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Tesla About To Start Battery-Swap Pilot Program
cartechboy writes: Remember 18 months ago when Tesla promised it was going to launch battery-swap stations? Well, it's finally happening, sort of. It seems Tesla's about to announce a battery-swap pilot program that will launch next week. The swap site will be located across the street from a Tesla Supercharger site in Harris Ranch, California — 184 miles south of San Francisco and about 200 miles north of Los Angeles. The pilot program will involve an unspecified number of Model S electric-car owners, who will be invited to take part in the test. For now, the battery-swap service will be offered by appointment only, at a cost of roughly a tank of gas in a premium sedan. Tesla's using words to describe this pilot program like "exploratory work" and "intended to test technology and assess demand" for a swapping service. While originally pitched that the battery swap would take less time than it would to take to refill the gas tank of a comparable luxury sedan, the company says now that "for this specific iteration" the swap process will take "approximately 3 minutes" — though it adds Tesla has "the ability to improve that time with future iterations." Is this test going to show that battery swapping is or isn't a realistic initiative?
It also leaked that Tesla is using top NASCAR pit crew talent during the demo period. This will allow them to design the robots needed to do it when it is in full production......
Are we really in such a hurry that a 3 minute swap needs improvement? It takes longer than that to use the restroom and buy a coffee.
I would have a sig but I am too busy updating programs and restarting my computer
Stuff like this makes me want to be their customer all the more. They promised they'd do something and are following through, and that something targets some of the big concerns about owning a battery-powered car. And no surprise that at first it's going to be less than ideal; the fact that they're moving forward is great and over time the technology and the processes will of course improve.
My take on this is if they put up wind or solar arrays, it would work better than trying to charge people's cars live off it. They could have more of a flexible margin of when they charge the batteries because as long as they have full ones to give out, they're in the clear. So if the wind isn't blowing, they just wait to charge the empty ones later. So technically all their electricity could be free if they played their cards right.
I keep being told by Tesla owners that this idea was dropped.
3 minutes for a swap is reasonable since it isn't worst than the current process (except for the fact that an employee is now needed for the process)
n.b. The cars in our house are currently a Leaf and an Energi.
When I first scanned the title, I assumed Tesla was providing a battery replacement type swap for degradation. A few lines in, I realized I was looking at a Tesla quick-fill "gas station."
I have to assume that Tesla, should they go wide with a service like this, would be refurbishing batteries as they rotated into and out of the quick-change locations. They'd have a dozen or so, "in stock," charged and charging, and some percentage of those taken in below a certain threshold of remaining charge would have to be refurbished before they could go back out.
You can afford to take your pristine battery into the swap-shop and get one that's only got 88% max potential charge on it. Maybe you only go "pay for a tank of premium gas" when your battery degrades, and you hope for a better one in return :)
You need to drive up to 200 miles to reach the nearest battery station? Sheesh... I thought driving to Costco for cheap gas was a PITA.
You want to prejudge a test before it's run?
They're running a test to figure out if it is a practical consideration or not.
That's why people run tests. If you knew the answer beforehand, you wouldn't have to run a test then, would you?
Doh...
Don't take life too seriously; it isn't permanent.
What happens when one of the little cells gets put in with the pointy part the wrong way? I mean, like, there must be a zillion in each car! Chances are good someone will goof it up, especially in the dark at night. And are all the AAA guys going to keep a bunch next to their gas can?
A thousand miles on a tank of gas... Maybe a Sherman full of gas, most certainly not an 80 liter tank (very high estimate).
The best you'll get from an Audi will be around 6 liters/100km (again, very high estimate). That means you'd get roughly 1300km from said tank. So you're some 300km short of those imaginary 1000 miles.
Show me a car that gets 6l/100km *and* has an 80l gas tank and I'll sell you a bridge.
As needing to get the same one back at each stop is unworkable in the long run and over time as more station for swapping are added people on a long trip will take the one that is nearest to them at the time they need more range.
Will the cost of the swap be variable based on the price of gas each day? According to gasbuddy.com the lowest price of gas near Harris Ranch today (12/19) is $2.45/gal which is 0.55 less than that referred to in the article on greencarreports. Even 91 octane is going at $2.65/gal, so assuming a Tesla is a high-end luxe vehicle comparable to BMW, it would require 91 octane equivalent electricity and the cost of swapping is $53. Otherwise the thrifty owner would choose to pay $49. Perhaps Tesla will conjure up a charge based on joules or kwH or some other measure.
You do know the meaning of the phrase 'pilot program' don't you. Seriously, whining like a baby about it taking a few minutes to completely change the batteries on an electric car. What else, the barrista needed an extra 20 seconds to make your pumpkin spice latte this morning?
Is this test going to show that battery swapping is or isn't a realistic initiative? Yes. (Surely battery swapping is or isn't a realistic initiative)
Say it takes 3 minutes to swap a battery and 30 minutes to recharge a battery. To service a continuous stream of vehicles at each battery swap station one would need to have 30/3=10 batteries charging per station. A Tesla Model S battery stores 85 kWh. To charge that in half an hour take at least 170KW. Now multiply that by the number of batteries charging would be 1.7MW draw on the grid. If you decrease the swap time the draw increases. Multiply that by the number of swap stations and the draw is even larger.
Swap stations don't work very well if you can not charge batteries at the rate they are swapped.
There is no National Automobile Battery Changers Association. If there was one, Republican governors would have prohibited Tesla from changing the battery like this.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
In 1995, our old 1982 VW Passat GL station wagon did 5.5l of diesel per 100km and had a 70l tank. With about 1272 km per full tank, that comes quite close to your Audi with 1333km...
hahahahaha!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This is the only realistic approach to over coming the issues of charging speed, temperature, and time. You can also then have economy, regular ,and premium grades of batteries based on formulation or size. It also removes any concerns about battery longevity as once premium packs and be moved into economy as they age. This allows the batteries to be pampered when charging as well. Once you know the optimum rate of charge for longevity you now longer have to force feed the battery because of humans needs or time scales, just have a large enough buffer of batteries in the system.
Battery swapping sounds awesome if they can get the program to work.
Be the first to contribute to the latest Tesla accessory project - The Tag-a-Long battery trailer/camper. It extends your mileage 4 fold, while providing a comfortable living environment when stranded alongside the road.
Tesla already has a fast charger at the Harris Ranch location. Which, if you are driving Sili Valley to LA, is a good place to stop for a lunch break. If I had a Tesla, the thought of a battery swap would not be compelling, since I'd be thinking of making the lunch/recharge stop anyway. OTOH, this is a good test -- when at the same location you have the choice between a battery swap verus a rapid charge plus good lunch, do people still go for the battery swap? It is an interesting marketing test precisely because the competing option is compelling.
How feasible would it be to tow an aerodynamic battery 'trailer' for extended range?
And once the batteries reach end-of-life for automotive uses, they can be automatically repurposed for off-grid storage.
Once battery capacity falls below a certain level (60% perhaps?) it becomes unsuitable for automotive use, but could be used for other purposes such as offline-grid storage. A factory floor filled with older batteries still has quite a bit of capacity - so long as you aren't overly concerned about space or weight efficiencies.
Battery arrays could be installed at wind and solar installations to act as online storage to help even out baseline demand, and as more batteries come available we simply(!) swap out the oldest/least capacity units.
Offline storage is the missing component that would make wind and solar power practical. Maybe used EV batteries is that component.
If they're using the existing Tesla Model S with the intention to have them pull over open bays in the ground and have robots remove battery packs built into the undercarriage, then it will fail. On the other hand if they were to make a new EV that had multiple bays from which you can pull out and swap rails of cells, then they'd have a good chance.
The only future for EVs is to go battery-swapping and to make swapping possible with human muscle.
>How feasible would it be to tow an aerodynamic battery 'trailer' for extended range?
