Frankly, neither am I. But many less people care what the latter thinks. Ahem. The LA Times’ Mr. Neil actually got to drive the prototype Model S sedan (as opposed to say gawking at it from behind velvet ropes) which he calls, “just barely ambulatory — more like a glorified golf cart than a harbinger of tomorrow tech.” Yeah, well — it’s a prototype and the production car’s a few years off. But then Dan gets to the meat of the issue: battery swapping. See, I was at the unveiling of the Model S a month back at Elon Musk’s private rocketship factory and went home with one particularly sour taste in my mouth. Jump?

Musk was talking about road trips of the future and how using 440 volts you’d be able to charge your Model S while eating lunch — a reasonable (but still a tad slow) proposition. Only Tesla now says no to 440 volt charging. So you are back to a four hour wait, assuming you can find a 220 volt plug. However, Musk also prognosticated about the ability to swap out battery packs on the fly, claiming they’ll be quicker to remove than a gas tank. That way, you’d be good to go as quickly as the swap could be accomplished. A couple of problems with that theory.

First, as Neil points out, swapping out the floor mounted batteries will be, “a daunting technical challenge that would require that the pack be a load-bearing part of the structure.” Kinda akin to changing out the chassis every couple miles. Here’s the other thing: the Model S is going to come with a bigger version of the Roadster’s 996 pound, 6,813 laptop battery array. We were quoted 1,200 pounds, and I guarentee that’s just for the smaller, 165 mile-range pack. So, um, my question is… er, how the hell do you do anything quickly with 1,200 pounds? Maybe if Musk started cloning Magnus Ver Magnuson. Which, actually, I’m not putting past him.  [Source: LA Times]