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Tesla Reveals Charging Station Sites In 3 US States
locallyunscene writes "Tesla has created the first solar charging stations for its Model S and plans to offer free charging. Is free fuel enough to for the electric car to finally gain traction? 'The technology at the heart of the Supercharger was developed internally and leverages the economies of scale of existing charging technology already used by the Model S, enabling Tesla to create the Supercharger device at minimal cost. The electricity used by the Supercharger comes from a solar carport system provided by SolarCity, which results in almost zero marginal energy cost after installation. Combining these two factors, Tesla is able to provide Model S owners free long distance travel indefinitely." The "free charging" part applies at least to Model S owners, and will be available first from a network of charging stations in California, Arizona, and Nevada, to be expanded nationwide over the next 2 to 4 years; Engadget features a video of the announcement.
Obligatory "People who can afford a Tesla aren't bothered by the price of gas"
But there is no way I've got enough charge to get there.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
3 hours of driving at 60 mph on the highway (which is dangerous IMO) and 30 minute fillup. More likely 70-75 mph, 2 hours of driving + finding a station? and then 30 minutes of fillup. 25% more travel time on a long trip. I don't know who has that kind of time on the road. Timing over lunch a great idea... what about at 3pm, not so convenient then is it. I think they have a lot of work to do
Like local and state sales taxes paying for services, state and federal fuel taxes are not going to be able to pay for roads and the deficit in the same way as we move to more efficient vehicles. Now with electric cars there is no fuel tax. The states have loved to live on these hidden taxes, in clothes, in fuel, on the phone bill, but really we are going to have to start more open taxes and explain what they pay for and how they are applied. If every dollar a middle class American makes is going to be taxed three times, one on payroll, once on income, once when it is spent, that makes less sense than just taxing it to begin with. Of course that will result in the wealthy paying taxes. For instance, most of us pay payroll taxes on everything we make, but someone making 200K does not. Now if you can afford a Tesla, you don't pay for the roads you use.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
No wireless. Lame.
But I want a Mr. Fusion, not a solar charger.....
However like others have pointed out if I can only drive for 3 hours at below what the usual speed is on the highway THEN I have to wait 30 minutes for it to charge, then it's gonna take a long time to get from place to place in a reasonable amount of time.
posting to remove accidental wrong mod
it seems like the car is meant to be a toy for a midlife crisis like the corvette.
for most people with kids you need something bigger
Yeah, I think http://www.betterplace.com/ has the better idea. Swapping out a battery in just a few minutes is far superior to waiting 30 minutes for a charge.
I'm sorry, but your opinion seems to be wrong.
From the SEC filling:
Woo boy. A whole three states. Without even reading the article I can probably guess two of them (California, New York). And the third is most likely one where driving isn't a necessity, either. Boy howdy, is that ever going to help things. After all, who cares about the little people in the unpopular states where they actually need to drive? They never even invented a single iPhone there, amirite?
(Who know a thing or two) are abandoning pure electric cars because they can't make the engineering sums add up with present battery technology. They have even produced a hybrid (Yaris hybrid) that undercuts the cheapest electric cars without subsidy. Now that Mercedes is bringing out hybrids and are producing their first fuel-cell cars, meaning we have gasoline, diesel and fuel cell hybrids, it looks like Tesla and the other all-electric experiments are a dead end.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
electricity used by the Supercharger comes from a solar carport system
Maybe if you have one car to charge every couple of days - but with the total solar energy hitting the eath's surface being about in full sunshiew, and many cells producing 100-130 watts per square meter this cannot be the sole energy source for a 40 - 85 kwh charge
No mod points, but that was a good one.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
The article (yeah, I read a bit), doesn't seem to give much info about the charger that is going to be in use: is it going to be DC Fast Charging with a Combined Charging System (what a name) , CHAdeMO or something new?
He was only 24 hours from Tesla
I prefer Better Place's approach of using swappable battery modules. It's faster for the consumer. Batteries can be tested and replaced before they degrade.
- Jasen.
Would have use a universal interchangeable battery pack that could be easily changed for a set fee at stations. The likelihood of car manufactures ever getting together and making this possible is just about zero squared unfortunately. Even though the design would be dead simple and economical to do.
Sorry we are just not a cooperative enough society yet to even allow ourselves to think out side of the box with four wheels. As oil hits 200 a barrel and the international tensions, hegemony and coercion by the corporations that control it becomes even more obvious to the public at large things might start to change however.
Tesla's ideas are a good start but they are far too exclusive and expensive to be practical. I don't see a gazillion Segways or practical small electric cars zipping around yet for this very reason even though it is technically possible.
