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CapitalistOppressor
Active Member
Personally, I don't get why folks don't get what a huge business opportunity battery swapping is for Tesla. There is a reason they are saving it for last, and it isn't because its the least important.
First, lets examine the statements you make -
Don't you realize that these "advances" are fundamentally in conflict with one another? Any time you increase battery size you increase charging time as well, for any given power output. Therefor, if you double the pack size, its going to double the charging requirements, either in terms of physical infrastructure or time spent to charge. So a pack that is twice the size will take twice as long to charge using existing chargers. If you double charging capacity you will be able charge in the same amount of time. To double pack capacity and also cut charging time in half at the same time, you need to be able to flow four times as much power.
Sure, you can build a nice system that still might be able to charge a 500 mile battery in an hour. And that's really not that bad of a system to have. I already don't mind charging for an hour every 200 miles. But this innovation path you are so enthused about requires building edge cases into every car. There really isn't much practical need for 500 mile batteries. 99% of the time the battery capacity will just be dead weight which lowers the efficiency and performance of the car. Scaling up to 1,000 mile batteries makes "fast" charging impossible. And it just makes the efficiency problems worse.
So what then are the problems you cite with swapping?
What's the cost? The robotic infrastructure is cheap. The main variable is the cost of the battery inventory.
The battery inventory is a business opportunity. The larger the inventory, the larger the opportunity.
Elon wants renewable sources of energy to win in the marketplace. The biggest problem with that isn't costs, which are going down rapidly, and are already competitive, or near competitive. The biggest problem is the lack of baseload power that utilities can use to prop up the grid while variable sources are busy being variable. Germany is already running into big problems with this. The U.S. as well, though because we use fewer renewables its not impacting us as badly yet.
Either they will need to keep massive numbers of gas electric turbines on hair triggers, or else they need vast amounts of grid storage. The "backup" gas turbines cost nearly as much to have around as just running them full time does. So the only real solution is grid storage on a vast scale.
Tesla has the opportunity to enter this business purely as a byproduct of their core car business. Battery swapping is the lever they will use to build up a national energy storage capacity that will pay for itself as it scales up to levels that will be economically relevant to the national grid.
The value of this stored power will increase with time as the price of wind and solar reach their respective tipping points where they are more economical than traditional sources. To understand the size of this business opportunity, renewable sources like solar power (Solar City) and a sufficiently large energy storage system could entirely displace all other energy sources. No more power plants, no more coal industry, petro-chemicals will be completely out of the power generation business. Nuclear is probably not competitive, and fusion still doesn't exist.
This is the economy that Elon wants to build, and grid storage is the key. The battery swap system is going to pay for itself with swap fees that have the potential to be incredibly lucrative for Tesla. And as it scales up and provides large scale grid buffering, and eventually wide scale grid balancing, it will open up vast new income streams from a portion of the economy that dwarfs the automotive market.
Beyond the pure energy economics, battery swapping also caps the size of the necessary battery. There is zero need for batteries that are larger than what the Model S already has if you have battery swapping. Therefor, future advances in battery storage translate directly into cheaper, faster and more efficient automobiles, instead of being plowed into larger pack sizes that are rarely used. It eliminates the need to imagine impossible MWh charging stations, or the need to invest in speculative R&D on the subject.
So, to sum up, the system that so many people here seem to be against is one that results in faster, more efficient and less expensive cars, while also directing vast income streams that are currently captured by fossil fuel industries and traditional power utilities (while simultaneously solving global warming eliminating toxic automotive and energy generation emissions), into the coffers of Tesla Motors, Solar City, and like minded renewable energy firms.
And as Tesla fans and investors we think this is unworkable because what? It might ding a few cars? Cost a few hundred million to roll out an initial, bootstrappable capability? I just don't get it.
On my overlay it looks more like Salem than Woodburn. But regarding the second dot, my guess is Stayton/Sublimity/Kingston.
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Either you're misunderstanding him or I am. My read of what he was trying to say is that swapping is not a "nirvana" / "brilliant" / "surprising" idea that's new to the planet. He wasn't meaning to say "it's a dumb idea", but rather that it's not new / novel.
Right, he was saying that pack swapping wasn't a terribly original idea, not that it was a bad idea. Then he said he wasn't sure it was economically viable as a business. Then he said he was all for optionality. I get the distinct impression that he's on the fence about it.
Boy do I love the last line of the video with Elon - 'You can pack some food, stay with friends, and leave your wallet at home.' It just dawned on me that in a year's time you can literally travel across the US and southern Canada WITHOUT SPENDING A DIME! Not one red cent. This concept is so foreign to our psyche that it is almost beyond comprehension. By purchasing a Model S, we've essentially pre-paid for all the costs of traveling via car. I need to give this more thought - my wife and I spend a fortune on airfare and travel in general. We don't need to do that any longer! The $ we save for travel expense more than makes up for the car payment. Hmm....I think we'll take another road trip this weekend! (we went to SW Michigan last weekend and charged / stayed with friends for free).
