Please don't do (better place method) battery swap stations, it's a stupid idea

[stopcrazypp]

So more than $30 per swap and you would stick with a free Supercharger?
At what price per swap would you say, "this isn't worth it, I will wait the 10-20 minutes and just use a Supercharger at the same location."

If Tesla said, "Pay $100 per month, commit to a contract for 8 years, now and you get 100 battery swaps over the next 8 years" would you pay it?
So you would be paying about $100 per month and have the ability to swap about once per month.
Or would you just use the free Supercharger at the same location?

We discussed all different kinds of payment schemes in the "how it will be accomplished" thread:
-Pay per swap and end up with a different battery at end of trip
-Monthly battery lease and a reduced vehicle price (like Better Place)
-Battery rental fee and get your own battery back at the end of a trip
-One time swap fee during car purchase (similar to supercharging)
-$12k replacement battery option gives you free swaps

They are not necessarily mutually exclusive (Tesla can do all at the same time). If that thread have not been derailed we may have made some progress toward figuring out which one is best, but I think we are out to time now (only 2 days left).

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What will be the use of creating a capital-intensive network of swap stations when supercharger (faster charging times) or battery tech (more miles per charge) becomes good enough that we won't need to swap batteries.Or is Tesla throwing in the towel and saying that this tech has reached it limit, now we need to rely on the swap-the-battery method?

Tesla has not reached the tech limit for charging. 240kW is about the limit for a cable based connection. Above that, Tesla will need an automated under-the-car power connection (at which point it's very similar to battery swapping, since you need robotics). And batteries still have plenty of room to grow in capacity.

But the problem is 240kW chargers and large capacity batteries are not likely going to come before Gen III. Swapping gives another option to bridge that gap. If consumers don't like the idea, then so be it, but it's another option that will expand the EV market. And I think from mainstream media comments, the general public does like the swap idea. The challenge is an attractive economic model and expanding the network gradually based on demand (not like BP).

 

[aaron0k]

@aaron0k the BIG problem with presuming that this will satisfy the masses is that the location of the battery swappers will not even come close to comparing to the convenience of a local gas station.

Agreed. However, everything has to start somewhere (even bowser stations at one time). Swap stations in dense metro areas and along major travel corridors first. What if Toyota, Mercedes and others join the "party" (spec)?



Even though this announcement is nothing "new"... I believe it will be a significant and historical event, and not only for Tesla Motors.

 

[Palpatine]

Reuters Insider

I just listened to the interview. Based on his comments, it is obvious that there is NOT a swap network planned. He referred to it as something they will only do if there is customer demand. Then he said that IF they did it then it would be $50 million to $100 million.
So thankfully he has some common sense and is not planning to just piss away $100 million without any evidence that anyone would use this concept.

 

[Citizen-T]

Guys do we really need ANOTHER thread for this? We've talked about absolutely everything in this thread already elsewhere.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk HD

 

[bollar]

Guys do we really need ANOTHER thread for this? We've talked about absolutely everything in this thread already elsewhere.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk HD

In several threads actually...

 

[mitch672]

Reuters Insider

I just listened to the interview. Based on his comments, it is obvious that there is NOT a swap network planned. He referred to it as something they will only do if there is customer demand. Then he said that IF they did it then it would be $50 million to $100 million.
So thankfully he has some common sense and is not planning to just piss away $100 million without any evidence that anyone would use this concept.

Yep, that was a very worthwhile 52 minutes.

I think the other issue is, Teslas real plan to "monetize the replacement of the ICE" (you don't think Elon and company have no plan, do you?), the real plan was layed out in an article in Seeking Alpha in March... It basically goes like this:
Tesla has plans to license their technology (battery pack, drivetrain, charging etc) to major auto manufacturers, once Teslas technological superiority is demonstrated ("copy us or join us"), once Tesla licenses their technology to other companies, they need to plan on how to charge potentially millions of road tripping EVs, and the SuperSwapper is one way to minimize the real estate, and actually lower the cost for very busy sites, because they won't have to deploy as many SuperChargers. Tesla and Elon are usually several steps ahead of their "stated" goals, and this is one of them. They'll probably only deploy these at the 2 sites in CA with the on site energy storage, and see how it goes. A nationwide rollout is probably years away, but since they are deploying lots of SuperChargers very soon, they are probably planning where the SuperSwapper will be located at each new SuperCharger site. Since this will be visible to everyone, he has to release the long term plans now, even if the future SuperSwapper is several years away from being deployed at that particular location. Btw, the analysis on Seeking Alpha had Tesla bringing in twice as much money from their licensing model, as building several hundred thousand cars per year, in other words, it's more profitable to let others build cars and charge a one time licensing fee for their technology and lifetime SuperCharger access.

In case you have not read Randy Carlsons SA article: SuperCharging Tesla - Seeking Alpha

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

Tesla Motors is our best chance to have a company really do successful EVs.
If you want EVs to be successful and common, then we need to have a financially stable and strong company doing this.
Battery swaps are certainly not a profit center and they are likely a huge money loser. Elon needs to be a better manager of money and avoid white elephant projects like this lame idea.

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What are you willing to pay for it?

How long are you willing to wait to charge at a Supercharger?

 

[InsanityWolf]

How long are you willing to wait to charge at a Supercharger?

Daily commute, won't need a super charger.

Long distance, I have a second ICE car and can rent one if need be.

If for some reason I end up requiring a super charger, I wouldn't mind waiting 30 minutes while I go take a bite.

But I will not swap my 15k/20k battery which I have been taking care of from day 1 for some other persons used one. This option will only be attractive to me if I had been careless with my battery (max charging each time, improper care). This alone creates a moral hazard issue. Why take special care of it if I can just swap it out a week later?

 

[richkae]

4.3% of car trips are over 100 miles
0.1% of car trips are over 200 miles

Do you have a source for that? That is extremely useful data.

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How long are you willing to wait to charge at a Supercharger?

I don't want to wait ever. I want the car to automatically reserve a spot at the supercharger while I am on route. If all the spots are busy I want the software in the car to find an alternative without me having to do anything. I want the superchargers to cost money so people don't block them when I need one.

 

[anthony]

I believe I read that for every vehicle sold, Tesla receives a green energy credit, and there were certain criteria the vehicles had to meet in order to qualify for the largest possible credit. One of those qualifications that the MS hasn't been able to meet is the ability to refuel in the same amount of time it takes to fill up an ICE's tank.

Anyone else come across that?

 

[richkae]

I have no charging capabilities at work or at home because I live in an apartment complex (not really, but lets presume I am a "common" person as you put it).

Don't buy an EV. Or move. Or get your apartment complex to put in outlets. Do not solve this problem with battery swapping - that is stupid.

 

[Palpatine]

Originally Posted by Palpatine
4.3% of car trips are over 100 miles
0.1% of car trips are over 200 miles

Do you have a source for that? That is extremely useful data.

I was wrong using 4.3% for trips over 100 miles. It is way less than that.
About 2% of all trips are more than 50 miles.
About 1% of all trips are more than 70 miles.
So the number of trips that are over 200 miles? That is a tiny fraction of 1%.

http://www.greencarreports.com/news...ips-could-be-made-in-electric-cars-says-study

Using data obtained from the Department of Transport’s 2009 National Household Travel Survey (NHTS), Garrett Fitzgerald and Rob van Haaren analyzed the travel data of survey participants, concluding that 95 percent of the 748,918 recorded single-trip journeys by car were under 30 miles.

More astonishingly, around 98 percent of all single-trip journeys were under 50 miles in length, with trips over 70 miles in length accounting for just one percent of all single-trip journeys.

The number of trips over 200 miles is even smaller. It was a tiny fraction of 1%.

I am sure there is someone who can cite an anecdotal example of a person "who they know" who regularly commutes some amazing distance on a regular basis where they MUST HAVE a battery swap in less than 2 minutes.
But seriously, do we really need to be designing a white elephant system for hundreds of millions of dollars for the 0.1% type of scenario of a trip over 200 miles? And at the same time there is a supercharger that is free that has already solved the issue?

I am just in absolute disbelief that most of the battery swap proponents think that this is financially viable for such a rare scenario.

 

[spatterso911]

Don't buy an EV. Or move. Or get your apartment complex to put in outlets. Do not solve this problem with battery swapping - that is stupid.

Precisely. Granted, there needs to be a real solution to include this population, it won't come with swapping batteries at remote locations along major highways. It would only work if people had access to them quickly and within short distance of their origin or destination.

I'm all in for making electric cars accessible to everyone, but there needs to be buy-in from major stakeholders like gas station owners (I HIGHLY DOUBT that BP, XOM, et al... will contribute to this) and businesses that will allow charging, more widespread adoption of PV installation (which is a potential windfall for SCTY and others), and municipal, county, and state-wide support of protecting the charging sites so that it becomes less palatable to use ICE cars.

 

[cwerdna]

I believe I read that for every vehicle sold, Tesla receives a green energy credit, and there were certain criteria the vehicles had to meet in order to qualify for the largest possible credit.

I believe you're referring to California ZEV credits. See ZEV credits

 

[CapitalistOppressor]

I was wrong using 4.3% for trips over 100 miles. It is way less than that.
About 2% of all trips are more than 50 miles.
About 1% of all trips are more than 70 miles.
So the number of trips that are over 200 miles? That is a tiny fraction of 1%.

http://www.greencarreports.com/news...ips-could-be-made-in-electric-cars-says-study



The number of trips over 200 miles is even smaller. It was a tiny fraction of 1%.

