Tesla announces 90 sec battery swap

https://twitter.com/TeslaMotors/status/347925866061385728

by sbashyal • 13 years ago

87 77 13 years ago

twitter.com

sbashyal3• 13 years ago

This sounds like the future of automobile - why do we still need to step out of our cars to refuel?

dave5104• 13 years ago

You don't in New Jersey and Oregon. Gas attendants do that for you.

sbashyal3• 13 years ago

That's even more backwards in my opinion. The fact that it takes a human to fuel the car was my point.

TannerLD• 13 years ago

"Return the pack on your journey back or keep it & we'll bill you the difference."

Are there different battery types/options available that cost different prices?

sbashyal3• 13 years ago

Yes, there are a few batteries types with different capacities that give various range to the car. So it sounds like the ones who bought a lower-capacity battery can extend their range by swapping their battery while traveling.

schiffern3• 13 years ago

There are actually only two batteries – 85 kWh and 60 kWh. The 40 kWh was discontinued.

chad_oliver4• 13 years ago

I expect they'll also run a full set of tests on the battery, so they could charge you more if you give them an old worn-down battery and get a new battery in exchange.

ck22• 13 years ago

This is great but remember no existing model can do a battery swap.

Only the next gen which has been re-engineered will be able.

durkie• 13 years ago

Not so sure about that: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/347082201596321794

ck22• 13 years ago

Oh wow, okay I guess what I read the other day was incorrect.

iamshs5• 13 years ago

Wow. This is incredible. Nicely designed, electric power vehicles. Incredible. Finally, after around 130 years of IC engine, we are onto the next step. And this step is such a simple method to refuel. Better than spending 30 mins recharging from ground up.

Why are we going towards electric vehicles? To reduce dependency upon conventional fuels. From where will electricity come? Nuclear Energy.

Can long term derivative benefits and harm be predicted? Spent nuclear fuel storage and getting rare earth minerals seem to be only obvious ones to me.

chad_oliver4• 13 years ago

It's only wishful thinking at this stage, but I'm really looking forward to fusion power. Conventional nuclear has many downsides that fusion doesn't suffer from.

cdash3• 13 years ago

Not enough to wait.

iamshs5• 13 years ago

Definitely, there will be progress. Right now, conventional fuels provide 80% of electricity. It is estimated that by 2100, fusion energy will provide 20% of electricity generation.

mtgx2• 13 years ago

From where will electricity come? Nuclear Energy.

Tesla is giving free "solar" energy through its supercharger network.

jlgreco• 13 years ago

"solar" energy

A.k.a. Fusion. ;)

iamshs5• 13 years ago

That is great. "Over time, Tesla plans to add solar canopies to all Supercharger stations."

Homunculiheaded• 13 years ago

One thing that I haven't seen come up much is the idea that the electric car is going to be essential for a successful robotic car.

Sure robotic drivers will be masters of fuel efficiency, and quiet likely we'll end up sharing one car between many different people when that happens. But Jevon's paradox[0] suggests that we'll actually be using more fuel, not less. And it makes sense as well: driving will be so easy and not constrained by human factors (needing to sleep, eat, boredom with driving, being intoxicated etc) there are millions of reasons to have more cars doing more work.

Even ignoring environmental cost, the fuel cost to the individual would remove a lot of this usefulness (Why not commute 8 hours while you sleep, start your weekend on the beach the moment you wake up? Because it's so expensive!).

I pretty strongly believe that without fully electric cars, we'll never realize the benefits of fully robotic drivers.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

schiffern3• 13 years ago

getting rare earth minerals

I don't know about other electric cars, but this one doesn't use rare earth metals in the motor or battery. They use an AC induction motor that doesn't require permanent magnets, invented by Nikola Tesla actually.

http://www.teslamotors.com/it_CH/forum/forums/no-rare-earth-...

roskilli• 13 years ago

I believe he was referencing the Uranium required for Nuclear Reactors that currently is the most efficient/green standard for generating electricity at scale, althought Thorium-based nuclear power could well solve the "rare" issue

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power

sliverstorm4• 13 years ago

From where will electricity come?

