Tesla To Build Its Own Battery-Swap Stations

New submitter lfp98 writes "Just a month after the collapse of independent battery-swap company Better Place, the uniquely successful maker of luxury electric cars, Tesla, has announced it will provide its own battery-swap capability for its Model S sedans. The first stations will be built adjacent to Tesla's charging stations on the SF-to-LA route, and a swap will take no longer than filling a gas tank. From the article: 'A battery pack swap will cost between $60 and $80, about the same as filling up a 15-gallon gas tank,' Musk said. 'Drivers who choose to swap must reclaim their original battery on their return trip or pay the difference in cost for the new pack.'"

Comments

reclaim their original battery?

[Joe_Dragon]

that seems like a dumb idea for a car makeing a big trip why not make it like propane exchange where you do not have to due that?

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[Overzeetop]

Unlike propane tanks, it's a huge deal to refurbish a battery pack. You could "refill" your EOL battery pack for an $80 swap and get a new battery pack. Or, worse for the consumer, swap your brand new pack for a recharged pack that is nearing EOL. At $10k+ for a full sized battery (I'm guessing, too lazy to look it up), that's a pretty big fail for one side or the other.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[crakbone]

The batteries degrade over a time period much shorter than a propane tank. However if you take a couple of trips you will save some amount of degradation on your own pack for each trip. You may want to just wait and let the station charge the car however as the costs are much cheaper.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[Bradmont]

It would be more expensive. I'm guessing the car batteries have a limited lifespan, and loose capacity over time. You have the option of keeping the snow one (it says so in the summary) but you have to pay the difference in value. Using your propane tank comparison, I can fill my propane tank for $11, or swap it for $20. Since I really only need to replace the tank every 5 or more years, a new one costs about $35, and I go through say 3 tanks a summer... Well, do the math.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[Anonymous Coward]

This battery swap system is going to fail. If you have to pick up your original battery on the return trip, how do you swap multiple times to drive cross country? Time limits? That won't work. Have to take the same route back? That's not going to work either. So Tesla is just building these swap stations to satisfy short-haul driving for the Model S. When the Model X comes out, we will still have this same problem so now you're just buying an SUV just because (you're not taking it off road, and you're not going on roadtrips).

This will be Telsa's Achilles Heel

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[Dan East]

The article is light on details, but it doesn't seem possible to always swap out with brand new batteries. Each battery pack keeps track of the exact number of charges and discharges, temperature levels, etc. So essentially the "age" of the battery is known. I would think Tesla would pro-rate the exchanges and charge based on how much newer the replacement battery is. The real question is whether customers swapping the other way (getting an older battery for their newer one) will be paid by Tesla for that difference as well.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[cnaumann]

A better solution would be to simply lease the batteries and not worry about getting the originals back. The lease would cover wear and tear.

I imagine most people would want their original packs back.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[h4rr4r]

Very few, a couple percent tops ever take their SUV off road.

They can ship the battery to where ever you are going to be.

Worst case Tesla drops the idea and continues on with the current plans. Soon batteries will charge fast enough to make this pointless. They can already do half the battery in 20 minutes, cut that in half again and the problem is essentially solved. A 10 minute stop every 150 miles is not a big deal.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[Anonymous Coward]

that seems like a dumb idea for a car makeing a big trip why not make it like propane exchange where you do not have to due that?

*sigh* I wish moderators would stop upmodding comments that were very obviously made by twelve year old children. First, the childish lack of capitalization is a dead giveaway. Second the lack of any punctuation is almost as big a giveaway. Third, misspelling of a six letter word (making) shows that the commenter is barely literate, and the misspelling of a TWO LETTER WORD shows that this kid can barely read.

And you fools gave him a three. What's wrong with you people?

Here is a literate version of Joe's comment (I notice he's not above using capitals in his user name)

That seems like a dumb idea for a car making a big trip. Why not make it like a propane exchange, where you do not have to do that?

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[wvmarle]

Propane tanks also don't have an infinite life. Over time they start to rust, the screw threads wear out, etc. One way or another that cost will be paid by the end user, either through a filling fee or in the cost of the fuel.

A difference of course is that a propane tank's capacity doesn't decrease over time, which is a typical issue of batteries, making a swap harder.

On the other hand indeed I'd rather see a station outright swapping batteries, and where you pay for the amount of energy you get. However that's tricky: battery capacities vary with age, and your depleted battery is not empty (as otherwise you wouldn't make it to the battery station), and the amount of energy to be added to fully charge it depends on that. Somehow smart battery monitoring electronics will have to take care of that. And when that's done, it should work quite reliably.

The final step is going to be to have all car manufacturers agree on a certain standard, instead of having numerous competing standards. "One size fits all" is impossible as cars have different sizes, so maybe we should go for battery packs: small cars carry ten batteries, big cars carry 20, trucks 50. Like current gas tanks. Thinking of it, this could also solve the "rest charge" issue as the car could use the batteries one by one, starting to use one when the previous one is depleted. Or using 2, 3 at a time to get sufficient power, same principle applies.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[Alioth]

Unfortunately batteries won't with that speed for any reasonable definition of "soon". 150 miles will be about 50kWh. A 10 minute stop will involve 2 minutes of faffing around (drawing up, parking, connecting, disconnecting, etc) meaning 8 minutes charging time. 50kWh in 8 minutes would require a charging system delivering 375kW of power assuming it's 100% efficient.

80,000 people live in my general area. Now let's imagine everyone has electric cars that can charge in 8 minutes. If we think how many people are fuelling their cars right now, there's probably right at this moment while I type - at a rough guess - at least 30 people putting petrol in their cars somewhere in my vicinity, and this is to fill a tank that lasts on average 400 miles. Reduce this to 150 miles and you're looking at almost tripling the "filling up" activity, so probably around 80 people simultaneously quick charging. This will require an increase in generating capacity of 30 megawatts. Our peak electricity usage now is about 30 to 35MW, so this effectively needs you have to double the generating capacity to do this.

So for rapid charging electric cars to be practical in anything other than really small numbers, it'll be years off just because the grid will need a significant upgrade. This is before considering the engineering that has to go into designing a charging system that delivers 375kW and has to be hooked up by the average car owner safely, not a specially trained operator. It's going to require high voltages just to keep the currents reasonable (at 11,000 volts you're still looking at about 35 amps).

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[oobayly]

That's what Renault do. However it causes my company some headaches when it comes to underwriting them for dealerships - the batteries are leased by the owner, so the car will effectively have no battery when it is part exchanged for a new vehicle. Not many dealerships are keen on leasing a set of batteries for a car that they will (hopefully) sell within 90 days, or (more likely) trade out of.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[h4rr4r]

So all the gasoline you use comes in a pipeline from the refinery to your car or is it stored at the gas station in a tank?

The station would charge a large storage system and draw off of that. Normally charging would also be done at home at night, not at these stations.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[serviscope_minor]

A 10 minute stop every 150 miles is not a big deal.

You say that but on the last Tesla thread there were legions (well maybe one or two) of slashdotters who claimed that they regurlarly drove 7 hours without a break so clearly this will be a deal breaker for them and everyone else.

This steps around most of the problem, but now you'll have people who regularly drive 7 hours to completely random uncorrelated locations without a break. Naturally of course electric cars are unsuitable for the general population as a result.

Some people here seem to be very emotionally invested in the idea that electric cars will fail. I'm unclear as to why, but they will find all manner of bizarre excuses and rare use cases for why electric cars will fail.

The thing is electric vehicles have dominated well in certain niches and as tech improves the niches will expand, as they are expanding right now.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[RenderSeven]

I've rusted out three "stainless" grills.

Continuing OT, 'stainless' is not much more than marketing BS. The burners and heat diffusers (you know, the parts that actually are subject to high heat and rust) are made of recycled tin cans and auto bumpers. And replacement parts are priced carefully to be almost but not quite as much as a new grill. Not sure if I should load it into my truck and park it outside of the Sears mall entrance with a huge "Piece of Shit" sign on it for a few days, or just dump the remains in front of the door. If Tesla comes out with a battery-operated grill though, put me on the waiting list.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[h4rr4r]

Yeah, slashdot has a lot of liars. Also a surprising amount of luddites.

I can't wait for an affordable electric car. I looked at the leaf, but still just too much for me. Getting ~50mpg in a my current ride is also limiting my desire. As a second car a subcompact/compact like the Leaf would be perfect if it was just a little cheaper. I know it is just a matter of time.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[oobayly]

Christ, how big is your propane tank? A friend has a gas barbecue that he's had for about 6 years. It's been kept permanently outside (UK) and he often forgets to the cover on, meaning that the heat reflector under the grill has rusted to buggery. The cast iron grill, plate and jets are in perfect condition. Admittedly the jets have had to be re drilled twice as the iron oxide was restricting flow, but that's it.

It also gets used a hell of a lot - the earliest I've cooked on it (his wife calls it my barbecue, it's just that her husband happens to own it) was on New Year's day. Maybe a grill is different from barbecue, and I'm comparing apples to oranges.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[Anonymous Coward]

80,000 people live in my general area. Now let's imagine everyone has electric cars that can charge in 8 minutes. If we think how many people are fuelling their cars right now, there's probably right at this moment while I type - at a rough guess - at least 30 people putting petrol in their cars somewhere in my vicinity, and this is to fill a tank that lasts on average 400 miles. Reduce this to 150 miles and you're looking at almost tripling the "filling up" activity, so probably around 80 people simultaneously quick charging. This will require an increase in generating capacity of 30 megawatts.

There's one HUGE flaw in your logic. You are basing your figures on how many people are currently filling up their gasoline cars, and then extrapolating that out to electric. However, how many of those people have a gasoline pump at their house that could fill their car up overnight? If people could easily fill up their cars at home each night, do you think there would still be 30 people at the pump at any given time? Or do you think that more than 80% of them would never need to visit a gas station during their normal daily driving?

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[wvmarle]

And that's the trick: storing large quantities of electrical energy and having this available quickly is not possible with current technology. You can't take a tank of electricity like you take a tank of gasoline.

Besides, the power draw is going to be around 30 MW regardless on whether you fast- or slow charge the car. When charging slow, the time per car increases, and the number of cars simultaneously charging increases proportionally.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[lobiusmoop]

Makes sense. If it flies, floats or flux, always rent it.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[taiwanjohn]

This. Also, Musk has repeatedly said his charging stations will be powered by solar PV arrays. (Thus, his catchy slogan: "Drive anywhere, for free, on pure sunlight.") Plus, it will be quite a while before we get to the massive scale described by the GP. Even at 20k units per year, they'll have plenty of time to build-out the charge/swap network and increase its capacity as needed.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[ganjadude]

not insightful, OT mods

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[markass530]

so you're saying you didn't even bother to read the summary? people must reclaim their original batteries

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[AnotherAnonymousUser]

There's been that talk of the mini nuclear reactors for a few years now, and a number of prototypes made to power neighborhoods. That's exactly the kind of distributed power generation that would make EV very attractive technology without straining the grid. It could make for a very interesting and effective pairing if either one ever became common enough to foster the growth of the other.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[jimbolauski]

With Tesla's model of owning the dealerships they may avoid this problem, although the problem of the owner selling the car or trading it in to a non-Tesla dealership does become an issue.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[h4rr4r]

Annually I drive from NY state to TX.

I stop every 2 hours and so should you.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[Agent0013]

To me it sounds like complaining that there is no way everyone could have broadband at their home because the phone lines could not handle that much data. When there is demand for it there will be solutions developed.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[Agent0013]

There's one HUGE flaw in your logic. You are basing your figures on how many people are currently filling up their gasoline cars, and then extrapolating that out to electric. However, how many of those people have a gasoline pump at their house that could fill their car up overnight? If people could easily fill up their cars at home each night, do you think there would still be 30 people at the pump at any given time? Or do you think that more than 80% of them would never need to visit a gas station during their normal daily driving?

You make a very good point. But you also have a flaw in your thinking. Many people, especially in large cities, live in apartments with no parking. If you need to park your car on the street you will need to use filling stations to recharge it. Yes, people with homes and garages can plug in at night, but many people will not be able to do that.

Re: reclaim their original battery?

[Anonymous Coward]

most folks see capitalization as an anachronism.

Bullshit. Just look at the posts here and you'll see that most of them use proper capitalization. Most people see capitalization as a normal part of writing, so they continue doing it and only a blind man or a fool who ignores the proof before his very eyes could believe otherwise.

Even if that wasn't the case, "everyone else is doing that way" has always been and will always be most idiotic excuse in this history of mankind.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[wvmarle]

I don't doubt fast charge will happen (supercapacitors, recently a story about Al based batteries, whatever). It's just not there, and doesn't mitigate the simple fact that we need to roughly double electrical power generation if we want to run all our cars electric.

And sure, lots of idle power overnight. After midnight, when everybody is sleeping - not at 18:00 when they come home and plug in their car to charge overnight. Of course that can be solved again (timers on the chargers or so), it's not that straightforward either. And charging 50 kWh in say eight hours means a power draw of 6.25 kW. 27 amps at European 230V, or about 60 amps on US 110V. Many houses don't have that much power available, and even if they have, the cables in the street are not up to everybody actually using that much, so that requires expensive upgrades of the local distribution networks.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[h4rr4r]

Actually smart meters and chargers are already fixing this. You tell the device I want to only charge when power costs $X. Then it will charge day or not when power costs $X. The electric company sends the cost of power to your meter every Y minutes.
This can be used to charge a bank of batteries, cheap floodies to then charge the car when you get home, if you want a faster charge. This stuff all exists, you really should look into it.

In the USA you tie two 110s together to make a 220. No different than an electric dryer. Adding supply to both homes and on the poles is something done everyday. It will take time and it will happen.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[bws111]

However, once electric cars become very popular any parking space could potentially be a 'filling station'. Charge your car while shopping or at work. This is a huge opportunity for people to make money, and it will be used.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[taiwanjohn]

OTOH, as EV's gain market share, charging options will expand as well. If your company adds a few stations in the parking lot, you can charge up during the day, or top off the battery at the shopping mall or the movie theater. For that matter, I believe the Model S is available with PV cells integrated into the roof. If you have a short commute, that alone might be sufficient on a sunny day.

Then there's the other elephant in the room... If you can afford a $50k~$90k luxury car, you can probably afford to set up some sort of charging facility at home. At any rate, this "problem" doesn't seem to have put much of a dent in sales. There's a long waiting list to buy a Model S, and has been since day one.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[msauve]

You go through all these calculations to make a point about "for rapid charging electric cars to be practical in anything other than really small numbers," while ignoring the obvious - electric cars use essentially the same amount of energy per mile whether they're quick charged or slow charged.

If anything, you're arguing against electric cars in general, not rapid charging.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[Lumpy]

"The final step is going to be to have all car manufacturers agree on a certain standard, "

Hell will freeze first. we cant eve get the Gas cap on the same side of the car.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[CohibaVancouver]

Some people here seem to be very emotionally invested in the idea that electric cars will fail. I'm unclear as to why, but they will find all manner of bizarre excuses and rare use cases for why electric cars will fail.

