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Forbes: "How Two Billionaires Are Supercharging The Electric Car To Upend Big Oil"

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This is a comment to the story I posted on the Forbes Website in response to battery criticism from other readers:


Full disclosure: I’m a prius-driving, liberal, tree-hugger from Seattle. I don’t pretend to know anything about the generation before me, but let me state for the record, that If I need to travel anywhere more than 300 miles, I FLY. Period. End of story. Not great for the environment, but there it is. After a 240 mile drive, I would need a half hour to get a bite to eat and stretch my legs. Hello blood-clots. The Tesla battery tech is in it’s infancy and super-charging is a winner.

Unless you travel for a living, there is never a night when your car doesn’t return to home base. Putting a car in a garage is something that the majority of people do. If you’re a big-city dweller, than you walk everywhere anyway. If we can all plug in a cell-phone nightly, why can’t we remember to plug in a car every night as well? I know this article was about battery swapping technology and you make a good point, but at what point are range-anxiety pot-stirrers going to give it up? Even a 75 mile range leaf does the trick for the vast-majority of drivers! They are out on the road! I see them every day. 75 miles? That’s how far someone travels to work? MOVE CLOSER! Everybody else in the world seems to understand it. Musk now has over 16000 reservations for the model s alone according to the Tesla Motors Club Forum. Over 2000 for the model x coming out next year, which doesn’t even have a price yet. Musk is going to win.
 
My concern about battery-swap is the scope for abuse. You get into a situation where there's a big incentive to abuse, damage or even steal from the battery you have, and then swap it for a fresh battery. Not many companies are willing to hand out equipment valued at $10k+ to someone without a detailed check when it returns. If a check does occur, how long does that check take?
 
This sentence in the Forbes piece caught my eye:

"Tesla designed the Model S to have a swappable battery and in the coming months will roll out a battery-switch option at its service stations, though the company declined to provide details on how it will work or the cost."

That's the first I've heard of a battery-switch option for the S, at least in the last couple of years: earlier on I remember Elon talking about battery switching, but not lately. Or did the author misconstrue a coming (and necessary) service capability for a full-on 'refueling' capability?

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My concern about battery-swap is the scope for abuse. You get into a situation where there's a big incentive to abuse, damage or even steal from the battery you have, and then swap it for a fresh battery. Not many companies are willing to hand out equipment valued at $10k+ to someone without a detailed check when it returns. If a check does occur, how long does that check take?

Then there's the issue of having to finance, deliver and maintain a large number of battery packs, a significant fraction of the delivered fleet size, in order to make the battery-swap concept viable. If you don't standardize the battery pack across all models, the inventory needs at any one swap location multiply, plus the machinery to handle swapping is inherently large and costly. Supercharging is the more elegant solution, by far: for a cost of $25K (for a bare-bones setup) to $250K (for multiple charging stations, solar PV and a canopy), you can deploy far more SC's for the same capital outlay and incur essentially no operating costs.
 
This sentence in the Forbes piece caught my eye:

"Tesla designed the Model S to have a swappable battery and in the coming months will roll out a battery-switch option at its service stations, though the company declined to provide details on how it will work or the cost."

That's the first I've heard of a battery-switch option for the S, at least in the last couple of years: earlier on I remember Elon talking about battery switching, but not lately. Or did the author misconstrue a coming (and necessary) service capability for a full-on 'refueling' capability?
The Model S does, apparently, allow for fast-swapping with highly specialized equipment. There's something like 26 bolts that lock the battery into place (no need to worry about thievery--anyone who tried to steal the battery would be flattened). And then there's all the connectors for power, coolant and controls.... So, while it's technically feasible, the article leaves the reader with the correct impression that it's not the route down which Tesla is going.

This was discussed a while back over here: Battery Swapping/Rental for the Model S
 
The Model S does, apparently, allow for fast-swapping with highly specialized equipment. There's something like 26 bolts that lock the battery into place (no need to worry about thievery--anyone who tried to steal the battery would be flattened). And then there's all the connectors for power, coolant and controls.... So, while it's technically feasible, the article leaves the reader with the correct impression that it's not the route down which Tesla is going.

This was discussed a while back over here: Battery Swapping/Rental for the Model S

I should have known this ground has been covered before...my bad.

When I took my factory tour, the number of bolts used to secure the battery pack was said to be 35. But that's just one DS's off-hand remark.
 
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I found the following tidbit in Dan Neil's comments responding to a Jalopnik/Matt Hardigree piece from earlier this year:

"Musk’s battery-pack solution is brilliant. At the outset I could not imagine how a liquid-cooled battery pack could be a stressed member and be also quickly service-able, if not exactly swappable. The Model S’s rigid aluminum battery pack (100mm thick, or 112mm with the protective skis) is attached to the bottom of the car with 37 through-bolts and connectors, 16 on the side sills plus 12 in the cross-members, plus two at the front subframe, plus four at front subframe cross-member, plus two for shear plates to rear subframe, plus one for the aero shield."

In case you haven't read the whole thing, it's instructive, if a little out of date in light of all the recent COTY awards:

It's Too Bad Elon Musk Wouldn't Even Give Dan Neil A Full Tesla Model S Test Drive