alt Hacker NewsThey're not afraid of doing tricks in front of live audience either. Look at the battery swap event. No camera placed anywhere near where the "swap" was happening for a few minutes. Then the car drove off Wow! Amazing! And they never talked about battery swap again
Replies
ZeroGravitas • last Friday at 4:19 PM
They got about $300 million in extra regularory credits for that demo. The government shut the loophole in 2014 after it became obvious Tesla was faking it and no real Tesla drivers were benefiting.
fwip • last Friday at 6:04 PM
Or the continued use of tele-operators for all of their humanoid robotics demos.
➕ show 1 reply
They never talked about battery swap again because DC fast charging got fast enough to eliminate that hassle.
Meanwhile Chinese EV maker Nio has built over three thousand battery swap stations. We can speculate all we want about Tesla's motives, endlessly entertaining as that is, but the fundamental idea was sound.