HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

⬐ elkos

So is this so fast and easy currently?

The statement is worded critical of Tesla, but IIRC there's some truth to it. They engineered the Model S to be battery-swappable, and there was some advantage wrt. the regulatory credits to doing so. Can't find a link, but I remember reading it.

They rolled out this service to a couple of spots in California, which was probably sufficient for the the credit regime, but ended up not expanding the program further and terminating it after a few quarters. The official explanation was that it was not widely used.

https://youtu.be/H5V0vL3nnHY?t=57

There may have been other business reasons. I have no idea what was discussed on the executive level but wouldn't be surprised if they considered some tradeoffs of complexity, costs and customer attractivenes to not be worth it. Honestly, it's very rare that you actually need or strongly prefer to have this kind of service rather than just recharging at 150kW for 15 minutes. So if it adds considerable cost or complexity, I could understand the decision to drop it.

A short time later, they started welding an extra metal shield onto the bottom of the Model S, to act as an extra layer of protection against collisions with highway debris that caused some high-profile battery fires. I had the impression that this precluded battery swap, so at that point the business decision must have been made to not expand the program further.

If the regulatory incentives was key in the decision to do this and then later drop it, that's a fundamental property of incentives to do something that might not be a good idea in isolation.

⬐ snotrockets

I am critical of Tesla, as it success was largely due to to public subsidy, and I believe we should hold such enterprises to the highest of standards, to guarantee the public made a sound investment. But I digress.

A short summary of the extra government subsidy Tesla got out of the non-existing battery swaps is here: https://seekingalpha.com/article/2724835-after-earning-tens-...

I wonder if the electric car market (i.e. Tesla) is ripe for disruption.

I read the article and thought back to the demo [1] Tesla did years ago of automated battery swap. Tesla did it as a stunt; they publicly stated that they didn't plan to market that.

As a Tesla owner, I don't want battery swap as long as I am paying for the battery as part of the price of the car. I'd be worried that my brand new max-range battery would be swapped with old worn-out batteries, and I would feel like I lost value.

However, on road trips, I would much prefer a 5-10 minute battery swap over supercharging (which they no longer give me for free). The electric car experience would essentially be the same as the IC experience.

If Tesla (or someone) sold me a car without a battery, and I had to buy a battery "subscription", I might go for that. I'd get a huge discount off the base price of the car, and now I wouldn't be concerned about swapping since it's not my battery. I'd do my normal day-to-day as usual, and on road trips or unexpected usage, I could swap out in minutes. I could get on board with that.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5V0vL3nnHY ed: added video link

⬐ xutopia

My opinion on when Tesla will be ripe for disruption is when more than one car manufacturer agree on a battery swap technology. Once we have that we might see a city offer a fleet of cars for car-share services first (or rental) and then it could take off from there. We aren't there yet and at least a few years out.

⬐ JamesAdir

Better Place, the electric car company that was launched in Israel with Renault was doing that. You could charge at home or go to a station and have your battery swapped in minutes. I think they did that mostly to make sure people will always know they can charge quickly and not waste time in a station for that.

⬐ pornel

I think there's no market for this, because charging has been solved to a good-enough with bigger batteries & faster DC charging.

Charging is already at the level it adds only 10% to the road trip time compared to an ICE car (see Bjorn Nyland's 1000km tests).

⬐ serpix

Recent road trips show that the weakest link are humans which have to take a longer rest period than the car needs to recharge.

⬐ pacetherace

The gas grill + propane tank model

⬐ kumarvvr

I think the logistics for battery swapping in bikes vs cars is completely different.

A battery in a car is a critical piece of mechanical equipment, that lowers CG, forms an important part of the stability calculations etc. As such, the fixtures that hold a car battery in place are much more rugged and designed so.

Making that a swappable design adds more weight to an already overweight car (for example, having a rugged frame casing that has a removable batter inside)

⬐ cbhl

I remember Shai Agassi gave a couple of TED talks in the 00s about swappable car batteries, but Better Place went defunct in '13.

I feel like the scale matters -- a Tesla Model 3 has a battery of 50 kWh or more; whereas an ebike battery is more like 0.5 or 1.0 kWh. You can charge 50-100 ebike-battery-swaps with the energy you need to charge and battery swap one car-battery-swap.

