After recent rumors of such an announcement, Tesla Motors founder and CEO Elon Musk has just tweeted that the company will be revealing its battery swap technology at Tesla’s design studio in California on Thursday night. Video of the event will be posted to the web soon after the demo.
There’s bound to be a lot of discussion surrounding this move by Tesla, as ambitious startup company Better Place, which focused on battery swapping for its business model, has recently filed for bankruptcy. The company didn’t manage to popularize the technology as hoped – far from it.
However, Tesla is not hinging it’s whole business on battery swapping, so there’s not so much riding on it. In fact, the company recently announced a massive and speedy expansion of its Supercharger network in North America, so battery swapping would be in addition to that method of juicing-up Tesla cars on the road.
If Tesla’s battery swapping only takes a few minutes (or less) to carry out, as it did with Better Place’s gas station-like system, it may be an added drawcard for potential and existing customers.
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