Sci-Tech: Tesla Motors demos fast battery swap system

Tesla Motors demonstrates a system for fast battery swaps that will be an option to free battery charging at their Supercharger stations : Battery Swap – Tesla Motors

Update: A couple of skeptical reviews:

3 thoughts on “Sci-Tech: Tesla Motors demos fast battery swap system”

  1. The battery swap is neat, but Tesla’s marketing department needs to be taken to task for an unfair comparison. In the side by side video the gasoline car gets filled with over 23 gallons of gas. How many sedans have a 23 gallon tank? And at 25 mpg that’s 575 miles of driving, amost three times the range of a single charge on a Tesla. They should really be comparing against a car filling 8 gallons.

  2. I suppose but on the other hand they do show the 23 gallon fill up. So one can decide for oneself if two swaps in the time of a long fill up like that is impressive or not. I think the demo gets across the message that the swap is on the same time scale as a fill up.

    BTW, I wonder if a car like that really gets 25mpg? Looks more like a 18-20 mpg sort of car and probably one that prefers high octane fuel. Also, the Model S gets ~260 miles on a 100% charge. So even at 25 mpg, it’s more like a 11 gallon fill up.

    I added links to a couple of articles about the cost of building a swapping station and of a swap. Don’t see that it’s really worth it. People who can afford a Model S and are such a hurry to go 300-400 miles they can’t wait half hour for a charge will buy a plane ticket or get into their private plane anyway. I think attaching a cafe/restaurant to each Super charger station would be more cost effective.

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