TSLA - Tesla Motors

[ERICOPOLY]

In November, I drove my Model S from Richmond, Virginia to Sacramento, California.  The trip took a total of 4 days.

 

I charged roughly every 120 miles or so.  Perhaps every other charging stop I ate a meal and didn’t spend any extra time waiting for the car to finish charging, and used the other charging stops to go for a walk.  I was driving about 700 miles per day.

 

My Tesla is 6 yrs old and had to stop every 120 miles due to the spacing of the charging stations.  I could have made it perhaps twice as far between charging stops with a 2020 Model S due to the extra range of the new cars.  That would have eliminated the waiting around during charging as most of the time would be consumed by the time to sit down and eat, use the bathroom, and go for a walk.

 

It just isn’t desirable to drive 700 miles a day with stops for only 3 minutes to fill for gas.  Get real.

[Liberty]

In November, I drove my Model S from Richmond, Virginia to Sacramento, California.  The trip took a total of 4 days.

 

I charged roughly every 120 miles or so.  Perhaps every other charging stop I ate a meal and didn’t spend any extra time waiting for the car to finish charging, and used the other charging stops to go for a walk.  I was driving about 700 miles per day.

 

My Tesla is 6 yrs old and had to stop every 120 miles due to the spacing of the charging stations.  I could have made it perhaps twice as far between charging stops with a 2020 Model S due to the extra range of the new cars.  That would have eliminated the waiting around during charging as most of the time would be consumed by the time to sit down and eat, use the bathroom, and go for a walk.

 

It just isn’t desirable to drive 700 miles a day with stops for only 3 minutes to fill for gas.  Get real.

 

They have new battery announcements coming in April. Wouldn't be surprised to see the S and X get in the 400-425 miles range. Meanwhile, the Porsche is around 200 for more money.

[ERICOPOLY]

I’m hoping their big battery announcement is to launch a battery leasing option. 

 

Knock 20% off the purchase price of the base Model 3 car and lease the battery for a monthly cost somewhat similar to paying for gas in a conventional car.

 

Then you’ll get their base Model 3 price down to around $30k.

 

The battery is obfuscating the real economics of the car vs a conventional car — people either cannot or do not want to see that.

[Liberty]

I’m hoping their big battery announcement is to launch a battery leasing option. 

 

Knock 20% off the purchase price of the base Model 3 car and lease the battery for a monthly cost somewhat similar to paying for gas in a conventional car.

 

Then you’ll get their base Model 3 price down to around $30k.

 

The battery is obfuscating the real economics of the car vs a conventional car — people either cannot or do not want to see that.

 

That'd be an interesting thing to do.

 

If I had to guess, I'd say it has something to do with Maxwell Tech's dry electrode technology (a company that Tesla acquired a little while ago).

 

Where the puck is going is that battery costs keep falling year after year and we're not close to the physical limits yet, so someday, EVs will cost basically the same as gasoline vehicles for similar range, and there'll then be absolutely no reason to buy ICE for the vast majority of people. A question of "when", not "if".

[rb]

I’m hoping their big battery announcement is to launch a battery leasing option. 

 

Knock 20% off the purchase price of the base Model 3 car and lease the battery for a monthly cost somewhat similar to paying for gas in a conventional car.

 

Then you’ll get their base Model 3 price down to around $30k.

 

The battery is obfuscating the real economics of the car vs a conventional car — people either cannot or do not want to see that.

Of course the battery is key to everything that has to do with EVs. Personally I'd like them to shrink the battery and lower the price of the car. You get other efficiencies by knocking off weight as well. It's the logical things to do, save for rednecks who worry about being left without juice on the one trip they take to Disneyland once every 5 years.

 

But I may just be a logical idiot. The success of Tesla could very well come from the giant batteries providing useless range.

[Liberty]

I’m hoping their big battery announcement is to launch a battery leasing option. 

 

Knock 20% off the purchase price of the base Model 3 car and lease the battery for a monthly cost somewhat similar to paying for gas in a conventional car.

 

Then you’ll get their base Model 3 price down to around $30k.

 

The battery is obfuscating the real economics of the car vs a conventional car — people either cannot or do not want to see that.

Of course the battery is key to everything that has to do with EVs. Personally I'd like them to shrink the battery and lower the price of the car. You get other efficiencies by knocking off weight as well. It's the logical things to do, save for rednecks who worry about being left without juice on the one trip they take to Disneyland once every 5 years.

