Proof of Tesla's plan for battery swapping

[SteveG3]

Well, like I was saying in the similar thread in the "Tesla Motors" subforum, I am not entirely dismissive of aluminium-air batteries in the Model S. I just think that if we are talking about aluminium-air batteries, it makes a lot more sense to swap out the Model S battery pack with a long range aluminium-air battery pack. It could contain 10-20 kWh of regular li-ion and 400 kWh of aluminium-air, without weighing more than the current 85 kWh battery pack.

You simply drive into a battery swap station, they remove your battery pack for storage and transportation to any other battery swap station you desire, then they put in a 410 kWh battery pack and you're ready to go. 1000 miles later you pull into a different battery swap station, they replace your battery pack with one that's fully charged, and refill the depleted one with aluminium and water for the next customer. When you arrive at your destination, you return the al-air battery and get your battery pack back. (If the destination is far from where you handed off your battery pack, you wait a couple of days until they ship it to your nearest battery swap station or tesla service center, and collect it. While you wait, you make due with the 40 miles of range on the regular li-ion and any remaining range on the aluminium-air.)

I could see a lot of benefits in the system you are suggesting. To me the biggest question is could they have such mixed source packs that would maintain the safety of existing packs (i.e. crash resistance, and allow the metal-air part to receive air and water flow, and repeated servicing access to swap aluminum.

 

[scaesare]

I have it on good authority that the "answer is obvious in general concept, but unexpected in implementation."

I'd venture that means a clever swap methodology.

 

[Spells]

Here's how the existing swap technology works, and an explanation of the economics:
Future Cars: Battery Swap Stations - YouTube

The key is, batteries will get cheaper and more powerful over time. This makes buying one now to last 10 years a not-fantastic idea. But if the car company owns the batteries, and you are just paying for the electricity, two nice things happen:

1. Battery swap out means that customers don't have to worry about battery degradation over time, and refueling is very fast. These are the last two hurdles to EVs.
2. The auto company gets to sell energy, and the production costs get cheaper and more efficient over time.

This could make Bluestar a lot easier. If the customer doesn't have to pay for the 10k battery, you're knocking the purchase price down right away. You can also sell cars to people who don't have driveways/garages/fixed parking spaces.

Put the swap out stations in cities and suburbs, and supercharging stations between cities. It's perfect, if you can make the tech work.

 

[ModelS8794]

I have it on good authority that the "answer is obvious in general concept, but unexpected in implementation."

I'd venture that means a clever swap methodology.

i wonder if any of the brains here can help me with this. I have a notion that battery swap can be incorporated into a system that's designed for 2 uses instead of one: Tesla long distance travel, and demand response/ utility rate arbitrage as well. My question is, is the capacity of the 85kwh battery sufficient that it could be utilized at some scale that makes it meaningful to a utility as a demand response system but also built in a location/environment that is sensible for Tesla drivers looking for long distance travel swaps?

 

[callmesam]

I have it on good authority that the "answer is obvious in general concept, but unexpected in implementation."

I'd venture that means a clever swap methodology.

This context leads to a swap but that only swaps a small onboard aluminum water battery for 100 mile boosts (maybe you can keep spares in the car)?

 

[FreeOfPge]

It's probably not that cheap. See 2012 Toyota RAV4 EV-Safety - YouTube, for example. All the major automakers also do tons of simulations prior to physical crash tests.

Wow! That is pretty crazy!!! Funny the whole conversation seems to now moved on to only swaping in the frunk. I don't think we need another new thread for frunk battery swaping, as the board is pretty cluttered but both threads on the battery swaping topic are now simoltaniously talking about this.​

 

[ChadS]

So THAT is what is meant to plug in to the opportunity space...

 

[cwerdna]

Here's how the existing swap technology works, and an explanation of the economics:
Future Cars: Battery Swap Stations - YouTube

Sigh... I only watched a few seconds and immediately saw Better Place again... They were the guys who have been pushing battery swapping for a long time.

Since it seems people have ignored my prodding to look towards certain posts towards the end of the Better Place thread. I'll post them here + a few others.
San Francisco electric taxi program faces setbacks | Will Reisman | Local | San Francisco Examiner
CA spends $3M on 6 EV Taxis - the above involved Better Place (see further news further down) and Coda, that went bankrupt, so it was good $ thrown after bad
Cash crunch may lead to layoffs at Better Place - Israel News | Haaretz Daily Newspaper
Better Place Electric-Car Service: Few Users, More Turmoil
Report: Better Place laying off hundreds Tech News and Analysis
Shai Agassi Out As CEO Of Better Place Electric-Car Service
Third Better Place CEO In Four Months Departs
Better Place To Shut Down U.S., Australian Operations - Forbes
Better Place Reports Loss Of $454 Million In 2012, Is
Better Place receives "going concern" warning - Globes
Better Place needs to raise $500m - Globes

Better Place has lost $812 million since it was founded in 2007 through the end of 2012, including $424 million last year. The company's auditor attached a going concern warning to its financials. Most of the loss was in the fourth quarter - $251 million - after the company recognized a $179 million write-down on its Israeli operations and for restructuring costs.
...
But the company's revenue was just $7 million in 2012.

So tell me, how well have the economics worked out for Better Place?

Oh yeah, and there's Carlos Ghosn says no more battery swap cars. Remember, Ghosn is the CEO of Renault-Nissan and the Renault Fluence ZE is used by Better Place...

 

[Spells]

So tell me, how well have the economics worked out for Better Place?

