Elon "Enron" Musk, receiving transmissions from Mars
PALO ALTO, Calif. -- When it unveiled the Model S, Tesla Motors Inc. crowed about its fast-swapping technology, demonstrating in 2013 that a depleted battery could be swapped for a fresh one in minutes. Later, it built a swap station in Harris Ranch, Calif., halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco, to test the technology.
But theres a problem, Tesla CEO Elon Musk says: Customers arent interested.
People dont care about pack swap, Musk said Tuesday at the companys annual shareholder meeting. Teslas proprietary Superchargers, which can top off the battery in the Model S with 200 miles of range in about 20 minutes, are fast enough for most customers, he said, and unlike battery swaps, theyre free.
We thought people would prefer Supercharging, but we werent sure, Musk said. So thats why we built the pack swap capability in. And based on what were seeing here, its unlikely to be something thats worth expanding in the future unless something changes.
With this public reversal by Musk, battery swapping, once a promising alternative to fast charging, now seems destined to become a quirky footnote in the history of Tesla, and perhaps the entire electric-car movement.
Battery swapping was in vogue when Tesla was designing and engineering the Model S. Better Place, an Israeli startup, raised $750 million in venture capital to prove the concept, and had 200 employees at a headquarters right near Teslas offices in Palo Alto. But in 2013, the company left the U.S., and then went bankrupt.
That same year, Tesla signaled it was committed to battery-swapping. In June 2013, the company held an event at its design studio in Hawthorne, Calif., where it demonstrated a pack being swapped in 90 seconds...SNIP
...Tesla makes tens of millions of dollars per quarter by selling zero-emission vehicle credits awarded by the California Air Resources Board, which requires a share of cars automakers sell in the state to be electric vehicles. Its a small and shrinking share of Teslas revenue -- about 5 percent nowadays -- but money is money.
In 2013 and 2014, Tesla was able to claim about 75 percent more credits -- up to 7 credits per Model S instead of 4 credits per Model S -- under a fast-refueling provision that regulators had written in an attempt to give extra credit to hydrogen cars. That translated into tens of millions of dollars in extra profits...SNIP MORE:http://www.autonews.com/article/20150610/BLOG06/150619976/tesla-sours-on-swappable-batteries
Musk: The Pied Piper of Silly-Con Valley, leading the kids astray
Musk the Scam Artist Shyster got away with stealing Millions and Millions of dollars from poor and middle class taxpayers in California. Giving tax credits to rich people so they can buy $100,000 cars is a brilliant idea- if you're Elon "Enron" Musk.
Related, from 2013: The Tesla battery swap is the hoax of the year
(Someone got it back when "Enron" was channeling PT Barnum, but few bothered to listen, and many called the author all kinds of disparaging things. The last laugh is the best, no?)
The fundamental reason this blog exists is to tell the world about the fraud Tesla is committing. This has resulted in tens of millions dollars worth of fraudulent carbon credits being received by the company, and if nothing is done the tally will get into the hundreds of millions.
Published on Jun 1, 2015: Edward Niedermeyer conducted an on-the-ground inquiry into Tesla's battery swap program over the 2015 Memorial Day holiday. He found no evidence that the station in Harris Ranch, CA was actually being used to swap customer batteries. Instead, it's likely that the EV giant is taking advantage of a loophole in the California ZEV mandate to collect more than $100 million in credits.
Musk is the new PT Barnum and his Lithium Batteries are yesterday's tech. The Future is Hydrogen. Watch Japan and Germany. Or don't, I couldn't possibly care less.