June 20th Speculation

[Citizen-T]

Not saying I hate it, saying I'm too dumb to get the benefit vs risk model. It's a few minutes on multi-hours or days trip. If that time is worth that to me, I'm on a plane. To me, the battery health is equivalent to the engine health on ICE. Swapping the engine on my car would be like swapping the car, all to save a few minutes so I can eat in the car instead of a restaurant. To my brain, its a dumb trade I wouldn't consider, but like I said, this brain is way too dumb to get it.

But it's true if you could demonstrate swapping an engine in 2 minutes, I'd be impressed as hell you could do something I'd never consider doing. Nice engineering feat, for no good reason to me.

I think you are missing the value proposition. You are assuming that it is only to save some time at a supercharger, but there is more. No matter how well you care for your battery, at some point it is going to drop below the level at which it would have been taking out of circulation in the battery swap network. If you think about this that means that those that participate in battery swap put a floor under how much "their battery" can degrade.

Think about this. After 8 years you are selling your car with an 8 year old battery in it. You've taken extremely good care of it, but age eats away at batteries no matter what you do, and yours is 8 years old. Now, how does your car match up against an identical used Model S on the market whose owner purchased the battery swap option? We know that his car's battery is at least as good as the worst battery in the battery swap network.

Assuming that you intend to keep your car for a long period of time, and that Tesla pulls packs from circulation after they reach some level of degradation, it is perfectly reasonable to expect that any old guy driving around that participates in the battery swap network, no matter how badly they abuse their battery, has a better battery than you. Oh, and they don't wait at Superchargers as long as you do.

Now, is that worth the price? That's the question. For some it won't be, but I bet for some it will be. People don't want to have to worry about how best to baby their batteries. They just want it to work.

 

[brianman]

I think you are missing the value proposition. You are assuming that it is only to save some time at a supercharger, but there is more. No matter how well you care for your battery, at some point it is going to drop below the level at which it would have been taking out of circulation in the battery swap network. If you think about this that means that those that participate in battery swap put a floor under how much "their battery" can degrade.

Think about this. After 8 years you are selling your car with an 8 year old battery in it. You've taken extremely good care of it, but age eats away at batteries no matter what you do, and yours is 8 years old. Now, how does your car match up against an identical used Model S on the market whose owner purchased the battery swap option? We know that his car's battery is at least as good as the worst battery in the battery swap network.

Assuming that you intend to keep your car for a long period of time, and that Tesla pulls packs from circulation after they reach some level of degradation, it is perfectly reasonable to expect that any old guy driving around that participates in the battery swap network, no matter how badly they abuse their battery, has a better battery than you. Oh, and they don't wait at Superchargers as long as you do.

Now, is that worth the price? That's the question. For some it won't be, but I bet for some it will be. People don't want to have to worry about how best to baby their batteries. They just want it to work.

Sounds a lot like insurance.

 

[Johan]

Sounds a lot like insurance.

Bingo. Another peace-of-mind service Tesla can sell. Just like pre-paid service, pre-paid battery replacement (will perhaps be made redundant by swapping).

 

[30seconds]

I'm assuming that they would not sink $100m in a rollout without understanding how it complements the superchargers and what the payback is.

With that said - even though I can't understand the business case (yet), I am still net positive on this because once again it demonstrates that Tesla's engineers can flat out deliver.

I view this as a long term hold and a rapid swap would just increase my faith in the team and their technological lead over the rest.

 

[DTB]

I might be wrong and time will tell but I still believe that it'll be a frunk battery swap. Battery swap needs to be all weather to be efficient and thinking of having my "floor" battery being removed at -20C during a snowstorm just doesn't make sense. With a "frunk" battery though, that would make perfect sense. When I read the tweets and listen to the comments, they all can still apply to the frunk battery when you read between the lines and Tesla has a way of surprising us...

Then again, maybe it's because deep down I would much rather prefer the announcement to be "frunk" rather than "floor" but I'm posting this here just for the record (nothing better than to see "DTB predicted it!" in future posts ). After all this is a speculation thread isn't it?

 

[bollar]

If that time is worth that to me, I'm on a plane.

You are common now, but I think we are going to see Tesla sales eventually swing to a preponderance of owners who value their time differently. These people ferry their car to their destination because its cheaper than flying. Think NE to Florida for the family vacation. In that scenario, there's a driver swap every three hours and a longer refreshment stop every 5-6 hours, depending on the vehicle's range. On that 18 hour drive, an hour to two hours saved by avoiding a few 20-40 minute recharging stops may be significant - it certainly is psychologically significant.

Further, these people may not care about "babying the pack." They probably don't check coolant levels and tire pressures on their ICE, so I'm not sure why they'd start doing anything special to protect a battery now. In any event, it's not known yet how much impact the user can have on Model S battery life. The data on this forum have not yet shown a range difference between different packs based on how they're maintained.

