Tesla has previously made headlines for its unique battery-swap program allowing Model S owners to replace their depleted pack with a new, fully charged unit in as little as three minutes.
However, according to The Verge, CEO Elon Musk said during a shareholders' meeting that there is a very low take rate for the pack swap station already in place.
“We did an initial round of invitations, where we did basically like 200 invitations, and I think there were a total of four or five people that wanted to do that, and they all did it just once. So, okay, it's clearly not very popular,” he admitted. “And then we said, okay, let's expand that invitation to all customers, but I would expect that all customers roughly behave like that initial sample group.”
In fact, Musk bluntly said that people don't care about the battery swap system, mainly because Tesla's Superchargers are fast enough already and charging is free, whereas a new battery pack costs about the same as a full tank of gas.