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Tesla battery swap: Post announcement discussion

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I'd also like to see a "conjecture" subforum generally. So we can consolidate of the theory threads somewhere separately from the fact and discussion of fact threads.

Great idea. There is tons of conjecture and debate over whether what they are doing is "right" or not :) Would be great to keep that away from discussions actual owners are having about their cars!
 
One thing I haven't seen anyone mention is the fact that as there are more Teslas on the road, the demand on the super chargers will increase. Eventually Tesla will reach a point where they can't expand them to meet demand, which will mean that there will be wait time to just connect to a super charger. Someone who normally would just charge might decide to pay for a swap rather than waiting.
 
And that's the amount I'd always seen floated around for Better Place's stations. They went into a spiral and then bankrupt.

Better Place faced some other issues -- they'd have to build more stations for every Tesla station to get comparable coverage. Musk said Nissan would need 4X the stations if they wanted to offer a Supercharger-like service, so maybe think $2 million/station for Better Place.
 
You're in a situation where you don't want to wait for a Supercharge to complete. Perhaps a very long-distance road trip.

Sorry, I love the innovation and the effort, and to reach new heights means sometimes striking out. But this one I still don't see taking off. There just aren't that many people in the world who 1) take long distance trips who 2) can't spare a few minutes to wait for a free SC and 3) would rather pay $99 (or even $50) for a loaner battery even assuming this was 100% foolproof and there was zero chance of any technical issues in swapping out the battery. And does someone pay $60 for every battery swap along the way of the trip? So a person driving 1000 miles in a 60 would pay at least $494 for five swaps along the way. Really??
 
Sorry, I love the innovation and the effort, and to reach new heights means sometimes striking out. But this one I still don't see taking off. There just aren't that many people in the world who 1) take long distance trips who 2) can't spare a few minutes to wait for a free SC and 3) would rather pay $99 (or even $50) for a loaner battery even assuming there were no chances of any technical issues in swapping out the battery. Does someone pay $60 for every battery swap along the way of the trip? So a person driving 1000 miles in a 60 would pay at least $494 for five swaps along the way. Really??

I don't know if swapping will be successful or not, but I do think there's a potential audience -- if you go to Disney World, you'll find thousands of ICE cars that got there from extreme distances with owners who are already used to paying that kind of $ to make the trip. If you're making the 18 hour trip from upstate New York, I can easily see alternating swapping with charging -- charge on the longer bio and food breaks, swap on the driver changes. Each swap saves 40-60 minutes, so on a journey like that, I do think it's a signficant consideration.

I know there are many people here who would just say, "Meh, just fly," but I can say that when I worked in Buffalo, half my staff would drive to Florida over Christmas and Spring Break. Economically, it was the only they could make the trip work. If swapping can make that trip feasible without adding a significant period of time for charging and actually costs less than gas, I think that's a huge selling point to a potential X or Gen III buyer.
 
Sorry, I love the innovation and the effort, and to reach new heights means sometimes striking out. But this one I still don't see taking off. There just aren't that many people in the world who 1) take long distance trips who 2) can't spare a few minutes to wait for a free SC and 3) would rather pay $99 (or even $50) for a loaner battery even assuming this was 100% foolproof and there was zero chance of any technical issues in swapping out the battery. And does someone pay $60 for every battery swap along the way of the trip? So a person driving 1000 miles in a 60 would pay at least $494 for five swaps along the way. Really??

There are a lot of people who said they'd prefer to make a long trip in an ICE, even after fast-charging was announced, pointing to the charging time. This is meant to be the same cost, yet even faster. Perhaps, once they make a few trips, they'll prefer using SuperChargers and save the money. Until then, it will convince them that in an EV future they won't have to spend more time on long trips than with an ICE. Aside from the question of network size, that is, but that won't be a long term problem if the mainstream starts buying EVs.

AFAIK the cost (if really $500k per swap station, as the non-Tesla tweet said) is roughly comparable to a gas station, so Tesla today more or less demonstrated that an electric car world will give you the same options as the ICE world, plus options that you don't have with ICEs (less expensive long trips, and home charging for daily driving).