So, I think a case can be made for swapping along certain routes, like I-95 in the Mid-Atlantic and I-10 in Texas. That buildout will need to be finished before this consumer demographic will buy. At that point, maybe Tesla will find it makes sense to expand swapping across the country, or maybe not.

 

[haid]

I'm assuming that they would not sink $100m in a rollout without understanding how it complements the superchargers and what the payback is.

With that said - even though I can't understand the business case (yet), I am still net positive on this because once again it demonstrates that Tesla's engineers can flat out deliver.

I agree. As for the business case, I'm guessing that this would make sense for a large fleet of Taxi cabs such as Las Vegas
Zappos CEO will share 100 Tesla Model S EVs in Las Vegas Downtown Project

The taxi company would buy the robo battery swapper, and the ownership of the battery packs are not an issue.

 

[deonb]

Think NE to Florida for the family vacation. In that scenario, there's a driver swap every three hours and a longer refreshment stop every 5-6 hours, depending on the vehicle's range. On that 18 hour drive, an hour to two hours saved by avoiding a few 20-40 minute recharging stops may be significant - it certainly is psychologically significant.

I've actually made the trip between Seattle and San Francisco several times in a single day (800 miles), and we then just do drive-through Starbucks. Drive-through meals. Eat in the car. Stop for the bare minimum at a gas station to refuel & go to the bathroom.

And I hated doing that every time, as I'm the sole driver. However, I always get a lot of objections from my passengers if I wanted to stop for longer for a sit-down meal, or even just want to do a 5 minute stop every 2 hours. I always say: "this time we're stopping more!" before the trip, but then after objections it inevitably becomes yet another 13-hour virtually continuous drive.

So I was actually really looking forward to be forced to take longer breaks on that particular trip (forced by the SuperChargers).

It's a little sad to me now that there might be battery swappers on the I5 (even worse that at gas stations, since you don't even get out of the car for a swap).

Oh well, maybe there will be a few years where there will be SuperChargers on that highway but before there are SuperSwappers.

 

[TD1]

does anyone know if the event will be live broadcasted tomorrow, and what time it will be?

 

[bollar]

does anyone know if the event will be live broadcasted tomorrow, and what time it will be?

Supposedly not -- a taped version is expected to be available at 9:30pm PT

 

[johnnydop]

Elon's interview with Reuters was pretty interesting.

Judging by what he said it sounds like the battery will be swapped out in an insanely quick fashion.

I think a demo of a Model S driving into a SC slot and having its battery swapped out in under 5 minutes with the driver still in the car will be amazing. After the demo if he announces that most of the planned SC stations will roll out with the swapping mechanism installed then it might be a fond farewell for range anxiety and a Falcon 9 ride into the stratospehere for the stock

 

[Johan]

Supposedly not -- a taped version is expected to be available at 9:30pm PT

I'd love if some TMC member would broadcast it, like Ben Goodwin did with some earlier events. If Tesla would allow it of course.

 

[brianstorms]

Even if Elon demonstrates a swap that happens in 30 seconds or less, while impressive, it would mean very little to me. The key issue is not speed of swap, it's

a. Where the battery goes
b. Do I still own it
c. How much it costs to do the swap
d. Being convinced doing a swap makes any sense at all

I am not (yet) a Model S owner, but what I would envision with the car is several times a year taking it up to Silicon Valley from San Diego. The notion of being able to do that trip essentially for free, with superchargers all over, is attractive.

I see no reason why I'd ever want to swap in that kind of driving scenario, however. Especially if it cost anything more than, say, free.

What would change everything is if Tesla reduced the price of the Model S by $10k or $20k or even more, by eliminating the battery purchase outright, and making it leased. And you can swap up to N times per year for free as part of the lease. If I buy the car but not the battery then I don't have any attachment to the battery. If I buy the car with a battery and the battery is the most expensive thing about the car, then I kinda have an attachment to the battery as opposed to every other stranger's Model S battery. Cooties, etc.

I still don't get the whole swap thing. I really hope that this isn't a big mistake on Tesla's part, an obsession with swapping that they have had since day one and they're finally able to demo something that's been a part of the vision forever. Seen this so many times with tech visionaries. I hope they have figured out a reason that swapping makes sense instead of just being gee-whiz cool.

 

[NigelM]

^^^ I couldn't have expressed my sentiments any better than *brianstorms*; I'd only add that from an investor perspective I don't get battery swapping as a priority. BUT.....Elon/Tesla has surprised us before and they might surprise us again.

 

[Palpatine]

^^^ I couldn't have expressed my sentiments any better than *brianstorms*; I'd only add that from an investor perspective I don't get battery swapping as a priority. BUT.....Elon/Tesla has surprised us before and they might surprise us again.