Gosh this gets better all the time!
Gosh this gets better all the time!
makes you think about getting an X, a little inside remodel and live on the road... for nothin- well gotta stop for the coffee
deonb
Active Member
I totally agree with you on Grid storage, but for Grid storage you can have larger and cheaper batteries with a single shared cooling and management system. You don't need to stack up 20 individually managed car batteries.
Both Elon and Javier said they have a 5 min recharge solution. If you have a 5 min recharge time, what would be the virtue that Li-Ion Battery swapping brings to the table?
Are there maybe some set of people out there that are going: "I don't want to plug in a car for 5 mins. I want to instead have a 5 min car-wash drive-through like experience at those same locations in order to refill. The difference between those are SO important to me that I'm not going to purchase the car as a result."
I would buy an Al-air model because that one does have an additional virtue: It's easy to distribute - you can sell/rent those from any gas station shop - places where you'd NEVER have SuperChargers. But you're not going to find Li-Ion battery swappers in more places than SuperChargers.
stopcrazypp
Well-Known Member
Isn't battery swapping that "faster than filling gasoline" solution mentioned by Elon and Javier? I guess we'll see real soon.
5 minute recharge from empty to full will require a 12C average charge rate (actual peak charge rate higher because of tapering). That's not something Tesla's batteries can currently handle and even the fastest charging battery chemistries (like the titanate based ones) take 10 minutes.
It also would require a 1MW connection. ~250kW is basically the limit for a cable based connection. More than that will likely require a connection under the car (kind of like the charging bars used by electric buses with 500kW chargers).
CapitalistOppressor
Active Member
There isn't anything particularly cheaper about stacking vs non-stacking. Both systems will use the same NCR18650 cells that the Model S uses, because they are the cheapest and highest quality option available. Stacking battery packs is only slightly more complicated than building a dedicated housing.
Except this is not physically possible. It would destroy the battery, require MW class connectors that don't exist, and MW class cables that can't be manipulated by hand. Even the 60kWh car will take over 30 minutes to recharge with 120kWh. Doubling that to 240kWh is pushing the boundaries in a major way, though it might be possible.
That gives you recharge times of well over 15 minutes, because your tapering requirements are likely more severe. Doubling it again to 480kWh is exceedingly unlikely to be able to be accomplished, and still leaves you with 8+ minute charge times on a 60kWh car. The 85kWh car takes much more time than that, and you need MWh charge capacities to drive it down further, which is emphatically not going to happen. The Model S literally does not have connector ports able to handle any of these options.
Any thought that something like this is going to be announced June 20th is absurd.
We knew the specs for the SuperChargers enough to know ahead of time that the announcement was likely to include an increase to 120kWh. That happened. The SuperCharger announcement is finished. There is not going to be a SuperCharger v2.0 announcement.
There is going to be a battery swap announcement, because if there is not a battery swap announcement Tesla is potentially liable for misleading its shareholders after telling them that there WOULD be a battery swap announcement involving "specialized" facilities in the "near future". We further know this because of how Elon answered the question about battery swap in the announcement. Battery swapping is fully compatible with a tweet about fast "recharging" as long as you put quotes around it.
I don't even know how to respond to Aluminum Air proposals. From an engineering standpoint they seem inelegant in the extreme. From the standpoint of being a well informed Tesla watcher, I have never once seen them discuss this possibility. I also fail to see the business case for it, or any reason why it could possibly be superior to the conventional battery swapping systems that Tesla has been discussing for years.
You can't use them for grid storage, which is a fundamental requirement for renewable sources like Solar. You can't even do small scale buffering. The logistics of it are terrible, and I don't see any obvious way that Tesla can make money from it.
In contrast, industrial scale grid storage has the potential to put the Exxon Mobil's of the world out of business, while transferring much of their income to Tesla. It would literally make the world a better place. Battery swapping has the direct ability to bootstrap a massive grid storage solution into existence without the chicken/egg problem being a factor. With an economical battery swapping business, Tesla is going to be able to undercut any competition that attempts to develop competing systems that are based solely on the economics of renewable energy.
Johan
Ex got M3 in the divorce, waiting for EU Model Y!
@CO: Eloquently spoken and to the point as always. Sums up the arguments well and I agree on all points. Like Citizen-T said in his thread: "Swapping IS coming". It's in the SEC filing. I suppose they have actually legally comitted to introducing it by putting the statement in the filing.
deonb
Active Member
I agree with you on all the technical aspects. I do not know of any existing way that it can be made to work.
But you can maybe interpret Elon's tweet as metaphorical to imply battery swapping. However, I don't see a way that you can interpret Javier's statement as anything but literal:
"Charging technology is only going to improve with time. Charging times will decrease significantly and range will increase accordingly. In the very near future, the argument that internal combustion automobiles are more convenient than electric vehicles will be a moot point. You will be able to arrive at a charging station with an empty battery and drive off with a full charge faster than you can fill up a gas tank."
There is no ambiguity there.
