Tesla unveils 90 second battery swap
 

For $50 bucks. Interesting, mainly because this means that you really may not need to worry about "replacing" your battery when it wears down. Everyone shares batteries, and Tesla covers the cost of replacing it if they are going to swap batteries like that.

http://money.cnn.com/2013/06/21/auto...source=cnn_bin

Have to see how this works out. The idea of battery swapping or battery leasing is not new. The issue is that if you are going across country these stations need to be right off the highway at convenient locations. Why would you want to drive 10 miles or more out of your way to continue to drive another 200? Sounds good on paper but I'll wait for the real deal to see how it works out.

Consider how many cars can fill up at a gas station any given day. Will Tesla be able to store 1,000 or more batteries? Or worse, with on 20,000 Teslas on the road can a station stay in business swapping only a couple of packs per day?

You wouldn't need a whole station. Just train a person at an already operating charging station. Better yet, train people at existing gas stations how to do it.

A nice step forward. In my opinion the future of electric vehicles lies in this technology.

http://grist.org/list/liquid-battery...three-minutes/

It will be a while before such a thing is viable for automotive, but it would make for a pretty smooth transition if they can retrofit current gasoline pumps.

I think the bigger issue would be managing where all the batteries need to be shipped as batteries will migrate away from more remote locations. You wouldn't need a huge stock of batteries, mainly because there will likely be a system for recharging them, and it's likely most people will still choose to charge using the quick charge method.

It'll be interesting to see what happens.