Battery would be 1000 pounds, more than the towing capacity of most cars (Tesla has no towing capacity listed.)
Towing a 5kW generator and 3 gallons of fuel ( 3 gallon of gas is equivalent to 100 kwhr battery.) would be more like 50 pounds, easily in the range of what a car could carry. Now, if you can get the car to charge while moving...
i think that's a volt good sir.
Only at 3-4* the cost. Although I do think electric cars with a add on gen makes sense. If the electric car works for my commute let me remove the weight, add it only when I may need more range. Or share the gen set with other use (all hybrids should have 112 volt outlet in my opinion.)
Sounds like I can have a Telsa battery for myself with a jack and a screwgun...
There may be better options soon if something like Phinergy's aluminium-air fuel cell pans out - this would be more practical for only ~50 - 60kg additional weight.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
I actually did read the article which seemed to think this was all a ploy to get additional green credits. While I'm sure this is a factor, here's my theory. Some day they'll want to release a cheaper model (which isn't even a secret) but with a lower battery capacity, say 100mi. More than enough for most people on their daily commutes. But, give the option for a battery swap to the 2-300 mile battery for the big trips. They get to trim a few K off the cost of their most entry level edition, and the buyer can still use their car for a big roadtrip, they just have to rent the big battery for the cost of a tank of gas!
I can't see Tesla making the Gen3 only with a 100 mile range at $35k in 2017 or later - they'll be behind the curve. The Leaf, i3, Spark EV, etc are all in that ballpark right now and will have more range at lower cost by the time the Gen3 is ready.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
But, my point is that a 100mi range car, that I can temporarily upgrade to 2-300mi range, is a FAR better value than a 100mi range car that has no such option (if they're about the same price). In fact, I wouldn't even consider a strictly short range vehicle over a gas car, if I only had the budget for 1 car. In addition, Tesla will probably continue to have the best charging network for these vehicles. I'm not saying that all Gen3 would be medium range, I think they've stated 200mi range for the launch edition, I'm just saying, that I wouldn't be surprised if an even cheaper Gen3 option with a smaller battery became available in the future. Who knows, maybe a few generations of batteries later, and the battery swap will be able to give a Model S a temporary 400mi range (with a taller battery, maybe).
and just get the whole thing without all that mucking about with screws. Not to mention you probably need at least a car lift if not a service pit, which the driver (Strangely) didn't happen to park his Tesla on top of.
This makes a lot of sense as a pilot project location for Tesla. A lot of people already make it a stop going between Southern and Northern California and there are a lot of Tesla owners in the state. I think that many Tesla drivers will just stop to take a break anyway and that would give the swap facility more flexibility to schedule their stations. It's a smart move.
Why is Snark Required?
You drive your new Tesla into a swap-station and they take your brand spanking new battery pack and give you the beat up grungy recharged battery pack of the guy before you?
E Proelio Veritas.
I have a Mk1 Toyota Yaris D4D that I reckon could do 1000 miles on a tank if conditions were perfect! :(
My current all-time record is only 800 miles tho'
Show me a car that gets 6l/100km *and* has an 80l gas tank and I'll sell you a bridge.
I know it is cheating, but you can fairly easily do 1000 miles per tank in a modern diesel, as long as you stay below 60mph or so and avoid cities. I did around 40l for around 1200km over a couple of weeks in a rented BMW.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
and assess demand" for a swapping service.
Not sure how you can "assess demand" for something like this with a limited trial. The "demand" would be for a substantial network of swap stations that allowed people to treat EVs like gas cars and not have to plan long trips around meal breaks at superchargers. They might expand the market to customers who have currently rejected EVs because of the charging problem: if you already have a Tesla you probably looked into the charging situation and decided that it fits your motoring needs, so you're not going to be falling over yourself to pay for a battery swap instead.
Then, the battery replacement needs to be integrated with some sort of lease scheme whereby you don't actually own the battery which (some EVs use this approach anyway) which would make sense in many ways, but if you've already bought your car, complete with battery, are you going to want to swap it out?
