In 2013 Elon Musk demonstrated a new feature: the battery swap for Model S. With some people complaining (as some are still complaining today) that battery recharging takes too long, Elon demonstrated that they could fully swap out a discharged battery with a fully recharged comparable Tesla battery in 90 seconds. Which is actually less time than it takes to fill the tank with gas in many comparable cars. At the time, the proposed battery swap would cost about the same as you would pay to refill a large gas tank.
Tesla offered this battery swap service in a pilot program for a couple years at a test station in Harris Ranch, CA. which is a busy Inn, restaurant, and Supercharger station midway between San Francisco and Los Angeles. The battery swap pilot program was stopped in 2015 with Tesla choosing to build more Supercharger stations across the world instead.
There was some news in 2017 when Tesla filed a patent for a mobile battery swap trailer that could be easily deployed anywhere. But outside of the patent, a functional battery swap trailer was never seen built.
https://www.torquenews.com/5474/how-can-tesla-battery-swap-work-now-after-million-mile-batteries
No comments: