Confusing and fragmenting?
I arrive at a swapping/supercharging station. Charging is free, swapping costs $30. Question: am I going to stop anyway to get a coffee and use the restroom? If yes: charge; if no: is my time worth $25? If yes, swap. On with my life.
Another example: I arrive at a station to find that all Supercharger ports are occupied. There is a possibility that I'd be waiting 10s of minutes before I can even start charging. Even if there is a car currently getting its battery swapped, I know I can swap in as little as 2 mins. Is the certainty worth $30? If yes, swap. If I'm going to be hanging out for an hour anyway...wait for a charge.
It's just not that big of deal. It gives me options that I didn't have before, but it isn't the burden you make it out to be. Elon said he's a fan of "optionality" --- me too.
You know that if they make a swap 2 minutes you'd have a lot of batteries becoming useless for grid storage right?
So presumably if you pay $30, you're not going to want a battery with a 20% or even 66% SOC. It will need to be 80%. And you can arrive any time, so the top battery in the set can't be used for grid storage.
But if swapping only takes 2 minutes, then the one after that will also be offline for grid storage. And the one after that... and the one after that.
I think you'll have about 10 batteries (20 minutes with back-to-back swaps) that can't be touched for grid storage. Thereafter you'll start to be able to use 15% of the battery. To be able to use 50% of the batteries, you'll need to have 30 batteries on non-usable reserve. If swapping on the other hand takes 5 minutes, those numbers drop to 4 batteries for 15% and 12 batteries for 50%.
So the system can't actually be too fast, because then grid storage doesn't work. It also can't be too slow, because then superchargers are faster.
It also can't be too cheap, because nobody would want to use superchargers. It also can't be too expensive, because then people will only use superchargers. (At $30 in order to save 15 minutes... not a lot of people's time is worth $120 per hour after taxes).
So I'm not saying it's not going to happen, but it's incredibly delicate. It's by no means the slam dunk business plan that it's made out to be. I can't imagine if a startup presents such a business plan that any V.C would put any money towards it. But in the end the question is whether Elon can pull it off? Yeah... probably
only him.
PS: If there is a line at the SuperChargers, they're undersized and won't be solar-positive. The solar-positive system only works if there is almost never a wait.
