Concerning "under your nose" and such, I had an odd conversation with the staff at my local showroom. They had a new model S chassis in, which I had never seen before so I studied it quite a bit, asking what each mechanical thing did (it had the compressor, pneumatic thing for the air suspension etc. Right behind the front axle is an aluminum case with Tesla stamped into it. It is made of fairly lightweight Al, and appeared to have a simple catch holding it in place. I asked what IT was and the guy said it was for holding "extra batteries". My ears picked right up, wondering if he was ill informed or saying something he shouldn't have. He said that for a 60kWh it was empty, but for the 85kWh it was full of extra battery modules. He said that a 60kWh had 14 battery modules and an 85kWh had 16, so for the 85 the 2 extra that "couldn't fit" in the floor area went there. There are tons of things wrong with this statement, so I know its bad info (for one thing the math doesn't work: 14/16 is not close to 60/85. For another, that little box was clearly not a part of the cooling/heating system. A third is that the space is far too small for that many LiIon batteries)
Looking at google images it appears that that little box might just correspond to a little raised area on the front of the battery pack, where cooling and/or power connections go. So it might be a location of a heat exchanger or something mundane like that. But I had to put on my tinfoil conspiracy hat for a second. Either he is really badly informed, or messed up a cover story
Do you smart folks know what its really for so I can take off the hat?
Picture here, if I can get it to work:
