Thứ Tư, 4 tháng 1, 2017

battery swapping confirmed - no more "mystery" announcement part 2

  • Jun 19, 2013
    raymond
    "But he surely must mean something different!"

    No he doesn't. Sometimes a swap is a swap. If this thread had a "vote-to-close-this-thread" button I'd have pressed it by now.
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  • Jun 19, 2013
    NigelM
    Don't worry, there's at least 4 others just like this one..... :wink:

    - - - Updated - - -

    Probably because it's tough to see how Tesla could pull off the logistics and make it worthwhile. As I keep saying, we've been surprised before and if there's something we don't get why not wait till it's actually presented tomorrow night?
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  • Jun 19, 2013
    Right_Said_Fred
    Taking out a battery to charge it in a few minutes time and then putting it back, is not swapping. That is charging.
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  • Jun 19, 2013
    strider
    He paraphrased a quote attributed to Henry Ford. "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse."
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  • Jun 19, 2013
    yobigd20
    yes you can. metal air range extender or super cap in the frunk. pop it in, drive off. car recharges while you're driving.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Now if only you could easily battery swap an iphone...then you wouldn't need to buy a new one every year when the damn thing goes dead on you.
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  • Jun 19, 2013
    Raffy.Roma
    This would be the perfect solution. I also always think to charging an EV while driving.
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  • Jun 19, 2013
    yobigd20

    ^^^ this. I highly doubt there will be any faster charging. It's already dangerous to charge a li-ion battery as fast as Tesla is already doing. While they can mitigate some risks with cooling etc, they are still present. IMO (as a non-battery guru) anything faster would probably risk permanent damage to the batteries or worse.
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  • Jun 19, 2013
    Wenche
    As I get it, SWAP is not only the word for exchange of something, but also exchange of a stream. When you look swap up in Wikipedia, you find the following definitions for computers; and in my opinion Tesla Model S is closer to a computer than to the old fashioned fuel car

    Swap (computer science)

    From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

    Jump to: navigation, search
    In computer programming, the act of swapping two variables refers to mutually exchanging the values of the variables. Usually, this is done with the data in memory. For example, in a program, two variables may be defined thus (in pseudocode):
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  • Jun 19, 2013
    stainlesssteel
    Not super fast swapping, but straightforward: iPhone battery replacement videos:

    iPhone 4 Repair - iFixit
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  • Jun 19, 2013
    EarlyAdopter
    Speculation over the event tomorrow aside, do we have anyone signed up to live blog/post about it here? Elon tweeted that the demo is at 8pm, but the video won't be posted until 9:30pm. I'm gonna want to know how it went down before then.
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  • Jun 19, 2013
    jeff_adams
    Event is tomorrow (Thursday)
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  • Jun 19, 2013
    richkae
    The other thing being missed is that Better Place relied heavily on the swapping - much more than Tesla will. They needed lots of stations and lots of availability because their cars were short range.
    The Model S is two notches above that. The Model S has a 200+ mile range, so a great many of the trips ( probably the vast majority ) that a BP car would need swapping or charging - the Model S does not.
    The second notch is supercharging. If a swapper isn't near you, maybe a supercharger is. If superchargers are cheaper than swappers, you can have more of those. If there is a location that doesn't get enough traffic for a swapper, it might get enough for a couple of superchargers.
    Lastly, Tesla can roll out swappers to improve the convenience of the Model S as demand requires, BP needed to bootstrap an area with them or their cars were crippled. You can happily drive a Model S for 8+ months without a swapper or supercharger anywhere nearby - most of us have.
    Those things combined will let Tesla get away with a couple orders of magnitude fewer swappers than Better Place needed.
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  • Jun 19, 2013
    Bubba
    So if it is free or cheap to swap out my battery, can I do it right before I sell the car?
    That would save me a ton compared to the $12,000 battery replacement cost.
    If I was at a point where the car is 5 or 6 years old and I am ready for something new, I would just swap a few times till I get a really good battery in there, then sell my car.
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  • Jun 19, 2013
    stopcrazypp
    Tesla will likely structure their scheme to account for this. There's been multiple proposals:
    -Battery rental (you get your pack back)
    -Battery monthly lease
    -Minimum quality guarantee (you get a pack back with similar condition or there is a set standard in which case your car might not qualify)
    -Pay $12k fee (or other) first to get access to swap