 

But I may just be a logical idiot. The success of Tesla could very well come from the giant batteries providing useless range.

 

They used to offer smaller battery tiers, and almost everybody bought the bigger models, they stopped making them. They even just made the bigger ones and restricted them in software for a while instead of making a whole different lines for those low volumes, iirc.

 

There are downsides to smaller batteries; they go through more cycles over their lives and don't last as long, and can't provide as must peak power for acceleration or supercharge at rates as high.

 

I think Tesla knows its market well and knows that small batteries are a huge psychological barrier to most, even if in practice they'd be mostly fine. Kind of like how people buy way too much car for their real everyday needs ("but what if I ever want to go offroad or carry large furniture from the store!") and instead try to match their peak needs. Gotta sell to real people, not idealized "rational" customers.

[ERICOPOLY]

True, the customer may only need the added range every five years .  Regardless, the extra range takes pressure off the reliance on the Supercharger network.

 

For example, if range were 700 miles it would eliminate the need for most of their costly charging stations.

 

As the battery range grows, the company’s costs drop.

[rb]

True. But the consumer cost increases. Charging stations may not be cheap, but I'm sure it's cheaper than x00,000 units x 1/2(cost of battery).

[StevieV]

I think Tesla knows its market well and knows that small batteries are a huge psychological barrier to most, even if in practice they'd be mostly fine. Kind of like how people buy way too much car for their real everyday needs ("but what if I ever want to go offroad or carry large furniture from the store!") and instead try to match their peak needs. Gotta sell to real people, not idealized "rational" customers.

 

Seems rational to me to buy a vehicle suited to peak needs.  Perhaps people overestimate their peak needs or how often they'll hit that peak, but makes total sense to buy something that meets actual peak needs.

[Kaegi2011]

I'm surprised to see nobody adopting the Better Place model where you can physically swap standardized battery packs on the go.  It eliminates the ownership of battery issue that Eric referenced, and it gets rid of any range anxiety b/c a swap can literally take 5 minutes and viola, you get another 300 miles.  I'm sure there are reasons why it hasn't been adopted that I'm not aware of (technology not working well across different platforms, etc.), but that seems intuitive to me. 

[rb]

I think Tesla knows its market well and knows that small batteries are a huge psychological barrier to most, even if in practice they'd be mostly fine. Kind of like how people buy way too much car for their real everyday needs ("but what if I ever want to go offroad or carry large furniture from the store!") and instead try to match their peak needs. Gotta sell to real people, not idealized "rational" customers.

 

Seems rational to me to buy a vehicle suited to peak needs.  Perhaps people overestimate their peak needs or how often they'll hit that peak, but makes total sense to buy something that meets actual peak needs.

It may seem rational to you, but in fact it's not rational at all.

 

If I need to move a bunch of furniture or whatever, I'll just rent a van, or pay for delivery. I don't buy and drive a van for 10 years. That's why those business establishments exist - because that's the rational thing, and the efficient thing to do.

[rb]

I'm surprised to see nobody adopting the Better Place model where you can physically swap standardized battery packs on the go.  It eliminates the ownership of battery issue that Eric referenced, and it gets rid of any range anxiety b/c a swap can literally take 5 minutes and viola, you get another 300 miles.  I'm sure there are reasons why it hasn't been adopted that I'm not aware of (technology not working well across different platforms, etc.), but that seems intuitive to me.

I've heard from somewhere a while back that the system is pretty popular in Israel. But I don't see it working in the current iteration of EVs for a couple of reasons.

 

1. For it to work, the battery should be generic. If the battery is the most important thing in the EV, then all the manufacturers will fight the model like crazy.

 

2. In the large range vehicles like Teslas and most of all that's coming to market the battery is large. More importantly it is very heavy. That means it has to sit low on the vehicle, otherwise it's makes the vehicle unstable. So long story short, you can't easily swap it.

[Castanza]

I think Tesla knows its market well and knows that small batteries are a huge psychological barrier to most, even if in practice they'd be mostly fine. Kind of like how people buy way too much car for their real everyday needs ("but what if I ever want to go offroad or carry large furniture from the store!") and instead try to match their peak needs. Gotta sell to real people, not idealized "rational" customers.

 

Seems rational to me to buy a vehicle suited to peak needs.  Perhaps people overestimate their peak needs or how often they'll hit that peak, but makes total sense to buy something that meets actual peak needs.