If the current political climate is any indication, coal.

mikevm• 13 years ago

Why are we going towards electric vehicles? To reduce dependency upon conventional fuels. From where will electricity come? Nuclear Energy.

Yeah, I don't really get the fuss about electric vehicles. They might move us away from oil, but we mainly use fossil fuels to generate electricity... so this is merely an indirection.

pshc• 13 years ago

The great thing about indirection is you can change what it points at.

In the future we'll be running out of fossil fuels and generating electricity with same will be uneconomical compared to alternatives. It will be nice to have a mature EV industry at that point.

theguycalledtom2• 13 years ago

Is this a serious thought out comment or a joke?

Even coal powered electric plants are far more efficient than an ICE. So they are a cheaper source of fuel for the consumer and are putting out less C02. They are also far away from populated cities so the pollution isn't choking up the air in the city.

cicloid• 13 years ago

I'm still waiting for Mr. Fusion in my car.

austenallred• 13 years ago

I'm calling it a long, long way in advance, but Tesla has won. Game, set, and match - in 50 years we will all be driving electric cars.

With the battery swap Tesla has finally alleviated the "cross-country road trip" problem in a way that superchargers really couldn't. Now when you are comparing car vs. car you have no reason to turn your nose up at electric. And with Tesla making the best cars ever in the luxury sedan price range, they will likely do the same as they scale and create an economy car. The cost of batteries and production will continue to drop until the only real choice you're making is Tesla vs. Chevrolet. And Tesla makes better cars.

If I weren't a broke startup founder I would pour in all my money to Tesla stock.

iamshs5• 13 years ago

This is also an incentive to improve tech in some of the directly related fields: Solar, Battery tech, Self driving cars. Electric cars are huge improvement, which will lube lots of gears into motion 15-20 years down the line. But I also want to see what German and Japanese car makers bring to the forefront. It is also important to have competition.

coolsunglasses• 13 years ago

Tesla has finally alleviated the "cross-country road trip" problem in a way that superchargers really couldn't.

As someone who's taken a one-way cross-country trip before (NYC->SF), no, no they haven't. The system only works if it's round trip.

Gas powered vehicles continue to be more practical unless you are firmly confined to a 100 mile radius in your vehicular needs and can afford to supplement your electric with an extra vehicle (the case for all Tesla owners so far) and/or alternate modes of transport.

backprojection• 13 years ago

The system only works if it's round trip.

I'm confused, why is this? From the tweet:

"Return the pack on your journey back or keep it & we'll bill you the difference"

theguycalledtom2• 13 years ago

"Gas" powered cars are terrible. They choke up the roads with smog, they require way too much maintenance and they can't be fuelled with solar, wind or nuclear or other sustainable fuel sources.

The system only works if it's round trip

Why?

rdouble• 13 years ago

I might be confused about how it works, but isn't finding a place that can do the battery swap the same dilemma as finding a supercharging station? How does it help on a cross country road trip?

jcdavis• 13 years ago

I'm still confused on the details of this. Surely you'll be required to come back on the way back and swap back into your original battery? (for warranty reasons). Seems like a complex & expensive logistical nightmare (vs the simplicity of superchargers)

eisen• 13 years ago

Maybe I'm crazy but if it is a physical battery swap then this brings memories of history class. Horses were swapped along the silk road to extend distance in shorter range of time. Same goes for horses as do batteries I guess. They get the job well on more available energy but take for ever to regain to keep going. 2c of thought

sliverstorm4• 13 years ago

I really doubt horses were fungible. I don't know the actual details, but I would expect when you swapped horses, you got off a company horse and got on another company horse.

iamshs5• 13 years ago

Drivers can either return the fresh battery pack upon their journey past the service station, or keep it. Tesla will bill later for the difference in value, and Musk says that the service will cost about the same as a tank of gas.

Source: http://www.theverge.com/2013/6/21/4450664/tesla-model-s-batt...

Someone• 13 years ago

"Musk says that the service will cost about the same as a tank of gas."

