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Tesla To Build a Rapid-Charging Station Between LA and SF
thecarchik writes "Earlier this year at the official launch of the 2012 Model S Sedan, Musk said that Tesla was planning on installing ultra-rapid charging stations along major arterial freeways such as the I-5 between Canada and Mexico, but declined to give specifics. But in an official Tesla earnings call last week, Musk let slip where the first of these ultra-rapid charging stations would be: somewhere between San Francisco and Los Angeles. However, even by the shortest route, the distance between the two cities is nearly 400 miles, meaning that an equidistant SuperCharger would be no use to owners of Model S sedans with smaller 160 or 230-mile battery packs."
Because LA sucks.
I eat only the real part of complex carbohydrates.
This is a pretty important quote from TFA missing from the summary:
And while most of Teslaâ(TM)s current orders are for Model S Sedans complete with 300-mile battery pack option, expect Tesla to install multiple SuperChargers along the I-5 route to cater for drivers of lower-range Model S sedans.
So while an charging station placed exactly half-way between LA and San Francisco would be of limited utility to some Tesla owners, it would serve most buyers of the Model S sedan...
How would an equidistant supercharger (thus, one that is 200 miles from each of two points, themselves 400 miles apart) fail to help drivers with cars that have a 230 mile range?
You have to build the first one somewhere.
Did he say 'directly in the middle of the I-5 route between LA and SF."?
it's so strange to have access to some basic maths, to have done vehicle simulations and also have an environmentally-friendly hat on, it catches me unawares when i see things like this. i have to double-take for a second, because it's so incredibly strange for EVs to have on-board either high-explosive materials (lithium) or highly toxic metals (nickel) in such huge quantities, i really can't understand why people don't understand that batteries are a storage mechanism not a power source, and don't design vehicles accordingly.
there's quite a lot involved, so please forgive me dear slashdot reader for not cut/pasting it all here - here's a link http://lkcl.net/ev to relevant articles and so on. some insights are also on http://hybridcar.com/
They'd better build one one the Top Gear test track. Hammerhead is half way, isn't it?
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
How would an equidistant supercharger (thus, one that is 200 miles from each of two points, themselves 400 miles apart) fail to help drivers with cars that have a 230 mile range?
Good question. That quote was directly from TFA.
That said, there could be a couple of reasons that the drive from LA to San Francisco is not equal in energy use to other drives of a similar length. LA and San Francisco are separated by mountains -- it's not a perfectly flat route.
Additionally, there energy-consuming traffic on both ends of the route.
Finally, few drivers of the LA-SF route are likely to be driving downtown LA to downtown San Francisco. I would guess that many owners of the Model S will live in the upper-income suburbs, some of which are south or west of Los Angeles or in the case of San Francisco, in the North Bay.
Methinks you might want to start by actually turning out some of those promised cars first.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Doesn't sound smart to equip these vehicles with a proprietary connector. Why not have a standardized connector, and sell more vehicles ?
However, even by the shortest route, the distance between the two cities is nearly 400 miles, meaning that an equidistant SuperCharger would be no use to owners of Model S sedans with smaller 160 or 230-mile battery packs.
Wake up, it isn't about usefulness. It's about hype.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Good for you. A Civic is nothing like a model S. One day the electric car that fits your needs will exist, this is a stepping stone to that day. Only the cheapest Model S would need 3 charges to cover that distance, most orders are for a model that only need 1 recharge.
You almost sound like an old GM commercial. When the others were bragging about their fuel economy GM was bragging on how far you can go on a tank of gas AKA bad fuel economy but much bigger tanks.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
In mountain driving. As one who has made the drive in question dozens of times, I'm immediately thinking about The Grapevine, aka the Tejon Pass
Can a Tesla even make it from Magic Mountain to Bakersfiled with that kind of mountainous driving? I think you'd need at least 3 charging stations, one on the San Juaquine side of the Grapevine, and one on the Los Angeles side of the Grapevine, then one somewhere in the middle of the San Juaquine valley.
Still, at the current rate it takes an hour for a 300 mile recharge. That's quite a long time to be waiting.
You almost sound like an old GM commercial. When the others were bragging about their fuel economy GM was bragging on how far you can go on a tank of gas AKA bad fuel economy but much bigger tanks.
You think a Civic has bad fuel economy?
I once ran my Civic 426 miles on a tank. I cheated though. It was a downhill run from the Sierras. There was somebody with me when I did it, and we still talk about that ride. The mileage might have been higher if it hadn't been for road construction in a rural area that required a Caltrans escort through a mile of dirt road!