These comments are awful. You people suck.
This seems to be a reoccurring problem for many an electronic.
We've advanced far and wide in several fields, but we're not advancing (fast enough?) with batteries.
Instead of focusing on these charging stations (which just feels like a bandaid fix to me), they should be finding a way to make a higher capacity/more efficient battery.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
I love this "argument".
Greens have pushed for huge subsidies for electric/hybrid vehicles, in the $5k-10k+ range
Which is more than any of these vehicles would ever pay in gas taxes in their entire life time for road maintenance.
So, we are giving huge tax breaks on these vehicles, then bitching that they aren't bring in tax revenue for roads. It is beyond stupid.
And while we're at it, let's eliminate all the subsides the oil and coal industries get too.
Contrary to what side of the argument you're on, what we really need in the US is a complete over haul of our tax system (THE worst in the World for its complexity) and make it more transparent. This way, we'll see the true freeloaders - like the Koch brothers who made a lot of their money (billions) from tax subsidies - and we can stop having these asinine ignorant "debates" - usually pointing fingers at the "green" energy when fossil fuels are the biggest offenders.
will they start using some new battery technology to make this actually significant?
PS To those who are saying electric vehicles have already lost, you're not thinking longterm enough. They will (have) work(ed) by the time the sun burns out.
You create a situation in which your product looks good. You insert reasonable values into an otherwise onerous situation to spin the conversation in the direction you want.
You expect to have some people pick apart the argument you put forth, however you expect far more people to just nod their heads and move on.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I always thought zero squared was infinity? If zero is nothing, and I have no nothings, I have everything, right?
Those aren't Superchargers though. So it's going to take substantially longer than 30minutes to charge your EV.
Looking at this
http://www.greenretaildecisions.com/news/2011/12/01/walmart-to-install-ev-charging-stations-
http://www.blinknetwork.com/brochures/l2-pedestal-charger/page02.html
So this is a 240V*30A = 7kW charger.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/tesla-motors-launches-revolutionary-supercharger-032000226.html
Now a 100kW charger can charge a car in 30 minutes or half an hour. So a 7kW charger can do it in 100/7*0.5 7 hours.
Fancy hanging around Walmart for 7 hours?
http://www.greenretaildecisions.com/news/2011/12/01/walmart-to-install-ev-charging-stations-
Sounds like the taxpayer ended up paying for infrastructure no one is going to use.
Actually the Blink Fast Charger would have been a better bet.
http://www.blinknetwork.com/brochures/dc-fast-charger/page02.html
So you'd charge in 100/60*0.5=0.83 hours or 50 minutes. Then again I'm not sure I'd fancy hanging around Walmart for an hour while my car charges. And if people leave their cars charging while they get lunch, isn't that going to lead to queue?
I could see exchanging batteries working. But how do I know I'm not going to swap a brand new battery worth tens of thousands of dollars (Tesla won't even cite a replacement price) - for one which is worn out?
Exchanging 60kWh batteries is like swapping a $30K (based on âTesla ostensibly charges $10,000 for 20 kWh of capacity' from here) vehicle with a stranger and trusting them not to give you a knackered one.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Under 0celcius, electric cars are a failure.
So what happens when your 'new' ten-year-old battery pack only holds half a charge and you're suddenly out of power in the middle of Axe-Wielding Redneck Country with no charging station within a hundred miles?
I was in the new Tesla dealership in the Roosevelt Field Mall in Long Island on Sunday. The Model S is a good sized sedan. I did see 5 grown adults sitting in it. The car itself looks great, like a Bentley, I thought. I learned of the constellation of supercharging stations there, which put in a nail in the coffin of range-anxiety ninnies.
But letting you recharge for free? That's genius. A swift kick in the nuts to both the oil and traditional auto industries. More power to Tesla! God how I'd love to see the fossil fuel people utterly collapse in a year in the face of such disruptive vision.
If not us, who? If not now, when?
By abandon do you mean rolling out an all electric RAV4?
Sure, they're dropping one line of car, their little eQ minicar. But that doesn't mean they are dropping electric all together. They've just realized that the technology isn't there quite there yet. And they are planning on having 21 hybrid versions of their vehicles by 2015.
In other words they moved too fast on the all electric cars for some markets and are backing off for now until the technology catches up with the ideas.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/24/us-toyota-electric-idUSBRE88N0CT20120924
I want all that stuff, and also a pony.
No pony? Your products are crap!
The usual arguments are range, economics, and speed. People are worried about the limited range of the vehicles, they feel they are too expensive to buy as well as to own in the long run, and they are not as fast as "regular" cars. All of this is bullshit today.