    At any rate, one simple way Tesla can prevent "gaming" the system this way is to not tell you the quality of the battery you are getting back during swapping. Plus it'll be tough to certify the quality of your battery to a potential buyer and the buyer can always go and swap for another one afterwards (so not sure this will help resale much compared to not swapping and just selling the car).
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  • Jun 19, 2013
    brianman
    I think I'm going to start using XorXorXor as shorthand for super-swapping just for a modicum of entertainment.
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  • Jun 19, 2013
    EarlyAdopter
    <chuckle> Yes, I meant tomorrow. Will edit post. Rest of content remains - anyone planning on attending who can live blog/post from it?
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  • Jun 19, 2013
    Trnsl8r
    Check with Jalopnik...

    OK, just kidding, but I'm sure there will be some repo... ehrm, bloggers attending that will have something up before the video posts.
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  • Jun 20, 2013
    AMPd
    Fastest gas station pump vs battery swap
    Twitter
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  • Jun 20, 2013
    yobigd20
    I doubt they'll structure it so you get your own pack back. I also have a hard time believing it's going to be something that's costly either. I would put my money on the "don't worry about your battery pack" comments Elon's made in the past, which leads me to believe it's along the lines of a minimum quality guarantee. It's also possible that they could do something like 'x number of swaps per x amount of miles (or days) are free, anything above that there will be a small fee'. That would at least make it available to everyone to use, not just someone whose taking advantage of it on a daily basis or someone who is uber rich and can afford to spend another one-time cost of $12k etc.
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  • Jun 20, 2013
    Soflason
    Lots of gems here in this exclusive Reuters interview with Elon... much of the interview is on dealer issues, but, there is a good portion devoted to pack swap... it sounds as if he'll be slowly rolling these pack swaps out at Supercharger locations where they see sufficient "demand" at first -- investment should be $50-100 million, and, to the question: how fast will the swap be? Elon chuckles, "Quickly... really quickly" -- makes me think tonight's live demo will be impressive :cool:

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  • Jun 20, 2013
    deonb
    I've transcribed the swapping portion of the original interview (the video above is compressed) over here:
    http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/showthread.php/18021-battery-swapping-confirmed-no-more-quot-mystery-quot-announcement/page9

    Post #90.
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  • Jun 20, 2013
    Raffy.Roma
    @deonb

    Elon says that the swapping will take something like less than 2 minutes to swap the battery (faster than you could fill a gas tank). Than it will be an electronic battery swapping rather than mechanical battery swapping?

    That is to say fast DC charging?
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  • Jun 20, 2013
    Royal TS(LA)
    To (almost) cite Sigmund Freud: "Sometimes a battery swap is just a battery swap" ;D .

    I suspect the physical swap will be so simple and fast that you won't believe it happening. The concept of unifying distributed grid storage, renewable energy and EVs in this way is genius. I really couldn't care less what battery is in my car. As long as Tesla guarantees my promised mileage with the exchanged battery, I mean, come on, guys.. . No offense meant, but this whole "my battery" thing seems a bit like a fetish to me ;) . You can bet on Tesla managing all issues transparently to you, so no worries.
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  • Jun 20, 2013
    aviators99
    Fine with me, but I feel sorry for the person who gets my battery.
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  • Jun 20, 2013
    Eggplant
    I really don't understand why people are so protective of their batteries. One of the great anxieties I have with this car is degradation of the battery over time. If Tesla will let me swap batteries out periodically and recycle the ones in the ecosystem that are too far gone that totally solves that problem.

