Tesla battery swap station plans

[Richard230]

According to an article in my newspaper today, written by Catherine Green of the LA Times, Tesla has announced plans to install battery swap stations at many of their Supercharging station facilities.  This appears to be big news - if you are a Tesla Model S owner (not so much otherwise). Tesla plans to start constructing facilities that would offer the Model S traveler the option to charge up for free or pay a (undisclosed) fee to just have their entire battery pack replaced with a new fully charged one. The Model S owner would drive over a pit, a technician would disconnect the car's battery and connect a new fully-charged battery pack to the underside of the car and the driver would then be able to take off and continue his trip.  Tesla has produced a video showing that it takes 4:09 minutes to fill the gas tank of an IC car, whereas the Tesla battery can be changed in 1 minute 33 seconds.  You would pay according to the condition of your existing battery pack and the condition of the fully charged replacement pack.  You could retain this battery or return later and have your old battery pack reinstalled, fully charged, in your car.

Tesla says that each battery swap station will cost $500,000 to build.  There is no mention what the cost would be to fully staff and maintain the swap stations 24/7. Tesla plans to implement this program along the busiest regional traffic corridors, including LA to SF and Boston to NYC.

You got to give Tesla credit for really putting up the cash to make it easy for their customers to travel long distances.  And you also have to give them credit for making it tough on all of the other EV manufacturers to do the same.  How is any other EV manufacturer going to compete with that program?  I don't believe that even a GM or Honda would be willing to take that financial risk for their customers.

Here is the video of the battery swap station plans announcement:

[oml]

I too was impressed as hell as seeing that first time - but the stock market seemed to be rather displeased (loosing 4% price following the news). That puzzled me at first, but those reactions make sense (for short term traders).

While the SC-network is relativly technology-neutral (yes, atm Tesla Model S only, but if they license the technology (which they wanted to iirc) everyone could charge there) those battery swap stations are kinda fixed to that particular drivetrain setup (battery mid bottom of the car, fixed size etc). Even Tesla themselve might have problems to provide compability with future car generations.

On the other hand, one huuuge improvement would be the energy output of a BSS compared to a SCS: The BSS could provide 3.4 Megawatt in peak operation time (90s for 85kwh) while balancing the load to the grid quite nicely given they have enough battery packages on hand.
That number ist just huge (still working to get my head around - on the one hand, one or two measily windmills can get that, on the other hand equals that the power supply for my university (complete with hpc and particle accelerator) - twice.).
Well, thats a good thing, isnt it? One BSS can perform as well as ~30 SCS for which 500k USD ist just shockingly cheap (other sources (read: quick google search for a number) say 250k USD for a SCS).  Which is why I dont believe that number - it wouldnt make sense to build anything else then. 500k USD would make sense for the screwing mechanics, storage cost and stuff like that, without charging infrastructure and batteries for operation.
I still think its cheaper than 30 SCS which leads me to my conclusion:
BSS are cool, because they scale much much better than SCS, handle "charging peaks" much better and could be quite cost-efficient under high load. With less then 20k cars on the road its still a bit early, though (but isnt "2 years earlier than necessary" Teslas slogan?). Tesla could easily plant more BSS than people need / would use, especially if they really plan to charge 80 (?) bucks for it.

[flar]

There is no technician involved, they use the same robots with "bolt finders" to swap the pack that they use to install it at the factory - your pack is retorqued to factory specs with every swap.  I'm not sure if there is a person who needs to be there in case of problems or not (imagine a customer stuck in the station with no battery pack because there was a hitch on the reinstallation), but the replacement process is automated and consistent in its 1:30 replacement time.

They charge a fixed fee "about the same as a tank of gas" for the service.  The "price differential based on the condition of your pack" cost only comes into play if you fail to return for your original pack after some (TBD?) time period.  Alternatively, they have indicated you could pay to have the pack shipped to a service center near you for replacement if you were unable to return to the same station to get it back.