[Veserv]

What do you mean? It did pan out for Tesla. Faking a single demo granted them 75% more ZEV emissions credit government subsidys [1]. That increased their profits by hundreds of millions of dollars.

All they had to do was go on stage and “swap” a battery without any clear video of the process and never “demonstrate” it ever again.

This is a company known for faking prominent demos like the FSD demo (where it crashed into a wall during filming), the solar roof demo (where they used regular roof tiles and claimed they were solar panels), the optimus demo (where they were teleoperated), etc.

Assuming they even did a battery swap, for which the official demo presents no clear video evidence, preferring overhead views over a close-up of the process or a glass enclosure to see the inner workings, it was at best a one-off custom-made device at the time. The one battery-swap station they claim existed has zero stories of any actual battery swaps, instead only evidence of it operating as a regular Supercharger [2].

[1] https://thewaroncars.org/episode-88-tesla-is-a-fraud-with-ed...

[2] https://slate.com/technology/2022/05/elon-musk-tesla-twitter...

[labcomputer]

They didn’t fake the demo, but the legislature quickly rewrote the law because it was intended to give Toyota ZEV credits for hydrogen cars.

Tesla did briefly operate a swap station at the site of the Harris Ranch Supercharger until California changed the rules.

There are several reports from people who used it on teslamotorsclub.com, and I saw it with my own eyes.

Hilarious that your source is Ed Neidermeyer. Perhaps the only thing more impressive than Elon’s lies about the state of self driving are Ed’s lies about how Tesla is going bankrupt Any Day Now.

It’s ok though, Ed’s stock manipulation antics enabled me to stuff my IRA with Tesla shares (since sold, when Elon went nuts) and make a nice little headway on my retirement savings.

[Veserv]

Cool. Then if you are not lying, then it should be easy to present a clear video demonstrating the automatic battery swapping machine in action and swapping out a battery in 90 seconds as claimed in the demo.

[secabeen]

Battery swap was and remains really risky for anyone doing it. You're taking a $10k asset, and swapping it for another $10k asset of unknown provenance. Does anyone really want to be in a situation where they purchase a new Tesla with a brand new, max-range battery pack, then swap it once on a road trip and get one that's been used for 300k miles and is at 75% of original capacity?

[bluGill]

The bigger risk is you need a standard battery pack. Sure you can put 3 in a truck or something, but you lose all the space that a standard battery size wouldn't fit but you can cram a cell in. Electric car design is about stuffing batteries where there is space - you need a lot of cells, but the individual cells are small.

[intrasight]

> of unknown provenance

I don't understand the comment. Of course they know where the batteries come from. They know everything about the battery.

[shawabawa3]

As long as you can always swap your battery again I don't see the problem

As long as the average battery health in the system is like 90% and the minimum is say 80% why would you care if you're getting a new battery every few days?

If anything it removes a big cause of depreciation from your car

[bluGill]

That is fine if you always are swapping. However if you normally charge at home that becomes a big deal - if your current battery wears out/fails because it has 500,000k miles on it are you out a new one? Do you pay for the tow to get to a swap station? Again, if everyone always swapped this would be easy to amortize and not a problem but the mixed use.

Of course this isn't a new problem. I know people who own their own welding gas tank - but they always swap the tank out. The place they swap at somehow handles when the tank needs to be re-certified - and people don't ask questions.

[ssl-3]

Eh?

In some mysterious future where swapping EV batteries during a road trip is a normal activity, then the battery packs won't be living in a vacuum -- their status can be known. Whether it is known by reading the pack's own electronics, by status reports from connected vehicles and charging stations, by direct measurement, or by some combination of these things: The status is knowable. It doesn't have to be a big ball of mystery.

How much value the marketplace finds in this health status is a different question. And this question is one that we cannot yet know the answer to -- this is not a reality that we presently live in.

We can speculate about how that potential future may be shaped, but that kind of speculation is kind of meritless since that version of the future may never actually happen (and at the present, it sure does seem very unlikely to happen any time soon).