Battery Swapping/Rental for the Model S

[Banahogg]

There's this interesting bit on page 6 as well:

In addition, we designed Model S to incorporate a modular battery pack in the floor of the vehicle, enabling it to be rapidly
swapped out at certain of our service centers and specialized commercial battery exchange facilities that we anticipate may be available in the
future.

 

[cwerdna]

witch is where Better Place come in, as there hole business model is bild up around battery leasing

For those who may have missed the news...

Better Place files for bankruptcy | The Times of Israel
Better Place to be liquidated - Globes
Israeli electric car venture Better Place seeks to dissolve - Business - Israel News | Haaretz Daily Newspaper
Death of Better Place: Electric car co. to dissolve | JPost | Israel News
Better Place CEO: A missed opportunity - Globes

An issue that hadn't really occurred to me, until it was written:

Might the liquidator decide to take the battery and leave a useless car?

"Ownership of the car is different for each customer, and it's true that the customer doesn’t own the battery. This is the first thing that the liquidator will have to examine, and it's hard to give an answer now."

 

[smorgasbord]

The only thing that might work is a rental scheme, but even that might discourage people from buying a larger battery and it may not make economic sense for Tesla for that reason.

Well, here are after the swapping announcement, and it is a rental scheme. Those that got the 40KWH battery are probably pretty happy right now, and I wouldn't be surprised to find that Tesla canceling that option and the swapping announcement were related inside Tesla HQ. We're still years away from swapping being readily available, but if the 40KWH battery does your daily commute with change to spare, then you can save $20K and instead spend $60 to swap in an 85KWH battery for road trips.

 

[dsmith2189]

Well, here are after the swapping announcement, and it is a rental scheme. Those that got the 40KWH battery are probably pretty happy right now, and I wouldn't be surprised to find that Tesla canceling that option and the swapping announcement were related inside Tesla HQ. We're still years away from swapping being readily available, but if the 40KWH battery does your daily commute with change to spare, then you can save $20K and instead spend $60 to swap in an 85KWH battery for road trips.

I got this link in an email from Tesla a few days ago Model S Battery Swap but haven't seen any discussion or details here on TMC about it.

 

[bob_p]

Tesla hasn't provided details on the battery swapping costs & policies or for the promised battery protection plan, and until they provide those details, we're all just guessing about how the battery swapping will impact us.

 

[brianman]

Tesla hasn't provided details on the battery swapping costs

They haven't given specifics, but they have given details. About the price of 15 gallons of gas, sensitive to local gas pricing. Estimated $60 - $80. These are nearly direct quotes from Elon at the Q&A.

As for the costs to keep the swapped pack, the brush strokes are definitely much broader.


So if you want to do cost and value modeling, use $40 as the low and $100 as the high and you'll have significant coverage for margin of error.