I think, by their very nature, tech-minded people are obsessed with edge use-cases. This, coupled with a desperate need to be able to say "I told you so!" results in a visceral hatred for electric cars in some cases even though, for 80% of the use cases, they're fine.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[tnk1]

As a member of one of those understrength legions you are talking about, you're doing the point a disservice. Some of us may be luddites, but I'm certainly not. I just don't want to trade a car that does everything I need for one that does not (and pay more for the privilege).

For instance, I have been looking for a battery swap program, which would make trips a lot more feasible without long stops intervening to refuel. This program is getting closer to what I want to see. Obviously, there are some downsides to be worked out, but it is a step in the right direction.

And no, my routes are usually the same, and are predominantly Interstate driving, so this could work. I do shift routes occasionally, based on traffic at my destination, but it is usually a choice of one or two routes, not "random". That said, I'll be driving to another state soon to go to an event that I attend maybe once a year. I'd like my car to be able to get me there with minimal trouble, but this might be in the range of these vehicles.

I get the feeling that you have some idea that oil companies are paying shills to have these objections, or you believe that we are out to get electric cars. Nothing is farther from the truth. When I write about what I would like to see, I am asking for features or outlining requirements for my own purchase. I am not suggesting that it will not work as a mass production vehicle. There are plenty of people who would use these for commuter vehicles, and in that regard, they are pretty much there.

What current EVs are *not* is a replacement for an automobile for more general transportation purposes. They are not yet a replacement for a standard gasoline/diesel vehicle, and I would actually like for these electric car companies to work to that end (as I am sure they are). If I am complaining, it is mostly so that people are aware that what they are giving is not good enough for me, but I certainly don't want to discourage others from buying it if it is perfectly acceptable for them. After all, early adopters will provide the capital to get features that I want, so please, keep buy them if you like them.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[msauve]

"You say that but on the last Tesla thread there were legions (well maybe one or two) of slashdotters who claimed that they regurlarly drove 7 hours without a break"

I drive a VW bus, you insensitive clod. 150 miles is 7 hours.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[eudaemon]

Sure, if there's as many people driving Teslas as driving every other car model combined. You've just doubled the amount of traffic on the road and sold as many Teslas as every other kind of car as well in your effort to create a strawman. You're also completely ignoring the fact that Tesla have the opportunity to charge these packs ahead of time, flattening out your tenuously arrived upon peak demand. What a wonderful town you must live in where everyone can afford not only a second car, but a Tesla at that! In the real world - where of the 80,000 people in your area on average 800 could *afford* a Tesla and of those perhaps 10% would choose to buy one, I don't really see a charging station holding 8 battery packs on hand for all 8 owners in your town as an issue, do you?

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[sshir]

I think Elon does not tell the whole story here. I suspect they simply explore different possibilities for business expansion (just like Google does).

I speculate they will introduce a battery lease program: you buy the car (for, like, 30% less) and you lease battery(ies). In such case they do not need to track batteries - just keeping the log of discharges customer's car performed is enough.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[denobug]

If you can afford to buy an electric car at $80k, I don't think a parking space with charging capacity is going to be a problem

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[rjstanford]

It doesn't work for everyone, that's true. Also, many people (especially those who are comfortable paying $80K for a car) will just hop on a plane to go 1,000 miles.

Thankfully even if we had 80% electric cars there will still be gasoline cars available to rent for the few days a year when you want to drive that far, just as people rent trucks from U-Haul for periodic use instead of owning them all the time, just in case.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[bws111]

In the 60's everybody drove huge V8 powered behemoths. Then gas started getting expensive, and Japanese manufacturers started introducing small 4 cylinder cars. Many, many people said 'those small cars will never be suitable for me - I can't put the whole family and a ton a camping gear in there, they have too little power for my kind of driving, it will be too uncomfortable to drive for long distances, etc'.

What does the road look like today? It seems that an awful lot of people who thought they could not possibly use a small 4 cylinder car are, in fact, using small 4 cylinder cars. So what changed? First, the small cars themselves got better. Second, people realized that their actual driving requirements were not what they had thought they were. They realized they did not need a large car all year just so they could go on vacation once a year - you can rent a large car for that. They realized that you do not need a 400HP car just so they can tow their boat to the lake in spring and back again in fall - you can rent a truck or pay someone to haul the boat for you. In short, they realized that the benefits of a small car outweighed the supposed restrictions it put on their driving habits. And, of course, if you do actually need a large vehicle or truck, you can still buy one.

Electric cars are now pretty much in the same position as small cars were in the 70s. They will improve, and people will make their own decisions on which car is right for them.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[fiannaFailMan]

I think the final step is batteries being superseded by supercapacitors that don't have a long charge time. I see battery swapping as an interim workaround for a problem that will soon be solved.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[BasilBrush]

Thinking of it, this could also solve the "rest charge" issue as the car could use the batteries one by one, starting to use one when the previous one is depleted. Or using 2, 3 at a time to get sufficient power, same principle applies.

Electric car battery management systems already do these kinds of tricks: using cells selectively. So it doesn't solve anything that's not already solved.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[BasilBrush]

Just because it isn't scalable doesn't mean it doesn't solve a particular problem. The particular problem being that electric cars are most uses in California, but the two major cities are too far apart to do in a single charge with Tesla's current generation of electric car.

Solving that particular problem with a battery exchange opportunity half way will sell some amount of extra cars.

The general range problem needs solving another way, but that doesn't make this targeted service a certain failure. It isn't intended to solve the general range problem.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[wvmarle]

To me, battery = "device that stores electrical energy". What technology they use is irrelevant - chemical like current lead-acid, Li-ion, etc, or physical like supercapacitors. The key problem is the peak of power demand needed for fast charging. You will need a large supercapacitor at a charging station that charges constantly to provide a fast charge boost to the smaller supercapacitor in a car (with smaller being relative, of course).

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[wvmarle]

Same solution, different problem. No surprise it's already done as it's technically simple.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[JimFive]

Did you see the story about the Boston parking auction where 2 spaces went for ~$600,000?
--
JimFive

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[gtbritishskull]

Except most people will charge at night when it is *not* during peak load.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[big_e_1977]

First off, nobody is going to pull 60 amps at 120v. In north america, households are fed off a center tapped transformer, with 2 hot leads and a neutral. Between a hot lead and neutral the voltage is 120v, between the two hot leads the voltage is 240v. Most large loads such as central AC, electric water heaters, electric ranges, electric dryers and well pumps use 240v circuits. A rapid charge electric car will be no different and should be able use 240v as well.

At 240v, the circuit requirements will only be 30 amps. An electric dryer, central AC, or electric water heater requires roughly the same ampacity. Most houses built within the last 40 years where the service is adequately sized to the home should be able to handle this one extra circuit. It has been estimated that when it comes to sizing distribution transformers, that adding an electric car, would be the same as upsizing your house by 1/3rd. Not a critical increase. During nighttime hours this should not be a major problem.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[tgd]

And that's the trick: storing large quantities of electrical energy and having this available quickly is not possible with current technology. You can't take a tank of electricity like you take a tank of gasoline.

How do you think Tesla is doing it with their charging stations? Exactly that way.

Its not rocket science... but even if it was, I hear they've got someone there who has some experience in rocket science, too.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[BasilBrush]

You say that but on the last Tesla thread there were legions (well maybe one or two) of slashdotters who claimed that they regurlarly drove 7 hours without a break so clearly this will be a deal breaker for them and everyone else.

Electric vehicles are of course inevitable, as gasoline is only going to get ore expensive as supplies become ever more limited. And if one effect is that people aren't able to drive 7 hours at a stretch, but need to do the occasional forced 30 minute break, then that's a good thing!

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[tgd]

Yeah, slashdot has a lot of liars. Also a surprising amount of luddites.

I can't wait for an affordable electric car. I looked at the leaf, but still just too much for me. Getting ~50mpg in a my current ride is also limiting my desire. As a second car a subcompact/compact like the Leaf would be perfect if it was just a little cheaper. I know it is just a matter of time.

Lease a Volt. Its a far nicer car than the Leaf or Focus EV, the lease rate is dirt cheap, its quiet, comfortable, and if you're one of the Slashdot liars who drives 7 hours in a row without a stop, it has the generator on-board just-in-case. And a couple cup holders in the back you can stick the bottle of urine into, given that you just drove seven hours without a stop.

They're pricey when bought outright, but because the federal tax credit comes off the lease amount, the lease rates are really very low. I bought mine, rather than leasing it, but if I'd leased mine I'd actually be saving money -- I am saving $100/wk in gas, and the leases tend to run about $350/month with my amount of driving. They're currently $280ish a month for a 36month/36k mile lease. Even if you only save $50 a week in gas, you're basically getting a Cadillac quality EV for a Corolla price.

Re: reclaim their original battery?

[TheGavster]

The Fisker Karma was the ev with a solar roof option. The available area and current efficiency didn't make it reasonable to use as the sole charger though.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[bws111]

He's talking about the tank itself, not the propane IN the tank. Tanks last about 10 years, grills don't, unless you buy a VERY expensive built-in grill.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[Alioth]

But that's not going to happen with electricity in any reasonable definition for soon. Notice I did NOT at any point say "it's impossible", just that it won't happen "soon" (during the next decade or even two). The technology to store such vast amounts of electrical energy and then be able to discharge at the furious rate required to charge 50kWh in 8 minutes (and not only do that, but keep doing it *all day long*) don't even exist in the labs today. When they exist in the labs, based on current track record, it takes roughly 10 years for the technology to reach the streets in a form that's usable and reliable.

Storing liquid fuels is trivially easy in comparison. Pumping liquid fuel at the equivalent rate of 1MW is trivial. Doing the same thing with electricity has several engineering headaches to be solved, and requires technology still to be invented.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[dj245]

In the 60's everybody drove huge V8 powered behemoths. Then gas started getting expensive, and Japanese manufacturers started introducing small 4 cylinder cars. Many, many people said 'those small cars will never be suitable for me - I can't put the whole family and a ton a camping gear in there, they have too little power for my kind of driving, it will be too uncomfortable to drive for long distances, etc'.

What does the road look like today? It seems that an awful lot of people who thought they could not possibly use a small 4 cylinder car are, in fact, using small 4 cylinder cars. So what changed? First, the small cars themselves got better. Second, people realized that their actual driving requirements were not what they had thought they were. They realized they did not need a large car all year just so they could go on vacation once a year - you can rent a large car for that. They realized that you do not need a 400HP car just so they can tow their boat to the lake in spring and back again in fall - you can rent a truck or pay someone to haul the boat for you. In short, they realized that the benefits of a small car outweighed the supposed restrictions it put on their driving habits. And, of course, if you do actually need a large vehicle or truck, you can still buy one.

Electric cars are now pretty much in the same position as small cars were in the 70s. They will improve, and people will make their own decisions on which car is right for them.

I have to disagree here. In my grandmother's era, most V8 engines struggled to break 100hp. Plastics weren't invented/widely used in cars, so they were very heavy. Putting a I4 of the era into an all-steel car of that era is laughable. If anything, expectations for power/weight have increased.

Finding 0-60 times for old unmodified cars isn't all that easy, but the 1962 Lincoln Continental 7.0L V8 had a 0-60 time of 12.4 seconds with 300HP. Perhaps comparing to a new Lincoln would be appropriate, but a new Honda Civic with a not-terribly-exciting engine can do 0-60 in 9 seconds with about 140hp. You have to look pretty hard to find a car these days that takes more than 10 seconds to reach 60MPH. Stopping distances are much shorter, and new cars corner far better than the old ones. Driving requirements have actually gotten much more demanding, but weight and power advances have kept up.

Re: reclaim their original battery?

[BasilBrush]

off topic, but lack of capitalization is *not* a sign of poor english skills.

Poor English skills or laziness. It's the writing equivalent of spending all day, every day in jogging gear, and eating instant noodles or McDonalds for every meal.

You might think it's an anachronism, but you're wrong. The majority of people do use sentence capitalization. And referencing the work of a poet that's been dead 50 years hardly helps your implication that this is the new way.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[ducomputergeek]

If I were a betting man I'd be placing my money behind the gas-electric hybrid technology like the Volt. GM has volume of production as the technology trickles down into more models and improves. I'm getting close to replacing my current car in the next year, maybe two. What has limited my options is the fact I live in a loft and can't install a charging station. But that is changing as our company is moving out of Downtown and into the county next year and I'm also moving into a house closer to the new offices later this year. On a daily basis I could drive the Volt and probably fill up once a month. I do own farms about 180 miles from where I live that we rent out. So if I would need to go down there on a weekend to check and see how things are going, I just stop at the nearest QT, fill up and go. Same with visiting my Dad who lives 50.6 miles from my loft's garage to his doorstep.

At this point what keeps me out of a Volt, or Hybrid of any kind really, is that I can't justify the price difference. The Chevy Cruse Eco is $20k less than the volt, similar sized car, and gets over 40MPG. That calculation has been the same for every Hybrid I've priced. I could go in tomorrow and write a check and walk out of the dealership with either. I could do the same for a Tesla or BMW or whatever under $100k.

So this round is likely to once again be a gas powered car. But my planning on the car 8 - 10 years after that will be a gas-electric hybrid similar to the volt. I figure by that time the technology will be proven and will have come down in price enough that it will be an affordable option or hell maybe even standard in a dozen models.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

I see battery swapping as an interim workaround for a problem that will soon be solved.

Are you referring to the problem of having to charge those supercapacitors with extremely thick wires? How do you propose that those ~10 MW ought to be pushed into the car? At high voltage, so that the wires can be reasonably thin, at the cost of having to install a mammoth voltage converter into the car (look at the size of electric locomotives), or do you propose using low voltage and a copper conduit the size of a tree trunk?

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[SerpentMage]

I have no idea why you are marked as "informative". As an engineer this is an absolutely silly idea. Granted in smaller simple scenarios it is a good idea. However, as the grandparent has pointed out, it is 11,000 volts at 35 amps. That is an insane amount of electricity. To put things in context. If this were running at 110 volts you would need about 3500 amps. Your normal house uses about 10 Amps. This means you need 350 houses. Where on God's green earth are you going to find a system that can storage that amount of electricity? Answer is not easily. Thus informative is the wrong rating. I would more say ignorant. Not insulting you, but pointing out with a little bit of math you probably would not have posted that answer.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

It seems that I got the decimal point in the wrong place. But even at 1MW, the problem is mostly the same.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[Mal-2]

Why should we worry about the side the gas cap is on, when it's not even internationally agreed which side the DRIVER should be on? The reason nobody worries much about the gas cap issue is that it's not that big a deal to align the car approximately to match the pump. With a battery swap, it will have to be considerably more precise.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[SerpentMage]

Here is why electrical cars will fail:

1) Battery technology sucks. You don't get enough charge from a single battery. It just takes too long. While driving around locally is ok, there is still range anxiety.
2) If you constantly charge your batteries you will bugger your batteries. I don't run my fuel to the last drop. At around half a tank I start looking for the cheapest station and then will fill it. Charging a half full battery consistently is going to kill the battery.
3) Cold weather or hot weather. Whether Musk likes to admit it or not, I like my car toasty, or cool in the summer. I don't live in the valley where weather is sunny and nice for the most part of the year. That drains the battery, as it drains fuel from my car.
4) Battery replacement is expensive and requires rare earths. As demand for that increases so will the prices for batteries. Thus negating the benefit of electrical cars.
5) We don't have enough power to charge all of the cars. If a highway has about 300 cars per hour (and that is not much), and every 150 miles a charging station is placed the parking lot will need to accommodate 75 charging cars. 75 charging cars which require about 96 kw will need 7,200 KW, or 7.2 MW. A single nuclear reaction outputs about 478 MW of power (remember this is nuclear not coal, or gas which are much lower), which means it can only provide power to 10,000 miles of highway. Add up in America how much highway there is and how many power plants will be needed. Now do the math with peak traffic of about 2,500 cars per hour and you have a REAL problem.

Simply put electrical cars work so long as it is a "Ferrari", where only a few have it as a status thing. Once the masses start, the current technology will be crushed by the demand and we currently have no solutions.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[Applekid]

"The final step is going to be to have all car manufacturers agree on a certain standard, "

Hell will freeze first. we cant eve get the Gas cap on the same side of the car.

Tell me about it. I hate that my gas cap is on the inside of my car.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[Mal-2]

Actually I thought most U.S. homes have 220V coming off the pole, but then distribute it through the house wiring as one "hot" phase and a "neutral". I know our air conditioner uses both "hot" phases, and while the current central AC is relatively new (~15 years), the house was built around 1960 with an ammonia-based central AC system. I do not know that it was 220V, but I can't imagine it was drawing LESS power than the new one.

Re: reclaim their original battery?

[Mal-2]

A roof charger is probably just good enough to guarantee the battery doesn't go flat and fail when you leave it at the airport for a couple weeks -- provided you park it out in the open. I'd imagine the car would still need to be juiced up by conventional means before it could actually go anywhere. Perhaps that will be an additional valet service offered -- as soon as your return flight takes off, they start charging your car fully so it's as ready as can be when you arrive.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[Kjella]

Probably because they've become fed up with eco-nutters who insist they should buy a craptastic EV, perhaps not the Tesla Model S but most that have come before because it's the "right thing" to do even if it's a crappy deal. Not too unlike listening to RMS saying you should use open source no matter if it does what you need or not because it's the "right thing" to do. The statistics say second time hybrid buyers are rare, I don't know the stats for EV buyers but not many are on their second car yet. Does it live up to the hype? Does the technology really get all that much better if we get people to use it, or is the very idea fundamentally poor? Modern combustion engines are pretty good at what they do, it's not obvious that EVs will be better for any other reason than that we might run out of oil.

Too many people take Mahatma Gandhi's "First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, and then you win." like some magic formula for everything. No, many times you stay ignored. No, many times you remain a laughing stock. No, many times you fight and you lose. What about simple things that even if things have been a mess the whole week and I've forgotten to tank/charge but I'm finally ready to go on my cabin weekend trip then my gas car just need a pit stop while my EV is an expensive paperweight while I wait for it to charge at home or I have to drive it to some quick-charger to hang around there. I've managed to make my cell phone black out even though I've had power nearby all the time, but I'm always going to keep a charge on my car? Ideally shit won't happen, practically I'm sure it will.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[WindBourne]

There is no chance of Tesla dropping the plan. They need to hoist bay to do maintenance. Right now, it takes them 2-3 hours to change a pak, which will in about 8-10 years start needing changes.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[h4rr4r]

I have no interest in renting a car.

I don't even spend $50 week in gas. I spend that a month. I already own a 50mpg hybrid.

That and GM is not a brand I really have much interest in. Not sure I could ever trust them again.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[WindBourne]

skip the smart meter. Tesla does it now.

In addition, in the USA, you do not tie 2 120's together. It arrives at the house doing 240V and then is split. So, you simply do not split it.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[WindBourne]

All US homes have 240V OR HIGHER at the breaker box. The bigger homes (above 10K') are actually at 480V.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[oobayly]

Face, meet palm. I'm also guessing he's talking about an actual tank, not a 19kg bottle that we tend to use, and swap out for a full one every so often.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[Guspaz]

Is it? One megawatt is about 8x the current wattage. It's DC, so the cross-sectional area is what matters for resistance (the area of the circle needs to increase by 8x, not the diameter), so to get one eighth the resistance and push 1MW, you need a cable that is about 2.8x the diameter.

This also ignores the possibility of active cooling in the wire. With that, you could use a thinner wire.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[WindBourne]

It will NOT be done by Solar. How will you get it at night time? You will not. Instead, they are taking advantage of the space (and marketing) to add solar. The sites will not cost Elon much, if anything, BUT, they WILL use power from the grid.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[Guspaz]

Assume you start at home, and are driving far enough to require multiple swaps. Your original battery will be removed at the first swap, the Tesla station closest to your home. After that, you're swapping around borrowed batteries, and don't have to care where you return those. As long as you stop at that one Tesla station on the way home that has your original battery, you're fine.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[WindBourne]

Which needs STRONG discouragement. You want ppl to charge at nighttime, not during the day. So, sometime soon, a state will get smart and INSIST on taxes on chargers during the daytime. Not much. Say, .02/KWH. BUT, that helps to discourage daytime chargers.

Note, that even with electricity at .20/KWH, you are STILL less than gas at $3/gal.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[Guspaz]

As far as I know, they don't store any energy at the Tesla stations. They're using the electrical grid as their storage. The Tesla station solar panels dump power into the grid when nobody is charging, and pull from the grid when they are.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[Guspaz]

Why would you ever do 110 volts? US homes are hooked up at 240v (before splitting), and that's what Tesla's home chargers do.

The supercharger stations are 440v, since that's the industrial voltage provided by the utility in the US

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[WindBourne]

Assume somebody does drive 7 hours. The average range of a car is around 300 miles. So, at 60 MPH, that would be 5 hours. And at 75, it is only 4 hours. Do you really think that these ppl are driving 7 hours without re-fueling?

Heck, the audi A8 holds 23 gals, but gets less than 20 MPG. That is a max of 460. Assuming 75 mph, then it will still be 6 hours.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[Cro Magnon]

The gas cap isn't a problem with my usual car. It IS an annoyance when I'm driving a rental, I pull to my usual side of the pump, then realize the damn thing is on the wrong side in that rental.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[rsborg]

...

Electric cars are now pretty much in the same position as small cars were in the 70s. They will improve, and people will make their own decisions on which car is right for them.

I have to disagree here. In my grandmother's era, most V8 engines struggled to break 100hp. Plastics weren't invented/widely used in cars, so they were very heavy. Putting a I4 of the era into an all-steel car of that era is laughable. If anything, expectations for power/weight have increased.

Finding 0-60 times for old unmodified cars isn't all that easy, but the 1962 Lincoln Continental 7.0L V8 had a 0-60 time of 12.4 seconds with 300HP. Perhaps comparing to a new Lincoln would be appropriate, but a new Honda Civic with a not-terribly-exciting engine can do 0-60 in 9 seconds with about 140hp. You have to look pretty hard to find a car these days that takes more than 10 seconds to reach 60MPH. Stopping distances are much shorter, and new cars corner far better than the old ones. Driving requirements have actually gotten much more demanding, but weight and power advances have kept up.

While everything you said may be entirely accurate (and seems so), it does nothing to refute bws111's claims. In fact, if you take your facts and align them to bws111's analogy, it makes perfect sense. Right now, battery technology and charging methodology are still lacking for mass-market EV adoption. Personally, I'm thrilled that Tesla is releasing cars with reasonable range for commuters (I drive 75mi each day I commute - 160 is probably the minimum I would want in an EV), but I really wish there were more Volt-style plug-in hybrids available - I think they're the easiest next stepping stone (after "Prius" - i.e., the one that came before - now hybrids are mainstream).

Once battery tech gets to a point where it's long range enough for 99% of commuters and it's not $10k/pack, we'll be very ready for mass adoption of swap stations, charging points and all the economic activity that will enable/sustain it.

For now, Tesla is blazing the trail.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[WindBourne]

You would lose badly. Even now, there are batteries going into production that have DOUBLE the density of what is in the Tesla cells. And a new chemistry (lithium-sulfur) will be in production within 2 years, that hold 4x the density, 1/2 the costs and at over 1000 charges still has not gone down in capacity.
In addition, a number of small breakthroughs in ultra-Capacitors are happening. Once the energy density on these equal a li-ion of today, then the game is over. The reason is that you have charges in the million ranges, and you could charge a car faster than you can fill one.

About the only place where a hybrid makes sense, is in large passenger vehicles (suburbans), and commercial vehicles. For these, a serial hybrid is ideal.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[nmr_andrew]

It's bad, but not quite as bad as you say. You're off by an order of magnitude on what a house uses. In most parts of the US, I believe minimum code requires 100 Amp service, not 10 Amps. A lot of newer homes are built with 200 Amp service. So that takes it down to 35 houses (which is still a lot). Also, as someone else pointed out, you'd almost certain charge at 220 Volts, not 110.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[AmiMoJo]

Or just put solar panels on every roof. Public ownership, no risk, no douchbag corner cutting operators to screw it all up.

We need to get away from trying to generate most of our power all in one place and instead use distributed generation and storage.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[WindBourne]

So many things wrong there.
1) You may have range anxiety, but most others are losing it quickly.
2) Electric cars do not pull all of the energy out of all of the cells at the same time. Instead, they rotate through them. That is why tesla went with a LARGE number of small cells. So, charging at nights time constantly OR an occaisional 3000 mile trip with lots of super charging will not bother the cells. OTOH, if you are driving coast to coast daily, then electric is NOT the way to go. ICE, or even better yet, serial hybrid is.
3) weather does not bother the tesla that much. the fact is, that these are driven in deserts and in northern areas. Plenty of ppl in Norway, and greenland are saying that they love the car. BTW, your AC on your gas car likely costs more to run than it does on the tesla.
4) there is more rare earth in your car then in the batteries in Tesla, or Leaf. In addition, there is plenty of rare earth around here. Look up molycorp.
5) numerous studies have shown that this one is SO full of crap. Basically, we have more than enough power to run 100% of our cars/trucks, IF less than 25% charge in the daytime.

Now, why electric cars will succeed, is that electric companies will push these because they will lower THEIR costs and make them higher profits.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[WindBourne]

yes, but, you pay dearly for that 40 minutes savings. With tesla electric in less than 2 years, it will cost nothing to go 1000 miles around the nation. OTOH, your vehicle will cost no less than $200. For that 40 minutes, I get to sleep free in a nice hotel.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[ArsonSmith]

Good thing there isn't a government mandate to remove all petrol cars and replace them with battery cars tomorrow as your example seems to assume. If the market for chargers builds up then so will the infrastructure to support it.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[lgw]

we cant eve get the Gas cap on the same side of the car.

You do realize that's deliberately randomized? It's so that gas stations where the traffic mostly flows one direction can still get balanced use of both sides of each gas pump.

I do miss the old concept of the gas cap under the license plate so that you could reach it from either side, but that doesn't work well with modern gas stations that stack the pumps "three deep".

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[MightyYar]

Don't most cars have an arrow on the gas gauge?

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[AmiMoJo]

Okay, but that wasn't the GP's point. He was saying that it doesn't follow that since an EV is somewhat unsuitable for you it is unsuitable for everyone and thus the whole concept is a failure.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[Mal-2]

Did you ever notice that next to the gas pump icon on the dash, there's a small arrow pointing to the side the gas cap is on?

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[lgw]

I keep waiting for a battery system where you can recharge it by simply pumping out the chemicals in the battery and pumping in a fresh charge. There are batteries that sort of work that way today (it's how you store a battery on a shelf for 10 or 20 years and have it working in a minute when you need it - a must-have for a torpedo), but I think they're acid batteries so all kinds of problems with that.

That's why I love the concept the DoE patented a while back of storing power as metal hydrides, where the metal was very small glass-enclosed spheres, and thus pump-able. You could fill your tank in minutes in the normal way with a car that ran on hydrogen. I wish people took more interest in hydrogen-as-battery - storage density is quite high with metal hydrides, and it's amazingly safe for something with that energy density.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[lgw]

The power distribution grid is already the weakest, most overstressed large-scale infrastructure in America today. There used to be lost of redundant capacity, but mostly that's no longer the case. Electric cars or not, we seriously need to build out the grid. There's not even a NIMBY problem here, just an overall unwillingness to pay more for infrastructure (much like rebuilding the NO levees just as they were before, because better would cost more, despite that being a bad long-term cost tradeoff).

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[lgw]

Everyone I know with an electric car tries their best to charge only at work. The satisfaction of having their employer pay for their fuel trumps other concerns - a feeling I understand completely.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[lgw]

That and GM is not a brand I really have much interest in. Not sure I could ever trust them again.

Keep talking like that and I'll have to take you off my foes list! :p

High MPG hybrids are the main reason update of electric cars will be slow - they don't add that much value over a high MPG car. I suspect plug-in hybrids will lead the way to electric cars becoming common - if we can ever get to a serial rather than parallel hybrid, the difference will be a lot less important really. A 50 HP engine can charge a battery just fine over time, and can be made quite efficient if it can run at constant RPM (heck, very different engine designs become appealing then - reciprocating internal combustion is just fundamentally limited to somewhat low efficiency).

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[LynnwoodRooster]

Well, with everyone going to electric cars, we can use the now-plentiful gasoline to power local generators at each recharge station and generate the electricity locally!

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, man, that would be great to have on a car again. Then, you can drive around with the license plate flipped down and defeat red light cameras. If an actual cop stops you because it's flipped down, blame it on the gas station attendant.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[Richy_T]

It would also make it easier to swap out batteries with ones of a similar capacity. Or to charge/rebate for any discrepancy.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[Richy_T]

Large cities tend to lean liberal so will provide on-street charging at the drop of a hat.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[Richy_T]

I also looked at the leaf. I can deal with it not having enough range for the occasional long journey but it just doesn't quite have the range for my daily commute (it would if charging was provided at work or I wanted to spend my lunch hour at the Nissan building). It's also god-damn ugly.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[taiwanjohn]

Duh! If you have a battery-swap station, it will have a lot of STORAGE capacity sitting around. You charge the batteries during daylight (when most people are driving anyway) and swap them whenever needed.