⬐ specialist

IIRC, Ford's EVs use prismatic battery modules. So their F-150 would have 6-8 modules. An obvious next step is to make them user hot-swappable.

(Probably gleaned from Munro Live on youtube. It might have been another mfg, like Rivian or BYD.)

⬐ stetrain

This is happening at a pretty large scale in China with NIO brand vehicles.

For it to work, as you said it is a subscription model for the battery.

It requires a very large fleet of vehicles that all use a standardized battery size. That means not offering lower priced vehicles with smaller battery packs, since you're just able to swap it anyway. And it means not having higher-end larger vehicles with larger packs, since now they aren't standardized.

That also means you are using more battery cells than needed for some customers, and you need more total battery packs in circulation as well.

So it can work, but there are definitely tradeoffs to vehicle design, and I doubt the US market could come together to create a standard used by a large enough percentage of the fleet to be worthwhile. We have some brand segmentation in DC fast chargers, but imagine if Chevy and Ford and Honda all had different battery swap stations. And within brands, can an F-150 use the same battery pack as a Ford Escape?

⬐ ComradePhil

Here is a video on how it works:

https://youtu.be/hTsrDpsYHrw

While currently, thr stations have to be manned, there is potential for this to be completely unmanned drivethrough where you take the car and never have to get out of it, you pay and the battery is changed for you in 3 minutes (which also looks like it could be improved, and that could come down to less than a minute).

I have no doubt that this will absolutely kill the competition.

Also, it doesn't have to be one standard size. A standard interface with a few standard sizes will work just fine.

⬐ stainforth

But the market is so efficient, it will find the best way soon enough.

⬐ geenew

I would think you would only need a standard size battery, and have vehicles capable of holding as many standard-sized batteries as necessary for their weight/performance. So a compact car would have 1 C-sized battery (joke), and a F150 would have 5, for example.

⬐ konschubert

I would be worried that the complexity needed for multiple battery slots would drive up cost and reduce range immensely.

Tesla and Elon Musk presented a demo of just that over 8 (!) years ago and then ... nothing.

https://youtu.be/H5V0vL3nnHY

⬐ gen220

I’ve tried thinking about this from Tesla and the auto manufacturer’s point of view.

I think, while battery technology is rapidly evolving, the incentives of EV manufacturers is not to create “open interfaces”, but instead to integrate the battery into the hardware as much as possible. This gets better performance but also creates lock in.

In short, my theory is that until there’s a “battery company” ecosystem that sells up to auto manufacturers, this dream of swap stations will not materialize. Barring some regulation, I guess.

Tesla tried that too (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5V0vL3nnHY), but they only built one swap station and they decommissioned it a couple of years later. They claimed lack of demand and doubled down on supercharging instead.

A company named Better Place got a ton of VC funding to set up a battery swapping service for electric cars, and flamed out spectacularly.

Perhaps NIO can succeed where Tesla and Better Place failed, but I'm doubtful. OTOH, Shanghai is probably a great place to start.

He got something like $180 million from California for the faked/minimal battery swap effort alone.

Basically $180 million to make this commercial and a couple scrapped demo stations:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5V0vL3nnHY

⬐ atomi

HN is not immune to political biases especially when it comes to taxes.

Nobody likes taxes and if you can either avoid them or recoup them through subsidies it makes you "smart."

⬐ southeastern

You make it sound like they don't argue their hardest that it's destructive to the economy, and not that they just don't like it. Yes HN is susceptible bias and no that's not okay. This idea that we just have to be relegated to accepting bad ideas cuz everyone wants to do it is.. dangerous.

What I don't understand is why a replaceable battery is seen as an all or nothing proposition. Design the car so that you could add 1 or 2 extra batteries when you need them.

So 90%, 95%, 99% of the time you're using your built-in 150-mile range. But you're not dragging around the weight of the extra 200, 250, 300 miles that you don't need. Your car weighs a lot less so you get better eMPG.

Tesla did a demo of having a battery swap: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5V0vL3nnHY That's really cool but if you could roll into Jiffy Lube (now offering Jiffy Volts) and get your extra batteries ...

⬐ elihu

I like that idea. It's a little tricky to pull off, though. Adding cells in series increases the voltage (which the car might not be designed to handle) or adding them in parallel means they have to be well-matched to what the car already has.

