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A comment on Volkswagen, Porsche, and Audi finally say they will use Tesla's EV charging plug. Parent comment

Re:Volkswagen, Porsche, and Audi finally say they will use T... by dkbrk on Wednesday December 20, 2023 @03:33PM (#38713269)
Tesla already tried that, years and years ago. They built a fully automated battery swapping station for the Model S, as a test of concept, and nobody used it. So the program was abandoned as a complete failure, and now Tesla's newer models no longer have the capability.

In fact, Tesla's Head of Design and VP of vehicle engineering discussed this very topic just a few days ago in Jay Leno's video on the Cybertruck [0]:

[0]: https://youtu.be/BGDOKD7ZZqI?si=TR7Txex7qg5VGYar&t=3158

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Volkswagen, Porsche, and Audi finally say they will use T... by kalleboo on Thursday December 21, 2023 @08:37PM (#38729828)
> nobody used it

Nobody could use it. It was by invite-only. EV bloggers contacted them to ask if they could try it and were stonewalled. They only reason they built it was to get subsidies from a CARB program for cars that supported battery swap so they could technically say the Model S supported battery swap.

(now personally I don't think battery swap is ever going to be a solution for consumer cars [maybe for stuff like taxis or buses] but the Tesla effort did not appear to be done in good faith - I don't think they ever believed in it even when they were building it)

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