IOW, it WILL be solar. Elon has already promised this. And since he is also CEO of the #1 solar installation company in the USA, I reckon he knows what he's talking about. In any case, I'm quite happy to take his word over yours... ;-)

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[Agent0013]

If you look at the direction parking meters are going it would not appear to be the case. They have reduced them to one per block rather than the one per space as they used to be. And a meter is self contained without a need for power source like the charging stations will need. I guess the new one per block meters do need power as they are all computerized now, but it is a much smaller power draw than chargers will take. It would be a very large undertaking to put chargers at every parking spot in the city. And the side streets in residential areas don't even currently have meters, it's just park wherever you can find enough room for your car. Adding chargers will regiment that into static sized spaces and leave very large charging cables laying all over the curbs. I don't see that as an improvement to the city landscape. I would rather see rapid charging or battery swap as the needed charging method for people who don't have a garage to park in and charge overnight. I would think most city politicians would not want to spend the money either and the people would probably agree. Let the market sort it out.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[h4rr4r]

Honestly CVTs really help without the added costs of serial hybrids. They do quite well at keeping engines in a narrow power band while offering very smooth "shifting".

I think these kinds of improvements are going to move into all cars before we go full electric in a big way.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[h4rr4r]

Hydrogen is a PITA to deal with and comes from steam reformation of natural gas. Exactly what problem does that solve?

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[lgw]

But CVTs were tried and no one liked them. They feel gutless to drive, because you don't get the feel and sound of engine power rising through (RPMs support by-) the gear. The main reason parallel hybrids are parallel is precisely to give that traditional feel under full power.

However, for someone who's already bought into the feel of an electric car, a serial hybrid keeps the same feel and vastly extends the range (and impromptu rechargability) . Plus the efficiency gain possible from multi-stage pistons or turbines is amazing, if you don't have to care much about the power/weight of the gas engine given it's quite small to begin with compared to the electric.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[lgw]

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/businessdesk/2009/08/why-do-cars-have-fuel-doors-on.html

2 seconds to Google - do it yourself next time.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[mattack2]

I think, by their very nature, tech-minded people are obsessed with edge use-cases.

With so many bugs I find in everyone's software, I think not.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[h4rr4r]

I have a CVT, I like it fine. If you want to go fast put your foot down and the ratios change fine.

Wanting something new and better to sound like something old is pointless. No one bitches that cars don't whinny like horses.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[gmclapp]

Yes.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[lgw]

You don't want to use steam reformation, you want to do electrical hydrolysis of the waste steam at the electrical generating plant. In terms of electrical power, the process is more than 100% efficient, because you benefit from the heat of vaporization in the steam that was otherwise wasted.

The real problem is how to get the hydrogen from the power station to your fuel tank, because hydrogen is a PITA unless stored as a metal hydride, at which point it's awesome. There's no practical explosion or very-high-energy fire with metal hydrides, which is a real benefit over gas or current high energy density batteries.

It's very similar to the situation with Tesla batteries - palladium family metals are all quite pricey, so you'd have to be careful about how you did the swap. But "pumpable" metal hydride fuel could use the current gas infrastructure with only minor changes, and that's a huge win.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[webminer]

How is this "new" tax any worse than the gasoline tax we all pay today? The state needs money to maintain the roads and infrastructure. Everyone has to pay! In this case its even more fair than applying this tax to your electric bill.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[radarskiy]

That is consistent: obsessed with edge case, ignorant of common cases.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[mattack2]

No, I meant I find lots of bugs in what are arguably edge cases (though IMHO not extreme edge cases..)

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[pepty]

What's the "round trip" efficiency when it comes to using metal hydrides for storage? energy -> hydrogen -> metal hydride ->stuff happens ->electricity? If you're starting with waste heat and ending up with electricity then it's not exactly round trip, but you get the idea.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[mattack2]

What current EVs are *not* is a replacement for an automobile for more general transportation purposes.

But I suspect (since I have no citation) that "commuter vehicles" (and shopping at the grocery store/Costco) IS what the vast majority of the U.S. population does for "general transportation purposes". A commuter vehicle *IS* general transportation for most people. That's why even the EV1 was sufficient for 80% of people (if I remember the movie quote correctly).

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[spire3661]

Did you even think before you commented about the gas cap? Picture your local gas station and imagine why having all the caps on the same side might be a bad idea.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[pepty]

Tesla will sell you a home connector that requires a 100 amp 220V circuit and puts out about 20kW. The superchargers are 90kW (250Amp at 400V).

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[Spiridios]

When the Model X comes out, we will still have this same problem so now you're just buying an SUV just because (you're not taking it off road, and you're not going on roadtrips).

Very few conventional SUVs can be taken off road, unless by offroad you mean the maintained gravel road out to your favorite trail head. SUV hasn't mean off road for many years now, SUV generally means minivan-without-the-stigma.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[pepty]

They'd need at least 600 m^2 of solar panels (at noon) to power one 90kW supercharger.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[Minwee]

Did you even think before you commented about the gas cap? Picture your local gas station and imagine why having all the caps on the same side might be a bad idea.

At my local gas station, and in fact at just about every gas station I have seen, half of the cars are facing one way and half the other. The alternating sides strategy is only optimal in cases where the number of cars being serviced is less than the number of pumps available. Once that condition is no longer met it becomes a 50-50 chance that the next open space is going to be of the same sidedness as the next car in the queue and drivers are forced to find their own solution.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[h4rr4r]

No matter what you want to do, this is what they do now and it is considerably cheaper for now.

Metal hydrides release hydrogen when heated, that means fire is a real concern.

Yes metal hydrides do solve a great many problems, but they have their own as well.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[tgd]

That and GM is not a brand I really have much interest in. Not sure I could ever trust them again.

Keep talking like that and I'll have to take you off my foes list! :p

High MPG hybrids are the main reason update of electric cars will be slow - they don't add that much value over a high MPG car.

*shrug*

Even with the way-above-average driving I do daily, I still average 160mpg in mine. And, unlike a "high mileage hybrid", its smooth, quiet, powerful and quick.

Before my current gig, I was going almost 2000 miles on an 8 gallon tank. I averaged about 250mpg for the first 6000 miles for the cost equivalent of about 40 gallons of gas. (150mpg cost-equivalent) And those figures were only because of taking it on a few road trips.

When I bought mine, it and the CT200h were the only "green" cars on my list of things I was considering -- and it was by a long shot the cheapest on my list. Still bought it, not because of the savings, but because it was the best of the cars I drove. The "green" was just a perk. YMMV.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[Hamsterdan]

No it's not.

Japanese cars mostly have them on the right side, because in Japan that's the driver's side.

American cars have them on the left side, unless it's a captive import.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[Guspaz]

As I said, they use grid storage. My estimate is that the 6-bay supercharger station on their home page has somewhere between 135 m^2 and 240 m^2 of photovoltaics. I suspect that they anticipate a rather low load factor for their superchargers. So perhaps you might need 6 bays to handle labour day weekend, but a regular Wednesday might have barely any traffic at all. Any time they're not charging cars, they're "storing" the power (in the grid), and while I find Elon Musk's claims that the superchargers will be net producers of energy a bit hard to believe, I don't find the idea to be absurd either.

It looks like 5 kWh per square meter per day is a reasonable figure for the best parts of the US (for solar), and solar panels at 20% are available, so you'd get about a kilowatt per square metre per day. So they're producing 240 kilowatt hours per day at that 6-bay station, and if we assume the average charge is half an hour (people don't necessarily charge from empty), that's enough to charge 5 cars a day. Is it possible that a station would get less than that number? Sure, maybe the less popular ones, and especially if you say "net positive" is for the entire supercharger network as a whole (including those ones that almost never get used but need to be there to be able to say you've covered the area).

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[kwbauer]

I have no problem if New Orleans (the city) or Louisiana (the State) rebuilding their levees bigger and better. What I do have a problem with is Wisconsin, et al building the levees in New Orleans bigger and better.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[kwbauer]

And when everyone is charging their car at night, night will no longer be off-peak; there will be no off-peak.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[kwbauer]

"Public ownership, no risk, no douchbag corner cutting operators to screw it all up." Yeah, that never happens with public projects.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[lgw]

I have a problem that neither did. Plus I suspect Wisconsin, et al paid enough for the rebuilding that it would have been cheaper long term to pay for the levees.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[lgw]

Not arguing the technicalities - just pointing out why the market didn't like them. People like irrational stuff for subjective reasons, and selling product is all about that.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[kwbauer]

or maybe the smaller engines got better so we could keep putting most of our stuff in there.

At least you had the good sense to not respond with "well, for the good of the environment, you need to rethink your lifestyle" that completely turns most people against EVs and such.

Of course, not all of us that own boats can also afford the second mortgage and higher taxes associated with the lake house so we tow our boats to the lake(s) a couple of times a week.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[kwbauer]

Yup, on a road-trip where the destination is the point of the trip, I like to drive 8-12 hours a day with 3-4 interim stops, of which only one requires fueling. The stops require 10-20 minutes each. When an EV can match that, then we haven't altered my lifestyle for the sake of saving the planet.

As I don't believe humans can possibly destroy the planet in any significant way, saving it has zero value to me. I am also unwilling to trade anything of value for something of no value.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[kwbauer]

Why, my bladder doesn't fill up that quickly. I generally get 1.5 to 2 times that mileage out of it.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[kwbauer]

I thought he was talking about a 20 pound tank that is very common in the states. The 40 pound (19kg) are more commonly used on house trailers for camping.

He was also talking about the tank not rusting or otherwise becoming unusable not about the propane in it never running out.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[Richy_T]

Decent points but parking meters is a bit of a different issue. There it makes sense to move away from the old style because you can reduce maintenance costs and it gives you the ability to take credit and debit cards. Then it also opens up the (quite vile) possibilities of implementing charging strategies that encourage people to overpay.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[lgw]

Well, it's not great, but it depends on how you burn the hydrogen. If you don't want electricity back, but instead want to push a car around, it's poor overall (because reciprocating piston internal combustion engines have inherently crappy efficiency, because the intake air needs to be cool). A true electric car would be better, but I believe it's more efficient for natural gas than burning the natural gas in the car engine (not to mention a Hell of a lot safer in a fire).

There are some pretty good fuel cells, and industrial scale power turbines are pretty good, at least compared to car engines, but it's still not a great battery efficiency-wise if you just want to store electrical power. However, it has the advantage that it's a very safe way to store a lot of energy in a densely populated area, or in the home (but then I guess a lot of people are OK with propane tanks so maybe I overestimate the value of that).

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[certsoft]

I bought a Ford C-Max Energi plug-in hybrid a couple of weeks ago. It's positioned between the Prius and the Volt in the marketplace. My usual trips around town fit nicely into it's electric-only range while having the gas engine for trips out of town.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[EETech1]

Even without the arrow, the fuel gauge has a picture of a gas pump on it, the side of the pump with the nozzle on it in the picture is the side of the pump you need to pull up to.

This is what the SAE says you are supposed to do anyways, some foreign cars did not always follow this recommendation.

Cheers!

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[OneAhead]

There's no practical explosion or very-high-energy fire with metal hydrides, which is a real benefit over gas or current high energy density batteries.

I take it you never worked with metal hydrides in the lab. Granted, the odds of something going seriously wrong with a tank of hydrogen are higher compared to a container of metal hydrides due to the former's annoying tendency to escape, and metal hydrides will burn violently or deflagrate at worst, while hydrogen has the additional ability to detonate. But if water or fire is about to get close to a metal hydride, I'll be running for my life all the same.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[OneAhead]

heck, very different engine designs become appealing then - reciprocating internal combustion is just fundamentally limited to somewhat low efficiency.

Are you talking about Stirling engines? If so, I find it unlikely that they will become appealing for use in cars; they have a very low power output for their weight and size, and are inherently expensive because of material issues. Keep in mind that mobile electricity generators (ranging from suitcase-sized to trailer-sized) almost always use internal combustion engines. As do cargo ships. There's a reason for that. The above are two constant-RPM applications applications where weight and size are somewhat less of an issue than in cars. What tips the balance in favor of internal combustion engines anyway is that, as you say, they can be made a lot more efficient if running at constant RPM. So much that it takes a lot of the advantages of the alternatives away.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[Jeremi]

Depends on how often the supercharger is in use. Obviously they aren't going to power the supercharger directly from the solar panels; rather they pull power from the grid when a car is charging, and then use the panels to "roll back the meter" to (ideally) zero again.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[wvmarle]

Grid is not a storage facility. You don't actually store power there.

It may act like that for small-scale applications like such solar panels that don't give off that much power anyway, a fraction of the draw of one of those superchargers. That's insignificant for the power plants.

Having six cars pull into the bays at the same time, plugging in 540 kW of electrical power in one go, that the power plants start to feel. Do that over a bunch of stations, and they really need to start to ramp up production - without warning.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[Loki_1929]

Unless and until someone comes up with better technology for charging and batteries than Tesla (and nobody's within 10 years of them), Tesla will be the gold standard by which any others are measured. Smart car manufacturers will license Tesla's tech as quickly as possible with a long term agreement and save the R&D. Lock it in at the cheap price point now and then sit back while everyone else struggles to catch up. Musk is very big into sharing the amazing technology he comes up with because he isn't looking to make a buck; he's looking to change the world (this usually results in making a buck along the way anyway).

Ford, Honda, GM, Toyota; they'd be stupid not to license the tech now. Musk will keep it cheap, they'll have access to the supercharging network, and they'll be able to mass produce within a few years.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[Loki_1929]

If only there were some way to store electricity that you draw off the mains during off-peak times so it could be delivered quickly when people need it...

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[Loki_1929]

And that's the trick: storing large quantities of electrical energy and having this available quickly is not possible with current technology.

You mean like every cordless personal electronic device has been doing for 40 years?

You can't take a tank of electricity like you take a tank of gasoline.

You mean like every electric vehicle every produced does?

Besides, the power draw is going to be around 30 MW regardless on whether you fast- or slow charge the car. When charging slow, the time per car increases, and the number of cars simultaneously charging increases proportionally.

What if you drew the powered needed during off-peak hours? Since Tesla's footing the bill for it (Supercharger station charging is free and will always be free per Musk), that would seem to make the most sense anyway.

You seem to have come up with problems that have been solved for decades; even centuries if you're talking pure energy storage solutions.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[Guspaz]

Six cars would be 720 kW with the new superchargers, actually :)

I'm not sure the demand would be all that unpredictable, though, and there are a rather large number of power plants in each NERC interconnect to pick up suerges in demand. Quebec's interconnect (yeah, we have our own, like Texas) is effectively entirely served by a power generation system that can ramp up/down rapidly (hydro) too. On top of that, there's currently a project under construction to connect three of the biggest North American power grids, the Eastern (eastern US and Canada excluding Quebec), western (Western US and Canada excluding Alaska) and Texas interconnects, and that'll start as a 5 gigawatt node, scaling up to 30GW. Using superconducting powerlines, no less.