It may seem rational to you, but in fact it's not rational at all.

 

If I need to move a bunch of furniture or whatever, I'll just rent a van, or pay for delivery. I don't buy and drive a van for 10 years. That's why those business establishments exist - because that's the rational thing, and the efficient thing to do.

 

Seems more rational to ask your friend or coworker if you can borrow their pickup. Usually comes with free labor and doesn’t cost much more than a 6-pack  :P

[ERICOPOLY]

I'm surprised to see nobody adopting the Better Place model where you can physically swap standardized battery packs on the go.  It eliminates the ownership of battery issue that Eric referenced, and it gets rid of any range anxiety b/c a swap can literally take 5 minutes and viola, you get another 300 miles.  I'm sure there are reasons why it hasn't been adopted that I'm not aware of (technology not working well across different platforms, etc.), but that seems intuitive to me.

I've heard from somewhere a while back that the system is pretty popular in Israel. But I don't see it working in the current iteration of EVs for a couple of reasons.

 

1. For it to work, the battery should be generic. If the battery is the most important thing in the EV, then all the manufacturers will fight the model like crazy.

 

2. In the large range vehicles like Teslas and most of all that's coming to market the battery is large. More importantly it is very heavy. That means it has to sit low on the vehicle, otherwise it's makes the vehicle unstable. So long story short, you can't easily swap it.

 

Battery swapping was a design goal of Model S and X.  They positioned the battery so that it could be swapped in minutes.

 

https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-shuts-down-battery-swap-program-for-superchargers/

[rb]

I think Tesla knows its market well and knows that small batteries are a huge psychological barrier to most, even if in practice they'd be mostly fine. Kind of like how people buy way too much car for their real everyday needs ("but what if I ever want to go offroad or carry large furniture from the store!") and instead try to match their peak needs. Gotta sell to real people, not idealized "rational" customers.

 

Seems rational to me to buy a vehicle suited to peak needs.  Perhaps people overestimate their peak needs or how often they'll hit that peak, but makes total sense to buy something that meets actual peak needs.

It may seem rational to you, but in fact it's not rational at all.

 

If I need to move a bunch of furniture or whatever, I'll just rent a van, or pay for delivery. I don't buy and drive a van for 10 years. That's why those business establishments exist - because that's the rational thing, and the efficient thing to do.

 

Seems more rational to ask your friend or coworker if you can borrow their pickup. Usually comes with free labor and doesn’t cost much more than a 6-pack  :P

 

Continuous improvement. I love it!

[Liberty]

I think Tesla knows its market well and knows that small batteries are a huge psychological barrier to most, even if in practice they'd be mostly fine. Kind of like how people buy way too much car for their real everyday needs ("but what if I ever want to go offroad or carry large furniture from the store!") and instead try to match their peak needs. Gotta sell to real people, not idealized "rational" customers.

 

Seems rational to me to buy a vehicle suited to peak needs.  Perhaps people overestimate their peak needs or how often they'll hit that peak, but makes total sense to buy something that meets actual peak needs.

 

Not that rational if those peaks are really rare and it's fairly easy to meet those peak needs in other ways, such as by borrowing or renting or getting things delivered or whatever. Better than paying for too much vehicle and polluting more the other 364 days of the year.

[Liberty]

I'm surprised to see nobody adopting the Better Place model where you can physically swap standardized battery packs on the go.  It eliminates the ownership of battery issue that Eric referenced, and it gets rid of any range anxiety b/c a swap can literally take 5 minutes and viola, you get another 300 miles.  I'm sure there are reasons why it hasn't been adopted that I'm not aware of (technology not working well across different platforms, etc.), but that seems intuitive to me.

 

Tesla did it in 2013. They built it in the Model S, because they didn't know what would take off, Supercharging or battery-swapping. Turns out, Supercharging was better and almost nobody did battery swapping.

 

[LC]

I'm surprised to see nobody adopting the Better Place model where you can physically swap standardized battery packs on the go.  It eliminates the ownership of battery issue that Eric referenced, and it gets rid of any range anxiety b/c a swap can literally take 5 minutes and viola, you get another 300 miles.  I'm sure there are reasons why it hasn't been adopted that I'm not aware of (technology not working well across different platforms, etc.), but that seems intuitive to me.

I've heard from somewhere a while back that the system is pretty popular in Israel. But I don't see it working in the current iteration of EVs for a couple of reasons.

