Good News & Bad News, page-10672

Not quite the same thing but akin to this ... do you know that when buying a Renault Zoe you can choose to buy the car but lease the battery?

In terms of hot swappable batteries - I too felt that would make sense, but then I watched the last Tesla battery day presentation a couple of times and the value of having the battery part of the structural element of the car to then reduce car weight with associated reduction in cost of materials, stamping, assembly and then also result in needing a smaller capacity battery to produce the same range/performance makes me think that a hot swappable battery may not really generate the returns on cost of car/running costs that it first appears to produce. Re charging speed - I think that will start to further improve with different battery chemistry/series connected ultra capacitors and/or battery banks with multiple chargers to split the incoming charge current (or increase the acceptable charging current).

Already I think superchargers in Teslas can produce 200mile of driving distance with about 15 minutes charging. Couple that with a “million mile battery”, battery as part of structural elements of cars and I suspect hot swappable batteries become far less attractive.