So, if you use this regularly, the cost benefit of electric cars decreases. Probably not much of a problem, as most trips are short and doable 'on your own battery'. It is an incentive to get your own battery back, though, and also may keep the actual usage of the service down a bit, so that they don't need to store zillions of batteries everywhere.

mtgx2• 13 years ago

A camera recording of how it works:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VH4JloWFEI&feature=youtu.be

prawn• 13 years ago

Similar to swap-n-go for BBQ gas bottles. You might've bought the original tank, but after the first swap, it goes into the pool for refill and supply to others.

adamtulinius• 13 years ago

Interesting. Not long ago Better Place (at least in Denmark) went bankrupt, and now the Renault Fluence-owners are having problems due to all chargers (even home-installed onces) are/were connected to Better Place, and isn't providing any electricity right now. There's also the entire problem with the car-owners only renting the battery..

Anyways, Tesla were smart; they made a product people desired before building expensive battery-swap infrastructure. In Denmark, only about 200-250 cars that could use the battery-swap facilities were sold, so no wonder the company went bankrupt.

gcb02• 13 years ago

That may work for model s market... But even they came up with model cheap, this will be all kinds of nightmare from smart ppl "returning" all sorts of junk batteries.

kalleboo• 13 years ago

If all batteries are built and sold by Tesla, it would be easy to put battery health monitoring in there to test them before swapping them out. The cars are already all online and pinging home their battery level (see the stories about Tesla contacting owners who left their car in a garage and their battery is about to be irrecoverably discharged)

sown• 13 years ago

So I guess the near-term future is to commoditize the battery like Blue Rhino propane tanks you can swap around at the grocery store?

Jach• 13 years ago

That's what I thought, though "bill you the difference" indicates they're not treating their batteries like propane tanks. Hopefully someday.

cdash3• 13 years ago

Yeah, it sounds like you have a couple options. You can return to the station you swapped your battery at and get your old one back. You can also decide to keep the battery and you will either end up paying a certain amount of money that is determined in how much better condition the battery you have now is than your old battery or you can pay to have your old battery shipped to wherever you are.

brownbat2• 13 years ago

I've seesawed on this over the last few years.

I. The Good

I was originally* a big fan, faster than gas stations, but still compatible with at home "pumping" for city driving. It's basically a propane refill model, shops could buy back your old battery while they sold you a new one, so eventually you're really just paying for the energy at basically no wait.

II. The Bad

I grew more pessimistic as I started shopping for aftermarket cell phone batteries, noticing that:

a) Batteries degrade over time (in terms of capacity or depth of discharge)

b) Batteries are expensive, especially car batteries (though this should improve over time)

c) It's impossible to really know the exact capacity of a battery without a power cycle or two

Would you be willing to swap phone batteries with a stranger? What if the battery cost $4000? Who eats the cost of lemon batteries on the market? Does a sort of Gresham's Law kick in where suddenly everyone's dumping a lemon in every transaction?

Buying gas involves some trust, trust that they're not loading it up with crud, that it really has the energy capacity it says it does, that it's not 30% ethanol instead of 0, 10, 15. But I believe, based on the factors above, the trust relationship with a battery refill is a little more intense.

III. The Beautiful?

That said, now I'm of course swinging optimistic again. Car and Driver taught us that Tesla's diagnostic tools are awesome. Serial individual batteries, let the owner see its entire history, hidden lemon problem basically solved. Maybe build some "insurance" into battery costs, guarantee certain lifespan, smoothe out the cost of duds.

Musk can dodge some of the authentication problems by just keeping a tight grip on the infrastructure and the technology, but for this to really take off, Musk will want to allow competition, standardize battery swapping tech, encourage mom and pop "battery stations" to quickly build out the infrastructure in all the small towns he doesn't know are on the map. Not sure if that's in his personality though...

* Originally = Few years back I sat on a few panels for energy and transportation, wrote some white papers, nothing big.

EDIT: formatting, headings

gt565k• 13 years ago

Tesla's batteries aren't your regular cellphone battery... Not to mention Musk said they have partnered with Panasonic and are working on battery research for the future.

