No way would I ever trust Toyota with my Model S. They can't even change the oil correctly in a Prius unless you bring them a pre-measured amount of the correct oil. But it might make a good plot for a horror movie.
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What is Tesla's upcoming 'under your nose' announcement?
- Thread starter yobigd20
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- Tesla Inc.
No way would I ever trust Toyota with my Model S. They can't even change the oil correctly in a Prius unless you bring them a pre-measured amount of the correct oil. But it might make a good plot for a horror movie.
CapitalistOppressor
Active Member
They are planning on $200m in CapEx for 2013. That seemed like a big number.
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At least big in relation to things we expect them to do. Makes perfect sense if there is a large SuperSwapper component.
mitch672
Active Member
I just want to credit CO with the term "SuperSwapper", lets see if that's what Elon calls them, you might be due a nice "thanks" from Elon
Do we know how much of the model s manufacturing line will be used for the model x? Do they have to ramp up a pile of machinery to get the model x going? I assume if they started buying that equipment now (or 2013 that is), it could be setup this year and testing / beta models could be produced next year before they start delivering in 2014q4?
CapitalistOppressor
Active Member
I bet Elon is reading this thread and thinking "Superswapper! That's catchy!"
I'd be happy to take a P85+ in exchange for the trademark on it :biggrin:
ModelS8794
Member
Better Place is still a private firm. There is an Israeli holding company that is publicly traded and has made a significant investment in Better Place, but that investment is a tiny portion of the holding company's value, so investing in it wouldn't get you much in the way of exposure to BP.
Jonathan Hewitt
Active Member
I don't think they will go for that. :O FYI, the T-shirts and Hats are pretty cool, too.
deonb
Active Member
How do you consolidate this with:
"throughout the country"
"worldwide"
"under your nose"
I'm not convinced about the battery pack being tied to your personal car. You buy the car to drive electrically, not to have a specific battery pack. The packs are just necessary baggage to keep the thing moving. If there was a way to quickly exchange a vehicle's gasoline tank with a preloaded one in 5 secs, would you reject it just because it's not your old tank? Quality management of those things is something Tesla must be concerned about, not the customer. Looking at images of the car's underside, swapping must have been designed in from the start. It's the only logical explanation, alongside certain more or less official statements about swapping capabilities.
I don't get why the super chargers would get redundant with swapping? You still need the power electronics to do a regular super charge anyways. I think that when the SC hardware is not used by clients, it simply charges the handful of packs stored underground and keeps them in an optimal state. And remember, the packs would be almost fully charged. A regular super charge takes half an hour and only brings like half the battery capacitance back. Maybe the underground charging could even be faster by means of cooling the packs while charging. Maybe they can even go up to 200 kW without damaging or overheating them with cooling, which is not possible when attached to a Model S.
If a client needs a preloaded battery pack, the touch control could display where and how many preloaded packs are available. Maybe there could even be a simple reservation system that can be used on the road.
I don't get why the super chargers would get redundant with swapping? You still need the power electronics to do a regular super charge anyways. I think that when the SC hardware is not used by clients, it simply charges the handful of packs stored underground and keeps them in an optimal state. And remember, the packs would be almost fully charged. A regular super charge takes half an hour and only brings like half the battery capacitance back. Maybe the underground charging could even be faster by means of cooling the packs while charging. Maybe they can even go up to 200 kW without damaging or overheating them with cooling, which is not possible when attached to a Model S.
If a client needs a preloaded battery pack, the touch control could display where and how many preloaded packs are available. Maybe there could even be a simple reservation system that can be used on the road.
Let's remember that at this time, an investment of, say, $100-200 million is not enormous for Tesla. Around 2% of market cap, less than 10% of annual sales. They could easily pay for it tomorrow by issuing 2M shares (there may be a link here).
I think PR-wise, it will be important to launch this in a way that makes everyone see it as "pure upside", so that nobody who is already a believer today starts doubting. Also, as people have pointed out, peak demand for swapping could be a bitch. If the swapping is launched as an extra, they might get away with not promising that it will always be available. A reservation system could solve that, by the way: If you reserve in advance, you are 100% certain of getting a swap. If you do a drop-in you will get a swap, except at some very rare peak times. If that happens to you, you have the SC as a backup.