From an investor perspective, it really does concern me the most. I got my shares from back during the IPO because I was a Roadster owner. I have stuck with this company through a lot. My Roadster deposit was at risk during the 2008-2009 time frame when Tesla almost failed.

So as an investor when Tesla starts discussing taking on a lot of land ownership or long term land leases for phyical battery swap stations, that causes a lot of concern. Think of your typical gas station along the highway? What does it take to make that structure profitable, or at least avoid losing money?

Most gas stations don't make profits on the gas, they make profits on you coming inside to buy potato chips, soda, coffee, cigarettes, etc. To justify the expense of having that building there with one or two cashiers as employees, they need a high volume of cars coming through so they can make a few pennies of gross profit on gas sales, then make healthy margins on the food and drinks or they add a Subway franchise or something like that to make more money.

So as an investor in Tesla, I want to see their plan for how this pencils out financially for each swap station. The target market seems to be the driver that is on the road for 500+ miles and needs a battery swap so fast that they cannot stop for more than 1-2 minutes. So there doesn't appear to be a profit goal involved with selling other products (potato chips, soda) to that customer.

So since the target customer doesn't appear to have time to get out of the car to get other food/drink profit items, then 100% of the costs of a swap station need to be captured in either the swap fees or the subscription or whatever method they use to pay the building, real estate, employee staff expenses, electricity, battery inventory, etc. I am really interested as an investor how they keep this from becoming a huge money pit.

 

[johnnydop]

Even if Elon demonstrates a swap that happens in 30 seconds or less, while impressive, it would mean very little to me. The key issue is not speed of swap, it's

a. Where the battery goes
b. Do I still own it
c. How much it costs to do the swap
d. Being convinced doing a swap makes any sense at all

I am not (yet) a Model S owner, but what I would envision with the car is several times a year taking it up to Silicon Valley from San Diego. The notion of being able to do that trip essentially for free, with superchargers all over, is attractive.

I see no reason why I'd ever want to swap in that kind of driving scenario, however. Especially if it cost anything more than, say, free.

What would change everything is if Tesla reduced the price of the Model S by $10k or $20k or even more, by eliminating the battery purchase outright, and making it leased. And you can swap up to N times per year for free as part of the lease. If I buy the car but not the battery then I don't have any attachment to the battery. If I buy the car with a battery and the battery is the most expensive thing about the car, then I kinda have an attachment to the battery as opposed to every other stranger's Model S battery. Cooties, etc.

I still don't get the whole swap thing. I really hope that this isn't a big mistake on Tesla's part, an obsession with swapping that they have had since day one and they're finally able to demo something that's been a part of the vision forever. Seen this so many times with tech visionaries. I hope they have figured out a reason that swapping makes sense instead of just being gee-whiz cool.

My assumption based answers to your questions are:

a. Where the battery goes
He said in yesterdays Reuters interview that they specifically designed the Model S so that its batt pack is swappable and can be done quickly so i dont think this demo will be about a seperate battery going in the frunk.

b. Do I still own it
How could you? You just left it at the station and someone else can take it once its fully charged. This makes sense because Elon said during the “Service” announcement that the battery is 100% covered under the warranty. With that said, owners shouldn’t have to worry about tending to it like a little baby. If the performance of it drops dramatifcally I’m sure they’ll be replaced especially if many are using the swapping stations.

c. How much it costs to do the swap
He also said during the Reuters interview that the cost will be compelling, which i'm thinking it might be free. He also said it would cost about $50-100 million to have all the SC stations capable of swapping. Thats not a huge capital outlay and its also a one time cost. Remember, the space they have for SC's if either very cheap or rent free because it brings in high end customers to the location.

d. Being convinced doing a swap makes any sense at all
A five minute “recharge” as opposed to 20. That’s not enough convincing? Or perhaps there might be a bigger battery that you can swap into for a fee which would be a good range extender.

 

[hershey101]

d. Being convinced doing a swap makes any sense at all
A five minute “recharge” as opposed to 20. That’s not enough convincing? Or perhaps there might be a bigger battery that you can swap into for a fee which would be a good range extender.

Lets be clear. Its 5 minutes vs. 1 hr to recharge your battery. If I'm driving an ICE I'm not going to make a pitstop until the needle points to E, why should it be any different with a Tesla? If I'm driving anywhere, I don't want to stop every 2 hours for a 20 minute stop. Thats a ~20% increase in my travel time, even after babying the battery. I want to drive my Model S like my ICE, 80+ mph for several hours, stop for 5-10 minutes to fill it up/ go to the bathroom, and go back to driving.