    I currently have a four year old hybrid with about 100k miles on it (while I wait for my tesla!) The battery is terrible at this point. I get 10 mpg less than I did when the battery was new. Swapping it out is an extremely expensive proposition, and affects the resale value of the car. If I could uncouple the battery from the car and just go in for a battery swap that would be grand.
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  • Jun 20, 2013
    Martini
    People seem to consistently give a premium value to ownership when an economically-equivalent rental option is available. Call it mistrust or whatever, but we like to be in full control of our things. This is a tough bit of human nature to work against, so they have to make swapping very attractive (cheap and convenient) while guaranteeing that you will never be stuck with someone else's mistakes in the form of a bad battery (cue awesome battery warranty). I think Tesla can do all this, but time will tell.

    The trick on the business side seems to be reducing the capital cost, and integrating swapping with stationary storage seems like a good way to do this.
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  • Jun 20, 2013
    Royal TS(LA)
    I think the swapping infrastructure and the included automatic quality management of batteries could even help with refurbishing batteries. Let's say that Tesla detects at a swapping station that the battery you just had in your car has reached the threshold where it can't reliably provide the promised mileage. Then the battery can be taken out from the swapping cycle and automatically examined. Why? Because each single cell in the battery ages differently. If they have (dis)charging history logs about each single cell in the battery, Tesla can then use still working cells to create new battery packs. This should save quite some cost for Tesla. What do you think?
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  • Jun 20, 2013
    deonb
    Well, it's down to 45 seconds now after Elon's tweet, and it's drive-through.

    In the realm of future possibilities where there is a mechanical device that can swap a battery pack in 45 seconds vs. a Lithium battery that can handle a 40 C charge without instantly exploding (up from 1.5 C currently at the high-end 120kW SuperChargers), my money is on the battery swapper...
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  • Jun 20, 2013
    scaesare
    (Emphasis mine)

    Why do people keep saying this. Even the new 120KWh superchargers are charging at only 1.5C Not dangerous at all for a Li-ion cell... much less a thermally managed one.

    We do this all the time in other consumer electronics equipment.
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  • Jun 20, 2013
    NigelM
    I think you answer yourself. If you're concerned about degradation then you might also be worried that you'll swap your "good" battery for an "older, not-so-good" one. I'm guessing that Tesla will explain more this evening, but for now it's easy to understand why folks might want to keep, or specifically get back, their own battery.
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  • Jun 20, 2013
    Discoducky
    So couldn't a swapped battery just be meant for short term use in that the swapped battery might be geared toward only having a shorter (say 1 to 2 year life span) and thus could access *ALL* of the cells in the pack. It has been suggested that TM only uses about 70% of the pack so if the swapped packs are just meant to be used for just long trips you could potentially swap in a pack which could get close to 400 miles without doing much re-engineering for software and near zero hardware engineering.

    Or, quickly meet the demand when introducing a new battery range.
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  • Jun 20, 2013
    Eggplant
    Do people think Tesla will keep bad batteries at the swap stations? Why is the battery you bought with the car any better? That "good" battery will become "older, not-so-good" pretty quickly. If someone cares that much, then don't use the swap service for a few years until your battery degrades. Then enjoy getting a better one quick and easy on the cheap.

    My point is, people shouldn't be attached to their battery. It's one of the parts that will wear out quickly. In a few years swapping the battery will likely get you a better one. We'll see what the pricing looks like on the Tesla plan soon, but if it's any better than thousands of dollars to swap out my battery for a new one (probably refurbished anyway) 4-6 years from now, I'll take it!
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  • Jun 20, 2013
    mnx
    Only use 70% of the cells in the pack? I haven't seen that one yet.

    On another note, I'm surprised that so many dislike the idea of battery swapping. The ability to swap the battery makes a great car even better. If you baby your pack by keeping it at 50% SOC good for you you'll probably not want to swap. If you're like the rest of us and plug it in daily in standard mode then not getting your pack is not a big deal at all.

    Many have said that building out superchargers comes out of the marketing budget and that's what it mostly is. It helps to sell the car. I probably won't even get to try one out for another year, and yet I've greatly enjoyed the car in the mean time. I see the same thing here with building out swapping stations. I personally see them as a huge convenience for roadtrips. If I need to get something to eat, I'd stop to supercharge but if it's between meals then I'd prefer to pack swap and not have to wait ~30 mins (or however long it takes).

    That said, I'd be surprised if pack swapping gets a widespread buildout. I doubt there will be pack swapping outside of the current in service superchargers within the next 3 years...

    BTW any guesses on what this is going to cost? I'm willing to bet $100 or less per swap. (Making it similar to the cost of fueling up an ICE).

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  • Jun 20, 2013
    pilotSteve
    Since everything about this car/charging/battery system is controlled by software this is no limit to the kinds of innovative business models Tesla might introduce.

    For example, "swap" batteries would be identified differently than "owned" batteries and therefore might be charged to higher levels because Tesla chose to depreciate them (financially) and their life span is better spent as "high performance" or longer range units.

    Also as Tesla owned units they could be incrementally rebuilt (call banks replaced) that could be cost effective for the company yet not for an individual owner.

    Most interested to hear tonight what the business model is and what the consumer benefits will be. Certainly the newsworthiness of such a spectacular announcement will help boost sales and deepen market penetration to new customers that "just now heard about Tesla with its fast charge battery". Hey, that all good business regardless of the actual technology used. IMO.
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  • Jun 20, 2013
    Royal TS(LA)
    To get the most seamless EV-experience, customers should never ever have to concern themselves with technical details of a product IMHO. You want a car because you want to drive with it, right? Why should any customer care about messy hardware details?
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  • Jun 20, 2013
    JRP3
    Don't know where that came from, Tesla uses all of the cells, they just limit the amount of charge and discharge percentage used of each cell.
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  • Jun 20, 2013
    brianman
    I thought it was 47.
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  • Jun 20, 2013
    Discoducky
    How do you know they use all of the cells? That is protected IP. Assuming, for a moment, they don't use the packs full potential, therein lies the benefit of having a pack that could potentially be used in an accelerated state to drive several engineering goals.
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  • Jun 20, 2013
    deonb
    That's fairly wild speculation...

    If Tesla wanted you to carry unused cells in the car for some reason, they don't need to put it in the battery. They could just hand you a bag of cells that you can throw in the trunk.


    I anyway always carry 2 18650's in the car to show people what they look like :).
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  • Jun 20, 2013
    ebbrey
    My ecig uses 18650 battery. I have taken it out many times to explain cells in model s :p
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  • Jun 20, 2013
    Discoducky
    I'll clarify. Every cell is not used/filled/charged to 100% at any given time. There is a buffer and I would imagine you could engineer a pack that didn't set aside as much buffer so you could garner a longer range per max range charge.
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  • Jun 20, 2013
    deonb
    That gets back to the point JRP3 was making:
    But yes, you can do that in theory. The buffer isn't that big though. It's between 5kWh and 10kWh in total. It won't extend it to a 400 mile range.
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  • Jun 20, 2013
    JRP3
    All cells need to be used a similar amount all the time or you create imbalances. There is no logical reason to have cells in the vehicle that are not being used, or that are being used differently. The BMS is there to make sure all cells behave the same.
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  • Jun 20, 2013
    NigelM
  • Jun 20, 2013
    yobigd20
    I wouldn't be surprised if the swap only takes 10-20 seconds and that the 45 second timer is just a tease to trick us into thinking that's how long it'll take.
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  • Jun 21, 2013
    UMD86
    It's funny how No One is saying how much it will cost? Musk said you can get "FREE" supercharging or FASTER battery swap......
    How much is the SWAP???? Once people find out the cost they will OPT for FREE and wait the 20-30 minutes.

    I can't imagine this is a cheap option. Also doesn't this effect the battery warranty on the car?

    Also the "changing" station will require additional manpower which will add cost to Tesla......
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  • Jun 21, 2013
    NigelM
  • Jun 21, 2013
    deonb
    The price of 15 gallons of gas.