I think PR-wise, it will be important to launch this in a way that makes everyone see it as "pure upside", so that nobody who is already a believer today starts doubting. Also, as people have pointed out, peak demand for swapping could be a bitch. If the swapping is launched as an extra, they might get away with not promising that it will always be available. A reservation system could solve that, by the way: If you reserve in advance, you are 100% certain of getting a swap. If you do a drop-in you will get a swap, except at some very rare peak times. If that happens to you, you have the SC as a backup.
Ben W
Chess Grandmaster (Supervised)
There's been quite a bit of speculation about swapping the 1000-pound battery pack, and also speculation about sticking a 50-pound aluminum-air battery in the frunk for non-rechargeable extended range.
What if the two ideas were combined? Suppose the entire 1000-pound battery pack were replaced with an equivalent aluminum-air battery, or a combination lithium-ion / aluminum-air / distilled-water, designed specifically for long-distance road trips (e.g. lower peak power, high energy density)? Might it be possible to swap a self-contained 1000-mile NON-rechargeable battery pack into the existing modular battery space, just for a road trip? This I'd like to see.
What if the two ideas were combined? Suppose the entire 1000-pound battery pack were replaced with an equivalent aluminum-air battery, or a combination lithium-ion / aluminum-air / distilled-water, designed specifically for long-distance road trips (e.g. lower peak power, high energy density)? Might it be possible to swap a self-contained 1000-mile NON-rechargeable battery pack into the existing modular battery space, just for a road trip? This I'd like to see.
Mayhemm
Model S P85+ "Lola"
This reminded me of something. People taking advantage of the hypothetical battery swap service would be road-tripping, yes? So would the battery they receive be range/max charged to enable them to continue on their trip with the maximum range? Or would they have to swap packs and then plug in somewhere in order to maximize range?
Although a 1000-mile pack sounds nice, it would add a lot of complexity, and thus cost, to the system. You'd need a facility for refurbishing the used up metal-air battery. I think that the more uniformly the whole system can be handled, the better for everyone.
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A freshly swapped battery pack should be fully charged and ready for immediate use to give the customer maximum convenience and reach. The half-hour charge is only an example for a typical stay to eat and refresh. Half charge would perhaps force additional stops taking half an hour, while full charge means half the stops in theory. So, if you want to shave off a couple hours on a long-distance trip, swapping is the way to go IMHO.
Johann Koeber
Happy Owner
The battery swapping would allow Tesla to market a Gen III car without a battery, as does Renault. Renault sells you a car, but you must lease the battery.
That would be the most cost efficient solution for the customer. Like, the car costs $20k plus battery lease for $1500 a year.
CapitalistOppressor
Active Member
Everyone needs to keep in mind the $200m in CapEx that Tesla announced in the conference call on Wednesday. That a a fairly huge sum of money for a company that to all appearances has relatively modest capital needs, while having a pressing desire to stay profitable.
In the mid 80's Tom Clancy published "Red Storm Rising" which was, by far, my favorite book while growing up. A major factor in that book was the "maskirovka" that the Russians implemented to fool NATO. Later, when I was taking all of my Security Studies classes for my IR degree, I learned that a "maskirovka" was a real thing, and that basically it amounts to having a plausible cover story to explain your visible actions, so as to conceal your true intent.
My current thesis is that the widely discussed expansion of "service centers" which was supposed to explain the $200m in CapEx, is actually the Tesla maskirovka to conceal their SuperSwapper scheme until they are ready to announce. If you think about it, its not even lying. Tesla probably does have problems with service that they will need to invest in to fix.
But a SuperSwapper might well be considered a type of "service center". And you can even interpret previous halfhearted reports that they might let Model S drivers swap batteries at "service centers" as just a part of the maskirovka that has been being implemented for a year now.