While range is still limited, the vast majority of vehicles are never driven further than the range of a modern EV. Most people commute a fairly set distance, and the only times they go for longer trips they could easily rent a gas-guzzler and still save money overall... and that's assuming they don't run a hybrid of course, or live in an area where charge stations are put up.
While the economics are an issue, they are getting within range of pretty much everyone. If you can get a loan for a new car you can probably get one for an electric one. Running costs will generally be lower right up until something happens, batteries need to be replaced or some such... but you've hopefully got good insurance/savings for car-related costs anyway.
And speed... Well, given the car mentioned in this article I think we can all agree that's a moot point these days. Production EV's can hold a reasonable speed with ease, and the acceleration will make any speed freak happy.
So why do people not buy electric?
Well, because people don't want a car that can do the speed limit and get them to their job and back. They want a car that can go faster than is legally allowed, looks like a status symbol, has more room than they will ever need, and can do crazy shit that they won't ever actually do, like "off road" or "go to a track day".
Cars are theoretically transportation.. but practically they are toys and fashion. If the electric cars want to make an impact they need to target those markets. Not the practical and usable markets. Otherwise people will always see them as a step down from other options.
One thing I don't understand, and perhaps someone on here can enlighten me, is why people always assume you will fill up only when the tank is empty? It seems to me that one of the big advantages of electric is that you don't need a speciallized fueling station. You should be able to fuel up all over the place (although perhaps not quickly) provided there were enough charging stations. For example charging while:
At home.
Parked at work.
Out to dinner.
Overnight at a hotel.
At a movie.
Shopping at a mall.
The tank doesn't have to be empty, and the charging doesn't have to be to fill. But consistantly charging a little bit here and there should be one of the main ways to extend range. I realize that infastructure like charging stations need to be installed and the electrical grid must be able to handle it all. But other than that, what am I missing?
I'll agree that for day-to-day driving, an EV will work just fine. But it's more than a bit of an exaggeration to say that cars are not ever driven past EV range. I, and I imagine most car owners, travel some distance with a 3-4 hour round trip on a fairly regular basis. (For me, it's at least once a month...)
And the "rent a gas guzzler" plan for long trips isn't going to work due to variability in demand. The demand for such vehicles, during, say, thanksgiving weekend (or appropriate holiday in other countries), would be beyond insane.
I think "Volt-style" hybrids are the way to go... you get the best of both worlds. If only they can make it cheaper and more like a regular car.
Call a tow truck? What happens now when your Subaru Outback develops a clogged fuel filter in the middle of Axe-Wielding Redneck Country with no authorized dealers within a hundred miles?
FTFA: "The electricity used by the Supercharger comes from a solar carport system provided by SolarCity, which results in almost zero marginal energy cost after installation."
Well of course it will cost almost nothing after installation. That's the point of capital costs. You buy the land, pour the concrete, throw in a couple amenities, plant a massive battery and transformer system, and hook them up to the solar cells. Note that such an investment is utterly massive and unsustainable. With SO FEW Tesla drivers on the road (in that area, no less), they're going to rarely have a "customer".
But that's not how a public Level 3 charger would work. No way. Public Level 3 chargers would also require trenching from a strong enough power source since they will actually have regular customers. Then they will have to include the cost of all capital expenses (station, hardware, etc.) in the cost of the electricity that will be used during peak electricity usage (10am - 4pm) in some of the hottest areas in the nation when everyone is running their air conditioners (massive increase in electricity cost). Throw in the amount of energy lost when charging quickly and you have a compounded cost of simply fueling your car. This is why we encourage people to charge their cars at home and in the middle of the night.
Pure Electric Vehicles are an evolutionary speed bump. They exist to force manufacturers to accept the newer sensibilities of consumers and to seek better ways to reclaim power (regenerative braking, etc.), decrease wind resistance, and make lighter (and still affordable and sustainable) machines altogether.
OK, I'm going to buy one of these cars, charge it up for free at the nearest station, drive home, and dump the battery into my house inverter.
I'll get all the electricity for everything I own, for FREE!!!!!! Maybe I'll even dump some back into the grid and make money off whatever Con Ed is calling itself these days.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
Same thing as what happens when your gasoline burner reaches 200,000 miles and starts belching blue smoke and sounding like a cement mixer--you recycle the part that's worn out (the battery versus a worn-out gasoline engine). As to the rest of the system, we have a wealth of experience from electric locomotives, streetcars, trolley buses and attic fans: It'll most likely outlive the original owner, and probably his or her offspring as well.