 

1. For it to work, the battery should be generic. If the battery is the most important thing in the EV, then all the manufacturers will fight the model like crazy.

 

2. In the large range vehicles like Teslas and most of all that's coming to market the battery is large. More importantly it is very heavy. That means it has to sit low on the vehicle, otherwise it's makes the vehicle unstable. So long story short, you can't easily swap it.

 

Battery swapping was a design goal of Model S and X.  They positioned the battery so that it could be swapped in minutes.

 

https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-shuts-down-battery-swap-program-for-superchargers/

 

This is another reason Tesla and the auto industry should be sharing (i.e. licensing from Tesla) battery tech. Shared tech means shared battery design, which allows EVs of different makes/models to swap identical batteries. This in turn allows easier buildup of an EV charging network which increases adoption of EVs in general. Increased adoption = everyone wins.

[Kaegi2011]

I'm surprised to see nobody adopting the Better Place model where you can physically swap standardized battery packs on the go.  It eliminates the ownership of battery issue that Eric referenced, and it gets rid of any range anxiety b/c a swap can literally take 5 minutes and viola, you get another 300 miles.  I'm sure there are reasons why it hasn't been adopted that I'm not aware of (technology not working well across different platforms, etc.), but that seems intuitive to me.

I've heard from somewhere a while back that the system is pretty popular in Israel. But I don't see it working in the current iteration of EVs for a couple of reasons.

 

1. For it to work, the battery should be generic. If the battery is the most important thing in the EV, then all the manufacturers will fight the model like crazy.

 

2. In the large range vehicles like Teslas and most of all that's coming to market the battery is large. More importantly it is very heavy. That means it has to sit low on the vehicle, otherwise it's makes the vehicle unstable. So long story short, you can't easily swap it.

 

Better Place was started in Isreal, from what I remember.  On your comments:

 

1) Wouldn't it eventually get there anyway?  I mean I know certain people swear by Shell/BP/whatever gas b/c it's special, but at the end of the it all works.  Why shouldn't batteries be different in the long run?

2) That seems like an easy solve to be honest (see video posted a few posts later)

[Kaegi2011]

I'm surprised to see nobody adopting the Better Place model where you can physically swap standardized battery packs on the go.  It eliminates the ownership of battery issue that Eric referenced, and it gets rid of any range anxiety b/c a swap can literally take 5 minutes and viola, you get another 300 miles.  I'm sure there are reasons why it hasn't been adopted that I'm not aware of (technology not working well across different platforms, etc.), but that seems intuitive to me.

 

Tesla did it in 2013. They built it in the Model S, because they didn't know what would take off, Supercharging or battery-swapping. Turns out, Supercharging was better and almost nobody did battery swapping.

 

Thanks for posting it.  I had no idea it existed. 

 

This seemed awesome and I'm not sure why it wasn't more popular.  I wonder if it would've worked better had there been a battery leasing program (vs. buying the battery attached to the car)?  If we agree on the premise that battery tech is only going to get better over time, why would one want to buy vs. lease, with the added benefit of a much shorter swap time vs. charging?  Anyway, the market spoke so I don't want to belabor the point, but it does seem a little odd that it never got further.

[Liberty]

Battery swapping is a transitional fossil. Won't be there in the future (at least not for mainstream use -- maybe for some specialized uses, maybe for large semi trucks?). Too many reasons why it's a worse idea than alternatives. Tesla could even attempt to do it just because they control every aspect of the vehicle and station, but doing it across manufacturers and vehicle models would be a nightmare. Imagine the stockpile of heavy batteries you'd have to have on hand to be able to service all kinds of models of vehicles, having to build hundreds of expensive robotized stations that might have operations problems in every large city. Imagine how some vehicles would have really dirty and corroded undersides, how much trouble you'd be if a fire started in a damaged battery pack stored right next to hundreds of other battery packs, how some people would try to do fraud by swapping crappy batteries for new ones by hacking into the metadata on batteries, etc.

 

Much much much easier to just do fast charging.