I don't know if anyone has tried this, but a solution I like for adding dissimilar batteries is to break the battery up into blocks that are linked in series, with each block being, let's say, 50 volts. Maybe the stock battery has five of these in series for 250 volts.

If you add more blocks, it exceeds the voltage specifications. So what happens is that each block has a contactor (i.e. a big relay) that can bypass that block; it just looks like a 0-volt battery when enabled.

Supposing you add two extra blocks for a long trip. Then you have a scheduler that disables two blocks at a time on a rotating schedule, so it always has 250 volts. If the added blocks have more amp-hours than the OEM blocks, that's fine: they'll just be enabled for a longer duration. Rotating batteries in and out can be done in a way that keeps their voltages roughly equal with each other as they're depleted.

Maybe this is too complicated and too much of a hassle to be worth it in general (as opposed to just building a car with a big battery to begin with). I'm also not sure if typical relatively-inexpensive contactors can tolerate being switched on and off every few minutes while under load.

On the plus side, you could probably just have a few kinds of generic "extra" batteries that work in a wide range of vehicle as long as they can handle the required current. They wouldn't have to be an exact match for what's already in the car.

Tesla had a demo for a battery pack replacement station [1, 2013], but I guess it never went anywhere.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5V0vL3nnHY

⬐ ianai

The crazy thing is the economic trade off here. Those batteries are around half the cost of the car. So splitting the two would make the car that much cheaper while the battery could be like a lease program.

⬐ foobarian

This would really get me to switch to one - just paying for the car sans battery, and having battery swap stations. Sadly the available charging infrastructure is a nonstarter for me. I don't have a big house or a garage so even charging off of 120v plugs does not work.

⬐ natch

We make it work with two Teslas living in an apartment with no chargers on site. Need either charging at work or a close Supercharger or nearby fast public chargers to make it work. Preferably at least two out of those three.

⬐ ianai

Yes, they’re leaving the vast majority of apartment occupants (like myself) and probably other types of residencies in the cold. It’s not that oil doesn’t have a similar problem. A tank of gas easily weighs over 100lbs (per a quick search). It just benefits from being a liquid.

⬐ natch

See my comment history re: apartments. It may be possible, depending where you live.

> didn't Elon try and shoot for a battery swap station similar to a gas station and Tesla deemed it unfeasible?

It was developed and demonstrated. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5V0vL3nnHY My understanding is that it was deemed more unnecessary than unfeasible. That it would change the battery ownership model would also create administrative complications too.

Supercharging improved to 250kW, bringing down charging times. That people need to recharge their Tesla at intervals when they should probably take a break from driving anyway, on the occasions when they take long road trips, makes it hard to justify a battery swapping program.

⬐ pmontra

A swappable battery means we're not tied to the power grid. One can load as many as possible on a pickup and use them in remote areas. Exactly what happens with petrol. Furthermore the car manufacturer loses some control, which probably is a good thing for everybody else.

⬐ WorldMaker

That seems to be the level of scale where Hydrogen Fuel Cells most make sense for interacting with cars: trucks and shipping containers that can be used to service remote areas or places the grid doesn't service well.

This sort of "mobile charging station" is probably much more convenient than the mechanical trouble of swapping a battery, especially with most of the EVs using the battery as a major part of the chassis and safety designs of the cars and the trade-offs of making them swappable aren't worth the loss of certain safety constraints.

A recent video on the subject of HFC tankers, in which Siemens and others are actually working to commercialize it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCmKAAh-vkE

⬐ gnode

It's quite a different model to petrol: the batteries themselves are very expensive, and the stored energy very inexpensive. Futhermore, the batteries degrade, losing capacity over time, making them vary in value, and non-fungible. Practically, battery swapping requires a leasing / rental scheme. Batteries can't just be sold for consumption like petrol.

Transporting batteries might make sense for some extremely remote locations with no grid access, but people don't commonly drive far away from the grid. As these batteries are very heavy, I would expect the handling involved to make this far more expensive than just charging on-site.

>swappable batteries would require a huge engineering effort.

Worked just fine back in 2013.

The people's habits were the only obstacle: owners wanted to retain their own battery pack, instead of getting pre-owned one left by somebody else, in unknown condition. And/or drive over a weird contraption.

