Am I the only one seeing that everyone has a slightly-to-greatly different idea about how this should work? All of which makes it more complicated than the simple gas n' go paradigm it's supposed to compete with?
Battery swapping can work great for fleets. Let it out in the wild and plenty of people will complain about it. Some just to complain, some with good reason. It's not likely to succeed unless you can eliminate the good reasons. Chris On Sun, Jun 23, 2013 at 12:54 PM, <[email protected]> wrote: > A few comments: > > 1.) Managing a fleet of rental packs and owned packs: > One way to easily ensure you get your own original pack back would be to > make your first stop on a road trip be at a local swapping station. There > you could swap your say 60 kWh pack for an 85 kWh or larger pack and pay > the pack rental/usage fee. Tesla would store your original pack until your > return, or until you informed Tesla you now planned to keep the rental pack > (convert to owned), thereby releasing the owned pack into the rental pack > fleet. > > This model might also be able to support repeated swaps of the rental pack > at no additional fee or a nominal fee. A daily pack rental fee with > unlimited swaps might work. This would be like a daily car rental fee with > no miles limit. > Another approach would be the per-swap fee, and a daily pack storage fee > (for your original pack). Daily storage fee would end when you picked up > original pack or chose to keep new pack. > > 2.) Pack size/disparity between 60 kWh and 85 kWh Model S owners: > It has been suggested that it may not be 'fair' for the 60 kWh owners, or > even the grandfathered 40 kWh owners, to be able to get access to larger > than original packs. Appropriate pack swap/rental pricing should be able to > mitigate this. If pack limits are programmable within the packs, perhaps > they could be set during the rental process, with lower fees for swapping > in smaller packs. Tesla could actually build all the packs as the same > capacity and program in the usable capacity based on the rental choice. An > 85 kWh pack programmed to 60 kWh could see an extended life as it would > only have 71% of it's official capacity used on a given charge/discharge > cycle. FWIW, Tesla has announced that the 40 kWh Model S is software > limited, but actually has a 60 kWh pack in it. > > 3.) Pack return logistics: > If an original pack is dropped off at a swap station where the owner is > not likely to return to, the owner could ask that it be transported to a > nearby station he will be going to. This return logistic component might be > handled via a fleet of Tesla pack transport trucks (long distance EV > trucks, nonetheless, running off the packs being transported). The > transport trucks would also provide a supply/demand balancing solution in > case some stations are doing more swaps than others and are running low on > rental packs or storage space for owned packs. > > Or if Tesla can get route information from other Tesla drivers, it might > even be possible have these other drivers perform the transport function as > long as they understand the pack must be swapped at the next swap station > or at a particular swap station on their route. This return logistics > option might offer drivers a free or reduced cost pack swap in exchange for > them dropping off the pack as-agreed. > > 4.) Pack sizing/form factor: > The stakeboard chassis design could allow for a pack that has a swappable > component and a nonswappable component. Swappable piece would be common > sized across multiple models, and would be good for a significant range. > The nonswappable piece would permanently remain with the vehicle, and could > be placed in vehicle niches that would be unsuitable for swapping. Charging > would fill the nonswappable piece first; discharging would take from the > swappable piece first. Charge shuttling from swappable to nonswappable > might also be used. A mix of swappable and nonswappable components might > allow for both a small car and a large car to use the same swappable pack; > the large car would just have a larger nonswappable section. Or if the > swappable components were smaller units, a large car might use 3 swappable > units and a small car use 2 units. > >> >> -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://lists.evdl.org/private.cgi/ev-evdl.org/attachments/20130623/cde153be/attachment.htm> _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org For EV drag racing discussion, please use NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
