Battery Swapping Event - Live Updates

[Royal TS(LA)]

What, if the barcode on your battery is scraped or damaged, and the battery can't be identified? Screwed much?

 

[voidptr]

What, if the barcode on your battery is scraped or damaged, and the battery can't be identified? Screwed much?

ICs that are nothing but a serial number on a one wire bus are available for less than a dollar, and they're also available integrated on chips you'd already use in many cases. We're at the point that almost any non-trivial electronic system with replaceable electronic parts has a serial number on every subcomponent that can be read in-circuit. I guarantee there's at least one already in every battery pack, and the car knows exactly which battery it's connected to. They could make the S/N available in the information screen at some point.

The two questions I'd have on this scheme are first, how does it work for supercharger stations that are split directionally, like north-bound and south-bound rest areas on a divided interstate? If I swap at the NB station, I'm going to be using the SB station going home. Getting back to the NB one to pick up my battery would be sub-optimal. And second, what does this do to Tesla's land agreements for the locations? As a business owner, I may not have too many qualms about giving up for free or cheap a few parking spaces for superchargers that are guaranteed to bring in customers for 30 minutes or so, but making room for a swap station that's not going to give me the same captive audience is a different story, nor is the room required simply existing parking bays. It's at least 4 car lengths of thru-traffic, plus an underground vault of some non-trivial size.

 

[Royal TS(LA)]

I'm interested in how easy it will be to spoof the swapper. Stealing batteries and leaving worthless chunks of metal instead could become a sport. I hope TM has thought about how to prevent this .

 

[Adm]

I'm interested in how easy it will be to spoof the swapper. Stealing batteries and leaving worthless chunks of metal instead could become a sport. I hope TM has thought about how to prevent this .

I'd be shocked if the batteries don't carry some sort of ID, a digital serial number. Would a swapper accept a "empty case"? How difficult would it be to block cars from using stolen batteries?