Reality check: This thesis is based on conjecture whose foundation is pure speculation. Tesla might announce a minimal "swapping" system like they described a few months ago, where cars with smaller batteries could go to a service center and swap in an 85kWh battery on a rental like basis. That made some sense when 40kWh cars were still a thing. Except of course, that program was cancelled, and all cars are SuperCharger capable. And its completely inconsistent with Elon's tweet.
Reality check 2: Battery swap is not planned and will not happen. Seems to be clearly contradicted by the 10k filed yesterday.
My momma taught me to go big or go home. I filed a report on Seeking Alpha on this, so if they decide to publish it I am going to look like an utter fool if Tesla announces something completely off the wall.
But on the bright side, I am going to go visit my mom tomorrow. So I'm covered either way.
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That's what I suggested here. Assuming a little over 1 kWh/kg, the Model S battery pack could be replaced by an aluminium-air battery pack with around 400 kWh, which should be enough to propel a Model S for more than 1000 miles.
This is a business model I can support. Regular battery swapping won't be as fast as filling gas, no matter what Musk says, but swapping 1000 mile batteries can be as fast. That means that driving San Francisco - New York, one would have to stop three times for 10 minutes or so. The entire US could probably be served by 10 battery swapping stations. (While to cover the US with sufficient battery swapping stations using regular batteries, you'd need hundreds of battery swap stations.)
The biggest downsides with aluminium-air is that they aren't rechargeable, and the energy cost is more than twice as high. This matters very little when you ditch the battery at a specialized battery swap station, where they can put in new aluminium, and you'd only use the batteries for the occasional long-distance trip, so the cost is largely irrelevant.
Edit: I occurs to me that you would probably want to keep a small portion of the regular li-ion cells, maybe 10-20 kWh, lest the customer having rented an al-air battery would become stranded far away from a battery swap station with no way to recharge.
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The way Elon keeps telling us not to worry about the battery packs and that it's 100% guaranteed by him really makes me think that this battery swapping idea is legit. Any issues just "swing by and we'll swap it out" sort of thing. I mean they haven't followed any other typical car tradition other than having 4 wheels so why start now? It's this "thinking out of the box" paradigm that led them to be successful in the first place.
Battery swapping would not only solve "fast charging", it would also solve any "degradation" doubts that people have (this assuming that you don't need to come back to get your own battery back, that the swapped battery is just as good as it was when the car was bought). It doesn't really make sense to mass produce millions of cars (e.g. Gen III) with a technology (Li-ion) knowing that they just might degrade too low simultaneously in 15 years or so. If battery swaps were free, hell - if battery swaps were even under some sort of "yearly lease", all of the sudden both problems are solved. Every time someone doubts something that Elon says he can do, it drives him more to prove them wrong. While a visionary, he is also practical. I really think this battery swapping idea is what the demo is going to be. It certainly makes sense business-wise to do this (increasing 4 to 7 ZEV credits). I mean if someone said to your business "hey, if you prove you can do this easy thing that you said you already designed the car to be able to do in the first place, then you'll get millions of dollars for free" uh well doh, hello, why not?
Battery swapping would not only solve "fast charging", it would also solve any "degradation" doubts that people have (this assuming that you don't need to come back to get your own battery back, that the swapped battery is just as good as it was when the car was bought). It doesn't really make sense to mass produce millions of cars (e.g. Gen III) with a technology (Li-ion) knowing that they just might degrade too low simultaneously in 15 years or so. If battery swaps were free, hell - if battery swaps were even under some sort of "yearly lease", all of the sudden both problems are solved. Every time someone doubts something that Elon says he can do, it drives him more to prove them wrong. While a visionary, he is also practical. I really think this battery swapping idea is what the demo is going to be. It certainly makes sense business-wise to do this (increasing 4 to 7 ZEV credits). I mean if someone said to your business "hey, if you prove you can do this easy thing that you said you already designed the car to be able to do in the first place, then you'll get millions of dollars for free" uh well doh, hello, why not?
Still very expensive.
SC's do not require a human presence.
Swapping a battery requires at least on full time person 24/7 available that confirms that all fittings are done, screws are tightened, etc.
Quickly moving 1000 pounds and the storing it in racks is not trivial.