The other issue is the long-term scalability of the "free supercharge" model - its fine with the current level of Tesla ownership, but if EVs go mainstream provision will have to ramp up dramatically (think: whole parking lots wired up for charging) or it will be common to turn up at a station and find all the bays occupied by fully-charged cars waiting for their owners to drift back from their leisurely lunches and shopping trips. A battery-swap system might be the only way to turn round enough customers. "Free charging" certainly isn't going to be long-term sustainable - but while its there, its going to be hard to persuade people to pay for battery-swaps.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
I'll do you one better (this is a topic that I've put a fair amount of thought into for years):
Instead of people owning the batteries, standardize them and make them federally owned and paid for by a yearly tax (like an extra fee on your yearly vehicle registration if you drive a compatible EV). Since nobody owns the batteries themselves, nobody has to worry about them other then when they're in your car. Once one starts to go bad (which should be relatively easy to test for during the charging process), it gets decommissioned and sent back to Uncle Sam (or equivalent) for recycling. This takes the burden of battery ownership and recycling off the shoulders of the vehicle owner and lets the government (or whoever they contract this out to) deal with it.
That's a narrow-minded view. In the real world, most people need to get places on time and can't jack around for 30 minutes waiting for their car to recharge. Unless they can make some serious advancements in charging times, some sort of battery or electrolyte swapping solution is going to be mandatory for EVs to reach broad appeal (especially for long commuters and road-trippers).
For this to work (and it has to for EVs to reach broad appeal) they need to standardize the batteries across all vendors such they can be installed/uninstalled quickly by standard equipment.
In addition to this, it would also make sense to have the battery packs federally-owned and maintained (possibly paid for by an annual tax, similar to a registration tax for those that drive compatible vehicles, or surcharges at the time of a battery swap). In addition to the benefit of no longer having to worry about which battery is owned by who, this would effectively take the costly burden of battery ownership and disposal off the backs of vehicle owners and leave it for the government to deal with.
Whatever these stations will be, they have to be able to handle the time periods like holidays when the customer counts can be many times the 'normal' levels.
If its labor intensive, then can these stations suddenly hire their needed 'experts' for short durations (and then not employ them the rest of the time).?
Assuming the charging equipment itself can keep up (public utilities and just more battery hookup units) - any solar charging system likewise has to be scaled for the crush/rush and maybe the batteries held on hand as well. Thats all cost overhead which turns a 'good' idea into an impracticality.
Maybe automatic enough that the drivers can 'self serve' .... Someday, but has anything close to that been engineered yet.
Battery safety (when you get someone elses, who make sure its what it is 'safe' - more inspections = more labor, etc...) -- that could be a great boon to insurance companies and auto hazard lawyers.
100 mile when new.... and how fast drops to quite a bit less after X months or cold weather....
These should ONLY be in the service centers and the batteries should be for say 400 MPC. IOW, this is not to be used to fill up for local driving, but instead used for putting in long distance batteries so that you can take a vacation. With a battery that has say over 120 KWH, that first 30 min will still bring you up over 250-300 MPC, which is plenty long for extended driving.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
the reason for the longer range is that you move across cells. It is the number of charges (combined with heat) that is detrimental to cells. As such, they will likely always have about 160-250 MPC.
BUT, you are right about rentals for true long distance driving.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
the opportunity cost is that you're taking 90 seconds to fill up with gas anyway, so you're just waiting another 90 seconds.
this is what journalism has come to: Tesla has everything else worked out with such finesse and perfection that this is the only thing the writer can come up with to complain about.
And it's the only thing that can generate slashdot comments.
What I don't like about this scheme is that I end up driving my car around with someone else's batteries. With my own battery pack I know what the batteries have been through -- their service record, the conditions they have been in, and also what I can expect out of them in terms of performance because I have been using them recently. When you swap out the battery pack that all goes out the window.
These batteries degrade over time. So I could end up swapping my batteries with 400 hours on them for batteries that have 10,000 hours on them. No thanks.