Anyhow, maybe I'm biased because I come from a place where power is extremely plentiful and cheap to the extent that electrical heating is the overwhelmingly dominant form of heating, but I'm really not convinced that electric cars are going to be a major issue to the grid.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[wvmarle]

And that's the trick: storing large quantities of electrical energy and having this available quickly is not possible with current technology.

You mean like every cordless personal electronic device has been doing for 40 years?

That are small quantities of power that are not available quickly.

A phone battery is around 5 Wh. A car battery 50 kWh. 10,000 times larger.

A phone battery can charge/discharge over a period of hours, not minutes (without damaging the battery). Now we're looking to charge a battery 10,000 times as large in 1/100th the time. For a grand total of six orders of magnitude difference than your measly phone battery.

You seem to have come up with problems that have been solved for decades; even centuries if you're talking pure energy storage solutions.

I'd love to see an electrical energy storage solution that existed decades years ago, that can be charged from the grid (speed doesn't matter), store it for some time, and then supply 500 kW of electrical power for at least 10 minutes before being depleted. You seem to know so much about it - so where can I find such devices? Let me make it a little easier, it doesn't have to be from decades ago. Just something that's working now.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[Loki_1929]

What current EVs are *not* is a replacement for an automobile for more general transportation purposes. They are not yet a replacement for a standard gasoline/diesel vehicle, and I would actually like for these electric car companies to work to that end (as I am sure they are). If I am complaining, it is mostly so that people are aware that what they are giving is not good enough for me, but I certainly don't want to discourage others from buying it if it is perfectly acceptable for them. After all, early adopters will provide the capital to get features that I want, so please, keep buy them if you like them.

I'm confused. Tesla has provided cars that go over 200 miles between charges, can be charged at home for a few bucks per "tank" (rather than $50+), and is providing a network of rapid chargers that will give you (per Musk's announcement on the upgraded Superchargers) 150 miles of additional range in 20 - 22 minutes for FREE. Even beyond that, you'll have the option to pay the cost of a tank of gas and swap the battery in half the time it takes to fill your traditional tank if you're so impatient that you can't be bothered to wait 20 minutes after driving for 3 hours straight.

What the fuck are you doing with your existing gas engine car that makes that not better in every conceivable way? Hauling a boat up the side of Mount Everest? While the Volt and some other EVs are certainly no replacement for the masses in the US (arguably, they'd work great in much of western Europe), the two vehicles Tesla has produced both end up being fantastic drop-in replacements for gas powered cars in all but the edge cases.

Nobody does a 300 mile commute to work every day. Nobody does a 300 mile trip to the grocery store. If you just drive the low end of the range of the Model S every day, you're claiming to put 73,000 miles a year on your car and you're full of shit. There's probably 4% of the US population that couldn't use a Model S as a drop-in replacement for their gas powered car today. There's probably 1% or less who couldn't use a Model S for a drop-in replacement in a year from now when the Supercharger network is upgraded and vastly expanded.

I don't have a Model S or a Roadster, though I'd love to if I could. I do, however, get irritated at the utterly irrational bullshit spewed by people who are convinced that no EV ever produced will ever work for them. Tesla could make an EV that does 0-60 in 1.5 seconds, has a 4,000 mile range, sees 1% range reduction in Antarctic Winter temperatures, works underwater, flies in the air at Mach 5, self-drives, self-parks, seats 12 comfortably, and there would STILL be people here bullshitting that it just won't work for them.

Cut the crap. If you have an actual issue with the functionality of the car, spell it out and make damn sure it makes sense. Then consider whether it applies to more than 2% of the other 300 million people in this country. I've yet to see someone come up with a real problem with these cars; just imaginary scenarios that don't exist in real life.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[Loki_1929]

Right now, battery technology and charging methodology are still lacking for mass-market EV adoption. Personally, I'm thrilled that Tesla is releasing cars with reasonable range for commuters (I drive 75mi each day I commute - 160 is probably the minimum I would want in an EV), ... Once battery tech gets to a point where it's long range enough for 99% of commuters and it's not $10k/pack, we'll be very ready for mass adoption of swap stations, charging points and all the economic activity that will enable/sustain it.

The low-end Tesla Model S will do over 200 miles, so your 160 mile requirement is met. The Supercharging stations are free and will add 150 miles of range in 20-22 minutes once the upgrades are completed (per Musk). The existing stations take a whole 30 minutes. 20 - 30 minute stop after 3 hours of straight highway driving? Completely reasonable, especially since such trips are rare for just about everyone.

As for it supporting 99% of commuters? Ok, so the low-end Model S has a range of >200 miles (Tesla says 230, EPA says 208, let's say 200 on a bad day). Per the US Census Bureau (http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/american_community_survey_acs/cb13-41.html) there are just 600,000 people who travel more than 50 miles each way to work. That's 0.2% of the population and that's half the range of the Model S on a bad day. This puts the likely number of people commuting >100 miles each way somewhere in the range of 0.001% or so. For those people, (all ~3,000 of them), the low-end Model S probably won't cut it unless they can charge at work. If they're commuting over 200 miles each day to work, they're likely not working at a car wash, so there's at least a decent chance some percentage of them will be able to charge at work and complete their 3+ hour daily commute. (This, by the way, is ridiculous. If you're commuting 3+ hours a day to work, sleep in your office or your car and join the YMCA so you can shower and change, then go home on the weekends. Or FFS move closer or telecommute.)

So yet again, the Model S meets your demand for range. Is the pack expensive? Sure, for now, and so's the car. But that isn't the point; the point is that it's an EV that's affordable for a sizable group within the US (all those people driving Audis and BMWs) and which actually works in the real world. By your own standards, it works. By any reasonable measure, it works. Unless you're commuting 200+ miles round-trip each day and putting 70,000+ miles on your car each year (and according to the US Census, you aren't), the Model S works fine for nearly everyone.

If you come to me and say that the Nissan Leaf (75 mile range) or the Ford Focus Electric (76 mile range) or the Smart ED (68 mile range) won't work for a big chunk of the US population and I say you're absolutely right. I'd be afraid to drive the thing to the grocery store in a major metro area for fear that I'd get stuck in traffic and end up calling for a tow. 60 miles 'til E is when I fill up my gas tank. Why? Because I don't like stopping unexpectedly or worrying unnecessarily about when I'll run out. But how in the world can you say that with a vehicle that goes 200 miles or more between charges and which starts out every day fully charged? It's the perfect daily commuter; you'd -never- have to fill the thing up at a 'station' of any kind unless you were going on a long trip. Consider taking the 7-minute stops at the gas station you'd typically make once a week (that's over 6 hours a year pumping gas into your car) and using a quarter of that time to plan the two road trips a year your average Joe does that go over 200 miles. Find a Supercharger station along the way, stop for 20 - 30 minutes (have a bite to eat while it's charging), and complete your trip. If that's too much trouble for you, take some of the money you've saved from not filling your gas tank (in the range of $2,000/yr average) and rent a really nice car for the week and then realize what a pain in the ass it is

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[Loki_1929]

You should probably ask Tesla about that since they're already doing it in some stations in California.

“We actually have grid storage going on at some of our Supercharging stations,” said Musk, noting that two stations in California currently have 500 kilowatt-hours of combined energy storage—with the potential of “putting out a megawatt if need be.”

“The chargers are generating energy cumulatively throughout the course of the week, and it cumulatively adds up to more than what the cars consume,” said Musk. “So it's actually capable of going completely off-grid,” and of continuing to charge cars when the power goes out.

So that's a solution that does exactly what you claimed is not possible and has never been done, and it's doing it today, right now.

Any other questions, sport?

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[WindBourne]

Electric cars are not about saving the planet. It is about saving you money. The Model S competes against A8 and similar cars. The S is not only cheaper to buy ( even without the incentive ), but it is much cheaper to run and is much quicker, and very likely, much safer.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[WindBourne]

Where did I say that it was worse? I WANT to see this. We need to discourage daytime chargers. The studies have shown that we have enough excess power in the daytime to handle just 25% of our total transportation. However, if we charge at nighttime, then we will still have excess energy at nighttime. BUT, our costs will drop.

BTW, the amount of taxes from electric will no doubt be pushed to be more for the miles than is gas cars, but what I find interesting is that the republicans are fighting against raising taxes on gas/diesel. Yet, we desperately need to. In fact, it would do more for pushing electric/NG vehicles than these subsidies.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[WindBourne]

Actually, per studies, there will still be excess energy. However, the daytime energy costs will drop to match the night rates (technically anyways), I doubt it though.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[semi-extrinsic]

How about your RTF link you posted? It admits that "they are not deliberately randomized", but suggests that the current situation, having evolved by chance, is (close to) an economic equilibrium, and is thus stable to changes. This is, as most economic theories, very hard to disprove.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[semi-extrinsic]

With the current progress in industrial applications for high-temperature superconductors (MRI machines, high-quality aluminium tempering) being ahead of the progress in supercapacitors, I think you will see superconductors doing the heavy lifting IF (big if) this happens.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[Mal-2]

I don't know how old the spec is, but my 98 Acura followed it and my 89 Subaru does not. There is no indicator inside the car for where the fill pipe is. More confusingly, the Subaru has only an unmarked lever which operates both the trunk release AND the gas cap cover door. Pull up to open the trunk, push down to open the fuel door. Then again, ALL the driver controls on an XT are totally weird. Almost nothing (except the turn signal lever) is where you'd expect it to be from previous experience, yet everything is within easy reach once you find it.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[wvmarle]

Yes, and a very simple one: how do they do it?

Re: reclaim their original battery?

[iamhassi]

Last car I had with the gas cap under the license plate was a 90s Impala. Thing moved pretty well with that 350 V8

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[Loki_1929]

http://www.faqs.org/patents/app/20120046795

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[wvmarle]

I was hoping for something in human readable form...

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[MightyYar]

As soon as you say "Subaru", we know it will be a weird controls story... they are the Volkswagen (or maybe SAAB?) of Japan :)

My brother's old Golf wouldn't open the fuel door unless you used the electronic unlock to unlock all of the doors. Really weird. It took me and the gas station attendant a few minutes before we finally gave up and looked in the manual.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[EETech1]

I saw it at an SAE conference in 1994, so it may have been implemented around that time.

Cheers!

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[AaronW]

Exactly. Since I got my Tesla the only time I drive my Prius is for some camping trips where there is no place to charge along the way. Hopefully that will change in the future since I've also taken my Tesla on one camping trip where charging was available along the way.

As it is, I'm considering selling my Prius since all it does is take up space in my driveway.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[h4rr4r]

I am not stopping for my bladder, but for my safety and that of all other road users.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[h4rr4r]

So then people in wisconsin will not longer purchase goods that come in via the port of new orleans?

You short sighted myopic "fuck you, I got mine" philosophy is not helping anyone.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[h4rr4r]

The market is accepting them now. Honda is using them all over the place.

Besides if you drive an automatic you have no right to comment about it bing a CVT or not. You gave that right up when you gave up the third pedal.

Re:reclaim their original battery?

[tnk1]

Never suggested I had a 300 mile commute, although I have had some nasty ones in the past. Instead, I stated that I take reasonably common trips that are about 400 miles. Even if I only took one 400 mile trip a year, I'd end up having to add 30-60 minutes to an already long trip which I don't have to accept with my current vehicle. It doesn't matter to me if I can take all the grocery store trips I wanted with such a car, since I am already capable of getting to the grocery store with my current vehicle.

The Model S costs significantly more than my current car (and I actually have a pretty expensive car), but provides fewer capabilities, particularly in terms of range. I'm not going to pay more for less. Seems pretty silly to me to do so, wouldn't you think? I think that line of reasoning is about as common sense as you could get.

You don't want the Tesla because it is more functional than existing vehicles, because you know it isn't, not yet anyway. Certainly the infrastructure you are presenting doesn't even exist yet, and for years will be limited to certain corridors. You want it for some external reason that has nothing to do with it's capabilities as a vehicle. Which is perfectly fine, but I just don't share your motivation in that regard. Or, "good enough" for you, is not "good enough" for me.

Your percentages appear to be like most statistics, and are made up completely off the cuff. Nevertheless, I am only claiming to speak for 1/300 millionth of the population of the US: myself. Even if you were right, I don't care much what 99.999999% of the population does or needs. I have my own requirements, and they are not even close to being as ridiculous as any of the things you suggested.

Putting all that aside, what I am not suggesting is that Tesla has to suit me to be worthy of existence. They certainly have a market, and I hope they are successful.

However, if they want me or someone like me to actually buy their car, then I have things I want to see, and I already get those things, so I know they aren't impossible or even really all that hard to do.

With that in mind, I wonder if your real problem is that someone is suggesting in text that they don't want to buy the car. In other words, a fear that dissent will cause them to disappear. If that is the case, you have more to worry about than my fairly modest range requirements.

I'm not against the cars, they're just not yet there for my current needs. In no way am I clamoring for their dismantlement because I personally don't have a use for them. In fact, I am clamoring for parity so that I can reasonably justify to myself potentially spending the extra cost on them. I'm more like a fan who is cheering for their team to get around to scoring a goal as they run down the field, but I'm not going to pretend that they've already scored, if they haven't.

Gas

[Dan East]

A battery pack swap will cost between $60 and $80, about the same as filling up a 15-gallon gas tank,

It costs $47.25 to fill up a 15 gallon tank here. However this isn't California, thank God.

Re:Gas

[LWATCDR]

Yea that seemed about double what a fill up costs here. That is well over $5 a gallon plus you need to pick up your old battery pack. In other words the Tesla is still not suitable for long trips. You would be better off renting a car for those trips if you want to have a Tesla. AKA it is still a toy for the well to do.

Re:Gas

[QuasiSteve]

A battery pack swap will cost between $60 and $80, about the same as filling up a 15-gallon gas tank,

It costs $47.25 to fill up a 15 gallon tank here. However this isn't California, thank God.

It costs $134.50 to fill up a 15 gallon tank here. However this isn't even the U.S.(, thank God?)

Assuming most of the cost is in management and storage of the batteries and man hours for the actual swapping, then something like that coming to this region of the world would be extremely attractive - especially next to the quick charge option.

Re:Gas

[tlambert]

A battery pack swap will cost between $60 and $80, about the same as filling up a 15-gallon gas tank,

It costs $47.25 to fill up a 15 gallon tank here. However this isn't California, thank God.

Actually, it's $52.35 in California, if you go to one of several Bay Arco stations not in San Francisco or Los Angeles. So even in California, it's between ~$8.00 and $28.00 higher than filling up a 15 gallon gas tank. So swapping out the battery pack can be up to 150% the cost, if it comes in at the high end of things. I guess electric vehicles are only cheaper to operate if you build some more nuclear plants to make cheaper electricity.

Re:Gas

[h4rr4r]

You do a lot of one way long distance trips?
Just hit the same stations on the way back as the way out.

