Whoopsy:
SciFrog:

Seems like an interesting idea but seems very impractical and a bad use of Tesla stretched resources. Current Teslas are not built for repetitive laps on a circuit, they are built for the road. The way they do it now seems like an appropriate amount: go to some circuits and post lap times. Maybe when the roadster comes out they will get more aggressive.

About the Urus: let’s be real, very few people are actually going to buy one. No one here yet right? Cars you like to look at and fantasize about and the ones you have in your garage are two different things. I could have an Urus in my garage today, yet I have an X and a RRS and neither of them is going anywhere.

 

Why not?

Tesla has the ambitions of doing a 'sports car'. They have zero idea on car handling and going racing will bee the perfect thing to learn a thing or 2 about handling.

With endurance racing it will also stress their systems to the max and beyond, Tesla ca find out what's bad about their engineering and improve those and hence make better road cars. 

The short comings is well known already, their cars does not handle, they are allergic to corners, their electric system cannot do sustained high discharge, recharging is still a problem. It can do maybe one, two great drag runs, but the wirings simply aren't designed for high current applications. Even those timed laps are one hit wonders, they can't do it repeatedly. A 911 can lap the same track pretty much the same lap time from full tank to empty tank. 

Endurace racing normally have a 50ish second pitstops with fuelling and tire change and driver change, so if Tesla can design a system where they change the battery pack in around the same time, or recharge their battery fully in that same time frame, then they will gain immense credibility as a car company. 

 

Surely there are things to learn there. But my point is that it is not worth the cost today for Tesla. 99.9% of the population does not car if their car can do a lap on the track. For the road, current cars are already more than enough, with the Roadster staying a big question mark in handling. Money would be much better spent on autopilot, efficiency and charging tech because that’s what will sell cars.

Tesla has demonstrated a battery swap system for the S which was automated and took about 2-3 minutes. These were abandoned as battery size creeped up while charging time dropped, making these swaps irrelevant except for service.