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by bpc9 4879 days ago
The article mentioned that the top-end battery weighs in at half a ton --- not exactly hot-swapping material. Also, when it comes to safety, center of gravity, chassis rigidity, etc --- I'm sure there were a myriad of engineering decisions beyond weight that go against hot swapping. And that's not even getting to added cost and logistics of maintaining a network of skilled battery swap experts, "ownership" over the batteries (e.g. who is responsible for replacing failing units if they are shared around the community of Tesla owners).

I'm probably just scratching the surface with a minute of thought. I'm sure that the folks at Telsa have been over this ground, and much more.
3 comments
CamperBob2 4879 days ago
You're right, those are all drawbacks. They all pale in comparison to the advantages, though.

Swapping my car's battery should be as big a deal as swapping the propane cylinder on my gas grill.

And yes, batteries these days are perfectly capable of monitoring themselves in a leased-usage scenario. Your laptop battery has its own CPU and EEPROM, for instance. To understand why, see any recent news story on the Dreamliner.

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eropple 4879 days ago
It would be nice, sure, but your propane cylinder doesn't cost thousands of dollars or weigh half a ton. There are physical realities to contend with.
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CamperBob2 4879 days ago
There are physical realities to contend with.

Yes, and we've just read about them in the New York Times.

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bpc9 4879 days ago
"Should" is always a tough one -- from a product design standpoint.

The tradeoffs due to price point, available technologies, time to market, etc leave a lot of "should" on the cutting floor due to compromise. I don't think we're particularly close on hot swap batteries as a stand in for real time charging while they still weigh 1000lbs.

I'm betting that folks like Telsa will drive hard on the necessary advances in battery technology over time, or energy storage technique more broadly.

Personally, I think having to swap the battery is just as stone age inefficient. I want some sort of super-capacitor with instant charge capability and fine-grained control over the energy release --- not to mention avoiding the nasty chemical mix in traditional battery tech, waste energy in the form of heat, etc.

Maybe some amalgamation of materials science, nano-tech, etc will get us there.

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tkahnoski 4879 days ago
I actually think the major thing missing here ia not swapping out the entire pack (although that would probably be more time efficient), but having some sort of emergency pack to get you that extra 5 or 10 miles you need to a charging station (or in the case of the article, release the parking brake to quicken the towing process).
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CamperBob2 4879 days ago
(or in the case of the article, release the parking brake to quicken the towing process).

Yes, that part of the article struck me as a real head-scratcher. This kind of "engineering" is becoming all too common in the auto industry, even among companies that have been around for decades and should know better.

For instance, the battery in the new-generation Porsche 911 is in the front trunk... which can only be opened electrically.

WTF, people? Are all the smart guys and gals working for Google these days, or something?

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tkahnoski 4879 days ago
I actually think the major thing missing here ia not swapping out the entire pack (although that would probably be more time efficient), but having some sort of emergency pack to get you that extra 5 or 10 miles you need to a charging station.
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