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Compared to a plug in electric car? yes.
Sure, but if you could charge more often that would be fine. A 15-30 minute break every 100 miles is something you will want to do anyway most of the time. Driving for more than 2 hours without a break is generally a bad idea. When I do drives like that we usually swap drivers, pee, buy gas, get a soda, etc every couple hours.
Yes, and more importantly, the main story is that they are planning on building them all along I-5, this is just the first one. So people with other Teslas models will have to wait a few more months before they can get from SF to LA. OMG electric cars are a failure !!1!1!
Every post that slashdot has accepted from thecarchick driving traffic to thegreencarreport has been full of misinformation and FUD. You would think that slashdot might get tired of being played for fools but apparently not.
I've about had it with this site. I swear that this is the only reason I have had to visit slashdot the last several years. I should just admit that it is a harmful habit and leave.
How long would it take to charge and how many charging stations would there be? If it takes an hour to charge, and all the charging stations are full, you could end up waiting quite a while...
Not really fun if you've got a bunch of kids in the back.
Tesla: For people with too much disposable income who want to look like they care about the environment.
. A 15-30 minute break every 100 miles is something you will want to do anyway most of the time.
say what?
"His name was James Damore."
In mountain driving. As one who has made the drive in question dozens of times, I'm immediately thinking about The Grapevine, aka the Tejon Pass
Can a Tesla even make it from Magic Mountain to Bakersfiled with that kind of mountainous driving? I think you'd need at least 3 charging stations, one on the San Juaquine side of the Grapevine, and one on the Los Angeles side of the Grapevine, then one somewhere in the middle of the San Juaquine valley.
The nice thing about mountains is that, for an electric car, pretty much all the energy you use going up you get back on the way down. Assuming it can make it to the top of the pass, shouldn't limit the range too much as it will be a (mostly) free ride on the way down.
This is true, hadn't thought about that. :)
Tesla cars use batteries, and as much as I love electric cars, I have stopped getting excited about such stories for several reasons:
1. They use Li-ion batteries, which means they will degrade at the same pace as those in my laptop. The horror.
2. Their idea of an "ultra-rapid" charge is one that takes "under an hour". This is a huge problem. Even if the range could be extended to the point where you can drive from LA to 15 min outside of SF, you would still need to stop for an hour to refuel before driving that last 15 min.
3. The price. Because of the above problems, they are unpopular, which prevents any benefits from economies of scale.
This story isn't about fuel cells so I will avoid talking too much about them, but I really believe they are the way forward. Yes, they have their own problems and could benefit from some advances in catalyst technology, but they are unaffected by the range/refueling problem. Also, once you buy one it's final, none of this taking the car in every few years to replace what is essentially the entire price of the car.
Compared to a plug in electric car? yes.
I guess the miles per gallon becomes infinite when you're stuck in the middle of nowhere because the battery went flat.
The ultimate addition would be partially subsidized charging lanes along major interstate highways. The major issue right now with pure-electric vehicles is their poor range; if the highways were powered, this would be a greatly reduced problem. I foresee solar-powered induction chargers, even if they are pay per use. I could imagine driving through the midwest between say LA and Dallas, or San Francisco and Vegas, on a pure-electric vehicle without concern for losing power in the middle of the desert. Simply exit onto the lane, your EZ-pass will automatically pay a nominal fee, and set the cruise control.
Bonus points for single lane highways with markers for automatic driving, no passing, just specify your exit on the nav system... That's a bit off in the future, but might as well plan for it now! :)
I suppose if you have to ask you can't afford it applies to the car itself. But what will the recharge cost be (how is it metered, cost per hwh maybe?)
Also if it becomes popular there might be a line at the "pump" er socket.
Driving for more than 2 hours without a break is generally a bad idea.
Oh please, I've driven a 4x4 offroad at high speed in 2 back-to-back 5 hour shifts many times with only a 1 hour break. I don't even get tired until near the end of the second shift. And I'm not very fit either.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I have a better idea for recharging for people who need to drive more than 60 miles with heat, AC, headlights, lights, and so on: how about implementing an electric car which is capable of converting chemicals with a very high energy density into heat energy, which can be harnessed as mechanical energy to turn a generator which could be used to recharge the battery, and perhaps even transmit power directly to the wheels in tandem with the electric motors on demand when more power is required? Ideally, such a system would be able to create the required heat from a number of different chemical compounds, ranging from hydrogen to LNG, from propane to diesel, kerosene, or gasoline. I guess we shall forever be stuck with impractical battery-powered vehicles which drop stone cold dead somewhere between 60 and 230 miles, and never attain a practical-yet-economical long-distance driving range.