    Oh, I must have missed that. Can you point out the additional manpower that was required inside the video?
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  • Jun 21, 2013
    4SUPER9
    Maybe he is referring to the cost of building this new system?
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  • Jun 21, 2013
    NigelM
    Mod Note: The fun police moved the icky jokes over here.
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  • Jun 22, 2013
    Electric Machete
    I don't see Tesla swapping batteries for the Model S. At least not for a long time. Building swapping stations for the Model S doesn't make sense from a financial perspective. I think the goal was to demonstrate the technology. Model S and Model X owners and reservation holders are a tiny fraction of car owners, all of whom are sacrificing the ease of which ICE vehicles can travel long distances. I believe that battery swapping will be quite useful once the 3rd gen model is released. It will ease everyone's range anxiety. If they have some stations in place before rolling out the 3rd gen model I believe that the masses in the US will feel like they won't have to give anything up to drive an electric car.

    Speaking for myself, I wouldn't want to take a random battery pack for my Model S. Unless there was some assurance from Tesla that degraded packs would be removed from the rotation. Plus, Telsa wouldn't be able to sell any new battery packs. If mine was degraded, I could simply swap it for a new one and drive that one around until it crapped out and then grab another one from the swapping station. Endless battery life. Not financially sustainable.

    If the 3rd gen model is sold with a leased battery, then I think the swapping strategy would be a success. Lower the initial cost of the vehicle, maintain flexibility for long distance road travel, eliminate range anxiety. Tesla seems to be hacking away at every objection American's have to electric vehicles.
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  • Jun 22, 2013
    ohmslaw
    Given that what little information we have included a statement that you would be charged for the difference in value between your own battery and the one you keep if you don't return it, I'm not sure I understand your objections. If you "simply swap [your degraded battery] for a new one" you indeed could get endless battery life, but it would be financially sustainable to the extent they charged you for the privilege (which they seem to be indicating they will).
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  • Jun 22, 2013
    JRP3
    It seems as if he didn't see any of the videos or read any of the actual discussions about how swapping works.
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  • Aug 4, 2013
    Johan
    Wow we had so much discussion in these threads and then a week after the demo we had nothing more to discus... Since Tesla never gave us any more info!

    So, we've seen the technology demonstrated. Next week is the Q2 earnings call. Will we get info on rollout plans, pricing, rental/leasing of batteries, 60/85 swapping issues etc???
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  • Aug 4, 2013
    deonb
    Well, I can add one little bit to this...

    I ran into one of the SuperCharger Engineers a few weeks ago, and had a long conversation about this. He is of the opinion that Tesla isn't serious about battery swap, and that he cannot personally see the point of it - especially after the upgrade to 120kW. He thinks that it is purely for marketing. He also said that battery swappers actually requires full-time staffing.

    Now apparently the battery swap demo was created by a team of 3 Engineers (not their fulltime job to work on battery swapping) and that they've been working nights and weekends to get this done in time, including doing an all-nighter the night before the demo. So it sounded when Elon originally tweeted about "right under your nose" and "there is a way to recharge a Model S faster than a gas station" - it seems that the technology didn't actually even exist at that point. At least the demo didn't. I wouldn't be shocked if there was a conversation just after the Consumer Reports article came out that went something like this:

    "You know that battery swap thing we've been talking about for years, do you think you can put something together that we can demonstrate to the press?".
     "Sure thing, Elon!"

    "So can I tweet about it? You can actually build this?"
     "Absolutely! It will be ready in 2 weeks"

    "That sounds a bit fast. Are you sure about that? I don't want to tweet but then having to keep pushing out the demo multiple times using some artificial excuse like a stock offering."
     "No problem! Just bring the Red Bull."


    As an engineer myself, I actually have nothing against a pre-announcement before something is ready. There is no more powerful design inspiration to an engineer as a hard deadline. But what I do read from this is that there isn't a section of the company that's truly dedicated to battery swapping. It's something that teams do on the side when they have time and when it's ready one day they will try it out and see if people would want to use it, and what the effect is on sales.

    This is actually not unlike what Elon said about it, but if anybody has an opinion that he was just sandbagging it, and that this is actually a full-steam-ahead plan with some grand plan behind it - it's not. This is just a test balloon. And as a shareholder, this pleases me.

    But alas, I don't think Tesla will give any significant more detail about the program in Q2, other than answering financial questions from analysts.


