Do people in spandex auits, I mwan Tesla Humanoid Robots, count as automatic?

I know this is a joke, but I'd not be surprised if they settled for pinging another person at the charging station and asking them to plug/unplug the car. Either because hype makes them want to be nice, or if they get some $FINANCIAL_VALUE for doing it.

IIRC, they did deploy that battery swap thing to some charger locations (hearsay, didn't confirm) and charged as much per swap as gassing up an SUV, plus you had to return later to get your battery back. They gave up because nobody wanted to do that.

A bunch of these claims are understandable with the tech and hype available at the time they were said, but there wasn't enough committent to follow-through. Not that it would have helped much.

The battery swap demo was essentially a subsidy scam:

> In 2013, California revised its Zero Emissions Vehicle credit system so that long-range ZEVs that were able to charge 80% in under 15 minutes earned almost twice as many credits as those that didn’t. Overnight, Tesla’s 85 kWh Model S went from earning four credits per vehicle to seven. Moreover, to earn this dramatic increase in credits, Tesla needed to prove to CARB that such rapid refueling events were possible. By demonstrating battery swap on just one vehicle, Tesla nearly doubled the ZEV credits earned by its entire fleet even if none of them actually used the swap capability.

From Ludicrous, Edward Niedermeyer