[Kaegi2011]

Battery swapping is a transitional fossil. Won't be there in the future (at least not for mainstream use -- maybe for some specialized uses, maybe for large semi trucks?). Too many reasons why it's a worse idea than alternatives. Tesla could even attempt to do it just because they control every aspect of the vehicle and station, but doing it across manufacturers and vehicle models would be a nightmare. Imagine the stockpile of heavy batteries you'd have to have on hand to be able to service all kinds of models of vehicles, having to build hundreds of expensive robotized stations that might have operations problems in every large city. Imagine how some vehicles would have really dirty and corroded undersides, how much trouble you'd be if a fire started in a damaged battery pack stored right next to hundreds of other battery packs, how some people would try to do fraud by swapping crappy batteries for new ones by hacking into the metadata on batteries, etc.

 

Much much much easier to just do fast charging.

 

I'm a car guy and love wrenching on my cars as a hobby, so from an engineering perspective I think it's not all that difficult to have standardized bays for battery packs, etc.  Having said that, I do think it may be difficult to make swapping convenient for consumers if different companies own their own packs (even if they're the same), and one can only swap packs at their stations.  That may negate a lot of the benefits when the alternative is to plug it into the garage most of the time and a Supercharger or equivalent when traveling long distances.  In any case, it seems like market is clearly going in one direction so it's all hypothetical now. 

[bizaro86]

Battery swapping is a transitional fossil. Won't be there in the future (at least not for mainstream use -- maybe for some specialized uses, maybe for large semi trucks?). Too many reasons why it's a worse idea than alternatives. Tesla could even attempt to do it just because they control every aspect of the vehicle and station, but doing it across manufacturers and vehicle models would be a nightmare. Imagine the stockpile of heavy batteries you'd have to have on hand to be able to service all kinds of models of vehicles, having to build hundreds of expensive robotized stations that might have operations problems in every large city. Imagine how some vehicles would have really dirty and corroded undersides, how much trouble you'd be if a fire started in a damaged battery pack stored right next to hundreds of other battery packs, how some people would try to do fraud by swapping crappy batteries for new ones by hacking into the metadata on batteries, etc.

 

Much much much easier to just do fast charging.

 

I think the only way it works is if you lease identical/commodity batteries to everyone. Tesla maybe could have gone with this model and built enough scale that other would have followed it, especially if they spun out the battery owner as a separate manufacturer-neutral firm. But its almost certainly too late for that now.

[StevieV]

Seems rational to me to buy a vehicle suited to peak needs.  Perhaps people overestimate their peak needs or how often they'll hit that peak, but makes total sense to buy something that meets actual peak needs.

 

I don't care if I convince anybody, but thought I'd expand on my statement quoted above.

 

It often makes sense to build or buy something to meet peak rather than usual usage.  In some cases it is obvious.  Who wants to drive across a bridge designed to hold an average load, instead of a peak rush-hour load.  The electrical grid needs to be designed to handle a peak load on the hottest dozen days of summer, not just an average load.

 

Same can be true of purchases.  I have a guest bedroom in my house.  It is useful for the "peak" 20-30 days a year we have people staying there, even if it is not needed most of the time.  There are convenience and other benefits in addition to the economics of simply not needing a hotel room for guests.

 

Turning to a vehicle, seems to make sense to me to buy something that meets peak needs.  Someone may usually only drive 15 miles at 45 mph with no passengers, but weekly or monthly drive longer ranges with 6 in the car.

 

Someone may use a vehicle during the week only for commuting and not need any particular range, hauling or truckbed for those times, but have more demanding monthly uses.  Most will choose a vehicle that meets those monthly "peak needs."  Might be ok to ask a friend to borrow their truck or to rent a vehicle every once in a while, but I wouldn't want to do that monthly.

 

Certainly, some people may over-estimate their peak needs.  Some people may also buy for some type of extreme peak need that doesn't occur often enough to be considered.

 

However, I think the idea of buying a vehicle that meets peak needs rather than usual or typical usage makes a lot of rational sense.  Would it be rational to buy a bus because I might sometime want to haul 20 people?  No.  Would it be rational to buy a minivan because I occasionally but regularly take road trips with 6?  Seems rational to me.

[Liberty]

I'm a car guy and love wrenching on my cars as a hobby, so from an engineering perspective I think it's not all that difficult to have standardized bays for battery packs, etc.

 

Do you know how big the batteries are in an EV like a Tesla, and how important it is for that battery to be well protected from impacts? This isn't like changing the 12v lead-acid in a gasoline car. This is taking apart a major part of the mass of the vehicle that happens to contain a lot of potential energy and is connected via high-current cables that need to be disconnected and reconnected flawlessly every time, as well as all the shielding that comes with the underside of the battery.