All luxury cars are a toy for the well to do. Else they would just buy a corolla.

Why does this car have to justify itself in dollars if a Porsche does not?

Re:Gas

[engun]

Well, that didn't take long!

Re:Gas

[h4rr4r]

Is that Top Tier gas?
Pretty much all your luxury cars should be running that, and many regular cars.

Electric cars are cheaper if you charge at night. Lots of unused power then.

Re:Gas

[Overzeetop]

No, they will create energy surcharge taxes to provide you with your $130 swap fee, just as it's taxes (and not oil or refinery costs) which drive your current fuel costs. FWIW, I currently pay about 10c/litre in tax on my fuel (38.6c/US gallon).

Re:Gas

[dywolf]

Wrong about this topic too.
Man you just can't catch a break.

Few or no "regular" mass market car needs more than regular gas.
Some luxury or performance cars, with a high performance engine with high compression ratios, will run more efficiently with it, but even then its not required because of the anti-knock sensors that are standard and have been for a while now. you lose a little performance, but they adjust the timing.

Read the manual.
If it says the words "premium required" then fine, you might actually need it.
If says "recommended" or nothing at all, and this is the overwhelming majority of vehicles, then premium is a waste of $$.

http://auto.howstuffworks.com/premium-gas-luxury-vehicles.htm
http://lifehacker.com/5846880/should-i-use-premium-gas-in-my-car

Re:Gas

[Anonymous Coward]

You need to work on your math: 15*4 = 60, 15*5 = 85

Oh the irony.

Re:Gas

[drummerboybac]

My $25k Subaru(in 2003) says premium required, and further says if no premium is available to get the minimum amount of regular to get to a gas station that has premium.

Re:Gas

[Saethan]

You need to work on your math: 15*4 = 60, 15*5 = 85.

You need to work on your math

15*5 = ?

Just sayin'

Re:Gas

[h4rr4r]

Top Tier has nothing to do with octane rating.
Man you are a stupid troll.

http://www.toptiergas.com/

Re:Gas

[zazzel]

It costs US$ 103-118 (depending on whether it's diesel or not) where *I* live, so still a bargain :-)

Re:Gas

[swillden]

I guess electric vehicles are only cheaper to operate if you build some more nuclear plants to make cheaper electricity.

The electricity cost of that full battery is negligible. At 12 cents per kWh, an 85 kWh battery costs $10.20 to fill. Also, I believe Tesla's plan is to power all of their superchargers with solar power, so presumably they'd use the same source for filling the battery packs for swapping. Hmm... to make the supercharger stations work they have to have large batteries on-site to accumulate the current from the solar canopy. I wonder if perhaps they're using car battery packs for that storage and are just looking at delivering that stored energy in a different way.

+1 for building some more nuclear plants to make cheaper electricity, though :-)

Re:Gas

[RenderSeven]

All luxury cars are a toy for the well to do

If you're billing hourly then commuting in an SL600 at 120mph gives you another hour a day billable time, and after the tax write-off for the business lease and expenses (including tickets) you can turn a profit on it. If you live.

Re:Gas

[h4rr4r]

Not around here. You will end up in jail for going that far over the speed limit.

Nor would you find any roads suitable for that speed. Pot holes at 60 are a real danger, at 120 you die.

Re:Gas

[PolygamousRanchKid]

It costs $134.50 to fill up a 15 gallon tank here.

. . . most of that $134.50 is probably taxes . . .

However this isn't even the U.S.(, thank God?).

American folks had some rather unpleasant experiences with England over taxes. Americans of all political colors tend to frown on excessive taxes, for something that is seemed as a basic necessity.

Electric cars are subsidized now by governments. As soon as they start being successful, the governments will start taxing them, too!

Re:Gas

[h4rr4r]

It is also off topic since top tier gas has nothing to do with octane.

Re:Gas

[Lumpy]

"If you're billing hourly then commuting in an SL600 at 120mph" dare you to constantly drive like there in the states.
Reality your SL600 is going 45mph as you are stuck in traffic on I80 because some moron could not merge.

Re:Gas

[Lumpy]

"Pretty much all your luxury cars should be running that, and many regular cars."

Ahh yet another uneducated car owner.... Unless the car is turbocharged, supercharged, or high compression you are a moron to run anything but the low grade "regular unleaded" gas

Higher octane burns SLOWER to reduce knock. this is used for Forced induction engines and high compression engines. Both of which are RARE to find in cars. less than 40% of all cars sold meet this need.

Sadly many uneducated drivers fall for the marketing of "premium" gas being better or having more additives.. They don't. It's just marketing to get people that don't know any better to buy the overpriced fuel they do not need.

Re:Gas

[h4rr4r]

Top Tier gas has nothing to do with octane.

So you are the uneducated one.

More additives are good, that is why so many car makers are pushing it.

Re:Gas

[Richard_at_work]

Its more expensive and they get a kickback for marketing it, thats why car makers are pushing it.

Same reason so many washing machine manufacturers recommend Calgon, or a particular brand of detergent, rather than those brands doing their own marketing.

Re:Gas

[h4rr4r]

That is not true.
Please do look into the program and educate yourself. It just sets standards, there are no kickbacks involved.

It came about when the EPA set the detergent levels so low as a favor to the oil companies.

Re:Gas

[gtbritishskull]

High octane-rated fuel does not spontaneously combust (or actually requires higher temperatures and pressures to spontaneously combust). Spontaneous combustion means all the fuel (essentially) ignites at once, which causes the "knock" sound. Instead, you want the fuel to ignite sequentially. How this happens in a gasoline engine is that the spark from the spark plug ignites some fuel and the flame front travels out from that point throughout the cylinder. So, while it is true that you do want slower combustion, the higher octane rated fuel does not actually burn slower than lower octane rated fuel. You are just trying to prevent the fuel from burning real quickly (spontaneous combustion).

Re:Gas

[dj245]

Then it may have high compression and no anti knock sensors. My 2005 BMW can run either, but premium is recommended - it has the sensors, so you just lose a little power on regular which just driving around, I've never noticed.

Putting regular in a BMW isn't a brilliant money-saving idea. The couple times I tried it, the MPG dropped by around 20%. The difference between regular gas and premium gas isn't 20%. It might be 10% if they are really screwing the premium-gas purchaser. Buying regular gas in this case is foolish.

Re:Gas

[gtbritishskull]

Top tier gas has a higher octane rating (Premium is usually 93, Mid-grade is usually 91, Regular is 89), which means that it requires higher temperatures and pressures to spontaneously combust (spontaneous combustion is bad for engines and results in the "knock" sound). While you might be correct that the gas does not actually have any more octane in it (ethanol increases the octane rating), you are wrong in saying that octane has nothing to do with top tier gas.

Also, as a sidenote, refineries do not actually produce midgrade gasoline. Midgrade is just a mixture of premium and regular gasoline.

Re:Gas

[h4rr4r]

Nope.
Go read their damn website.

There is such a thing as Top Tier Regular, it is 89 octane.

Re:Gas

[fahrbot-bot]

Electric cars are subsidized now by governments. As soon as they start being successful, the governments will start taxing them, too!

North Carolina, and at least 9 other states, are considering taxing hybrid and electric car owners (other sources available) to help make up for revenue those drivers aren't paying in gas taxes on their fuel-efficient vehicles. In addition:

New Jersey scrapped a plan to charge vehicles by miles traveled amid push back from media and legislators, opting instead for a flat fee on electric cars.

Re:Gas

[h4rr4r]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_Tier_Detergent_Gasoline

Educate thyself. Top Tier is about detergent not octane. Regular is 87 octane.

Re:Gas

[Alioth]

No, if you're billing enough that it's worth doing 120 and risking jail (and driving far enough that you'll get a good stretch at that speed), a private aircraft is what you get.

Re:Gas

[AmiMoJo]

Many Americans seem to get raped on car maintenance too. In Europe we alternate between one major service and one interim service every year. One service a year. Cost around 100 Euros.

Re:Gas

[Mal-2]

38.6c a gallon in taxes is not vastly different from what we pay in California. Last time I looked at the tags on the pump, the taxes were 18c Federal and 19.2c State (or vice versa), so 37.2c a gallon. I suspect the refineries pay more taxes where you are, and pass the costs along to you, but you DIRECT taxes aren't much different.

Re:Gas

[Mal-2]

Same story for my 1989 Subaru -- and for the 1998 Acura CL I had for a year and a half. The Subaru isn't even particularly happy with 91 octane, it was much happier when it was still 92 and ran better still on a road trip where the premium was 93 octane. We had noticeably better response and a noticeably cooler running engine as soon as we got out of California and filled up on Arizona gas. The engine practically purred when it got 93 octane in Arkansas, something it never did in California even with 100,000 miles less wear on it.

Re:Gas

[AmiMoJo]

Man you is gullible. Look at that web site you linked to. On the front page it contains such weasel words as:

"most gasoline marketers have actually reduced the concentration level of detergent additive in their gasoline by up to 50%."

So some unknown number, maybe 50.000001%, have reduced their detergent concentration by 0% to 50%. It's fairly obvious those numbers come from someone's arse crack, otherwise why not cite some evidence?

Then it goes on to both contradict itself and admit that it doesn't really know what the numbers are:

"Over the past several years, the minimum level of detergent additive required by the EPA has declined by an estimated 50%."

If you look at their FAQ it turns out that to become a Top Teir marketer you only have to ask your supplier for some documentation and then self-certify that you are compliant. There don't seem to be any checks, beyond making sure your membership fee cheque didn't bounce.

Re:Gas

[RenderSeven]

Not sure if even STOL would do it, though the BD17 might have worked if Bede hadnt gone out of business yet again. A helicopter might fit the bill, always thought the Rotorway would do nicely.

Joking and hyperbole aside, if you can bill by working during travel time then a limo can in fact pay for itself. I've also toyed with using Dragon Naturally Speaking to dictate documentation while I drive, and bill some percentage of regular rate for that. Obviously it needs a lot of cleanup (editing out the parts where I scream at other drivers for example) but a first pass is usually just a lot of verbal spewing.

Re:Gas

[h4rr4r]

Yes, and my guess is none.
Highway funds have been low the last few years.

Re:Gas

[h4rr4r]

This is because the only difference is if they pay the extra 2 cents a gallon to the refiner or not.

Since I have no other way of knowing this is the best we have.

Re:Gas

[pr0fessor]

I have seen I70 in Kansas City hit 5mph in 65mph zone frequently enough that I avoid rush hours when I drive through Kansas City.

Re:Gas

[Richy_T]

Until the government works out how to ensure they get taxes out of you to make up for what they're missing on the petrol. In the UK, it's somewhere around 80% of the price is tax. If you assume that that will transfer over to electric cars, the room for savings suddenly doesn't look as impressive.

Re:Gas

[kwbauer]

It would be nice if everything in life were that symmetrical.

Re:Gas

[kwbauer]

I'm sure he appreciates your doing your part in saving the world by paying outrageous prices for certain commodities.

Re:Gas

[LWATCDR]

Yea that was a typo I meant to say well over $4 a gallon. A lot more than we pay for gas here.

Re:Gas

[AaronW]

Also consider that the cars Tesla is comparible to usually require the more expensive premium gasoline.

Idiotic

[Anonymous Coward]

This sounds like a good idea, but certainly does not scale and is a logistics nightmare, as Better Place will attest.

Elon should watch the movie Disclosure. "Focus on the problem". And the problem to be solved is getting recharge time down to 3-4 minutes. It's a sweet technical problem and the peeps who solve it will own the industry.

Re:Idiotic

[h4rr4r]

10 minutes would be good enough if we are talking a 200-300 mile charge. People have bodily functions they need to perform about that often.

Re:Idiotic

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah yes, the old "You should have a magic wand" solution.

He is focusing on the problem. The problem is it takes too long to charge a standard electric car, and he's offering two solutions, neither of which involve the magic ability to improve technology at a pace hundreds of times faster than has been historically possible. Batteries are an industrial technology, they are not subject to Moore's law.

It took over 12 hours to recharge an electric car a few years ago (still does, on some models). Tesla offers a 30 minute recharge to 80%ish capacity for free and now a quick battery swap in 3-4 minutes. Sorry if it's not the same method you'd like in your dreams, but it is a 3-4 minute solution to a fully charged electric car. Personally, I'm disappointed it didn't use a giant Tesla coil zapping the roof of the car, but their system works.

Better Place offered one car that no one really wanted to drive. Tesla's Model S won car of the year from several magazines, despite the prejudices against electrics of many car magazine writers, and the main reasons it won had nothing to do with the fact it was electric. By all the reviews (I've never even seen one, let alone driven one) it's a fantastic car that happens to be electric. It is also a premium luxury car, not a midrange eco-box, and you only pay when you're in a hurry for the quick swap, the 30 minute recharge is still free. Better Place's Renault Fluence ZE's cost $300-$400 per month for the quick swap service (subscription, so you don't save money charging at home) on top of a $35,000 purchase for a fairly ugly, boring car that's more expensive, 600 lbs. heavier and way slower (top speed of 84 MPH) than the otherwise identical gasoline/diesel models.

"Does not scale" and "logistics nightmare" were arguments applied to Space X, too. I'm guessing he's done some research on this one too.

Re:Idiotic

[wvmarle]

It also enforces regular breaks, so drivers don't continue for 8-10 hours straight. Another plus for road safety.

Re:Idiotic

[Cro Magnon]

Yeah, but it usually doesn't take 10 minutes to dispose of the stuff I drank for those miles. Maybe 2 minutes for that, another 3 to buy more liquid to recycle through me, and the remaining 5 minutes, I'm pacing the floor, grumbling about slow charging.

Re:Idiotic

[BasilBrush]

Sit down. Have a coffee. Maybe a slice. Daydream. Look at girls. Phone a loved one. Read a newspaper. Lower your blood pressure. You might even live longer.

Re:Idiotic

[Mal-2]

Spend that extra 5 minutes looking at the traffic and weather conditions of the next leg of the trip. Or, just don't force a two minute bathroom break. Just washing your face and combing your hair can provide a significant (if short-lived) refreshing effect.

When we did stop on my last road trip, it was per the needs of the vehicle or it was pre-planned. The midpoint of the trip was pretty much right at Albuquerque, but a motel is quite a bit cheaper if you stop at a town just before or just after that point. Driving an extra 40 miles before stopping for a full 8 hours of rest saved us $20 on the room. These are the sorts of things you could be researching in that extra 5 minutes.

Re:Idiotic

[Richy_T]

But annoying if you have a co-driver.

Re:Idiotic

[kwbauer]

There it is. The liberal solution always boils down to "alter your lifestyle to save the world."

Re:Idiotic

[wvmarle]

Last time I was driving with a co-driver, which admittedly is over a decade ago, we STILL had to stop to switch seats. Unless car technology has really changed over the past decade, I believe that is still an issue.

