Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by makomk 4417 days ago
Interesting - if I'm reading that correctly, Tesla's battery-swap technology substantially boosted the amount of ZEV credits they obtained and could resell by allowing them to claim "fast recharging", despite the facilities to actually swap batteries never actually being available to customers.
2 comments

Yes, but to get the extra credits they only had to demonstrate battery swap with a bunch of technicians. The large automated demo they did later on wasn't for the ZEV credits.
Correct. The vehicle only needs to be able to swap, without the need to deploy the expensive ($~500K/each) battery swap stations.