All this arguing about how battery swapping is plain dumb. This is an amazing car, extremely fast, quite, and comfortable. I don't want to spend 20% of my travel time on road trips outside of the car, I spent over a $100K on it, I want to sit in it, and just drive! Battery swapping is amazing, extremely awesome if its free, but even if it costs as much as a tank of gas ($50-$60) per use, I would totally use it.
Last time I took my Model S from my house to my college, it took me 7 1/2 hours because of terrible charging infrastructure! I didn't take the car on the trip again because I can make the same trip in ~3.5 hours (250 miles @ 70 mph avg.). If this infrastructure was put into place in, say Scranton or Binghimton, I could drive my model S like my ICE.

I love driving, so it feels like being shackled when I have to keep on stopping to charge my car, and even though its the only drawback, its a huge deal. People on this fourms don't understand how much of a pain charging is because they are EV friendly. I couldn't care less if Tesla was an EV car or an ICE car, I bought it because its FAST, and QUITE, not because in some delusional sense I think I'm helping the environment or because I think a $60/tank is expensive. If I spend a $100K on a car, I don't mind paying $60 for a refill.

 

[brianstorms]

My assumption based answers to your questions are:

a. Where the battery goes
He said in yesterdays Reuters interview that they specifically designed the Model S so that its batt pack is swappable and can be done quickly so i dont think this demo will be about a seperate battery going in the frunk.

That's not what I meant by "where the battery goes." I meant where and how it is stored. Does it get absorbed into grid storage at the SC site? Does it get recharged and loaded into the next car that pulls in to swap? If it is 2 in the morning and I pull into the Tejon Pass SC, does a swap happen unattended? Entirely via swapbots?

 

[rlang59]

[/COLOR]
c. How much it costs to do the swap
He also said during the Reuters interview that the cost will be compelling, which i'm thinking it might be free. He also said it would cost about $50-100 million to have all the SC stations capable of swapping. Thats not a huge capital outlay and its also a one time cost. Remember, the space they have for SC's if either very cheap or rent free because it brings in high end customers to the location.

One quick point, if you are only stopping for ~5 minutes to swap then you have eliminated the "brings high end customers to the location" part of the statement. If they were going to stay around they could just supercharge. Also I will be very surprised if this is free. They are going to sell it as time value like they do with everything else.

 

[johnnydop]

That's not what I meant by "where the battery goes." I meant where and how it is stored. Does it get absorbed into grid storage at the SC site? Does it get recharged and loaded into the next car that pulls in to swap? If it is 2 in the morning and I pull into the Tejon Pass SC, does a swap happen unattended? Entirely via swapbots?

Sorry about the misunderstanding.

My guess is that the battery gets stored and get charged for the next person to take. I dont think they'd be used for grid storage since they'd need to be fully charged for the next person who needs one.

The stations will probably fully automatic without the need for anyone to be there so it shouldnt matter what time you go there.

I just cant wait to see exactly how it happens.

- - - Updated - - -

Lets be clear. Its 5 minutes vs. 1 hr to recharge your battery. If I'm driving an ICE I'm not going to make a pitstop until the needle points to E, why should it be any different with a Tesla? If I'm driving anywhere, I don't want to stop every 2 hours for a 20 minute stop. Thats a ~20% increase in my travel time, even after babying the battery. I want to drive my Model S like my ICE, 80+ mph for several hours, stop for 5-10 minutes to fill it up/ go to the bathroom, and go back to driving.

All this arguing about how battery swapping is plain dumb. This is an amazing car, extremely fast, quite, and comfortable. I don't want to spend 20% of my travel time on road trips outside of the car, I spent over a $100K on it, I want to sit in it, and just drive! Battery swapping is amazing, extremely awesome if its free, but even if it costs as much as a tank of gas ($50-$60) per use, I would totally use it.
Last time I took my Model S from my house to my college, it took me 7 1/2 hours because of terrible charging infrastructure! I didn't take the car on the trip again because I can make the same trip in ~3.5 hours (250 miles @ 70 mph avg.). If this infrastructure was put into place in, say Scranton or Binghimton, I could drive my model S like my ICE.

I love driving, so it feels like being shackled when I have to keep on stopping to charge my car, and even though its the only drawback, its a huge deal. People on this fourms don't understand how much of a pain charging is because they are EV friendly. I couldn't care less if Tesla was an EV car or an ICE car, I bought it because its FAST, and QUITE, not because in some delusional sense I think I'm helping the environment or because I think a $60/tank is expensive. If I spend a $100K on a car, I don't mind paying $60 for a refill.

I see your point but i think most owners dont buy it because they'll need to make frequent 300 mile trips that involve frequent 30 min charging stops, then again, after tomorrow, that might not be an issue. Pull in, swap out, pull out in about 5 minutes. If thats the case then i think i would be worth it to add maybe 5% travel time and be able to save tons of money on fuel costs.