[1] (loud music warning) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5V0vL3nnHY

⬐ SketchySeaBeast

I wonder why it bothers people about battery packs, but not propane tanks. They seem to have equal chances of exploding.

⬐ mulmen

What if some jerk replaces half his cells with rocks then swaps the pack and you get it?

You have to trust the charging station that you’re getting an equivalent pack in trade. Are incentives aligned to ensure that?

⬐ samatman

Gogoro has been quite successful with this model.

The difference, of course, is that a scooter takes batteries small enough to swap by hand.

⬐ mulmen

The Gogoro model is really cool and I would love to see it expand to cars. I’m just providing an example of why people might object to the idea.

⬐ michaelt

Propane technology has matured and stabilised; a 2019 propane tank is no better than a 2009 propane tank, it'll be the same size, supply the same amount of energy, and have the same connectors. A 2029 propane tank will, in all likelihood, be the same.

The same cannot be said of EV battery technology.

So why the Tesla demo video? According to [1] just doing the demo entitled them to $90 million of Californian "ZEV credits", and they never believed in or planned to roll out the technology.

[1] https://www.quora.com/Whatever-happened-to-Tesla-battery-swa... apologies for the Quora link

What labor? https://youtube.com/watch?v=H5V0vL3nnHY

> "You will have some sort of docking station in your garage and when you park short-term the car flips the batteries for you with a loaded one"

Are you serious? Tesla did this and presented a tech demo in 2013:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5V0vL3nnHY

> "auto-plug itself and charges overnight. No cables, no mess."

Another Tesla tech demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMM0lRfX6YI

Also, what do you mean "superchargers disappearing?".

It seems that Tesla is way a head on a lot of things and it will take quite an effort/investment for the incumbents to catch up.

Though in reality, wide EV adoption is a WIN for everybody and is actually the core mission of Tesla, which is to "Accelerate Sustainable Transport"

⬐ atombender

The battery swap system was a pilot program, and it was shut down in 2016 [1]. I don't think the parent comment was claiming that it was a new idea, though.

[1] https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-shuts-down-battery-swap-prog...

⬐ athenot

> > "You will have some sort of docking station in your garage and when you park short-term the car flips the batteries for you with a loaded one"

> Are you serious? Tesla did this and presented a tech demo in 2013

Tesla seems to have faded it out of their roadmap. Cool tech but people seem to want to own the battery since it's a sizeable part of the investment in a car.

Europeans are different in that battery appears to be seen as a liability and therefore leased.

At stake is how much fast charging you use, as that seems to be what has the largest impact on the battery's life.

Tesla was going to have something like that, but they ended up dropping the idea for a while. Looks like they might be considering it again, though

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5V0vL3nnHY

https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-shuts-down-battery-swap-prog...

https://electrek.co/2017/09/15/tesla-new-battery-swap-techno...

Refueling time (...) seems like major differences between hydrogen and battery.

Unless you do battery swapping, in which case they don't seem all that different: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5V0vL3nnHY

Tesla cars can do this in less than 2 minutes - faster than it takes to fill up a tank of gas.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5V0vL3nnHY

⬐ CamperBob2

If ever there was a legitimate role for a government-mandated standard...

⬐ kalleboo

Insert the typical disclaimer here about how they only did that demo to get some California ZEV credits and how they're not moving forward with actually implementing it for end users

⬐ codeulike

There is an actual battery swap station in california where Tesla owners can swap batteries. But not many people sign up for it.

⬐ imron

Well, that sucks.

⬐ walrus01

and the disclaimer about how the only semi-viable battery swap company went bankrupt and shut down:

http://cleantechnica.com/2013/05/27/no-better-place-battery-...

I don't really agree I'm sorry to say. It kinda makes assumptions about charge rates, charge locations (home, work, car parks) or even the means by which cars are "refilled".

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=H5V0vL3nnHY

⬐ ptaipale

To avoid making assumptions, I'm thinking of the cars that you can get right now. I live in northern Europe where the "charging stations" are actually abundant (in the form of electric feeds to parking places, currently needed for the convenience and benefits of engine block and cabin heaters in the winter) but charging an electric vehicle still takes quite some time.

But if we allow for technical development, then both electric and gasoline/diesel/lpg cars will also move ahead.

