They did a demo for the Model S and there was an Israeli EV company that had a similar model, but died.
There are a few problems with the swapping idea:
- People like to have ownership over their batteries (and the battery capacity)
- Logistics around swapping availability and costs
But the biggest one is:
- Charging continues to get faster and capacity continues to increase.
Whatever small amount of time is currently saved by swapping will be irrelevant by the time anyone could overcome the current obstacles to get something off the ground - it's a bad strategic bet.