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.
> 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 )
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?
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.
Have you thought about this at all? Why would 500 urban Tesla drivers ever show up at a charger on Saturday morning? They don't need to join the massive Costco queue. Their cars "refueled" the night before, for pennies.
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.
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" ;)
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.
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.
Yea, I though the same thing. But I also remember the gas rationing in the 70s where you were only allowed to buy gas on alternate days (based on the last digit of your license plate) which could be the reality again if we continue our current rate of consumption.
And I really don't get why people stand in line at a Costco for 20 minutes to save 15c gallon. $3 savings for 20 minutes "work"? Is their time really that cheap?
Have you actually thought about your comment? Why would a bunch of teslas in an urban environment need a battery swap? Why wouldn't everyone just keep their car plugged in at home? Urban driving rarely exceeds distances of even 30 miles in a single trip, unless you are a taxi or courier.
Are you saying that 500(or however many) teslas would all be rolling into the same charge station from 200+ miles away within the same 30 minute(or whatever) window?
And what happens in the rare, almost zero-probability chance that there are no batteries there for you to take in the 90 seconds? You wait 30 minutes for your car to be charged.
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?
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".
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.... 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).
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.
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?
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)
I own one. I routinely get over 600 miles, but 700 needs careful and slow driving. This A4 is a really tough comparison because the fuel economy and driveability is way better than most mid-size cars. The Tesla looks a lot better if you compare it to either more typical sedans or to its more direct competition which is sports cars. Eg compare to an R8 and the range difference is much reduced.
Diesel is kind of cheating -- you can go to a truck stop and use the high flow pumps (not sure if it works on the 2.0 TDI, it has to do with the vents in the fuel tank, but it works on a lot of non-semi diesel vehicles, including sedans and pickups). They're about 30 US gallons per minute.
You've got your numbers wrong with the Model S range. The 85kWh pack will go 300 miles by Tesla's estimates. The EPA range is 265 (not 235), but I've driven from Atlanta to Savannah which is approximately 260 miles with 40 miles of range to spare.
Tesla's numbers are good for distance driving and the EPA estimates are good for in-town driving. But since the battery swap is mainly applicable to distance driving, I would use Tesla's estimates.
I think we should just accept the poor range of Tesla and still root for it, because fundamentally, the technology is good for us and should be the future. We should accept it with all of its faults.
I'm happy it made it through (while Fisker didn't), if only for the cool factor... or whatever is the reason Tesla made it and Fisker didn't. I hope it keeps on rocking, so it can fund more research into improving the battery life until EV are decidedly better than gasoline vehicles.
On a side note -- I get 70mpg from my Prius C class when I'm supermiling. The car cost me 20k USD as I bought it new. I understand Toyota has a plugin hybrid too: http://www.toyota.com/prius-plug-in/
That's exactly it. There are so many downsides to internal combustion engines (exhaust that will literally kill you, horribly complicated with hundreds of moving parts, cost of fuel, etc), but no one ever mentions them when discussing the downsides to electric.
There is a lot of truth to this. If internal combustion engines were being rolled out today, people would be discussing those downsides. But, ICEs have been with us for quite some time, so we've accepted the downsides and mitigated where possible. This happens with anything that is new but competes with something that is old.
Personally, I am strongly rooting for Tesla. Even is Tesla fails, they will have significantly changed the automobile landscape.
Tesla made it because they're focusing on the car - their goal isn't to make a better electric car, it's to make a better car, period.
And they're largely succeeding. This is a company that will do anything to improve the product. Even build a nation-wide network of superchargers. That makes all the difference.
The more pedantic, the more upvotes comments get from me. To me, the relatively high ratio of pedantic comments is a large part of HN’s appeal.
Anyways, I’m still rooting for an initiative akin to BetterPlace[1] to take off worldwide. I think having battery swapping stations at lots of places (like say, at every gas station) is a good solution to the action radius problem of electric cars.
When I think about how to optimize the time of my day, it's certainly not the time I have to wait while the gas is filling up my tank.
3 minutes looks like a worse-case too. Not sure if that's 100 % honest.
The demo was to convince people that length of time at the gas station is not an argument against electric cars. Slam dunk for Tesla, methinks. I am not sure that swapping batteries is what we're going to do going forward - but it's an innovative approach and Tesla is doing a pretty good job making it practical.
It is still weird that they didn't find a solution where a supercharger station takes a few minutes to charge a car. I am sure they're working on it, and also I can't help but think that this is how it will work eventually.
Battery swapping is just an intermediary solution.
Tesla is very much at the forefront of electric car development, it's pretty exciting. Problems arise, solutions are tried, some will be discarded again - but the point is, they're doing it, and they will succeed, eventually.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.