Will Tesla Model S have battery-swapping available soon?

Last year, Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk showed how to swap a battery pack from a Tesla Model S and replace it with a new one. But, what has happened since then?

|
Lucy Nicholson/Reuters/File
People arrive to hear Tesla Motors Inc CEO Elon Musk (not pictured) demonstrate Tesla's new battery swapping program in Hawthorne, California, June 20, 2013. Since that event, the public hasn't heard much about Tesla Motors' battery-swapping program.

Exactly a year ago, Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk presided over a flashy demonstration in which the battery pack of a Tesla Model S electric car was apparently swapped from underneath within 90 seconds and replaced with a fresh pack.

The event generated a huge amount of press, and subsequent coverage explained why battery swapping was important despite the company's expanding network of Supercharger DC fast-charging sites.

Offering the ability to swap battery packs and "refuel" the car in less than 10 minutes earned Tesla extra points in the arcane world of Zero-Emission Vehicle credits administered by the powerful California Air Resources Board.

We heard very little about Tesla battery-swapping after that. And the demonstration left many questions unanswered, including how the battery pack's coolant pipes could be disconnected and reconnected in that short a time--presumably without spilling any of the battery's liquid coolant.

Then, this past April, CARB proposed changes to its rules that would have eliminated the extra credits for battery swapping that Tesla was presumably seeking.

Thus far, the only other demonstration of electric-car battery swapping has been the now-defunct Better Place service in Israel. It operated a few dozen battery-swap stations for its specially-designed Renault Fluence ZE sedans for more than a year.

Two weeks ago, Jalopnik published a story asking--in its usual pugnacious style – "Where The Hell Are Tesla's Battery-Swapping Stations?"

Which is actually a very good question.

To answer it, that story summarizes: "The short answer: it's coming. But nearly a year and a half later, and that's not even guaranteed."

Tesla's vice president of corporate development, Diarmuid O'Connell, attributed the delay in rolling out the battery-swapping stations to the fact that the company has been rather busy with several other priorities.

He also declined to discuss the cost of the proposed swapping stations, whose mechanisms are likely to cost a multiple of the $150,000 to $300,000 cost often mentioned for a Supercharger site (above and beyond the months of negotiation and paperwork before any shovels go in the ground).

Still, apparently at least one swap site is still coming: "I'd like to have something in place by the end of the third quarter," O'Connell told Jalopnik, saying the company was "in the process of developing" a location for that first battery-swapping station.

O'Connell then suggested "scenarios where a fleet operator is working with swap in a depot system," meaning the station might not even be open to the public.

Instead, perhaps a fleet operator with multiple Tesla Model S cars that stayed on the road many hours a day--taxi service, anyone?--might want to test battery swapping as a quicker alternative to recharging battery packs than the company's Supercharger DC fast-charging sites.

This is one in which we'll likely find out the next piece of news via a Tesla blog post, a tweet from Musk, or a mention in a quarterly financial report.

But it seems safe to say that, to date, little progress has been made on battery-swapping--and that the financial incentives for offering it has gone away--and that, consequently, Supercharging will remain the preferred and most common way to refresh a Tesla's range for some time yet.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Will Tesla Model S have battery-swapping available soon?
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/In-Gear/2014/0617/Will-Tesla-Model-S-have-battery-swapping-available-soon
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe