By now you’ve probably heard about the announcement of the Tesla Semi truck. Here’s Elon Musk’s tweet about it:
Tesla Semi truck unveil set for September. Team has done an amazing job. Seriously next level.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 13, 2017
Now, I had been of the mind that maybe Fuel Cells were the way to go for this type of application. They are far quicker to refuel, and after all, trucks need to be places in a timely fashion. So when I read this I was like “how are they going to make this feasible?”
But I just recently had another thought. What if instead of recharging, they merely stopped at battery-swap locations. They pull up, the machine removes the current battery pack, replaces it with a fully charged one, and they’re off again.
I know this was attempted by Tesla in the past, but seems to have been abandoned. But now I’m starting to wonder if maybe this is the secret sauce to this type of application. But such an operation would require a massive undertaking to build such locations.
I guess we’ll know for sure in September.