My take on Tesla's current position in the industry.

[JeffK]

I wish auto makers would just use Tesla's battery and drivetrain and slap their own body on it. Then they could use supercharging and set up battery swap stations.

Yeah, there's no excuse for GM to have not tried to make a deal with Tesla for supercharger access for the Bolt.

 

[LectrikPower]

Yeah, there's no excuse for GM to have not tried to make a deal with Tesla for supercharger access for the Bolt.

I'm sure it's pure ego. It's so annoying.

 

[Dan Detweiler]

I wish auto makers would just use Tesla's battery and drivetrain and slap their own body on it. Then they could use supercharging and set up battery swap stations.

I know that they tried the battery swap thing once and then later decided to drop it but in all honesty, I just can't wrap my head around that ever being practical. Why would I want to risk a defective or damaged battery that someone else had? Would I have to come back to the same station and swap out the loaner and get mine back? How long does the actual swap take?

I think the much better solution is maximizing the Supercharger network. As it is it seems perfectly adequate for the vast majority of travel needs. With further refinement and more stations it will only get better too. Just my 2 cents of course. Perhaps people who had the opportunity to use the swap station could enlighten the rest of us as to the efficiency of the experience.

Dan

 

[LectrikPower]

I know that they tried the battery swap thing once and then later decided to drop it but in all honesty, I just can't wrap my head around that ever being practical. Why would I want to risk a defective or damaged battery that someone else had? Would I have to come back to the same station and swap out the loaner and get mine back? How long does the actual swap take?

I think the much better solution is maximizing the Supercharger network. As it is it seems perfectly adequate for the vast majority of travel needs. With further refinement and more stations it will only get better too. Just my 2 cents of course. Perhaps people who had the opportunity to use the swap station could enlighten the rest of us as to the efficiency of the experience.

Dan

There are videos of the swap on youtube. It take about a minute thirty seconds if I remember. The battery would likely be leased. It would be sweet but I agree it requires a big infrastructure investment.

 

[Dan Detweiler]

If I remember correctly it took quite a bit longer in real life situations than in the demo, but I could be wrong. Either way I think they made the right choice going with increasing efficiency and decreasing charge times on the Superchargers.

Dan

 

[Pdub2015]

I could be wrong, but I think the battery swap idea is simply on the backburner until the G-factory can build enough of those batteries for it to scale.

 

[LectrikPower]

If carmakers had similar setups and we had swap stations and supercharging it would be perfect. No more excuses to have ICE.

 

[dsvick]

From what I've heard other issues with the battery swap were that you had to make an appointment for a specific time to come in and swap your battery, and you did have to come back and get your original battery. Those two things made it less than practical for general use and almost useless for anyone on a roadtrip since you would need to figure out, almost exactly, when you would get to the battery swap station.

I think the one station they built is still open and servicing people but I don't think there is much volume. Between that, increased battery efficiencies, lower prices on larger batteries, and the build out of the SC network battery swap is probably dead.

 

[S3XY]

Even without full V2V I could envision a situation where a fellow Tesla driver/vehicle was taking the same route as you and is about 5 minutes ahead. That car 'notices' that there is an anomaly (slow traffic where the database historically has not reflected same) or an unusual routing (vehicle switches from far left to far right lane). This data input could be from the autonomously piloted vehicle ahead or a flesh-and-blood driver. The Tesla server gets this data, identifies this anomaly and sends info back to your car which is approaching the same location that simply says 'watch out' or 'slow down' or 'wake driver' or the like. Not perfect, but useful, and it will become more robust as more Tesla vehicles are on the same route as you, either in full autopilot or stealth mode.

Waze already provides route slowdown information as well as accidents, cars pulled over, etc. through crowd sourcing.

 

[WileyTheMan]

I'm certainly excited that the hardware will be in the car as a standard feature. Not sure I would be willing to pay the reported exorbitant (in my opinion) amount for the software activation at the time I pick it up. It depends on how advanced the system is at that time; if its just autopilot-level, I can wait. They still have a year to go to convince me.