
Tesla: It's faster to 'recharge' electric car than pump gas - scg
http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/Energy-Voices/2013/0621/Tesla-It-s-faster-to-recharge-electric-car-than-pump-gas-video
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jdietrich
What people don't realise is that hardly anyone needs to use this sort of
infrastructure regularly. We fixate on the range of a gasoline tank, thinking
that an electric car _must_ match that range if it's to be useful. In truth,
long range driving is a very niche use case.

How many times in the last year did you start a trip with a full tank and need
to refuel before you reached your destination? The mode answer to that
question is zero. According to the Department of Energy, the average vehicle
trip is just 10.1 miles. 98% of car journeys are less than 50 miles.

Battery swap technology is irrelevant and always will be. It's a great
marketing move by Tesla, because it undermines one of the key arguments
against electric cars, but it has little or no practical importance. The fast-
charge infrastructure is what matters, because it's cheap enough to
realistically become ubiquitous.

We're just very poor at translating our experience of car ownership to
electric technology. There's a long thread of comments about peak demand, in
which several people clearly haven't internalised the idea that you can charge
your electric car at home, so you only need to use a fast-charge or battery
swap facility if you've just driven 300 miles in the same day.

~~~
glenra
> How many times in the last year did you start a trip with a full tank and
> need to refuel before you reached your destination?

Well, there _was_ that time in the last year that I drove from New York to
Jackson, Wyoming and back (~2000 miles each way). If I did that in a Tesla I'd
want to battery-swap once or twice a day. Um, it looks like that might be
possible sometime in the next year or two. Hurray!

(right now there aren't even any supercharger stations along that route, much
less battery-swapping ones. There's an interactive map of stations here:
[http://www.teslamotors.com/supercharger](http://www.teslamotors.com/supercharger)
)

Though there's another question about that: How do you charge overnight at a
hotel? Do you stay at motels and run an extension cord out the window? Is
there a special database somewhere of hotels with convenient charging
stations?

------
rphlx
Even ignoring the range differences, this is misleading marketing. What
happens when 500 cars show up at an urban Tesla battery swapper within 30 mins
of each other on a Saturday morning?

Anyone who's been to a Costco gas station knows that the petrol refill process
is sustainable for hundreds of cars, while the battery swap is "draining a
cache" of however many battery packs the station has pre-charged, which my
guess is, way less than 100.

They are gonna have a peak demand problem on holiday weekends, etc.

~~~
emarcotte
Assuming the batteries are not just discarded when swapped, you'd end up
charging them, right? If a stall can change 1 battery every 1.5 minutes, then
it needs something like 60 batteries available, total.

Take one out, start it charging on a super charger. 60 minutes later it's
ready to be used.

~~~
rphlx
Once the cache of pre-charged batteries is empty, the latency is the charge
time (~60 mins) and the throughput is the charge time multiplied by the number
of chargers they have. So when they run out of pre-charged batteries, have 10
chargers at the station, and you're the 11th in line, you get to wait for 2
hours. "All you have to decide is fast or free, and how to cut in line" ;)

~~~
lacksconfidence
I am just theorizing here, but If i were designing this system it wouldn't
work like that.

When a battery comes out of a car, it goes on a charger(underground, or
wherever). Each charging station starts with 42 batteries(2 extra for good
measure) and each spot that a battery sits in wait is a charging station of
its own. At minute 0 a battery goes on the charger. After 40 battery changes,
one every 90 seconds, an hour has gone by. At this moment the first battery we
put on the charger is full, and we have 39 more charging batteries each
finishing their charge at 90 seccond intervals in the same order they went in.

In this way, we never run out of batteries.