⬐ garrettheaver

I'm getting down voted for giving my point of view and trying to be cordial at the same time but cest la vie.

I agree there is progress to be made on fossil power cars but it's still unsustainable in any analysis. We're also not seeing anything like the kind of gains that are needed medium to long term. Progress through one technique yields a regression in other areas (emissions vs efficiency)

I too live in Northern Europe (Ireland) and we're really badly setup for electric car adoption as it stands now though the situation is slowly improving. Policy and infrastructure here (as I imagine in other countries) always lags demand.

⬐ ptaipale

Fwiw, I didn't downvote you. It could even be just someone's mis-click. It happens.

Over here (Finland), you can also buy almost completely renewable fuel for flexifuel cars (85 % alcohol made of food waste, not sure how the 15 % of gasoline is produced.)

BTW, one thing I didn't know until just googling around now: Ford model T was also a flexifuel car (i.e. it could run on ethanol).

⬐ gambiting

Sure, but we are having a conversation about whether it's possible that electric cars will have 35% market share by 2025. Considering that apart from a few first-world countries(and even then, only in big cities) there is very little infrastructure to fully support a large fleet of electric vehicles, and the battery swapping technology is not available anywhere apart from a couple tesla testing stations, I don't think that's possible. It would require a huge investment, and even then, cars easily last 15-20 years, so expecting 35% of the market to be electric in just 9 years is crazy.

⬐ garrettheaver

I understand the skeptical point of view and its fair enough, we'll all just have to wait and see how this all plays out. I'm more optimistic bearing in mind that nine years ago the electric car industry barely even existed and its ramping up at an astonishing pace over the last three years.

⬐ ZeroGravitas

35% Market Share generally means in this context: "35% of the cars sold in the year 2025 will be electric".

If you want to talk about the number of cars in use that are electric, then "installed base" may be the more traditional term.

Market share generally preceeds, installed base, especially in markets with durable goods.

They did a live demo:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5V0vL3nnHY

Here's a closeup video where you can see the battery pack being lowered and another being pushed into place:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlaQuKk9bFg

You mean like this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5V0vL3nnHY

And I doubt solar panels would ever be used for charging the whole car in a very significant way, even if they had 80% efficiency.

⬐ slxh

Somewhat like this but while on the move

⬐ mtgx

In the future roads would probably contain wireless charging within them with solar panels alongside them.

Buy an extra Tesla battery and swap the batteries in the evening when you get home from work. I know this isn't presently practical, but the idea of swapping electric car batteries is being discussed for the future, to avoid long charging times.

It may not be practical to do at home but Tesla has already demonstrated automatic battery swapping on their Model S. They've timed it at twice as fast as filling up a comparable luxury gas car:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5V0vL3nnHY

⬐ lutusp

Thanks! I managed to miss that development. I'm constantly amazed by how much advance thinking Elon Musk does -- it can't be an accident that the battery swap is so easy, it had to be planned that way.

⬐ pedrocr

it can't be an accident that the battery swap is so easy, it had to be planned that way.

It had to be planned. I don't think it was feasible in the roadster because of the battery placement. But the model S has a nice flat battery on the bottom of the car, making for great weight distribution and easy access. I haven't seen any news of any actual swap stations though.

⬐ hueving

Well the battery swap has to be easy anyway since these will go bad after 6-8 years anyway.

⬐ mikeash

It doesn't have to be 90-seconds-with-a-robot easy for a replacement at 6-8 years. At likely costs for the replacement battery, a few hours of technician time on top of that won't make much of a difference.

Also, I don't think that battery lifetimes can be stated with such certainty yet. Few electric cars have been running long enough to know just how the batteries age with that usage. About the closest available is the fleet of older Priuses that are hitting a decade or more on the road, and they seem to have occasional failures but not the consistent aging that's been predicted... but of course they use the battery completely differently, and capacity is less important.

⬐ toomuchtodo

It was because Tesla would receive the full EV credit amount in California, which has to be paid by other car manufactures if their vehicles don't meet emissions guidelines.

California appears to be phasing out that requirement (ability to swap the pack), which is why battery swap stations are no longer being pursued aggressively.

http://articles.latimes.com/2013/may/05/business/la-fi-elect...

http://gas2.org/2014/07/02/ev-battery-swap-stations-may-be-a...