Tesla's Shareholder Meeting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3AcKTmaoE8

Worth watching if you got an hour and a half to kill :)

codex• 13 years ago

Tesla uses a mechanically modified version of the commodity Panasonic 18650 battery, similar to an AA, ganged together in large quantities in a thermal and safety optimized enclosure. They are in fact very similar to cell phone batteries, chemically. Nissan, on the other hand, built a new battery manufacturing plant in the US, and makes their own from scratch. Once Tesla has the funds they would be wise to make battery manufacturing a core competency and vertically integrate manufacture to keep costs low.

jzoidberg• 13 years ago

You get your original battery back on the way home.

chad_oliver4• 13 years ago

I wouldn't be suprised if Tesla has added (or will add) a small monitoring chip to the battery pack, which would track statistics on battery quality and usage. That would make it very easy and quick to determine the relative value of each battery.

bbq• 13 years ago

I wonder if the economics will allow for an hacked battery market. Perhaps organized crime goes around with batteries lying about their age to make some $$$.

BuddhaSource• 13 years ago

Most of the batteries already have it. They keep a profile of the battery on a chip, this helps in factor in memory effect in batteries.

huhtenberg2• 13 years ago

Would you be willing to swap phone batteries with a stranger?

In this case you are swapping with Tesla though. It's a big difference.

kybernetikos• 13 years ago

I assume you would rent your battery instead, and you pay more for renting a battery in prime condition vs renting a battery in moderate condition.

brownbat2• 13 years ago

huhtenberg and jzoidberg noted that I'm talking about a different program than what Tesla's offering.

That's true, I'm talking about what role battery swapping would ideally play in the infrastructure long term, vice supercharging stations or home charging.

If 20 years from now Tesla's battery swapping operation means they control the entire fuel delivery system for transportation in the US, then we have other problems.

sliverstorm4• 13 years ago

Heh, approaching the fill time of my 2-gallon motorcycle in college. :)

codfrantic• 13 years ago

I have a 4-gallon motorcycle and I love not getting off / taking off helmet at pumps where I pay through a terminal at the pump :-D

pixie_• 13 years ago

All a gas station needs to do is hold enough batteries to match the rate of customer arrival over the time it takes to recharge a battery, plus a safety factor of X. Stations can add more batteries to their pool over time as more people start driving electric vehicles. And instead of daily fuel tankers, occasionally a truck comes to the station with replacement batteries for those detected to be worn out. It could be a really great system if Tesla makes it easy to setup and handles most of the work automatically delivering new batteries when demand increases, and replacing worn out ones.

Someone should do the math of how many 'equivelent fill ups' it takes to pay for a battery, and then subtract that from the total amount of fill ups possible before wearing out and electricity cost. I have a feeling this could be a very profitable investment.

danboarder• 13 years ago

I wonder if they have licensed technology from Better Place, which has been doing battery-swap electric car fill-up stations for several years now (see http://www.betterplace.com/ ).

schiffern3• 13 years ago

They went bankrupt. Also this: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/347005150860283905

huhtenberg2• 13 years ago

I bet that today's announcement is Tesla's first step towards full-blown "battery as a service" offering. You will own the car, but not the battery. Instead, you will lease it from Tesla with an option to swap it at will and as frequently as you'd like. For example, on any charging station, in less than 2 minutes.

That'd be very Musk-like thing to do.

rurounijones• 13 years ago

I don't really understand all this talk about "Your" battery, "My" battery etc. since it doesn't seem to be the sane way to do things.

Sell me the car without battery, make me sign up for a battery service at $X per month which guarantees access to batteries at the swap-stations (The first 'swap' being done when I get the car) and done.

Let me treat batteries like I treat AWS servers, totally replaceable cattle. No ownership issues, no "swap YOUR good battery for a dud one" issues.

jhuckestein• 13 years ago

The "Your" battery talk happens because Tesla charges extra for cars with larger batteries. I agree, though, that this will likely not be the case one or two generations down the line.

Tesla announces 90 sec battery swap

Related Stories