Johan
Ex got M3 in the divorce, waiting for EU Model Y!
Why does the first 2 (or 3) sentences have to be directly interconnected with the fourth sentence? I.e. in the first 2 sentences he talks about the fact that charging will improve. In the third sentence he sets up the fourth sentence, in which he merely says that "you can arrive at a charging station and drive off with a full charge faster than you can fill up a gas tank". If we assume that swapping stations will be co-localized with supercharging stations then I don't see how this statement rules out swapping???
deonb
Active Member
Because of what CapitalOppressor and countless others have rightfully said. This is not physically possible (with any known technology). "It would destroy the battery, require MW class connectors that don't exist, and MW class cables that can't be manipulated by hand.".
The problem is however - it's not on a trajectory that anybody is foreseeing that it would ever be physically possible. i.e. This isn't like battery life that will increase by 8% per year, so that you can plan a car 5 years out with 50% cheaper batteries. There is no such related improvement for charge time. You will never be able to lift a MW cable. You can't charge a battery at room temperature at 15 C. As far as we know, this isn't possible today, and it won't be possible 15 years from now either.
So when Javier is saying "Charging times will decrease significantly"... what the hell is he talking about? The only way that you can foresee charge time decreasing significantly in the very near future, is if you already know how to do it today.
I think they've had a scientific discovery - this isn't just an engineering feat (well, I guess it can be something like a Liquid Nitrogen flush to make the internal battery wiring superconductive during charging... but I doubt that).
And the announcement is a demo - however, it doesn't necessarily mean that it is available immediately or even applicable to existing batteries. This could just be Elon's way of publishing research (fiercely patented of course).
Battery swap would only make sense if a Model S purchase included a leased battery. The problem with battery swap is it's labor intensive. That is cost inefficient. Supercharging stations are unmanned and have a low operating cost.
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deonb
Active Member
Because you don't need robotics to swop them. They can be swapped by end users anywhere in the U.S. e.g. at any of 120'000 existing gas stations that are willing to stock and sell some Al-Air plates (and supply water). It's a stand-alone business model that absolutely makes sense to have in addition to SuperChargers. It's less convenient and more expensive than SuperChargers, but more widely available. That makes it a good justification to have both. I haven't seen a good business justification for having both Li-ion battery swopping and SuperChargers - especially since they would be at the same location. If Tesla only offered battery swopping, and not SuperChargers, will they even lose 1 sale as a result?
Lastly, Al-air swapping would also satisfy the SEC filing around swapping.
The other problem with Li-ion battery swapping is the SuperCharger placement. SuperChargers are placed in other people's parking lots. To the parking lot owner this is a great deal - you get some of your parking stalls upgraded to draw in a bunch of rich folks from out of town who will be hanging around bored for 30 mins and probably going to wander into your business as a result. You lose some parking bays for general use, but ultimately you create a huge drawing point for your businesses.
A battery swapper does the exist opposite. Now you have to give up some parking bays for Tesla to install something the size of a car-wash, for people who are so rushed for time (need a 5 min battery swop over a 20 min charge), that they specifically WON'T go into your business. That's a much tougher sell.
Not only that, but there are now 24 SuperChargers installed or being installed. And at each of these locations you would have already had to plan for installing the battery swapper. So those owners will know about it. Have you ever tried to keep a secret amongst 24 people? Nevermind 24 distinct 3rd party groups? It can't be done. (e.g. The Burlington, WA SC location was discovered by just walking up to some local people and chatting to them.)
deonb
Active Member
You mean like maybe under the nose of the car? Doubtful. If that was possible I'm sure Elon would have tweeted about it by now...
I guess I have range anxiety. I am excited and happy about the supercharger announcement, but I am also a bit disappointed about the time frame and strategy. It feels to me like it would have been a lot more productive to roll them out using bisectioning rather than the very clustered and clumped method shown.
If there was even just one SC in eastern TN or West Virginia, it would be enough to let me consider making the road trip to Memphis without it being a several day adventure. As it is, I am looking at two years before I could reasonably make that trip.
If they put in the SCs that are kinda out in the middle of nowhere, they enable the really tough trips, then start filling in the routes to connect them. Maybe it isn't as good of a strategy though. ::shrug::
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JRP3
Hyperactive Member
You also decrease the need for charging, i.e. you only need to charge half as often with a 500 mile battery as with a 250 mile battery. There are few people who even take such a trip and even fewer who would not stop for an extended time after 400-500 miles of driving.
For those of you who keep insisting that faster charge rates simply aren't possible with any battery technology you need to become aware of the fact that sub 10 minute charge times have already been demonstrated by Aeronvironment and Altairnano. Toshiba Scib and A123 should also be capable of similar times. Finally, don't fixate on the "5 min" charge time as being the mark, It's quite possible that they consider an average gas station stop to be around 10 minutes or so.
Tesla may indeed go with swapping but it's not a forgone conclusion at this point.
Unless you're swapping a pre charged Super Capacitor. And later the ability to charge it in place without a cable at certain locations
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