A battery swap only costs labor if you do it manually. I don't see why you would do that.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5V0vL3nnHY

Also, battery swaps, which is faster than filling a tank of gas (though not free), will help. As Musk put it, when you'd come to a supercharger station, it be a decision between faster (battery swap) or free (supercharger).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5V0vL3nnHY

⬐ lifeformed

I wonder how much a battery swap would cost?

Resale value in 5+ years out should be very good. I've been watching the used market for over a year and it's been very, very strong. There's not much used inventory being sold and owners seem to love the Model S's.

The other factor with resale is that the Model S is light years ahead of any other cars in terms of technology. So, in 5 years the current center console of the Model S will still be far superior in terms of user experience than any other car in the market IMO. This will help resale value.

Another point is that current users are experiencing very little degradation on their batteries, even after 20-30k miles of usage. After 5 years/70k miles, the battery will probably still be at 95% capacity and this will help resale as well.

Also, with EVs in general you are buying not just the car but the battery. Think of it as you're buying your future gasoline with the car purchase (of course this isn't a perfect analogy because you still need to pay for electricity), so that's why EVs tend to have fairly good resale value.

Lastly, Tesla demonstrated a battery swap (in less than a few minutes) last year (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5V0vL3nnHY). They've hinted that eventually you'll be able to upgrade your pack by paying the difference in value between your used pack and the new pack. No details have come out on this as of yet.

⬐ pbreit

"After 5 years/70k miles, the battery will probably still be at 95% capacity"

No way. I'd say you have 75% tops (probably less with 70k miles). And unless you pre-buy a new battery you're going to be looking at a $20-30k replacement cost. Also note that it will likely be out of warranty at that point. And that Tesla values them at roughly $1 per mile (the price they give you for purchasing a loaner).

⬐ epistasis

I always wonder where these super-confident statements come from that seem to be contrary to reality.

How do you know? Why are you so certain? Where do you pull these numbers from?

It seems like a surefire recipe to ruin one's credibility.

⬐ pbreit

I was quoting Tesla.

⬐ timdorr

The battery replacement cost is $12k for an 85kWh: http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/2013-model-s-price-increase

And the retention is closer to 85% at 100k miles: http://www.plugincars.com/tesla-roadster-battery-life-study-... (Keep in mind, the Roadster has a previous generation of battery pack technology)

⬐ makomk

That's $12k now in order to get a replacement battery in 8 years time, it'd presumably be more if you paid at the time, and it's not clear they're even offering the scheme - that post just says they will "in the near future".

⬐ pbreit

As I noted, that's the pre-pay cost.

And Tesla itself would disagree as it has stated 70% after 7 years/100k miles.

I'd be careful to compare with the Roadster either way.

⬐ NickM

Tesla itself would disagree as it has stated 70% after 7 years/100k miles.

Citation? I've never heard of Tesla claiming anything close to that.

⬐ pbreit

From Tesla S-1: "We currently expect that the Tesla Roadster battery pack will retain approximately 60-65% of its ability to hold its initial charge after approximately 100,000 miles or seven years"

Any citations for whatever you've heard.

The battery is removeable (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5V0vL3nnHY) so I guess it's reasonable to assume upgrades will be available (if the company still exists/we're still buying cars).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5V0vL3nnHY

Tesla already demoed this.

⬐ aryastark

This is pretty cool. But the problems I see are infrastructural scaling issues. To get a 2min throughput, you'd need at least 15 batteries stored below. That may sound reasonable, but then you realize it's only Tesla. And probably only compatible with one model of Tesla. Not very future-proof. I don't have audio at the moment, so maybe he discussed that.

Charger stations seem the better option. But I still think there could be bottleneck issues if electric cars really took off. You could reach some midpoint somewhere, say, Primm, NV, and be stuck there circling lots for hours waiting for a charger station to free up (assuming one could circle a lot for extend periods of time on a dead battery). The gas station there is pretty much hell on earth already.

⬐ marvin

Tesla have already announced that they will build multiple vehicles with the same battery form-factor as the Model S.

(I mean, you wouldn't even need a press release to know this - it's blatantly obvious that Tesla will do their best to capitalize on the massive investment that the Supercharger network represents).

Good point. But with the battery swap for the cost of fuel stuff isn't that issue now gone too?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5V0vL3nnHY