Most people today get great joy out of buying a new car if they can afford it. Our buddy Ron has a ten-year-old Tesla Model S, and rather than buying a new car, he decided to have Tesla install a brand new battery.
In our conversation, Ron explains what the original battery was and talks about the original range and how it’s degraded over the last decade. One of the big reasons to replace the battery was that the older batteries did not charge very quickly at Superchargers, but the new ones do.
While Ron doesn’t put a lot of annual miles on his car, he does go on very long road trips, including an 1,800-mile drive just this year.
Read an unedited, auto-generated transcript with chapter marks: CCATP_2026_04_01
If I remember correctly, one of Elon’s undelivered concepts for the future at Supercharger stations was battery swapping, making recharging as “easy” as swapping battery packs.