Oh yeah, and there's Carlos Ghosn says no more battery swap cars. Remember, Ghosn is the CEO of Renault-Nissan and the Renault Fluence ZE is used by Better Place...

The economics are obvious. That doesn't mean you can't bungle the execution. Tesla has done a few things now that other companies have failed at.

 

[cwerdna]

The economics are obvious. That doesn't mean you can't bungle the execution. Tesla has done a few things now that other companies have failed at.

Really? So how many others have done it and succeeded? How many are eagerly trying to get into the battery swapping station business?

As for your latter statement, yes, but Tesla's racked up about $1 billion in losses so far to get here.

 

[jeff_adams]

This was posted in another thread, but it bears repeating here. How about a simple solution like putting an Air Metal battery in the frunk cubby to act as a "trickle charger" when needed? No more range worries and no more Brodering. You could actually charge as you drive (think constant regen). Much cheaper and easier to implement. You could travel to anywhere that lacks electricity and still charge up the car overnight. Game changer
......

 

[cdabel]

For my use, I really don´t need any new or quicker kind of charging/swapping, but I am looking forward to more ammunition to shoot at the naysayers. Every time I mention my purchase of the Model S, the sceptics always ask (expecting no good come back) about three things: range, charging time and life of the battery.

 

[WarpedOne]

This was posted in another thread, but it bears repeating here. How about a simple solution like putting an Air Metal battery in the frunk cubby to act as a "trickle charger" when needed? No more range worries and no more Brodering. You could actually charge as you drive (think constant regen). Much cheaper and easier to implement. You could travel to anywhere that lacks electricity and still charge up the car overnight. Game changer

The best part of such a system is that it isn't necessary limited only to Tesla Model S and availability of such modules is not limited to Tesla's special locations.
It could be 'open-spec' so other EVs beside Model S and future Tesla's vehicles could use the same modules and they could be sold practically all over the globe.

Yes, this would be a game changer for EV adoption. No practical excuses left except price. "Poor" flat dwellers could completely skip home-charging and drive solely on energy from such modules.

Remaining question is could they be made cheap enough? Such a cartridge should cost less or at least not much more than gas for same miles driven.

 

[ToddRLockwood]

Going through the SEC-filing for Q2 I found this very interesting piece of information:

"our capability to rapidly swap out the Model S battery pack and the development of specialized public facilities to perform such swapping, which do not currently exist but which we plan to introduce in the near future."

I would like to suggest that you have bolded the wrong part of this statement. Try this instead...

"our capability to rapidly swap out the Model S battery pack and the development of specialized public facilities to perform such swapping, which do not currently exist but which we plan to introduce in the near future."

Battery swapping stations do currently exist. BetterPlace has already built a number of them. My money is on an alumimun-air battery pack that fits into that strange space in the back of the frunk. That could be what gets swapped. Tesla has a patent covering the use of an aluminum-air battery in combination with a lithium-ion battery pack. Range with such a setup could be well beyond 500 miles.

 

[deonb]

My money is on an alumimun-air battery pack that fits into that strange space in the back of the frunk. That could be what gets swapped. Tesla has a patent covering the use of an aluminum-air battery in combination with a lithium-ion battery pack. Range with such a setup could be well beyond 500 miles.

Let's say that's true. How do you correlate having both such a plan AND a Supercharger plan?

 

[WarpedOne]

Superchargers are there for free charging for those with big batteries. No heavy lifting required, no frunk space required, no water refueling.
MA range extenders are there for people going where there ain't no SC, are willing to pay for the modules, don't mind some exercise replacing the modules and don't mind paying for them.

 

[deonb]

Superchargers are there for free charging for those with big batteries. No heavy lifting required, no frunk space required, no water refueling.
MA range extenders are there for people going where there ain't no SC, are willing to pay for the modules, don't mind some exercise replacing the modules and don't mind paying for them.

You envision a world where lots of people would rather stop for 2 hours rather than moving a 20lbs object for 15 feet?

There might be some narrow band where the cost and inconvenience of a MA outweighs the inconvenience of the SC, but still make it practical to sometimes want a MA. I think it's really thin though, and it would be a HUGE coincidence if they exists together so perfectly.

 

[WarpedOne]

Those two hours are closer to half an hour and those 20 lbs are closer to 100 lbs in total.
And the first is free forever (after initial 2k downpayment), while the second is not free at all, probably quite expensive.
The first is also exclusive to Tesla, while second could and should be shared with other EVs.

 

[deonb]

Those two hours are closer to half an hour

Not for 500 miles it's not.

those 20 lbs are closer to 100 lbs in total.

That includes water though. 15 lbs of gasoline also weighs 120 lbs - nobody cares about that. You just need an efficient (and cheap) delivery system. A gardenhose comes to mind.

while the second is not free at all, probably quite expensive

That one is probably true. But still. If it's too expensive, nobody will use it. Too cheap, and nobody would use SC. Hence coming back to it needing a narrow range for it to exist so that both make sense.


Don't get me wrong - I'm very much rooting for this to be the announcement, and could at least be made to fit in with Elon's tweets. I don't see how a battery swapping system would fit them at all. Certainly won't be "all over the country" or "under your nose".

If it just wasn't for that pesky upcoming Supercharger announcement... UNLESS the supercharger announcement is: "No more Superchargers!". But then you can't stagger the 4th and 5th announcements by a week.

 

[Lloyd]

Gasoline is 6 lbs per gallon or 90 lbs. for 15 gal.