If only there were a practical solution which already exists today. One can dream, though. One can dream. ;)
In all seriousness, right now hybrids are practical. Small turbocharged engines are practical. Hybrids with flex fuel capability are practical. Those all give you what is practically unlimited range, good economy, and if you do happen to pull a boneheaded move and run out of energy, you can get a couple gallons (or small compressed tank) of fuel and be on your way, without having to wait hours for a recharge (or "only" 1-2 hours for a high-current rapid charge which accelerates degradation of the cells). The Prius has a great system (in principle), as does the Limited Hybrid, and even the Chevy Volt. You can achieve a practically unlimited range given the existent fuel distribution infrastructure, and not having to wait half a day to recharge the battery every 60-230 miles. I'd love to see someone drive a production car electric car cross-country with the AC running, on a typical vacation schedule. How long would it take to drive to a popular destination like, say, Disney World, or the Grand Canyon from where you live in a hybrid or gasoline/diesel powered car, vs, an electric car (assuming you have recharge stations on the way)? Driving the speed limit, hitting traffic jams, etc. on the way, I can get to Orlando in 22 hours. Via electric car, it would require six recharges (that is being optimistic on the range - more likely 12 with A/C, radio, etc. running). So, 22 hours of driving plus (6*48) to (12*48) hours for recharge cycles., That's longer than most people get for vacation. Or, if you want to drastically reduce the lifetime of your battery packs and you happen to find rapid charge stations along the way, you're still charging at a 56mi/hr rate (Tesla's best-case rating), which would put you at just under two hours to make it the next 224 miles (assuming you would actually achieve that range in traffic with the AC or heat going, wipers, headlamps, etc). - contrast that to refilling a fuel tank, which normally takes under five minutes. Ten if you have a really slow pump, and you have to also answer a nature call and then buy a snack in the store, etc.
From the wikipedia article:
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Cool. Not particularly impressive though. My car repeatably travels 600 miles between fillups in mixed driving, using no more than 14 gallons. The farthest I have ever traveled without refueling was 782 miles. It doesn't have the cost and complication of a hybrid drivetrain either. And yes, it's a fourdoor hatchback with more interior room than the Civic.
Of course, back when I was frequently making this drive, it was uphill *both* ways ;)
Assuming, of course, you are taking along small children, the elderly or pregnant women. :-)
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
"Say what" was exactly my reaction.
Small bladder syndrome I suspect.
A hundred miles is an hour an half if you follow the speed limits. We typically stop somewhere for lunch on long trips and swap drivers. Any other stop is just to see the sights, not to fill the gas tank, and certainly not to stand around for 30 minutes while the batteries recharge.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Something from VW I bet. Jetta, Golf or Scirocco Bluemotion.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
You almost sound like an old GM commercial. When the others were bragging about their fuel economy GM was bragging on how far you can go on a tank of gas AKA bad fuel economy but much bigger tanks.
OLD GM Commercial?
GM and others are STILL running this kind of commercial today. Its like they still don't understand that Miles per Gallon (KM/liter) is the only measure that makes any sense. I've been yelling at the TV for years, but it doesn't do any good.
Oh, and don't get me started on "Professional Driver on a Closed Course" ....
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Everyone is different. And how comfortable your seats are and how you have them adjusted makes a difference.
But every 100mi? Seriously? I drive ~800 miles, in two ~6hr segments. Stop for food, fuel, and restroom about 1/2 way. I occasionally need an additional restroom or food stop, depending upon when I start the trip. If you don't have a medical condition, you shouldn't need to stop more than every 3hrs or so.
make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false
Would you complain about the time to charge for pennies per mile (in electric drivetrain vehicles) if fuel was $12-15/gallon?
Hah, I recently drove the South Carolina to Wisconsin (about 20 hours) with both a two year old AND a pregnant woman. We stopped no more than every 3 hours on average. Thank God it wasn't during the third trimester...
So the vehicle is at fault because the user is incompetent and doesn't know when to recharge the car? Fact: Electric cars are orders of magnitude more efficient than ICE vehicles. Fact: Over 75% of Americans' daily commutes is 40 miles or less.
Electric vehicle development is occurring how fast compared to how long it took the ICE from develop from Model-T days to having hybrid vehicles? Keep wasting your time bitching on Slashdot; other folks work all day long to move the world towards electrified transportation.
Nope, I just like avoiding accidents.
