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These stations don't get used much because Tesla sells a battery with every car they make. If the cars came without the battery, there would be a lot of demand, but would also require the infrastructure to be in place to support long range travel. It's a classic chicken and egg problem.

What Tesla discovered is that bootstrapping the battery swap infrastructure off of battery owners doesn't work, since owners are reluctant to pay for swapping out their battery over recharging the one they own.

(Although, arguably, it was also launched too early from a technology perspective.)

Yeah, I know the story. The result shouldn't surprise anyone, the swap approach works only if there are enough swap stations so that buying a battery-less car makes sense.

As long as all Teslas come pre-equipped with a very expensive battery, it makes little economic sense to let it depreciate while you are paying to use another battery.