Elon Musk said that the Tesla Model S battery swap program, in which owners can switch depleted battery packs for new ones in just 90 seconds, may itself be running out of juice. This comes from observations at a single Supercharger station between Los Angeles and San Francisco, the first to offer battery swap.
“People don’t care about pack swap,” the Tesla CEO said during the company’s annual shareholder meeting on June 9. It seems that the battery swap, which was created as an alternative to the much longer time it takes to recharge a road-tripping Tesla at a Supercharger, hasn’t been very popular. Superchargers seem quite convenient enough for EV drivers on long trips. What began as an experiment (“we weren’t sure”) seems to have come to a conclusion: it might not be profitable for Tesla to expand the battery swap.
Tesla might pull the plug on battery swap tech: “Superchargers are fast enough”
Tesla’s battery swap tech, which allows Model S owners to switch out their depleted battery pack in just 90 seconds, could be dead on arrival. While Supercharging is free, Tesla planned to charge “slightly less than a full tank of gasoline for a premium sedan” for a battery swap. To back-seat …