Of course first they have to change the system to leased batteries so they
dont have to give do the whole 'come back for _your_ battery' thing.

~~~
droithomme
The requirement to return and unswap your battery does put quite a crimp on
the ability to make trips that aren't strictly plotted out, with no side
trips. As this is being promoted for long trips such as vacations, the
batteries might need to be shelved for weeks at a time before the user
returns. Considering more than a trivial number of users and the storage area
required would be vast.

You are correct that this only really would work with leased batteries, but
this would require owning up to the actual wholesale manufacturing costs of
the batteries, depreciated across the number of miles before the battery is no
longer practically usable. Tesla stockholders tend to get upset and
confrontational when these numbers are discussed, despite that they are easy
to determine since the cost of the Panasonic NCR18650A cell, the number used
per Tesla (6831), and the lifespan of the cell, are all known.

------
machinagod
Starting by congratulating Tesla in their system, which should win some
converts, but there's something bothering me with it.

An automobile network that's also owning their "refueling" network concerns me
with the usual lock in concerns. What'd append when other brands want to offer
the same service? A multitude of recharge posts all accross the land space
each under their car brand flag? Figuring that there's only tesla and ford on
this city, instead of the Nissan charging station that I need?

This particular solution seems very specific to Tesla (or even only model S),
is there any standard or independent initiative for battery-exchange stations?

~~~
gdubs
Interestingly, the idea of a car company owning the charging station network
was presented by Cringely on his column years ago. [1]

Just listened to the podcast the other day and was struck by how similar
Tesla's model is to what he presented. The entire segment is around the
question of "how would Steve Jobs run a car company".

1:
[http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2008/pulpit_20081207_0055...](http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2008/pulpit_20081207_005508.html)

------
jmduke
The Tesla takes ninety seconds to get a battery which will last 235 miles.
([http://www.teslamotors.com/models/facts](http://www.teslamotors.com/models/facts))

The Audi A4 takes three minutes to get a tank of gas which will last 448
miles. ([http://autos.aol.com/cars-
Audi-A4-2013/specs/mpg/](http://autos.aol.com/cars-Audi-A4-2013/specs/mpg/))

~~~
to3m
Most Audi A4s in the UK are probably the 2 litre inline 4 diesel. See the
specs page here: [http://www.audi.co.uk/new-
cars/a4/a4-saloon/specifications.h...](http://www.audi.co.uk/new-
cars/a4/a4-saloon/specifications.html). Note that figures are in miles per
Imperial gallon. The EU tests can produce unrealistic results, but the
combined figure is usually actually attainable in practice under realistic
conditions.

58.9 miles per imperial gallon in miles per 16.1 US gallons = 789.6 miles.

Diesel fuel is denser, but it comes out of the pump just as quickly. Add
perhaps 20 seconds for donning and discarding your disposable gloves.

N.B., the Tesla probably accelerates better and with less noise than the 2L
diesel. But that said, for the cost of a Tesla, you could probably buy an Audi
A4 and run it for 25 years (in the rather unlikely event your car search has
narrowed itself down to exactly these two types of car).

~~~
MaxGabriel
Is using disposable gloves while pumping gas an English thing? I've never
heard of it before

~~~
rdl
It depends on where you're fueling -- some diesel pumps are really dirty
(although this seems more common at truck stops and marinas/ag diesel tanks).

For insanity, the Army fueling procedure involves putting a drip tray
underneath the vehicle, wearing gloves/mask/etc., etc. Which maybe makes sense
for some tactical vehicles, but is silly when they're putting regular auto gas
into a leased SUV. This might have just been a contract requirement in
Iraq/Afghanistan/Kuwait. The contrast with the civilian Iraqi fueling (plastic
bottles by the side of the road...not fuel bottles, but 1.5L water bottles),
and the Kuwaiti civilian stations (leave the vehicle running, remain in the
vehicle smoking/on phone/etc. during fueling), was quite marked.

~~~
jevinskie
I've never encountered a very dirty pump. Certainly nothing that I felt I had
to wear gloves with. Do American gas stations clean their pumps more often?

~~~
sokoloff
Diesel stink stays on your hands and clothes a long time. It's far more
annoying than gasoline in that regard. (it's unclear if you're speaking from
diesel or gasoline experience)

------
MrSourz
The one thing I didn't like about the demo is they showed it compared to
refilling a car, but refilling a car adds more miles to your range than
swapping out one of those batteries.

