http://www.torquenews.com/3618/fill-up-tesla-model-s-faster-than-gas-car A Clear way to fill up your Tesla faster than a Gas Car can with Gas By Douglas Stansfield 2015-06-05
[video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5V0vL3nnHY Tesla Model S - Battery Swap HD Official Tesla Schweiz (Community Channel) Jun 21, 2013 Will your next car be an electric one? Join the community on Fac ebook: http://fb.com/MyNextOne ] There are so many people that look at the recharging times of electric cars and swear they will never get one because of the time lag of a recharge. Even though you can fill up your Tesla Model S overnight as you sleep in your garage. Even though you can wake up with a full "tank" every single morning after a good night sleep. Even though, there is a nationwide fast charger network. Even though you can drive from Boston to Florida or from New York to California in a Tesla Model S, some people are still not satisfied with EV technology. Step back a few years and note that Better Place had a technology that was the cornerstone of that company’s business model back in the Tesla Roadster days and it seems that Tesla has embraced it. It looks like there are California Air Resources Board (CARB) credits that are being given to manufacturers that break the 15 minute “fill up” barrier to at least 85% traction pack battery state of charge. Well, leave it to some government incentives to create an impetus to actually create a faster way to re-energize the Tesla Model S (although I don’t think Tesla needed an excuse to go down this road). At this point, there is a test program being run out of California for battery swapping of Tesla S batteries. According to recent posts in social media forums it appears to be that Tesla S owners are being invited to participate and there is a fee involved to participate. According to this video of a Tesla S battery swap, the swap is faster than filling up with gas and the Model S battery was swapped out in one minute and thirty three seconds. As these tests progress, it will be interesting to see if more and more battery swapping stations will appear over time or if the Super Charger network still is the most promising technology going forward. Based on this opportunity, having the ability to swap your batteries raises a lot of questions. For example: Are the Batteries owned by the company or by the Tesla owner? Will the original battery be required to be reinstalled back in the original Tesla S it came from? Can Tesla S owners swap in a larger P85 pack for trips and then come back and swap in their original pack? Will this test roll out to the East Coast so that NJ and NY Tesla S owners can participate? All in all a very positive test program and looking forward to getting the results. [© torquenews.com] http://www.autonews.com/article/20150610/BLOG06/150619976/tesla-sours-on-swappable-batteries Tesla sours on swappable batteries Gabe Nelson June 10, 2015 'People don't care,' Musk says PALO ALTO, Calif. -- When it unveiled the Model S, Tesla Motors Inc. crowed about its fast-swapping technology, demonstrating in 2013 that a depleted battery could be swapped for a fresh one in minutes. Later, it built a swap station in Harris Ranch, Calif., halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco, to test the technology. But there’s a problem, Tesla CEO Elon Musk says: Customers aren’t interested. “People don’t care about pack swap,” Musk said Tuesday at the company’s annual shareholder meeting. Tesla’s proprietary Superchargers, which can top off the battery in the Model S with 200 miles of range in about 20 minutes, are “fast enough” for most customers, he said, and unlike battery swaps, they’re free. “We thought people would prefer Supercharging, but we weren’t sure,” Musk said. “So that’s why we built the pack swap capability in. And based on what we’re seeing here, it’s unlikely to be something that’s worth expanding in the future unless something changes.” With this public reversal by Musk, battery swapping, once a promising alternative to fast charging, now seems destined to become a quirky footnote in the history of Tesla, and perhaps the entire electric-car movement. Battery swapping was in vogue when Tesla was designing and engineering the Model S. Better Place, an Israeli startup, raised $750 million in venture capital to prove the concept, and had 200 employees at a headquarters right near Tesla’s offices in Palo Alto. But in 2013, the company left the U.S., and then went bankrupt. That same year, Tesla signaled it was committed to battery-swapping. In June 2013, the company held an event at its design studio in Hawthorne, Calif., where it demonstrated a pack being swapped in 90 seconds. Ricardo Reyes, vice president of communications at Tesla, said the company subsequently invited Model S owners in California to use Tesla’s Harris Ranch swap center during road trips. Few accepted the offer, and even fewer were repeat customers, he said in an interview Tuesday in Palo Alto. “There’s been limited use by the people we’ve invited,” Reyes said. “They say: ‘that was a cool experience, but I’m going to go back to Supercharging.” In the heyday of excitement about battery charging, Tesla also had a strong financial incentive to make the technology work. Tesla makes tens of millions of dollars per quarter by selling zero-emission vehicle credits awarded by the California Air Resources Board, which requires a share of cars automakers sell in the state to be electric vehicles. It’s a small and shrinking share of Tesla’s revenue -- about 5 percent nowadays -- but money is money. In 2013 and 2014, Tesla was able to claim about 75 percent more credits -- up to 7 credits per Model S instead of 4 credits per Model S -- under a fast-refueling provision that regulators had written in an attempt to give extra credit to hydrogen cars. That translated into tens of millions of dollars in extra profits. The board changed its rules, effective Jan. 1, so the mere ability to swap batteries was no longer enough. Tesla suddenly had to prove that actual swaps were happening if it wanted the Model S to get the same treatment as hydrogen cars like the Hyundai Tucson FCEV and Toyota Mirai. And, as Musk acknowledged Tuesday, those swaps were few and far between. So another reason to hammer away at fast-swapping was basically gone. Some cynics argue Tesla was gaming the system. I don’t see it that way. With companies like Better Place presenting another way to refuel EVs, Tesla decided to engineer the Model S with a swappable battery to hedge its bets and to show off a nifty technology. It made a logical choice: to squeeze every cent out of that technology by making sure that it qualified for California’s credits. It is ultimately customers, not regulators in Sacramento, who decide which cars are desirable. And people simply haven’t found battery swapping desirable. C’est la vie. 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