First look inside Tesla's gigafactory
rgj.com
rgj.com
So that leaves the purpose of buffering solar energy collection. This dovetails with his cousin's Solar City outfit, which is growing like crazy.
I have a Solar City installation. I have no need for a battery because California makes my power company take excess juice I produce and give it back to me when I need it. The power company is effectively a big battery.
So batteries are only needed in states that don't make power companies do this. There has been a trend of states, like Nevada itself, taking back these laws. This is because it is considered a tax on homeowners who don't have solar.
Is Musk betting on the long-term demise of these laws?
1. Battery backup for homes could actually be a huge market. If you're looking at two homes, one is $500,000 and the other is $503,500 and outage-proof, which one would you buy? It's a nice feature at a relatively small price.
2. At the launch event Musk stressed the benefits of grid independence for the 3rd world. He drew an analogy with cell phones, where cell phone proliferation basically leapfrogged and obsoleted landline deployment. So in places where there is poor or no electrical grid they might jump straight to solar and batteries. (I don't know if he actually expects the 3rd world to be a significant customer base, but that's what he said.)
The Model 3 is to be unveiled at the end of the month, so Tesla is ramping up the buzz. It's their way of saying, 'See? Everything is on track!" I wouldn't be surprised if the Model 3 unveiling is just an image.
It's funny that people think the company spends no money on marketing. They're just good at modern marketing.
Forget your "/s"? They're going to have a running Model 3 at the announcement.
I guess we will see. The battery swap was also a "running" demonstration.
It's not something where you share with other people. You stop in and get a charged battery from Tesla. On your way back home, you stop again and get your original battery back, now charged.
Typically, though, the argument is that both customers and dealers will hang on to valuable good "money" (batteries) and thus the batteries likely to be exchanged will be of low quality.
So the model you describe is one in which each customer just alternates between a few batteries that essentially belong to them. It should address the quality problem, but at the expense of complicating the business of the battery depot. Treating batteries as a non-fungible commodity is a big step.
The only potential for trouble I see with Tesla's actual setup is people abusing the loaner batteries during their trip. And the batteries are so difficult to abuse I don't think it's a real problem.
There was to be the option to keep a newer battery received in a swap (for a fee) but also, somehow, always the possibility of getting your original battery back. How that would actually work if the original battery is in someone else's car half way across the country is left as an exercise!
http://www.forbes.com/sites/markrogowsky/2013/06/21/tesla-90...
Gresham's Law is about things which are fungible in some contexts but not others. If Tesla charges you a fee to keep your borrowed battery then they're never fungible so it doesn't apply.
How it works to always get your original battery back seems obvious to me: they don't put it in other people's cars, they hold on to it for you. If you decide to keep the newer battery, then your original is no longer yours, and you can't get it back anymore.
This whole thing seems like a lot of fuss about problems which are pretty easily solved, and are solved.
Contrast this with the battery swap strategy of Better Place, in which car owners don't own batteries.
The other question is how much was this "strategic threat" and how much actual plan. Something I still wonder about but if they actually start making batteries there it will answer that question too.
[1] http://www.rgj.com/story/news/2015/10/29/misdemeanor-charges...