Tesla battery swap
 

Following the Tesla testdrives at the annual meet you might want to watch this video on youtube showing the option to swap the battery instead of waiting for it to be charged.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5V0vL3nnHY

Quite a good comparison for this demographic +++

This is exactly what you and I were talking about at the meet, at the time I didn't know that Tesla were doing this.

Once this process becomes mainstream, and even better if the various manufacturers all shared the same battery tech making it more cost effective to roll out across the country we should see the Electric car sales take off exponentially.

Better hope the Grid can keep up......

The interesting thing about mass uptake of electric vehicles is the way they could provide a place to store the excess power that comes from our power stations and wind farms. Similar to the Cruachan or Snowdonia pumped hydroelectric power stations.

Also.......
Toyota are launching a (remarkably hideous even for them) hydrogen fuel cell car.
If this approach can be made to work, and if takes off, it has the potential to be a bigger step forward than the pure electric battery cars.

The future is with us

Whoever can successfully crack hydrogen powered vehicles will make a fortune. It has to be the future.

I've been cracking methane for years :eek2:

Surely, whoever can make petrol from electricity will be the winner? :ROFL:

After all, it "should" just need CO2 from the atmosphere and water plus some energy........

Edit: It's been thought of before of course..... http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20003650

An interesting comparison

http://tonyseba.com/toyota-vs-tesla-...tric-vehicles/

20bhp more than the standard R8 V10 plus..... and still slower to 60 than the Tesla....

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Audi-R8-5-...item46381bdd08

Prettier though admittedly...

:D

Isn't the C7 RS6 we were driving on Saturday more powerful than that? 578PS vs 570?
Heavier, obviously.... but only 0.1 secs slower to 60mph.

I didn't realise the Tesla was an aluminium (or, as the Americans would say, Aloominum) vehicle, like the A8/S8.

Found this new video interesting, posted on YouTube yesterday:

How it's Made - Dream Cars - Tesla Model S
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMdZ8FCDJ9w

Just goes to show how heavy those batteries must be: Lightweight aluminium body, no big heavy engine, smaller (presumably?) than an '8 and yet it weighs, what, something like 2.2 tons?

Imagine how much faster it will be when better battery technology brings lighter batteries!

One thing I can't get my head around is that a pretty popular option on the Tesla is 21" wheels fitted with Michelin Super Sports tyres - they must suck a fair bit of range out of the batteries with the footprint and rolling resistance?!

It's all interesting and impressive but if there is no smell of petrol when ''recharging'' and exhaust fumes then I'm not interested, sorry :p

Other than that a great car +++

And that's what I said, at first. As the old saying goes, don't knock till you've tried it ;)...

Tesla do quote a slightly lower range for the 21", but only marginally so: I think this is because, as a proportion of the total battery power and overall vehicle weight (a lot of which is batteries :( ), the wheel/tyre combo only makes a marginal difference.

I was speaking to a Bosch rep a few months back who suggested that battery swapping may become more common over time -
i.e rolling out a set of battery swap points at service stations over the country.

Apparently some of the electric battery technology is so expensive that they are also looking into the cost of leasing plans for batteries

Tesla's battery is still a huge set of Panasonic cyllindric consumer batteries. Yes, Tesla buys consumer batteries from Panasonic to build their car batteries. Perhaps very smartly managed, but still a set of old small batteries. There is no real advancement in battery technology with Tesla's arrival. What humanity needs is a breakthrough in battery technology. We need batteries with 1000x capacity that are 1000x faster to charge.

Behold - radioactive decay - giving off a stream of electrons for 10 years from a grain of rice sized bit of plutonium.

It's 7104 of the below to be exact(possibly slightly modified), just in a big case with liquid cooling and battery management to ensure equal charging/discharging. If you got one of those battery banks after testdrive you have 1 of these batteries inside it.

http://forum.a8parts.co.uk/attachmen...1&d=1433419265

http://www.aliexpress.com/item/1pcs-...336569642.html

Wow. Imagine if you had to turn it upside down and replace that lot, one by one, every time it ran out of juice!


