-
Want to remove ads? Register an account and login to see fewer ads, and become a Supporting Member to remove almost all ads.
Swapping is Coming [Discuss how it will be accomplished]
- Thread starter Citizen-T
- Start date
Sorry, I thought all this "Chicken Little" hair-pulling was fear. :wink:
Larry
Richkae. I agree.
Richkae has a Roadster and we both have experience with the 240 volt / 70 amp (approx. 17 kw) charging speed of the HPC. If 17 kw were the maximum power available on the highway at a stopping point, then I would agree that a business case exists for battery swaps. Nobody is going to wait 2 hours to recharge at 17 kw, then drive 2 hours to the next stop where you would recharge for another 2 hours. That system fails based on time delay and then battery swaps make sense if the price is reasonable.
However a Supercharger at 120 kw (which is a relatively new option) completely destroys the business case for battery swaps. The problem is solved already.
- - - Updated - - -
No, I am fairly sure the feeling was contempt and disgust at even the concept of Tesla pissing away that kind of money.
Watching how Better Place burned through $800 million is all you need to know about this dumbass idea.
And I am completely serious about my plans if they announce June 20th that they are spending significant CAPEX on battery swap stations. I will cancel my Model S order and short the stock. Battery swaps are an obsolete concept. My admiration for Elon Musk will drop dramatically. Owning a car from a new company like Tesla is already a bit of a risk. If they add battery swap expenses on top of the current risk model, that would be silly to own the car or the stock at this time. I will wait a few years and see how it plays out. I will just reverse the charges on my $2,500 deposit.
That having been said, I think the most likely June 20th announcement is just a demo that they can do battery swaps in about a minute. They will announce that they have no plans to rollout swap stations because there doesn't seem to be a business case for it. But if in the future there is customer demand, they may reconsider. I think at most they might build one single test swap station somewhere between San Francisco and Los Angeles (near Harris Ranch) to determine if customers have any interest at all in this scheme.
Last edited:
JRP3
Hyperactive Member
Why would it take so long when it can be installed and removed so much faster? Even without automated equipment all the bolts should be able to be removed quickly with impact tools, and all the connections are quick connects.
In this regard I agree, but I seriously doubt they will bother with even a single test swap station immediately. Perhaps that might happen when there is a demonstrated need for faster "recharges", such as when unmanagable congestion develops at Supercharger stations.
Larry
Because I am postulating it will happen at a Service Center not dedicated to quick swapping. The actual swap may indeed take a few minutes, but the ancillary time of speaking with the desk attendant, moving the car onto a lift, moving the new battery out of storage, swapping, lowering the lift and backing out, paying (or just showing enough ID to be billed), and then, perhaps a few minutes on a HPC to top off of the battery as it don't expect it to be stored at 100%.
Consider a "jiffy lube" style location, and all you want is to change the wiper blades. The actual swap of blades takes what, 2 minutes? But the minimum transaction time is still 15 minutes or so. More if there isn't a bay immediately available do to the work.
I agree that a dedicated swapping station could do it faster--but that's not how I expect it to be accomplished.
JRP3
Hyperactive Member
There are a few key points being missed.
As Tesla gets more popular, Supercharger installations may cost them dramatically less to install. Locations interested in capturing Tesla owners for 30 minutes may defray much of the cost.
The estimation of how much supercharging or swapping is needed seems overly high. A previous poster estimated 24 times per year. 24 times per year is somewhere between 5000 and 10000 miles of road trips. The average driver only drives 12000 miles per year, and I bet does very few 250+ mile roadtrips.
Partial recharges reduce the advantage of the battery swap. If my range is 250 miles and I am driving 300 miles, and I stop to supercharge at the 200 mile mark, I only need an additional 50 miles of range to make my destination. That's only 7 minutes or so at 120kW. The 5 minute battery swap has no significant advantage here.
As range goes up the need for supercharging or swapping goes down dramatically.
