Tesla To Build Its Own Battery-Swap Stations 377
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.'"
Re:Gas (Score:5, Informative)
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 [howstuffworks.com]
http://lifehacker.com/5846880/should-i-use-premium-gas-in-my-car [lifehacker.com]
Re:reclaim their original battery? (Score:4, Informative)
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? (Score:5, Informative)
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? (Score:4, Informative)
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.