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Comment by JoeAltmaier | Hacker News Reader

I saw it and wondered "what about dirt"? Dust, gravel, spilled oil, the stray coke can. Rain (yes it does sometimes rain in California). This is a fine stage demo, but really? We're talking enormous sealed electric bombs, swapped out by automated wrench and jack platforms, then a subterranean battery-storage-and-recharge system. The bigger technology than 'doing it at all' is 'keeping it working under environmental conditions'. Any info about that?

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FWIW, GM conducts full submersion tests on their batteries. I would hope Tesla does the same.

These things are in the floor of a car. I would imagine cars deal with much worse environmental conditions than a dedicated battery swapping station.

Please, you think they haven't thought of those problems? I'm sure it's a sealed system designed for real-world use. Otherwise why would they even create it?

You could say the same about the car itself, but that appears to work just fine in the elements.

Generally, doing open-heart surgery on a car requires a clean environment, a careful mechanic, and lots of attention to detail. A subterranean automated wrench platform is a whole 'nother thing.

There are many words I'd use to describe an auto-shop. Clean is not among them.

A good shop is clean. Not hospital room clean, not eat-off-the-floor clean, but clean. Floors swept and rinsed, fluids captured in drain pains, etc.

This changing station could well be inside such a tidy and enclosed area at the Tesla Station.

Its supposed to be drive-thru. If its not, then add opening the garage door (one coming, one going) and waiting in line to the supposed 90-second swap time.

These are literally all engineering problems that can and have been solved. You have no idea what you're talking about as it applies to this situation.

I am an engineer, and I am a driver. What else do I need to be?

An engineer at Tesla, who has actually worked on the problem, rather than someone who believes he has enough information to make a judgement on a problem which you have not studied or thought about for more than a few minutes. /internetproblems

I'm out, this argument is pointless.

As with most high tech, these problems were worked out by military applications at taxpayer expense. Better Place (the Israeli predecessor to this) based their swap stations on the tech used to load bombs onto jets. No doubt Tesla is standing on those shoulders.

It's probably reasons like those -- and other challenges, like actual installation -- that are keeping them back from announcing these stations as being available rather than just planned for an unknown point in the future, which is all we learned today.

I don't doubt they have all of those issues covered, but was looking at some of the damage reports from Hurricane Sandy on the subway in Manhattan and thought "hmm if a surge of saltwater submerged one of these things you would only have a limited time to get it un-submerged before the saltwater got into the packs. When that happened you'd be in a world of hurt.

There was some drama about a bunch of Fisker EVs catching fire[1] after immersion, but apparently[2] not (directly) battery-related.

Offhand, I'm not sure if the specific battery chemistry requires vents for in/out-gassing, or whether you could reasonably fully seal them. Or I suppose you could[3] have the battery pack detect such a condition and use its power to electrolyse some water to keep the pack at positive pressure. Or maybe some kind of self-destruct that dumps the stored energy into a chemical reaction or passivates the cells somehow (wave hands)

[1] http://jalopnik.com/5956179/more-than-a-dozen-fisker-karma-h...

[2] http://www.motorauthority.com/news/1080277_fisker-determines...

[3] points will be awarded for the number of different ways this is a bad idea

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