Why do you think the battery swap was faked? Changing the battery is not particularly difficult and the did have shortly after have a battery swap station open to select members of the public.
I think the battery swap program was somewhat legit. The demo was live in front of a fairly big audience. They also offered the service to a small group of people and some documented the process (and weren't particularly excited by it). The station they set up wasn't automated and took about 7 minutes instead of the the 90 seconds they previewed in the tech demo.
I suspect the battery swap idea was a response to the criticism about charge times. Since most Tesla users at that time used either free supercharger stations or charged at home, the appeal of for-fee battery swaps was likely limited.
Fully agree, which is why I pointed out the station fell short of their demo in my post.
I just don't see it as being deceptive in the way rolling a truck down a hill and suggesting it's operational is. Or at the very least, we're missing the smoking gun. Perhaps it is and someone who worked at Tesla or the blogger who posted about going to the station will come out and admit it was a big fake-eroo.
Finding the hill they pushed the truck down is pretty damning IMO in a way suspicions about Tesla's tech demo aren't.