    PS: I know the timing of the imaginary conversation above is wrong - it was added for dramatic effect.
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  • Aug 4, 2013
    bollar
    Heh. Except it more likely went like this:

    "I tweeted about that battery swap thing we've been talking about for years. You need to get something together in two weeks so that we can demonstrate to the press."
     "Sure thing, Elon!"

    {later} "Crap, how are we going to do this?"
    This would be more consistent with other announcements, like the "end of the month" Superchargers.
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  • Aug 4, 2013
    Johan
    Very interesting deonb! This has been kind of what I've been thinking in the back of my head all along. My preference would be to have them keep working on supercharging and have it approach its theoretical limits in real-life.
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  • Aug 4, 2013
    ItsNotAboutTheMoney
    When JB Straubel said that he thought they could charge a battery in 5 minutes he was talking about several years time and that it would be hard to do. They will continue to work on Supercharging as the preferred solution to the fast charging problem because it's simple and low cost.

    However, as I and others have written, for reasons of volume, 20 to 40 minute Supercharging simply won't scale to Gen 3 levels, so swapping capability is important from the perspective of future-proofing.

    However, thinking about handling volume, I really think Tesla needs to be working on self-driving cars and either fast wireless charging or automated plug-in. There's a significant benefit from the ability to plug in and walk away from the car and that would be lost at volume without automation or the additional cost burden of an attendant.
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  • Aug 4, 2013
    richkae
    If I were at Tesla I would want to get some data on usage of superchargers before making any decisions on battery swapping.
    There are only 17 stations right now. Before July there were only a couple of stations outside of California.
    Hopefully ( according to the map on TeslaMotors.com ) there will be 70+ by the end of "winter 2013", including 20+ in California. I'd want to see long term data on those stations including some busy holiday weekends.

    There is also room for improvement with remote monitoring and helping you choose which station to go to.
    Really valuable data about the supercharger visits will be to know how many are necessary. The next time I drive from Seattle to Portland I will stop to supercharge. The stop will not be necessary, but I will do it anyway. If my option was to battery swap, I wouldn't do it. If I knew from the highway that the supercharger was busy, I would just drive on by. When the novelty of supercharging wears off, I will probably drive by more.

    Mid 2014 might be a good time to think about whether or not deploying swap stations is necessary and where they would go.
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  • Aug 4, 2013
    brianman
    I agree with your general premise, and it matches what I've heard off-record as well. That said...

    It's easy to spin this as "marketing hoopla" with "no substance", and see it in a negative light. But I think there's more to it than that.

    I think this is one of those "you have to give people what they asked for so they can realize they don't really want it" moments. And once you've given them that technology, they will recognize they don't want it -- and you won't actually have to deliver it (at significant volume).

    Some might see the 40 kWh Model S in a similar light in retrospect. "Everybody says EVs are so expensive, so you should offer a lower range one that's cheaper. We did. Not many wanted it, so we canceled it and provided a better option for the small segment of customers that were extremely price-sensitive."
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  • Aug 5, 2013
    jeff_adams
    That was a pretty weird dog and pony show.
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  • Aug 6, 2013
    NoMoGas
    Well just to add to the confusion... I have now heard from multiple folks at Tesla that the batter swap is real, will be happening soon and is entirely robotic. You will drive your car onto a platform, it will auto-align and swap the battery out for about the cost of a tank of gas. Take that for what it's worth, to me the money to do this would be better spent in making longer-range packs, and faster charging stations. We are clearly getting there and will probably e there sooner rather than later IMHO.
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  • Aug 7, 2013
    brianman
    I don't think this was in dispute. The question was what kind of scale they would "bother" doing for this. Putting them at every "Tesla Station" regardless of expected demand projections seems foolish. But I've been wrong before when it comes to expenditures by TM.
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  • Oct 24, 2013
    hileyms
    Elon Musk is in london today opening the store. He was asked a question about battery swapping. His answer, was Tesla will test battery swapping on LA to SF corridor. If that�s popular, then it will be expanded, possibly to the UK too.
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  • Oct 24, 2013
    pete8314
    It's in Westfield/Shepherds Bush, right? The website still doesn't have the location listed, but I'm only a few miles from there, so might pay it a visit at the weekend.
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