08-22-2013, 10:45 AM
Strife Wrote:Vanraw Wrote:Either way the time it takes to charge is still a major issue. Hell 10 minutes is too long.Yea, 5 minutes is about the max IMO for something like that...
The whole swap out your entire battery at a changing station sounds great... It works, it's fast... but how fucking expensive is it. Are you just renting your battery? Do you have to sign a contract that tracks which battery you have and which battery you swapped for a new one? How much are the batteries? Who buys them? The filling station? So the filling station would have to have 100's of these huge ass batteries ready to be installed in cars.
That would fix the issue with the batteries going to shit though if every time you went to the filling station you just replaced the battery for a different one. Then the filling stations would be responsible for keeping only the good batteries on supply and trashing/returning the ones that can't hold a charge anymore.
A big part of Tesla's strategy is to put charging stations at Rest areas on highways (they have 3 off I-95 in Connecticut already), so it would be a normal part of a trip to stop and get some food, use the bathroom etc. while it charges. I think you get a 70% charge in 40 minutes at the Supercharger stations. Remember, the only time you really need a charging station for a Tesla is for long trips. If you go to their site, they have a map for planned stations, with the intent by end of 2014 of having a station within max charge range anywhere in the country.