With a 250 mile real range, I plan to supercharge a maximum of about a half dozen times per year ( I likely won't do that many and most of those will be partial charges anyway ).
When my Tesla has 400 miles range, I will probably supercharge on average once per year. The average driver will also likely have their supercharging needs dramatically reduced.
When an EV has 700 miles of range, then virtually no one will need supercharging or swapping on a road trip. ( Although the technology will eventually allow it, I bet nobody bothers to sell such a car for quite some time. )
Lastly, self driving cars are the killer app for charging logistics. With self driving cars you only need the supercharger/swap location to be within a short drive ( say a dozen miles or so ) of where you want to stop. The car will go fill up by itself. When the car is doing it without you, for most of those recharges you wont care if it is 5 minute swap or a 30 minute charge. When you don't care, the battery swap loses any advantage.
Long before Tesla has delivered 500,000 cars in the US, the average range of a new Tesla will be much much higher than it is now - and self driving cars will likely be available.
As Tesla gets more popular, Supercharger installations may cost them dramatically less to install. Locations interested in capturing Tesla owners for 30 minutes may defray much of the cost.
The estimation of how much supercharging or swapping is needed seems overly high. A previous poster estimated 24 times per year. 24 times per year is somewhere between 5000 and 10000 miles of road trips. The average driver only drives 12000 miles per year, and I bet does very few 250+ mile roadtrips.
Partial recharges reduce the advantage of the battery swap. If my range is 250 miles and I am driving 300 miles, and I stop to supercharge at the 200 mile mark, I only need an additional 50 miles of range to make my destination. That's only 7 minutes or so at 120kW. The 5 minute battery swap has no significant advantage here.
As range goes up the need for supercharging or swapping goes down dramatically.
With a 250 mile real range, I plan to supercharge a maximum of about a half dozen times per year ( I likely won't do that many and most of those will be partial charges anyway ).
When my Tesla has 400 miles range, I will probably supercharge on average once per year. The average driver will also likely have their supercharging needs dramatically reduced.
When an EV has 700 miles of range, then virtually no one will need supercharging or swapping on a road trip. ( Although the technology will eventually allow it, I bet nobody bothers to sell such a car for quite some time. )
Lastly, self driving cars are the killer app for charging logistics. With self driving cars you only need the supercharger/swap location to be within a short drive ( say a dozen miles or so ) of where you want to stop. The car will go fill up by itself. When the car is doing it without you, for most of those recharges you wont care if it is 5 minute swap or a 30 minute charge. When you don't care, the battery swap loses any advantage.
Long before Tesla has delivered 500,000 cars in the US, the average range of a new Tesla will be much much higher than it is now - and self driving cars will likely be available.
Last edited:
Correct. Two possibilities:
1. "Tesla Math" will be used to bend time and space to make it fit. See Bistromatics: Bistromatics - Hitchhikers
2. What is demoed will be the equivalent of refueling at a stock car race--multiple experts poised and ready to go with specialty equipment. Makes a cool demo, and a neat headline, but won't match the everyday reality of a lone service tech with a standard lift.
If battery swapping is the announcement, consider me disappointed. For one, I agree almost entirely with palpating, though I reserve the right to change my mind if they surprise me with a model of swapping that shocks me with its usefulness and efficiency. But for the life of me I don't see why I would ever want to use it. For one, I really don't want my car opened and closed underneath unless absolutely necessary. Anytime the human body in surgery or electronics in servicing are opened, there is an opportunity to damage them, making them imperfect. Secondly, what situation would this interest me? On road trips? If so, then why spend any time and money on the supercharging network? Seems redundant. I expect many people will be turned off by having their car altered like this.
The only way I'm interested in battery swapping is if tesla announces its easy, and will be used if your battery degrades over time, or that if better longer lasting batteries are developed while the car is still under warrantee you can upgrade for free or for a nominal reasonable cost.
