SAN CARLOS, California — Tesla Motors Chairman and CEO Elon Musk says the automaker is studying ways to tackle the problem of "range anxiety" in electric vehicles such as the upcoming Model S sedan, including a battery pack that consumers "can swap out."
Musk made the revelation in a wide-ranging interview with The Deal.com, in which he also explained the thinking behind dumping Tesla Motors Co-Founder Martin Eberhard earlier this year.
"[He] was definitely not the right person [for the job]," said Musk, 37, who is best known as the founder of PayPal Inc. "We discovered that Martin was wrong about important elements of the business. He had misled us about the cost of the [Tesla Roadster] and the time frame of when it could go into production."
As of Tuesday morning, Eberhard had yet to fire back on his blog.
Musk said his immediate challenges are "get to cash-flow positive, reach profitability in the core business, continue developing the Model S, get the DOE [U.S. Department of Energy] loan guarantee and go public."
In the meantime, he said Tesla may address the issue of "range anxiety," the concern that all-electric vehicles can only travel about 300 miles on a charge, with such things as a "battery pack you can swap out, like you would with a laptop.
"It would be done mechanically and it would be done faster than you can fill a car with gasoline," he explained. "There's also a fast-charge capability so that a battery could be recharged in 45 minutes instead of three and a half hours.
"Say you were driving from L.A. to San Francisco, which is 400 miles. By 300 miles, I'm sure you need a bathroom break or a meal break. So you go to a fast-charging station that's near a selection of restaurants and other amenities. You stop for a meal or a cup of coffee, come back in 15 minutes and you've charged the battery for another 100 miles."
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