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?

Comments

3 minutes is slow?

[X-Ray Artist]

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.

Re:3 minutes is slow?

[Guspaz]

It seems like they're going to be doing part or all of the battery swap manually, so the improvement from 3 minutes down back to the target of 90 seconds is more about getting everything automated again rather than simply improving the process. It's not practical to roll out large numbers of battery swap stations all over the world if they need a pit crew at each one.

From their press release, it sounds like the culprit is the additional armour that was added to the car to avoid damage to the battery packs from road debris. The original swap demonstration was fully automated, but then they went and stuck a bunch of other stuff on the underbody, invalidating their existing automation work for it.

Re:3 minutes is slow?

[mythosaz]

There might be 1440 minutes in a day, but people who want their battery full-charge want it to happen probably only in a small portion of those minutes.

The faster you can do it, the more effective you can be.

It's not about getting it done in 3 minutes, it's about being 3rd in line at 7:20am with 35 minutes left on your drive to work.

Re:3 minutes is slow?

[Kjella]

It's not about getting it done in 3 minutes, it's about being 3rd in line at 7:20am with 35 minutes left on your drive to work.

If your commute involves a battery swap for a Tesla you should really consider changing jobs. I'm guessing it's more about the weekend rush, Friday afternoon lots of cars will be going on long range trips and return Sunday evening, I'm guessing a battery swap pad is a lot more involved than a gas station pump so they won't have very many of them. They did run a test here recently driving a Tesla ~1000 miles and they said it all worked well but there was a lot of waiting, for every 2-3 hours of driving there's was one hour of charging. I know that when we drive to the capital it takes ~7 hours and we have one 30-45 minute stop, if they could swap batteries on at least one stop they'd be down to one hour charging per 4-6 hours of driving which would roughly be the break time we'd want with an ICE car too. But Friday afternoon I'm one of a thousand lemmings trying to get out of the city, it better go fast.

Re:3 minutes is slow?

[TWX]

Well, it used to be common for gas stations to also have vehicle service bays for back when cars were a lot more finicky and in need of regular tuning, and part of that was the oil-change pit. Maybe those remaining stations with that setup will find that it's a good market to do electric car battery swaps with the old pits.

even better

[slashmydots]

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.

Re:even better

[MattskEE]

Do you know how many solar panels it takes to charge an electric car? You're basically looking at a football field's worth, each.

Ah, to be young and full of made up numbers. Let's do the math.

The large Tesla battery is 85kWh. A solar cell typically has an efficiency of 10-20%, so with about 5kWh/m^2/day of typical solar radiation (check PVWatts for specifics in your town you can produce about 0.5-1kWh/m^2 per day.

If we assume 15% charging losses it will take 100kWh to charge a Tesla battery, which will require 100 to 200 square meters to produce in one day. A football field has about 5300 square meters, so we could expect one football field of tightly packed solar panels to charge around 26 to 53 Tesla's per day.

Re:Interesting...

[AK Marc]

And if everyone used these stations, the state of the batteries wouldn't matter. You'd get a better one one time, and a worse one the next, then back to a better one. The range may varry 5% or so, but more than that and the cost of the charge would cover replacing the bad cells. People get more variability than that now with fuels, but don't care or pay attention because range and usage statistics are so poor for gasoline cars.

Personally, when I ran the numbers on these, they should be charging people a time fee. If you come in once a year for a battery refresh, then you get charged more than the person that fills-up every day.

That's why it's a test...

[NReitzel]

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...

I see a problem here

[NEDHead]

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?

Re:Awesome

[dbrueck]

Ooh, I love this game. My turn! (BTW you didn't give me a starting point so I'll just go with your /. handle, but on future turns please give me a subject to start with)

Ok. 'greenwow'... let's see. Well, 'green' is like the Jolly Green Giant, who is big, as was Andre the Giant. He was French. The French sold us a lot of land in the Louisiana Purchase. Louisiana has a really high rate of obesity. Why do you support pediatric heart disease, you monster???

Your turn. Subject is 'turnips'.

The logical answer is...

[FredGauss]

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)

Some math

[jklovanc]

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.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

How can it not be realistic?

[F34nor]

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.

Announcing a Kickstarter Project

[NEDHead]

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.

Re:But what about my burger?

[Dynedain]

There's plenty of reason to spend as little time as possible at Harris Ranch.

Re:Awesome

[Noah Haders]

you anonymous cowards remind me of the people who were afraid to say anything while jews were hauled off to the gas chamber. godwin ftw!