Especially if logistics are needed to return the original battery to an owner.
I very much doubt they are ready and/or have a practical solution.
Just think of the math:
How many batteries of $15k each?
What happens when all batteries are taken?
This is too expensive of a solution for such a small fraction of vehicles that will need it. Removing and reinstalling a structural chassis element is not done in haste and without supervision and confirmation.
I don't think it's practical or needed.
SC's do not require a human presence.
Swapping a battery requires at least on full time person 24/7 available that confirms that all fittings are done, screws are tightened, etc.
Quickly moving 1000 pounds and the storing it in racks is not trivial.
Especially if logistics are needed to return the original battery to an owner.
I very much doubt they are ready and/or have a practical solution.
Just think of the math:
How many batteries of $15k each?
What happens when all batteries are taken?
This is too expensive of a solution for such a small fraction of vehicles that will need it. Removing and reinstalling a structural chassis element is not done in haste and without supervision and confirmation.
I don't think it's practical or needed.
Johan
Ex got M3 in the divorce, waiting for EU Model Y!
One aspect of this whole swapping thing is that if EVs prove to be much lower maintenance as is believed, and the drive-train has outstandig longevity, then you might have a very nice car with a crappy battery after 10 years. So instead of owning a battery it's better to have a lease. This way, not only is the degradation issue solved (for the customer) but also in 10 years you might have a 120kWh or 150kWh pack as a standard. My thoughts are that as battery techonology progresses the first thing we will see is them still filling the whole pack with better and better cells until you reach a certain level (for example 150kWh). After that level has been reached there really is no point in keep improving the total energy of the pack further, even as techonology progresses, but instead you would start cutting down on weight in the pack while keeping the form factor. Over time this could mean that you are only filling half of the pack with cells, cutting down on weight and perhaps also on cost eventually, something Tesla might be able to let the customer get the benefit from (lower lease costs).
I could also see a model where you either have unlimited swapping or another subscription with a lower montly lease where you pay-per-swap but still get to swap once in a while for free when new battery technology/chemistry is being rolled out. (it would be in Tesla's interest that people swapped when the batteries are upgraded, as the "old" ones would have considerable residual value for other uses, and also to make the "new" batteries they would probably take the old ones and re-use many parts of the pack while changing out some - especially the cells themselves). Also, if supercapacitors become practical in the future I guess you could keep the form factor and create a hybrid battery within the current pack.
One problem for them right now would be that they have sold the 60kWh and 85kWh cars and they would either have to carry two different types of batteries in the swapping stations. Alternatively, if they go forward with just one battery pack for swapping, they would somehow have to differentiate between the 60 and 85 owners so that either the 85 buyers are compensated somehow (lower lease fee, free leasing for 8 years) or the opposite - 60 owners "punished" with higher lease, only 4 years of free leasing etc.
Even with swapping the majority of charging would take place at home, overnight. However, swapping would enable those who are unable to charge at home to own and drive an EV (think Tokyo, Hong-Kong, Manhattan etc.).
I could also see a model where you either have unlimited swapping or another subscription with a lower montly lease where you pay-per-swap but still get to swap once in a while for free when new battery technology/chemistry is being rolled out. (it would be in Tesla's interest that people swapped when the batteries are upgraded, as the "old" ones would have considerable residual value for other uses, and also to make the "new" batteries they would probably take the old ones and re-use many parts of the pack while changing out some - especially the cells themselves). Also, if supercapacitors become practical in the future I guess you could keep the form factor and create a hybrid battery within the current pack.
One problem for them right now would be that they have sold the 60kWh and 85kWh cars and they would either have to carry two different types of batteries in the swapping stations. Alternatively, if they go forward with just one battery pack for swapping, they would somehow have to differentiate between the 60 and 85 owners so that either the 85 buyers are compensated somehow (lower lease fee, free leasing for 8 years) or the opposite - 60 owners "punished" with higher lease, only 4 years of free leasing etc.
Even with swapping the majority of charging would take place at home, overnight. However, swapping would enable those who are unable to charge at home to own and drive an EV (think Tokyo, Hong-Kong, Manhattan etc.).
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