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Tesla answers questions about battery swap announcement

Filed under: Emerging Technologies, EV/Plug-in, Tesla Motors, AutoblogGreen Exclusive

Tesla battery swap

After last night’s initial public demo of the Tesla Model S battery swap, we attended a small press conference with Tesla CEO Elon Musk where he answered questions about the program. You can get the early details about the swap stations in our first post and then dive into our back and forth with Tesla, below. You can also scroll down to see a video of the battery swap process in action, if you’re more of a visual learner.

Question: Will owners need to make a reservation for a battery swap?

Answer: No reservations are needed. Each of the swap sites will be stocked with enough batteries to cover demand.

Question: How many battery packs will be available at each location?

Answer: That depends purely on how frequently the station is used. For the most part, expect a swap station to stock about 50 batteries. However, busy corridors will have more and less popular stations will have fewer. The quantity will basically align proportionally with the number of Supercharger units at the station.

Question: Are the batteries at the stations all brand-new?

Answer: They will be brand-new at first. But as owners use them, they will obviously have recharging cycles on them. Each will be monitored for optimal performance, so the customer won’t have to worry about that.

Question: How much does it cost to upgrade a charging station to allow battery swapping?

Answer: It costs about $500,000 per site, and that includes digging the pit, construction and hardware. The electrical capacity is already on site (supplying energy to the Superchargers).

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Tesla answers questions about battery swap announcement originally appeared on Autoblog Green on Fri, 21 Jun 2013 14:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Tesla Model S battery swap takes just 90 seconds, will track your old battery pack

Filed under: EV/Plug-in, Tesla Motors

tesla model s

We’ll link to this 2009 post up front, just to make sure everyone’s clear that the fact that a Tesla EV can, indeed, do battery swaps is old news. Yes, four years ago, we learned the all-electric Model S was designed with battery swaps in mind. Or, as Tesla CEO said tonight, “We designed Model S from the beginning to be capable of swapping out the battery pack faster than you can fill a gas tank.” Are we clear? Good.

Still, last night’s first public demonstration of such a swap – which took place at the Tesla Design Studio in Los Angeles and involved two Model S EVs getting fresh packs before a gas car at “LA’s fastest gas station” filled up its tank with gasoline – represents a big new step in the evolving electric vehicle landscape. With the recent departure of Better Place, no one could blame you if you thought the only reasonable way to travel long-distance in an electric vehicle was to use fast charging (where there are three competing standards: CHAdeMO, SAE Combo and Tesla’s own free Supercharger network). But now Tesla has surprised us all with an official announcement about the Model S battery swap. Tesla has been hinting about the battery swap system for weeks now (1, 2), and here’s what we learned tonight.

Musk framed the choice to Supercharge or swap as one between “free or fast.” While Supercharging costs a Model S driver nothing, getting a new, fully charged battery pack will cost around the same as about 15 gallons of gas (so, let’s say around $60). Later, you can get your old pack back (again, fully charged and for another $60 fee) or you can pay an undetermined fee and keep the pack. Forbes says there will be a warranty available on the replacement pack, depending on its condition.

The pack swap stations, which cost around half-a-million dollars to build, will be installed next to Supercharger locations and will be available in busy Tesla areas, like the I5 corridor in California and between Boston and Washington, DC.

We’ll have more information later today.

Tesla Model S battery swap takes just 90 seconds, will track your old battery pack originally appeared on Autoblog Green on Fri, 21 Jun 2013 02:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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By the Numbers: The Great Long-Term Vehicle Swap of 2010

Filed under: Sedan, Subaru, Volkswagen, Diesel, Long-Term Garage

Like two ships passing in the night, our long-term 2010 Subaru Legacy 2.5GT and 2010 Volkswagen Jetta TDI Cup Street edition briefly met in person last Saturday morning before their driver – myself and Senior Editor Lavrinc – swapped keys, turned around and headed back to our respective ends of the country.

The Great Long-Term Vehicle Swap of 2010 went off without a hitch, and because we know more than a few of you are curious, you’ll find a table after the jump that shows fuel consumption results for each vehicle on my own portion of the trip. But first, here are some other interesting factoids.

Miles Traveled: 4,938 total for both vehicles
Days: 4
Hours Driven: 10+ per day, per person
Starting Points: Cleveland, OH (Neff in Legacy), San Francisco, CA (Lavrinc in Jetta)
States Neff Traveled Through: Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming
States Lavrinc Traveled Through: California, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming
Meeting Point: Cheyenne, WY

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By the Numbers: The Great Long-Term Vehicle Swap of 2010 originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 20 Oct 2010 19:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Great Long-Term Vehicle Swap of 2010

Filed under: Sedan, Subaru, Volkswagen, Long-Term Garage

Above are Autoblog’s two current long-term test vehicles, the 2010 Subaru Legacy 2.5GT and the 2010 Volkswagen Jetta TDI Sport Cup Edition. At the moment, they are separated by some 2,460 miles of road with the Legacy at my house in the Greater Cleveland area and the diesel Jetta with Senior Editor Damon Lavrinc in San Francisco. Come next Monday, they will have swapped places.

We could have called a carrier service to deliver the cars across the country. In fact, we looked into it, but who wants to pay over two grand to have a company do what we’ll gladly do for free? So myself and Lavrinc are embarking on a cross-country road trip from nearly opposite ends of the great 48 to swap these cars somewhere in the middle. We’ll both be leaving at the crack of dawn tomorrow morning and plan to return home late Monday night with different vehicles than the ones we left in.

This being my last night with the Legacy 2.5GT, I’ll sum up my feelings towards it by saying that it’s not the sporty sedan I expected. It’s not a true sports sedan at all, in fact, but more like a mid-sizer with a very comfortable ride that injects an extra element of driver involvement with its six-speed manual transmission. Unfortunately, it’s not the most precise six-speed I’ve ever rowed, but the 265-horsepower turbocharged 2.5-liter flat four-cylinder is a willing dance partner, even if the transmission occasionally has two left feet. And where else can you get a manual transmission paired with a powerful engine that starts under $30,000 in this segment? Not many places, that’s for sure.

So while Damon and I hunker down for the long haul, ask us any questions in Comments that we haven’t answered already in our updates. We’ll try to tweet answers from the road on Autoblog’s official Twitter account (@therealautoblog) or we’ll save the answers for future updates on the site.

Gallery: Review: 2010 Volkswagen Jetta TDI Cup Street Edition