Re:Idiotic

[Richy_T]

Yes. But 30 seconds vs 10 minutes...

Re:Idiotic

[h4rr4r]

If you have to alter your life style to stop that often you should not have a drivers license. You simply are not a safe driver.

Can this work for existing Teslas?

[Shoten]

We have a Tesla showroom near where I live, and I've actually been there twice (it's in a major shopping mall...granted, this is in a fairly affluent area). They have two cars on display, along with just the undercarriage of the car...the part that holds the batteries. That section holds the bottom of the car, and the batteries are framed by the frame of the car's body itself, if not also welded or bolted in. The entire bottom of the car is battery...even with the entire upper body and cabin of the car absent, you can put your foot on the front bumper, step up, and walk down the whole length of the car without having the slightest chance of putting your foot through and touching ground. I can't imagine how such a massive battery pack (it's not thin, either) could weigh a small amount either.

So...I have to wonder...if I'd bought one of these cars yesterday, how in the hell would they be able to swap all of those batteries out in 90 seconds? If they were as light as empty cardboard boxes, I'd have trouble swapping them all simply because of the bulk. And there's no way they weigh that little, or are that easily dislodged.

Re:Can this work for existing Teslas?

[Another, completely]

...how in the hell would they be able to swap all of those batteries out in 90 seconds? If they were as light as empty cardboard boxes, I'd have trouble swapping them all simply because of the bulk. And there's no way they weigh that little, or are that easily dislodged.

I think you've spotted the reason the stations will cost about a half-million dollars each. Assume a machine will do the lifting.

Re:Can this work for existing Teslas?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can see a (PR/marketing) video here of the swap: http://www.teslamotors.com/batteryswap

(it's a little hard to see at first, but the battery gets swapped out of the car from beneath).

Re:Can this work for existing Teslas?

[nschubach]

How about a nice simple hydraulic lift? They make hydraulic lifts for entire cars for about $5k. I can't imagine it's hard to refit those to lift a battery into the undercarriage of a car so someone can put in a few bolts.

Re:Can this work for existing Teslas?

[Kjella]

So...I have to wonder...if I'd bought one of these cars yesterday, how in the hell would they be able to swap all of those batteries out in 90 seconds? If they were as light as empty cardboard boxes, I'd have trouble swapping them all simply because of the bulk. And there's no way they weigh that little, or are that easily dislodged.

A trained formula one team will change all tires in less than 10 seconds, how long does it take you with a tire iron and a hand-cranked jack? I imagine it's pretty much like this:

1. Robot unscrews bolts, removes undercarriage
2. Place a battery caddy under the batteries
3. Disconnect the batteries
4. Caddy goes off to put them in automated storage
5. New caddy slides in with fresh batteries
6. Connect the batteries
7. Caddy goes away
8. Refasten the undercarriage

There's not much guesswork here, they know the exact dimensions, locations, sizes and everything the only thing they'll need to make sure is that the car and machinery is lined up correctly. Besides, it's 90 seconds under ideal conditions - same as the time allotted to evacuate a jumbo jet. I suspect in practice it will take a little longer...

Re:Can this work for existing Teslas?

[Guspaz]

It's clear that the battery pack is suspended from the undercarriage rather than being the undercarriage itself. In close-up videos of the swap, they lift the entire car up (if not off the ground, at least to take most of the load off the suspension) before doing the swap, because in the video, the whole car rises up and there's a lot of space in the wheel-wells during the procedure.

Re:Can this work for existing Teslas?

[Richy_T]

The machine lifts the passengers and luggage out of the car and places them in an entirely different vehicle.

Re:Can this work for existing Teslas?

[Another, completely]

A trained formula one team will change all tires in less than 10 seconds

Agree with the rest of your post, but these days anything over 4 seconds would mean somebody slipped.

$80 per 15 gallons of gas

[tippe]

You guys (Americans) pay up to $80 per 15 gallons of gas? That's over $5/gallon. Even I don’t pay that much and I live in Canada. I was under the impression that Americans wouldn't tolerate anything over $4/gallon and if the cost did go above that, there would be anarchy in the streets. Perhaps I'm just mis-informed...

Anyway, aren't the batteries under the trunk liner? So, in order to swap your battery during a shopping/camping/golf trip, wouldn't you need to empty your trunk first, then wrench out your back pulling out the used batteries (probably leaving a grease mark on your pants in the process), then wrench it again putting in the new ones? Sounds like fun...

Re:$80 per 15 gallons of gas

[nschubach]

I filled up this morning. 91 Octane, $3.81/gallon

Re:$80 per 15 gallons of gas

[brunes69]

This is referrig to California. Gas prices in California are as high or higher than Canada any time I have checked. Fuel quality in California is highly regulated and taxed which adds to the cost.

Re:$80 per 15 gallons of gas

[PPH]

No, we don't. Except for a few places like Hawaii, the price is significantly cheaper than that.

Publishing high retail prices is a marketing trick played by the petroleum industry to nudge the market price upwards. But it doesn't always take. Two weeks ago, when our local news (Seattle) said prices were creeping up (according to the industries publicity release) many of the independent stations dropped their prices 20 cents per gallon as a sort of FU to the cartel.

Re:$80 per 15 gallons of gas

[Lumpy]

"Prices in my area went up 15 cents overnight for no damn reason whatsoever other than the sun happened to rise in the same place as it did the day before."

This is because you allowed your elected officials to let gasoline become a traded commodity. if you were do demand they not allow it, price stability would return.

Re:$80 per 15 gallons of gas

[Thumper_SVX]

Anyway, aren't the batteries under the trunk liner? So, in order to swap your battery during a shopping/camping/golf trip, wouldn't you need to empty your trunk first, then wrench out your back pulling out the used batteries (probably leaving a grease mark on your pants in the process), then wrench it again putting in the new ones? Sounds like fun...

Nope, the Tesla Model S's battery pretty much is the entire bottom of the car (with a metal shell over it). This will be an automated system because the battery pack is one single unit. This article is old but has a good picture of the battery pack giving you an idea of the size of the thing. It also weighs a lot... so you won't be doing any wrenching yourself.

Basically the way this will work is that you'll drive up onto a ramp and then a robot will drop the battery pack out and swap it for a new one from underneath. You won't even need to get out of the car.

Re:$80 per 15 gallons of gas

[bws111]

California has minimal agriculture?? It has twice as much agricultural receipts as the next highest state (Texas).

Re:$80 per 15 gallons of gas

[CannonballHead]

It's not even referring to California. It's under $4/gal in CA. At least, where I am (near "Silicon Valley"/SF bay area).

Re:$80 per 15 gallons of gas

[akvalentine]

The batteries in a Tesla are not really IN the car, they are UNDER the car. Watch the video.

Re:$80 per 15 gallons of gas

[kwbauer]

Many of us are no longer positive that the coasts (where the highest fuel costs generally are found) are still inhabited by Americans.

Re:$80 per 15 gallons of gas

[kwbauer]

I guess you're talking about the futures marked here. As for its destabilizing effect, I guess Southwest Airlines ability to purchase a very large amount of fuel reserves in the futures market having given them a very stable fuel cost for 3 or 4 years is the one counter-example needed to disprove the BS theory of futures traders causing all the ills of the world.

Re:$80 per 15 gallons of gas

[kwbauer]

Yet the vast majority of the population lives hours away from anything considered agricultural. In a sense, you are both correct.

Re:$80 per 15 gallons of gas

[kwbauer]

And yet the guy I know that manages the tank farm down the road is constantly amused at the price changes at the pumps because they change much more frequently than the his wholesale prices. But he works for those awful anti-Obama brothers so they are probably just playing tricks on us.

What I wonder is...

[taiwanjohn]

Will they eventually start using something like the Better Place model for selling the car alone and keeping the battery as a company-owned asset? I'm not describing it quite right, but basically the idea was to sell "miles" to car owner the same way a phone company sells "minutes" to cell-phone owners. The point is, since the battery alone makes up a significant portion of the vehicle cost, this would be a way to reduce the sticker price and make the car attractive to a broader market.

Not that they really need to broaden the market. From what I've read, they have a long waiting list for the Model S.

Re:What I wonder is...

[taiwanjohn]

Yes, that's why I said "the idea was..." and linked to an article that says "Better Place was..." But their bankruptcy doesn't necessarily mean the idea was bad. There are lots of things that can bring down a company, such as an over-flashy CEO with poor management skills. Also, the Renault Fluence ZE was nowhere near as cool as the Model S. I really don't know what led to Better Place going under, but I don't reckon the battery swapping scheme was the main reason.

Interesting idea

[hurwak-feg]

I don't see this being as problematic as some of the other posters think. Considering most trips are short, and cars will typically be charged overnight, I think swapping batteries at a swap station will be rare for most people.

Re:Interesting idea

[rsborg]

I don't see this being as problematic as some of the other posters think. Considering most trips are short, and cars will typically be charged overnight, I think swapping batteries at a swap station will be rare for most people.

Rare for most, very common for some. Plus, once you've driven EV, it's very hard to go back to ICE - when my Prius is capable of cruising without the gas motor running it's like I'm in a spaceship - and the Prius is a souped-up econobox.

It's also a major "stumbling block" for EVs - if this hurdle is passed, there is one less reason to go EV. Maybe not Model S, but their next design or the one afterwards will finally pierce the mass market (think iPad - broke the $500 barrier, became a mass market hit, started cannibalizing PC (even Mac) sales).

Tesla's goal is to lay the groundwork for their next big hit - by satisfying existing customers, and making their vision mainstream by many small steps. This is the hallmark of an innovative and successful company.

Re:I see no difference in savings

[h4rr4r]

Your name makes good sense.

This is not cheaper since you are swapping the pack. Charging at home at night will be cheaper.

Also environmentalism is not generally concerned with saving money, they would be fine with a solution that was more expensive but better for the environment.

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

many of our latest phones and laptops don't have accessible or replaceable batteries?

Only if you buy the overpriced ones...

With Tesla being an economy brand I can see your point.

Great idea; Catastrophic execution

[Anonymous Coward]

Battery swap stations with cheaper prices than fuel are *the* killer feature that would everyone switch to electric with their next car.
And since solar power is nearly free, that should not be a problem.

But these high prices, lack of performance guarantees, and the expectation to pay even more for the new pack or be forced to take it back murders the concept in its crib. A false flag operation to destroy it couldn't have been worse thought out without losing believability.

I don't get what the problem is...
There *already* exists a system for returnable starter batteries (at least here in Germany), which works similar to returnable bottles.
Just build an automatic underground storage for batteries, which automatically keeps the batteries charged, using solar power (cheap!), and automatically marks all batteries below a certain performance (amount of energy it can store and wattage it can deliver) for recycling. Then every month or so a truck comes, and replaces all the dead ones with new ones.
You drive above it, a machine (e.g. a on a rail) detaches the empty pack (if it is of the right type), moves it to the storage, takes a new one out of storage, attaches it meanwhile you pay using the terminal, or a mobile phone app... and off you go.
You wouldn't even have to leave the damn car!

The price would just be the money to keep the refill stations and batteries alive (= recharging, repair, replacement, modernization), divided by the number of clients, plus your profit. That's it.

If that's not profitable, say that publicly (so that nobody misses it), and we know what's up! If it is, *do it*. What's the hold-up?

They are exaggerating.

[nten]

Its $3.34 here. Still this is the sane way to handle batteries, its a quick fillup and ensures recycling for EOL batteries. I still think the heat issues they have make them unreasonable in hot climates.

Re:Ha Ha Ha

[Faluzeer]

Using the UK price of approx £1.40 per liter, and the Sterling to USD exchange rate quoted on xe.com, it would cost £95.34 or $147.13 to fill a 15-gallon tank in the UK.

You never had it so good...

You are confusing uk gallons with US Gallons. There are 3.78541 Liters to a US Gallon, whereas in the UK it is 4.54609 liters to a gallon.

but..why?

[nimbius]

the range on a model S is ~205 miles, if you go for the top of the line its 265 miles. shouldnt this meet the needs of most drivers? i mean who drives more than 200 miles per day other than a CDL holder?

I think tesla is working like hell to dispel negative publicity surrounding the vehicle. Top Gear didnt do them any favours and the guys at the New York Times basically tried their damnedest to put it on a wrecker and make a story.
I also think the unspoken issue is the same as with a regular car: responsibility. If you want to drive on a quarter tank the entire week, floor it at every intersection and consistently violate the speed limit then so be it, but stop relying on a gas station on every corner to come to the rescue so you can keep treating your car like a toy.
disclosure: im a motorcyclist, so responsibility and range for me personally are something i dont just get to ignore without serious repercussions.

Why does every energy topic become a flamefest?

[H0p313ss]

Why are people so emotionally bound to internal combustion engines and coal power plants?

Re:Why does every energy topic become a flamefest?

[iggymanz]

what has engineering reality to do with flames? electric cars cost more to buy and cost more to run, have limited range, and have toxic materials in them.

we could have cleaner safer alternative to coal, it's called nuclear power from gen iv and iii+ reactors. but instead we are shunning nuclear for the much dirtier coal power.

Re:Why does every energy topic become a flamefest?

[drinkypoo]

electric cars cost more to buy

True

and cost more to run,

what?

have limited range

true

and have toxic materials in them.

Go huff some more gasoline and let us know how that works out for you, sparky.

Re:Why does every energy topic become a flamefest?

[iggymanz]

ok, had a good huffing session though that 10% ethanol really ruins a good pure hydrocarbon buzz.

look at the prices they talk of at battery "exchange" (loan?), gasoline is cheaper where I live. and even without that when the heavy subsidies of government are factored in the cost is atrocious. well-to-do's toy, electric cars are.

Re:Why does every energy topic become a flamefest?

[drinkypoo]

look at the prices they talk of at battery "exchange" (loan?), gasoline is cheaper where I live.

Me too. But that's not the only way to use the car.

well-to-do's toy, electric cars are.

Today, that's true. But anyone who owns a house and has a regular job is well-to-do by the standards of most of the world.

Re:Why does every energy topic become a flamefest?

[cbhacking]

Cost more to run? Bullshit. Pure bullshit. Much lower maintenance costs, and (assuming you don't charge off the grid at peak times, but instead charge at night or off solar or something) lower energy costs as well.

Have limited range? My 18-gallon car can beat the top-end Model S range, yeah, but a lot of my friends with 12-15 gallon tanks cannot. Besides, the exorbitantly vast majority (well in excess of 99%) of non-commercial driving is under 100 miles/day; even the lowest-range Model S can handle that with plenty of capacity left over. Oh, and you can charge up the car at parking lots and such as well (most malls/theaters/etc. in my area have a few electric charging stations these days, and no, I'm not in California).