Cigar. You get it. The incomparable ALH engine. They've never matched it since 2003.
The DOE has a report showing that 77% of the light vehicle fleet in the US could switch over to electric and could be charged at night without any additional base load generation facilities. So, nobody is going to need to build additional coal fired power plants.
yes, they are exclamation mark one exclamation mark :) but that really doesn't go down too well. hybrids on the other hand work very well: they're a compromise - a best-of-both-worlds compromise. which is why i'm designing an ultra-efficient one, having looked at the maths, done the simulations etc. http://lkcl.net/ev
I hope that is not for paid work, not sure about your field but in many driving related ones that would not be legal.
It surely is not safe. You feeling tired and when your reaction time has been impacted are not the same thing.
There is a variant of Deep Vein Thrombosis called Traveller's Thrombosis.
This is why it is wise to take a break every 90 minutes or two hours. However, the break does not typically have to be long. Frequently I merely stop the car, walk around it once or twice, and then continue.
Carnival bumper cars just point a paddle at the ceiling.
BART, and many other electric trains, just stick out a paddle and get their electricity from alongside the track.
So why are we not doing something similar for cars? Install something under the road, or along the side, to charge the car as you drive?
I know I'm offering the simplified consumer point of view here on "we have x technology, why can't we just do y?"... I don't know electricity... But I do know I'm tired of trying to find a station for gas, and sure as hell don't want to be caught somewhere in between electric stations with a 6000 pound car I can't physically push to the side.
I doubt that the difference will be that big. If the price of oil goes up, electricity will get more expensive too, especially if you consider the electric grid needs to be completely overhauled (at great cost) to allow for mass electric charging.
No, that's what I do for fun! :-)
They do similar stretches in many other offroad rallies, as well as Le Mans and LeMons (which are more physically exhausting - the Le Mans driver time limit is 4 hours).
If you think that's scary you REALLY won't like what some truckers do on the same roads as you.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
EVs predate the Model T. If time in field is your only criteria then EVs have failed.
In fact, although better batteries are the main need, not a lot can be done to improve EV efficiency further. Unless most power is generated by renewables- it isn't - the benefits of EVs compared to state of the art IC-based systems are pretty marginal.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
I have truckers in my family. I know all about forging logbooks. The solution to that is make the punishment for forging a logbook a permanent loss of CDL.
I would like to see any engineering projects of any complexity that you have successfully carried out. Your design weight is, I think, simply unachievable with reasonable life on real roads. I do not think you have any idea of the working stresses on an automotive chassis, including absorbing the vibration from your IC engine, and you don't appear to have considered hills. Also some of the observations on your website are incorrect; the Volt on its IC engine is not nearly as economical as a Prius. And the reason that the Volt and the Prius ar the size they are is that the cost of hybrid technology has not scaled down, so until now it has only been available at a price where people expect a mid-size car. Toyota is now scaling down slowly. Your 350kg three people carrier will be unreliable, unsafe, uncomfortable and expensive, because those are the tradeoffs.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
There is no connection between oil and electricity pricing. Less than a tenth of one percent of US power generation is done with oil-fired generation facilities: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=110997398
The price of electricity is easier to manage and properly plan for than the price of crude, based on current producers and global demand. Electric still ends up being the way of the future.
If time in field is your only criteria then EVs have failed.
Not if we run out of cheap oil first. It should be noted that we lose 4% of annual oil production per year due to depletion of those proven and in-production oil fields, and in the last 6 years, no replacement has been found for that amount of production we've lost.
Have ICE cars won? Well, the race isn't over.
Elderly? It's now "gerontologically-advanced old person" you insensitive clod. ;o)
So what you're telling us is that you're an idiot...
Is 1563649 a prime number?
A battery pack that could be quickly replaced would be a better solution.
The DOE has a report showing that 77% of the light vehicle fleet in the US could switch over to electric and could be charged at night without any additional base load generation facilities. So, nobody is going to need to build additional coal fired power plants.
Yeah, so you just need to stop at the charging station overnight in order to be able to drive from LA to SF.
yep, just turned your 6 hour drive into 10. Yea!!!
All points of time and space are connected.
If that is true then I shouldn't be allowed to drive home from work. If we are expected to be in top form at all times while driving then we aren't gonna get very far very quickly.
All points of time and space are connected.
Only if you're one of those people who thinks anyone who races cars is an idiot, in which case I'm a total idiot!
These are the rules used by Le Mans (which is more physically exhaustsing):
A driver is only allowed to drive a maximum of 4 hours within a 6 hour time frame (minus pit stop time).