And there was I expecting to see two huge Energizer batteries underneath.

;)

There is a guy not far from me who reconditions and rebuilds batteries for hybrids so that should also be possible for Tesla even if battery is quite a bit bigger on fully electric car. http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/LEXUS-HYBR...item43dd6c2471

This from Wikipedia: 'In 2013, Tesla canceled a 40 kWh version of the car due to lack of demand, stating that only 4% of pre-orders were for the 40 kWh battery option. Customers who ordered this option instead received the 60 kWh pack, with charge software-limited to 40 kWh (142 miles). It has the improved acceleration and top speed of the bigger pack and can be upgraded to use the full 60 kWh for US$11,000'

If this is true, very cheeky from Tesla to charge $11k for software upgrade to enable extra battery capacity which is already there physically. I imagine you ring them up, give your card number, they push an upgrade through the mobile network to your car and next time you get in battery have gone from 40kWh to 60. I wonder if you can jailbrake and modify it yourself but then again that would probably void warranty.

>> It's 7104 of the below to be exact (possibly slightly modified)

Yep, they order these batteries, but without any leak/explode/foolproof protection technology in them. Just a bare battery. Protection is realised differently from the outside. Economies of scale :) But still the old battery technology. Nothing new here.

…which is why they are building the Gigafactory in Nevada:

http://www.teslamotors.com/gigafactory

Thanks for posting the battery swap video, it was impressive.
So is that a D4 they are racing against? Interesting choice, the picked a car with the biggest tank around :)

Anyway, future is cold fusion when they figure out why it works and how to mass produce the reactors.

Audi have developed mixing water with co2 taken from the atmosphere to make Desiel so it's carbon neutral depending on where you get your energy for the making of the fuel?

Iv mentioned on more than one occasion about chatting to Bosch and the proposed ideas about impressed stock in service stations, battery leasing and swapping at service stations.
That coupled with the proposed transport infrastructure of selected charging points along major roads suggests that the plan is in place for electric vehicles to be the future of motoring.

Why rely on the Grid? - with (increasingly efficient and cost effective) solar panels, combined with local storage (like Tesla's Powerwall), you don't necessarily need the Grid +++

Seemingly Tesla was not content with having the fastest accelerating 4 door production car in the world. So decided to build a even faster one! 90kw dual motor capable of 0-60 in 2.8 seconds..!!

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/0...kdailyinvestor

Is this going to be just software upgrade or software + new battery?

Is Mr Musk chasing the Veyron acceleration? I think it does 60mph in 2.4s?
Good luck to him I hope he catches it. Just goes to show how easy it is for electric cars, I mean look at what they had to do to get the Veyron to that level, crazy amounts of engineering and I don't even want to think about the maintenance, and its only a 2 seater.
Model S is a large 4-seater family car and its going to be almost as quick. Only lower top speed.

I guess that's great deal due to 1 speed gearbox, apparently they wanted to make Model S 2 speed first but backed out of it. There is no confirmed reason for it but it's widely assumed that they could not get a gearbox that would survive instant torque for continuous use in the required size/weight envelope.

Bigger battery and uprated fuses required. Definitely both retrofittable, so lots of existing owners and order holders getting very excited on the Tesla fora! +++

Hmm even more Tesla news has hit my inbox! :D

From Insane Mode to Ludicrous Speed
The most powerful Model S ever, the P90D, increases power delivery from an insane 3.1 seconds 0-60 time to a ludicrous 2.8 seconds and a sub-11 second quarter mile time.

Increase your range to 300 miles
The new extended range option is an upgrade to the battery pack energy from 85 to 90 kWh for £1,500 on new configurations, which provides about 6% increased range. This makes our longest range model, the 90D, capable of almost 300 miles of motorway range at 65mph.

Defining "fastest"...
 

and this is interesting, as a contrast to the other thread posting on "fastest" cars…

http://uk.businessinsider.com/13-sup...15-7?r=US&IR=T