Toxic materials? You mean like gasoline, motor oil, and transmission fluid? Not to mention lead and sulfuric acid (in your lead-acid battery)? Oh, and brake fluid... Or how about emitting toxic chemicals; it's totally the electric cars that emit carbon monoxide, right? OK, electric cars have different toxic chemicals than gasoline cars, but claiming that electric cars are *worse* than gasoline cars is, once again, total bullshit.

Not sure if you're trolling or just a complete idiot. I'll give you the benefit of a doubt, though (I do also have mod points).

Re:Why does every energy topic become a flamefest?

[iggymanz]

my minivan with 20 gallon tank and 29 MPG can go over 550 miles.

factor in $5K replacement cost every three years for heavy driving and electric cars not so attractive

As for toxic materials, the gasoline gets burned and the oil & transmission/brake fluid are actually biodegradable in the long haul (bacteria eat them). What's left to compare, one small battery with the batteries of the electric car?

I have some cheap ones...

[spectrokid]

Better Place, a chain of battry swap stations in Denmark, just went bankrupt.
http://green.autoblog.com/category/better-place/

Pretty expensive "deal"

[frnic]

Think about this for a second. First they advertisae they are making an Electric car that is MUCH less expensive to drive than an internal combustion engine.

Then they let you use a fully charged battery for MORE than a tank of gas to go the same distance.

Then they want their new battery back or else you pay a $10K penalty.

If you comute a lot, and most in CA do, then doing this daily for a year (5 days a week) you will have paid $20K for electricity alone, since you still have your worn out old battery at EOL.

No thanks...

Re:Pretty expensive "deal"

[taiwanjohn]

You're missing the point. Battery swap is only expected to be used on rare occasions when you're in a hurry and can't afford to take a half-hour break every few hours. Most people only travel long distance a few times a year anyway, so this is hardly a great inconvenience.

The average commute time in the USA is 25 minutes, well within the range of even the cheaper (small battery) version of the Model S. You put it in the garage at night, and it recharges in an hour or two (scheduled for the cheapest KWh rates in your grid) and you're ready to go again in the morning.

Actually, this battery swap system adds functionality to that small-battery Model S. If you can't afford the $90k for the 200mi range, just get the $50k model. Then, if you want to go on a long trip, just drive till your battery runs low, then swap it out for the long-range version, and swap it back on the way home.

Re:Pretty expensive "deal"

[rjstanford]

You commute over 265 miles a day? If not, then you don't need this at all since you can charge at home, spending pennies instead of $20K.

Re:Pretty expensive "deal"

[cbhacking]

Where the fuck did you get the idea that the battery only lasts a year of heavy use? That's backed up by exactly zero real-world data. Most electric or hybrid cars get around 10 years on their batteries.

Re:Pretty expensive "deal"

[AaronW]

If you're commuting then you're not going to use this service. You plug in at night when you get home and unplug in the morning. It takes about 10 seconds to do. The electricity used for my daily 18 mile commute costs around $40/month with my Tesla model S. It's cheaper to drive than my Prius. I also have the option to charge for free which takes 30 minutes for 80% charge. The only time I need to use supercharging or possibly a battery swap is if I do a road trip like I'm planning up to Lake Tahoe. The battery swapping will first be set up for people driving between LA and the Bay Area. As for batteries wearing out, the batteries are rated for 3000 full charge/discharge cycles which is the equivalent to around 750,000 miles when you assume 250 miles/charge (EPA rated 265).

that's cheap, coming from Europe

[dutchwhizzman]

I just looked it up, we pay US $10.11 per gallon here in the Netherlands.

Re:that's cheap, coming from Europe

[tippe]

Yeah, I know. Over ten years ago while traveling Europe I was floored when I saw gas prices in London. I don't recall the exact cost, but I remember that after converting pounds to dollars and gallons to litres, it was something like 4x the cost of gas in Canada (although this was at a time when the Canadian dollar was low and gas was almost half the cost it is now). Regardless, I try to avoid complaining about gas prices whenever I converse with someone from Europe!

what?

[slashmydots]

"$60 and $80, about the same as filling up a 15-gallon gas tank"

Ummm no. I usually fill 13.5 and it costs about $42 and my state has the 2nd highest gas prices in the US.

Re:what?

[Guspaz]

http://montrealgasprices.com/ says current average here today is 137.290, which is $4.964 USD per gallon. So 15 gallons goes for $74.46 USD...

A bigger issue is that the range of the most expensive Model S is more similar to 10 gallons of gasoline than 15.

short-term battery loan

[jschen]

The way I see it, the best use of the proposed battery swapping isn't for a quicker charge. It's to allow one to borrow a battery to use/abuse during a road trip. If going on a long road trip, rather than subject one's own battery to the added stress of multiple fast-charge cycles, one has the option to borrow a battery for $60-80 and subject that one to those conditions. If we assume that a new battery is ca. $10k, then the rental is under 1% of battery cost. If a long road trip with multiple fast-charge cycles causes sufficient battery wear (or even just lots of anxiety about the potential effects), then for $60-80 one can get a loaner battery.

Re:short-term battery loan

[Mal-2]

If a long road trip with multiple fast-charge cycles causes sufficient battery wear (or even just lots of anxiety about the potential effects), then for $60-80 one can get a loaner battery.

Not just a loaner battery, but a FULLY CHARGED loaner battery. I'm pretty sure they're expecting you to bring it back near empty. Subtract the energy cost and what remains is your battery rental cost. Still non-zero, but you just did a pretty good job of justifying it.

Tiny tiny generator

[EmperorOfCanada]

If I had a Tesla there are two features that I would want. PV solar on all the horizontal surfaces. I use my car a few times a week and for short distances. So even crappy PV would generally keep the car topped up. Plus PV isn't that crappy thus a day at the beach should buy you 5% more charge.

But what I really want is a tiny turbine generator. As in 5-10 HP. This would be enough that if I screw up and am 10 miles from home when the car basically dies I can just pull over and read for 20 minutes to build up enough charge to get home.

People will blah blah about the volt having an onboard generator but that is basically a full sized gas engine. I am talking about something that would fit in shoebox or two with a pint or two of fuel. The range of the Tesla is great and would meet 99.9% of my needs nicely. But I can see the day when the kids didn't plug it in leaving it at 40% when I need to pick up my wife at the airport. I would look at the range and with gritted teeth see that I have almost exactly the range to get there and back. So I would kick in the turbine and buy a few extra miles. I am enough of an optimist to make stupid trips like this. Also it would allow me to do the walk of shame to a nearby gas station if I even ran down the fuel. Plus this whole battery switching thing and regular charging stations will come to my part of the world shortly after they install them in Antarctica so more ability for self-reliance would be required in these parts.

Re:Really?

[tgd]

Really? We can get this for cars but many of our latest phones and laptops don't have accessible or replaceable batteries?

All of mine do.

And in either case, feigned indignation aside, if you wanted your car to be a quarter inch thick, stylish slab of aluminum or polycarbonate, it wouldn't be removable either. If for style purposes a designer, say, wanted to have an almost entirely glass vehicle and needed to hide the batteries in the various A,B, and C pillars, you wouldn't have them removable either -- because the design decision was a higher priority.

Ah... -- So my "Troll" post had merit...

[eepok]

http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3802633&cid=43867447

It looks like Tesla properly understands the value of combining quick fueling with slow charging! The only thing they have to do is create a system (likely subscription) so that you don't have to pick up your original battery pack. The battery pack should belong to the fueling company and your subscription should provide the insurance/assurance against battery pack damage.

Battery packs will be standardized within a small group of performance levels (just like today's gasoline) and the only other variance between vehicles will be the *number* of battery packs swapped in/out.

And by the time that's perfected (oh the joys of "proprietary technology"), hydrogen fuel cell automobiles should be breaking into the market.

Re:Ah... -- So my "Troll" post had merit...

[Guspaz]

Except their supercharger roadmap shows a lot more than the 100 stations you criticize (admittedly some of those are in Canada), your post ignores the enormous solar panels on top of supercharger stations (they're using grid storage, IIRC) to defray electrical costs (Musk claims they'll produce more than they consume, although that likely depends on how many cars/batteries they charge each day), and you don't actual demonstrate how they'll require subsidies to do this.

They've stated the battery swapping stations are half a million each at the moment, and that fully equipping their planned supercharger network would cost $50-100 million. Tesla's got a rapidly rising revenue currently over half a billion dollars per year. They don't need subsidies to make a $50-100 million investment at this point.

Re:Holy core charge, Batman!

[K. S. Kyosuke]

How about a superconducting current storage pack, instead?

That's going to be a lot of fun to watch if you suddenly lose superconductivity in an accident, for example. You know what happend at LHC, don't you?

It will not be the case

[WindBourne]

The reason is that time is coming when taxes WILL be charged for daytime charging, and the sooner, the better. The reason is that you WANT ppl to charge at nighttime. When that happens, then it lowers the electrical costs for EVERYBODY. The reason is that power companies can move away from on-demand systems and put in larger base-load systems. In addition, it spread the costs of the grid over day/night, rather than just worry about 1 hour of time.

Finally, why would I want to pay 15 cents/KWH (say 13 + 2 tax), when I can pay 6 cents/KWH by simply charging at night?

Re:Really?

[lgw]

Give em time. It's amazing they can make an electric car not suck at the price point the manage today. As the technology matures, I bet they'll come downmarket. Heck, if I went to work everyday in a very small corner of a very large manufacturing plant, I know I'd be looking for ways to make a product more people can afford.

Re:it wont matter

[Guspaz]

Idiots might park in the supercharger bays, but the battery swapping bays have rails to guide the tires in, so you'd have to be extra stupid to park your car over a big pit in the ground with your tires sitting on top of guide rails for the wrong sized wheel base.

Re:Holy core charge, Batman!

[Guspaz]

Right, so now instead of having to carry gasoline in your car, you've got to carry around liquid nitrogen to keep your wiring superconductive, and instead of just stopping when it runs out of liquid like a gas car, now when you run out of liquid, your car will explode into a giant fireball because of the sudden introduction of massive electrical resistance. Brilliant!

Re:Really?

[AmiMoJo]

To be fair it's only Apple that don't like users replacing batteries, and other manufacturers make thinner phones which are easy to open up.

Must go round trip!?

[klashn]

It is a start at building an battery/gas station infrastructure between SF and LA. The deal breaker for me is having to come back the same route to pick up your original battery. What if i'm not actually coming back on I-5 between SF and LA?

Re:Must go round trip!?

[AaronW]

In that case they'll ship the battery (presumably to the station you'll use on the return trip) and charge you for the shipping. They have not stated how expensive that will be.

Re:Really?

[Blrfl]

Which is, amusingly, exactly Tesla's business plan.

Re:Really?

[desdinova 216]

With Tesla being an economy brand I can see your point.

when did Tesla start making phones and laptops?

License to existing infrastructure

[Scot Seese]

It would be smarter for Tesla to license the technology to companies already servicing fuel resupply (gas stations) and let them absorb most of the costs.

Just drop 2 or 3 "battery swap" stations off to the side of your local BP, Shell, Citgo, Marathon, 7-11 et al station and call it done.

Filling stations already exist by the bajillions across the U.S. - They already have huge brand recognition, advertising, distribution network, close proximity to high traffic areas, offer car wash stations, attached convenience stores, loyalty card programs, etc etc. Tesla owners typically have a few gasoline cars at home that they routinely take to their favorite filling station already. We are creatures of habit.

Why spend hundreds of millions of dollars on new construction, or renovation when the established fuel resupply players would love to gently transition to the new energy economy? Partner with 1 or 2 of the existing petrol companies, and let them pick up part of the check for the cost of the battery-swap robots.

Tesla owners tend to be higher income, higher wealth customers anyhow, and who wouldn't like a steady trickle of them through your store.

Everyone wins. Tesla gets a cheaper buildout option. Existing fuel station owners guarantee relevance and the ability to sell you overpriced milk at 1 AM.

Like you didn't see this coming.

[Minwee]

"The final step is going to be to have all car manufacturers agree on a certain standard, "

Hell will freeze first. we cant eve get the Gas cap on the same side of the car.

No problem. We'll just develop a new standard that covers everything.

Re:Really?

[Luckyo]

Don't buy apple. Most other manufacturers offer everything from top of the line to the very bottom with swappable batteries.

the money will be there

[mbkennel]

If everybody had electric cars in your area, a roughly equivalent amount of money which they are spending on gasoline will now be revenue to the electric utility. This may be a substantial amount of money and can be used to justify financing for long-lived capital improvements.

The fact that everybody can change to electric cars with only a doubling in power requirements is actually quite encouraging. This would happen over 50 years perhaps. The capital expenditures of transmission won't be twice existing ones in most cases, though of course for generation it might be.

Finally, a good fraction of people filling up their cars with electricity will do so at night when generation and transmission capacity currently has substantial headroom. At present exactly 0% of people fill up their car with petroleum overnight and thus the number of daytime peak-capacity electrical fillups will be less than current daytime fuel fillups.

actually what happened

[mbkennel]

is that today's 4 cylinder cars have as much useful acceleration and almost as much interior room as the V8 behemoths.

Take a look sometime how small a 4 cyclinder Japanese car from 1975 was. It had 53hp, about 1500 pounds. Today, common 4 cylinder cars are 150-230 hp, 2800 to 3600 pounds.

The point though is true, gasoline at $13 will educate many people about what they really need vs what they said they "needed". Liquid-hydrocarbon based vehicles will be rented like bulldozers are today. When gasoline is $13 for a decade or two there will be charging stations everywhere.

Re:actually what happened

[bws111]

Yes, that is what I said - cars got better, and people rethought what they really needed.

EV cost

[Firethorn]

Your data is old. They now cost more to buy, cost less to run*, and have fewer toxic materials in them then a contemporary gasoline car.

*The more cost to run was ~2 battery generations ago. They've really increased the lifespan of the batteries while reducing their cost.

Re:it wont matter

[Lumpy]

And that underlines my point. Every time I see a moron driver parked horribly it is always a SUV. My favorite was a SUV that pulled OVER and was sitting on top of a moped that was parked in a parking spot.

"OOps, I did not see it", was the response

Arizona vs. California gas

[tlambert]

Arizona doesn't reformulate their gas. California dilutes their gasoline with alcohol and other additives, and before that, MTBE, primarily due to lobbying by Chevron, since it allows them to manipulate the gas market in California by not allowing out of state refineries to ship gas into California.

You will find the same mileage improvements in states that do not reformulate during winter months (so called "winter gas" vs. "summer gas") if you refill your tank there during those months.

By the way, California gas is significantly worse for your engine, fittings, and gaskets than non-reformulated gas. This is one of the reasons there is a separate "aviation gasoline": to prevent an engine failure due to a hose or gasket failure due to it being eaten away by the alcohol or other substances.

Here is the reference for my statement about Arizona not reformulating:

http://www.epa.gov/region9/air/phoenixcbg/

"EPA published a separate notice approving Arizona's opt-out from the federal reformulated gasoline program, effective 90 [days] after the effective date of this final rulemaking."