I am sure there is someone who can cite an anecdotal example of a person "who they know" who regularly commutes some amazing distance on a regular basis where they MUST HAVE a battery swap in less than 2 minutes.
But seriously, do we really need to be designing a white elephant system for hundreds of millions of dollars for the 0.1% type of scenario of a trip over 200 miles? And at the same time there is a supercharger that is free that has already solved the issue?

I am just in absolute disbelief that most of the battery swap proponents think that this is financially viable for such a rare scenario.

So lets see, using your numbers, one out of every thousand trips (0.1%) is over 200 miles (and thus might use a battery swap). Since there were (according to the NHTS) only ~233,849,360,000 individual vehicle trips in 2009 that works out to only ~233,849,360 trips of greater than 200 miles.

At the height of the worst economy we have seen in most of our lives, where travel slacked off so much that gas prices cratered to levels we'll probably never see again.

I agree that trips of this sort are fairly rare at the individual level, but Tesla is only talking about building a few hundred sites at most. Once Tesla gets a noticeable market share (say 5%), 100 stations could start to see really decent daily volumes, and might even be overwhelmed on busy days if there aren't enough swappers.

 

[wraithnot]

Here is my 2 cents on the battery swap issue:

1. The battery swap idea doesn't seem very compelling for owners with an 85 kWh Model S- superchargers seem like a much more cost effective road trip solution
2. Elon's main goal is to have a successful mass market EV (a.k.a. Gen III) so the battery swap idea probably has more to do with GenIII than with the Model S
3. Excluding a breakthrough in battery technology, the easiest way to hit the $30,000 price point for the base model GenIII will be to include a battery that's much smaller than the 60 kWh Model S base battery
4. People who buy the base model GenIII can then go to the swap station for road trips and rent a large battery for the trip and then swap it back for something equivalent to their original battery on the way home

 

[addicted]

Tesla isn't Better Place. Battery swap isn't likely to be a range extending solution, IMO. Battery swap will be the answer to the question "What happens if I am miles away from a charger of any kind and run out of juice".

In other words, I think battery swap is a Tesla enhancement to their ranger service. You run out of batteries on your way to Vegas from LA, call their Ranger service, and in a short while you see a Tesla can arrive which instead of spending a bunch of hours trying to charge your battery, simply swaps it for a new one.

 

[stopcrazypp]

Doesn't it matter more the percentage of miles over 200 miles? A quick hop to the grocery store can count as a trip too.
From the data, 1,658.09 million trips out of 233,849.36 million were more than 100 miles, which works out to 0.7% of trips.
However, 357,366.43 million miles out of 2,245,111.45 million miles were more than 100 miles, so 15.9% of miles.
http://nhts.ornl.gov/det/Extraction3.aspx

Over a typical 12k miles per year, that's 1900 miles per year. That's good for about 10 swaps per year.

 

[addicted]

Also, as mentioned before, battery swap sounds like an excellent solution for fleets.

 

[Palpatine]

So lets see, using your numbers, one out of every thousand trips (0.1%) is over 200 miles (and thus might use a battery swap). Since there were (according to the NHTS) only ~233,849,360,000 individual vehicle trips in 2009 that works out to only ~233,849,360 trips of greater than 200 miles.

At the height of the worst economy we have seen in most of our lives, where travel slacked off so much that gas prices cratered to levels we'll probably never see again.

I agree that trips of this sort are fairly rare at the individual level, but Tesla is only talking about building a few hundred sites at most. Once Tesla gets a noticeable market share (say 5%), 100 stations could start to see really decent daily volumes, and might even be overwhelmed on busy days if there aren't enough swappers.

So you are using numbers for total trips assuming that 100% of cars on the road are EVs? And this justifies Tesla doing a battery swap network anytime soon.... like this decade?

Instead, let's use the numbers of Teslas that might be on the road by the end of 2014 that could possibly use a battery swap. Let's just say 15,000 for 2013 and 15,000 for 2014. The others are outside of the USA.

So 30,000 Model S cars on the road at the end of 2014. `
1 in 1,000 car trips are more than 200 miles.
So there will be about 30 cars per day that might need a battery swap at that time... FOR THE ENTIRE COUNTRY.
If there were a network of 200 battery swap stations, only roughly 1 in 6 would have a single customer for the day. The rest would likely be empty or near empty for the entire day.

And that is only if they choose to pay for battery swaps instead of using the free Supercharger that is at the same location (while they use the bathroom, get a drink, etc)
Obviously a large number of owners would skip the expensive battery swaps and would stick with a free Supercharger, because realistically most people are pulling into that area with over 50% still on their battery pack and they are only topping off to 80% - 90% before continuing with their trip.

So let's project that out even further with a few more years of Model S, Model X sales and even Gen III, the numbers still don't even remotely produce the demand needed to justify the swap network.