Yeah, they invited a few people at first, then opened it to every Tesla owner in California, and basically nobody was interested. Supercharging was fast enough for most people, and it didn't make sense to scale out something that almost nobody was interested in.
Another notable change at that time was adding the underbody plate[1] for increased fire safety, which made the swap take longer than it otherwise would. These were offered free of charge to customers and there was very high uptake.
> then opened it to every Tesla owner in California
Nope. Never happened. 200 invitations to one location, and those invited needed to schedule an appointment to use them. Then the project was killed off.
Appointment-only service isn't what "battery swap" was about. It was supposed to be a service that was more convenient than gas stations or superchargers.
But we all know that swapping $15,000 batteries, roughly 1000lbs or more (aka: the weight of an engine lift) in 10 minutes was never really a viable business model.
> Another notable change at that time was adding the underbody plate[1] for increased fire safety
Oh thanks for reminding me of that. The plate that no longer exists on modern models, yet another broken promise of Mr. Musk.
You know, make a blogpost about how awesome Titanium is as a metal / shield, but SEO it away by a few years to make "Tesla Shield" in Google point you to floor mats. You know, to make the public forget about the entire "Shield" episode entirely and the whole controversy about exploding bottoms of Tesla cars.
Another notable change at that time was adding the underbody plate[1] for increased fire safety, which made the swap take longer than it otherwise would. These were offered free of charge to customers and there was very high uptake.
[1] https://www.tesla.com/blog/tesla-adds-titanium-underbody-shi...