The only way I'm interested in battery swapping is if tesla announces its easy, and will be used if your battery degrades over time, or that if better longer lasting batteries are developed while the car is still under warrantee you can upgrade for free or for a nominal reasonable cost.
CapitalistOppressor
Active Member
Let's set that aside for a moment, because the power requirements are identical regardless of the system, and the power transmission issues are a key reason why you need grid storage in the first place. Just because you need to put the solar panels somewhere doesn't mean it's uniquely economical to put SuperChargers under them.
Let's be clear about this. Better Place was charging $500k to build one of their swap stations, and the technical requirements for Tesla are not going to be drastically different.
And again, all of this seems based on the assumption that SuperChargers are free. They are not. I've been told by a Tesla engineer that they cost ~$13,000 each, and that tracks well with the cost that Tesla is citing to build the existing stations where they are building 10-12 chargers at a cost of ~$150,000.
Even with 120kW charging, and assuming the throughput of each SuperCharger is able to operate at full capacity 100% of the time (which it clearly is unable to do), that works out to ~22 chargers, and a minimum of $286,000 in CapEx to match a hypothetical $500,000 SuperSwapper which is able to service 30 cars per hour with fully charged 85kWh batteries. When you consider that a SuperCharger can't possibly operate at 100% capacity 100% of the time (ie, charge tapering, cars pulling in and out, etc), the CapEx is going to end up being somewhere close to a wash at best.
In terms of your issues with the need for substations and high voltage power lines, you need to recall that the point of this exercise is to develop a substantial CES capacity. The power requirements you are so concerned about are a two way street. It will cost Tesla money to take power from the grid, but they will make a lot more money selling it back.
Elon has already mentioned the ability of their existing CES systems to output 1mW. Whether this is "continuous" or not is besides the point. They will need to feed that power back into the grid if they want to make money off of their grid storage. For now, that capacity is likely only going to be used locally for SuperCharging, but clearly if Tesla is doing CES they will need the grid infrastructure upgraded.
As to your comments about solar panels, I am skeptical that they will all be located at the charging locations. The system as a whole should be solar positive, but that doesn't mean you need to rely solely on panels located above chargers. Large scale CES helps enable large scale solar adoption, so i don't see why Tesla wont just put the panels wherever is most convenient when doing their system accounting.
Edit: Also, since I seem to have forgotten to address the 12,000 SuperSwapper claim, I don't see why you think there needs to be that many. 100 seems like the right number to support 2 million cars in terms of throughput, and your argument against that seems appears to be based on power generation requirements that are identical for SuperChargers.
Last edited:
deonb
Active Member
I agree the energy usage are the same for SuperSwappers and SuperChargers. But you can't support 2 million cars via either 100 SuperChargers or 100 SuperSwappers. The scale is way-way off.
2 million cars charging 15 times per year == 30 million charges. Let's say 40% is during the week, and 60% during weekend (Elon thinks it's much more that that in the weekend), but let's just say 30% during Friday and 30% during Sunday.
That means on Sunday there will be 30% of 30million / 52 weeks / 100 locations == 1730 swaps/charges per location on Sundays. Let's ignore where you're going to get 70 MWh of power from for a second and just look at car throughput:
The largest layout I've heard of is 10 chargers at 1 location. That means over a 12 hour period, every car can park/connect/charge/disconnect/leave only for a 4 minute cycle. That's not enough. You need 5 times that capacity just for absolute minimum usage. Even that further assumes a perfectly even distribution of all cars over the 100 locations, with perfectly spaced arrival times.
Similarly, with a swapper, it would need to do it's thing in 24 seconds - which includes car arrival and departure time, payment time etc. And again, assumes perfectly even distribution, with perfectly evenly spaced arrival times.
100 locations for either Supercharging or SuperSwapping is off by 2 orders of magnitude.
Next, why would Tesla charge $4b dollars for access to a network, but then only spend $30m to build a vastly undersized network?
Next-to-last, Tesla committed to 200 locations already, so why are we even talking about 100?