Maximum total drive time for a driver is 14 hours.
So basically it requires 1 more hour of break time but allows 4 more hours of driving per event.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Well, I was thinking something along those lines. Of course your error in this case is thinking that racing conditions are applicable to regular road driving.
If I had more money I'd be doing something similar on a motorcycle but until then I must content myself with the 30-minute sessions at the local track.
Is 1563649 a prime number?
Last I checked 230 + 230 = 460. So if the shortest route is nearly 400 miles wouldn't the 230 mile battery pack work fine? I mean yeah you have to account for getting out of an into the city, but 60 extra miles seems like enough to me. So the owners of the 160 mile battery wouldn't be able to make it, which given the market for Tesla cars, I'm sure is a minority. Additionally this is supposed to be the first of many, so they'll just have to wait a bit longer. I may be wrong, but the submitter of the article seems to want to label this hope instilling progress as either not good enough or proof of electric cars not working, I'm not really sure.
I was at a conference in Oakland last week where a guy from Southern California Edison spoke about the future of electric vehicle charging. When asked about the cost to charge an EV via a level 1 charger through the night versus a level 3 (20-40 minute) quick charger during peak hours (when they're most likely to be used) he said that he didn't have the exact numbers on the *power* difference (though it's significant), but the dollar-per-fill-up difference will be extreme.
The Level 3 charger alone is expected to be $50,000 - $60,000 depending on existing infrastructure. That cost will have to be made up in fill-up cost.
Then there's the cost of the power at the time of the day.
Then there's the amount of power it takes to charge something so quickly.
He closed with "It will *definitely* be a premium service. We don't expect many to need or utilize the service."
So why is Tesla doing it? Oh yes... because they're catering to a crowd of luxury environmentalists... the crowd that shrank to, like, three with the crash. Tesla's business model of supporting electric vehicles on the backs of the super wealthy has failed... they're just floundering now.
for mountain driving, fuel economy understandably critically depends on the weight. if you have a 550kg vehicle (including passengers) and a 25% gradient, then even at 50mph you still get almost 60mpg. if however on the other hand the weight is 1550kg, then that fuel economy drops staggeringly quick: expect to get best case 20mpg.
i'll add "gradient" in a moment to the simulator i'm writing, so you can try it out here: http://lkcl.net/ev/vehicle_simulator/output/Simulator.html
Here's a picture of one... http://www.pcmag.com/slideshow_viewer/0,3253,l%253D289592%2526a%253D289696%2526po%253D7,00.asp?p=n#fbid=0aLLDV-J5kV In Dixon.
Because there's a lot of barriers you have to overcome, and there's not much financial incentive currently for anyone to overcome them.
Here's a few examples.
1. Standardized form factors for batteries. This is a big deal for some time to come, because it's hard enough as it is to strike a good balance of weight/power for maximum range. That becomes even more difficult if you're forced to build around one particular battery someone else designed.
2. Who's going to provide the initial battery for the car? The battery rental company? So now you have to decide before you even buy the car which company you want to go with, and good luck swapping to another battery company in the future. I guess you could get your car towed from one battery company to another, but that's not exactly cheap either. Or did you think the manufacturer is going to provide it? So what are you going to do with the original battery you paid all that money for when you go to rent another? I know *I'm* not interested in spending several grand on a new battery that I'll exchange for whatever battery they'll happen to have available at the closest station.
3. Battery storage. As someone else pointed out, just look at all the cars that fill up at a typical city gas station in an hour. Where the hell are they going to find the room to store that many batteries? And they still have to be recharged some time, somewhere. So you either have to pay to have them hauled off somewhere, or you *also* need charging stations and electrical capacity to charge that many batteries. And you also have to have large equipment to swap the batteries. You'd be looking at a facility that requires several acres of space, and would be 10-20x the size of an average gas station at a minimum.
None of these are issues that can't be resolved, but they probably won't be due to prohibitive costs. I don't think batteries are the way forward, even for EVs. We need an energy storage medium that can replenished much more quickly than a battery can.
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
Noob here, this article got me curious, considering how popular passive charging stations are getting, how feasible would it be to have passive chargers built into roads? I mean, one of the reasons that people avoid electric cars is because you have to stop to charge so often, imagine if you never had to stop, because you were charging up while driving along.
Unfortunately, I'm late into the article, so I'll probably won't have my curiosity remedied.
PS Is it just me, or is Slashdot weirdly laggy using Opera (even with a fairly beefy machine)? It's gotten to the point where I'm really careful typing because I don't want to have to go back to correct any mistakes.