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Comment by gnode | Hacker News Reader

> didn't Elon try and shoot for a battery swap station similar to a gas station and Tesla deemed it unfeasible?

It was developed and demonstrated. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5V0vL3nnHY My understanding is that it was deemed more unnecessary than unfeasible. That it would change the battery ownership model would also create administrative complications too.

Supercharging improved to 250kW, bringing down charging times. That people need to recharge their Tesla at intervals when they should probably take a break from driving anyway, on the occasions when they take long road trips, makes it hard to justify a battery swapping program.

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A swappable battery means we're not tied to the power grid. One can load as many as possible on a pickup and use them in remote areas. Exactly what happens with petrol. Furthermore the car manufacturer loses some control, which probably is a good thing for everybody else.

It's quite a different model to petrol: the batteries themselves are very expensive, and the stored energy very inexpensive. Futhermore, the batteries degrade, losing capacity over time, making them vary in value, and non-fungible. Practically, battery swapping requires a leasing / rental scheme. Batteries can't just be sold for consumption like petrol.

Transporting batteries might make sense for some extremely remote locations with no grid access, but people don't commonly drive far away from the grid. As these batteries are very heavy, I would expect the handling involved to make this far more expensive than just charging on-site.

That seems to be the level of scale where Hydrogen Fuel Cells most make sense for interacting with cars: trucks and shipping containers that can be used to service remote areas or places the grid doesn't service well.

This sort of "mobile charging station" is probably much more convenient than the mechanical trouble of swapping a battery, especially with most of the EVs using the battery as a major part of the chassis and safety designs of the cars and the trade-offs of making them swappable aren't worth the loss of certain safety constraints.

A recent video on the subject of HFC tankers, in which Siemens and others are actually working to commercialize it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCmKAAh-vkE

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