Lastly, Elon told us already he wants to make the system solar positive by itself, which is doable with 12'000 locations (keep in mind this is worldwide), at a cost of $3.6b from $4b of revenue. There's no problem with the SuperCharger financials with a 166 vehicles per SuperCharger location ratio.
So now if you want to go and say, take some of these 12k 10-charger SuperCharger locations and change them to SuperSwappers instead, then sure, go ahead (and figure out where you're going to put the Solar Panels if you take those SuperCharger parking spots away). But 100 locations, whether it has 100 swappers or 1000 chargers, simply cannot service 2 million vehicles.
Last edited:
As long as I own the battery, I don't think I'd want the battery swap. If Tesla buys back the battery and I lease it then maybe but they'd probably charge a premium for me leasing the pack and would end up costing me more. I really doubt there will be a battery swap announcement but you never know. Will find out soon enough.
ModelS8794
Member
Perhaps not an original though, but it struck me today that we've all been taking a very US centric view of this debate. Given that 2/3 of production may very well end up being sold outside the US, perhaps battery swap is going to be Teslas solution for use cases where developing Supercharging infrastructure may pose hazards or limitations that we don't have in the US. German Autobahn for instance, where speeds are such that 3 hours driving and a 20 minute stop aren't in the cards for an 85kWh battery and supercharger. Or geographies where capability for at home charging isnt quite so commonplace (I dunno, is 200Amp home service commonplace worldwide, or are there countries where residential electric distribution infrastructure is not there even in affluent areas?)
ultimately I see swap as a solution for locations like that, where supercharger just doesnt make sense in the same way it does across US highways. city buyers that have no dedicated garage solution - a lot easier/quicker for Tesla to install 2 or 3 swap stations in a city than concincing 10,000 different condo boards to install chargers in their garages, particularly of we're talking about non-US locations where rules or requirements or even capability may be markedly different that here.
If that's true, then swap is not meant to compete with supercharger at all.
ultimately I see swap as a solution for locations like that, where supercharger just doesnt make sense in the same way it does across US highways. city buyers that have no dedicated garage solution - a lot easier/quicker for Tesla to install 2 or 3 swap stations in a city than concincing 10,000 different condo boards to install chargers in their garages, particularly of we're talking about non-US locations where rules or requirements or even capability may be markedly different that here.
If that's true, then swap is not meant to compete with supercharger at all.
deonb
Active Member
I'm a fan of the CitySwapper theory, but I think Thursday's announcement is U.S. only:
May 9:
elonmusk: There is a way for the Tesla Model S to be recharged throughout the country faster than you could fill a gas tank.
realbhuwan: @elonmusk yeah, we're waiting for superchargers :wink:
pjhornak: @realbhuwan @elonmusk hint that's not a supercharger
realbhuwan: @PJHORNAK doubt it is anything else.
elonmusk: @realbhuwan Don't forget the mystery announcement. Part 5 of the trilogy.
pratik_shah: @elonmusk only in US or across the globe?
elonmusk: @pratik_shah worldwide[<---- this has since been deleted]
So Elon redacted himself on even launching it worldwide.
Either way, City Charging is still a U.S. problem as well. There are quite a few neighborhoods just around here that only have street parking. And not even reserved street parking - you park at a different place every time. Someone in that situation has pretty much no hope of setting up a charger - at least they'll have to negotiate with the city to get them an assigned/reserved parking spot. Which is not a conversation that I think a lot of people would bother having.
deonb
Active Member
Not sure if this was intended as a serious statement...
But just in case it is, the 5 part trilogy is an homage to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker's_Guide_to_the_Galaxy#Novels
Are there perhaps commercial clients that could buy a semi-automated battery swapper for their fleet of S-es?
deonb
Active Member
If the 85kWh battery is truly selling for $32k right now, and a battery swapper is $500k, you're probably better off just buying extra cars and rotating through them.
Similar threads