Here ya go! (And if you want one that's not CGI, how about this guy's Lotus. It's like a Tesla with an internal combustion engine, which makes it about 20% warmer.)
No modpoints. Lame.
Charging stations are popping up all over California, as long as one charging station can charge any EV I can see this progress continuing. The people saying 30 minutes is too long for charging are right, but ideally we will move away from charging to fast battery swaps. If you can swap a universal battery type at a station (or hell, keep a spare at the office and in the trunk?) you could potentially be outta there faster than it takes to fill up a gas tank.
I read the headline and my brain jumped immediately to thoughts of someone finding some writing of Tesla's that indicate the hidden location of still-existing wireless "charging stations" in three states... ah, wishful thinking.
Who cares if it charges a little faster than the previous Tesla? It doesn't even have NFC.
then they'll need to be able to refuel by eating grass and drinking from a stream, they'll need to be equally at home on smooth or rough terrain, they'll need to cost no more than a couple hundred dollars for an entry-level model, and they'll need to be able to procreate.
My point? You don't always get uniform monotonic improvement with new technology.
Last week a couple picked up their Model S from the factory in CA and drove it cross country to Washington DC in 8 days. Check out http://teslamodelsxc.wordpress.com for their day-by-day experience and even a spreadsheet of raw data. One eye-opening thing for me was that RV parks are an existing national infrastructure of charging capability. It goes a long way to quell fears of range anxiety.
Sorry, Elan, I -don't- need 30 min's to use the toilet & to enjoy a drink, while an EV charges.
Don't you think it's time to get on-board the battery-swap band-wagon, so your customers can enjoy -under- 1 minute refuels?
I think your busy customers will jump on that bandwagon, if you don't, ie, as soon as BetterPlace's battery-swap stations become available so support the same California roads as you've announced, recently.
I urge you to: Lead the EV industry by offering some "battery-swap station compatible" vehicles, that all EV's can use, so all EV owners (of any brand EV) will - someday - benefit from.
May that day come soon! :-)
So ... I must drive from New York State to California in order to 'Charge' my Tesla Car!
What Shit Head thought up this stupidly?
OH! Its was Obama-Boy!
'Nough said.
Interesting posts, but clearly missing a view from an actual Tesla buyer. And yes, I've test driven the car (summary: "If this is what crack is like, I gotta stay off the drugs!") Why am I buying?
Demographics: same age as Elon, family of four, senior executive (CIO)
Current cars: sports sedan and a MINI
Residence: Mid Atlantic
Daily commute: 40 miles
Maximum annual roadtrip: 265 miles (Washington to NYC)
Typical road trip: 170 miles
Residence: single family home
Predilections: early adopter, tech fiend, car fanatic (rebuilt half a dozen muscle cars), motorsports
Power source: grid-tie Solar. 23 panels for the Tesla (5000 kWh/yr), 12,000 kWh total (96% of home+car).
Total cost for powering the car with solar: $6,300. (note that my gasoline costs are $2,200 annually, so less than 3 year ROI)
Primary justification for purchase: The Tesla is a phenomenal performance sedan, easily besting my previous/current vehicles (Audi and Infiniti).
Secondary justifications: Patriotism. Tesla is American owned, designed and built. Mine will also be American powered (my solar panels are made in America). No Saudi oil or mountaintop mining on my behalf.
Range anxiety? Zilch. In the dozen years I've lived in the mid-Atlantic, I've never driven more than 265 miles at a stretch in my own vehicle. We fly or take the train for longer trips. If you need to ask why, ask a friend with kids. Tesla's fast-charging stations are ideal in my opinion: after 200+ miles, a pit stop is mandatory with kids. As for traveling alone >200 miles: planes/trains are FAR faster than car travel (time=money).
That said, I've driven alone and with friends many times across the country (42 of the 48 states so far). However, unless I was moving I've always rented (do the math, a rental is ALWAYS a better deal for monster mileage unless you put very few miles on your car on a daily basis). IOW, the claims that the Tesla isn't viable for cross country travel are specious. Can it get you to Vegas from LA or SF? That matters! The newly announced chargers fit the bill, a single short charge will do the trick. LA to Omaha? Rent for the roadtrip or fly.
As for charge times where it matters most (the daily grind not a couple times a year for vacation), it takes seconds to plug it in at home. That definitely beats every week or two at the gas station, especially standing in sub-freezing temps at the pump!
"We are giving Model S the ability to drive almost anywhere for free on pure sunlight."
Must be nice to have pure sunlight in CA! Not like our filthy, polluted sunlight here...