~~~
akiselev
Still, 50% capacity at 200% refuel cost with 400% automobile cost (although I
would argue it easily performs/feels like a luxury vehicle so really 100%
cost) is pretty good considering the auto industry is about an order of
magnitude older than Tesla motors.

------
thedrbrian
How much will this cost? Really.

Reuters reckons it'll be the same as filling a petrol car about $60
[http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/21/us-tesla-swap-
idUS...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/21/us-tesla-swap-
idUSBRE95K07H20130621)

Edit:$60 apparently.

~~~
droithomme
So $60 for 240 miles of range, or $4 to travel 16 miles.

~~~
ori_b
Or $10 for 240 miles of range, if you aren't on a long haul trip, and don't
mind plugging it in at both ends of the commute.

~~~
droithomme
Yes, that should definitely be part of the analysis. $10 for the electricity,
$50 for the prorated cost of the batteries. Every discussion should indeed
take the battery life and factor it into cost of operation per mile, which is
exactly what is being done with these battery swaps. Since the units are made
up of commercial off the shelf cells such as the NCR18650A, the wholesale
price in quantity of which is well known, and which have a known short
lifespan, it is a simple matter to determine this cost.

So yes, absolutely when talking of the cost of operation, we should consider
both the electrical cost per recharge, and the cost of the battery.

------
dmckeon
Interesting timing on Tesla's part - announcing battery swap stations less
than 4 weeks after battery-swap based Better Place announced (May 26) that
they are shutting down.

This is either an amazing fast pivot, or more likely Tesla had the swap
capability designed in, but the swap station plan held in reserve to be able
to announce swapping so quickly after the departure of Better Place from the
battery swap niche.

------
Patrick_Devine
I'm really hoping that Tesla licenses the technology to other electric car
manufacturers and makes certain their other vehicles (Model X, Roadster) can
use it. It would be really silly to have "Tesla Model-S only" service
stations.

~~~
jholman
The Roadster's never going to become magically forward-compatible. Just like
it's physically incompatible with superchargers, I'm sure it's physically
incompatible with having its battery swapped.

Conversely, the X has a huge technology overlap with the S. So it's extremely
likely that it will work compatibly.

As for licensing the tech to other manufacturers, Elon has already said he's
willing to talk with other companies about making the superchargers available,
although there's accounting to be worked out.

------
notdrunkatall
> Each unit will include 50 loaner battery packs that Tesla owners can borrow
> for the equivalent of what it costs to fill up a tank of gasoline. The units
> will cost the company about $500,000 each to install.

What does this mean?

~~~
ksherlock
It's not a gas station, it's a block buster. You're not swapping, you're
renting. And if don't re-swap back for your original battery, they charge you
extra for it.

~~~
glenra
Keeping track of who owns which to ensure each user can get their battery back
seems like a bit of a mess. Presumably they give you _money back_ if you keep
a battery that's _older_ than the one you dropped off? If so, I frankly can't
see how it's worth bothering trying to reunite batteries with their owners -
just do the accounting and be done with it.

Suppose I'm driving two thousand miles and I swap batteries once or twice
every day along the route. If I don't take the same route back and stop at the
exact same spots, I've moved a dozen batteries 200 miles away from where they
were before. Whoever dropped off the batteries I picked up now can't plausibly
get them back.

On the other hand, suppose I DO plan to take the same route back. Suppose I
drive 2000 miles, spend a week at my destination, then drive back. All the
batteries I moved will be out of place for that week, so my schedule prevents
their owners from getting the batteries back on _their_ preferred schedule.

I'm sure they'll work it out somehow. At least with the new system long
driving trips are finally somewhat _practical_! (Or will be once the stations
are in place, anyway.)

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Yes, your analysis illustrates how amateur and silly the Tesla plan is. Did
they not run this by a focus group, or even ask somebody who drives long
distances maybe? Nothing about the announced plan stands the slightest
scrutiny. There were no answers for the simplest questions that occur to
anybody who heard the plan.

