Tesla To Blanket US With Superchargers In Two Years

dublin writes "Electric car manufacturer Tesla is planning to triple its construction of "supercharger" rapid charging stations, with a trail of stations in place for L.A. to New York trips by the end of this year. In addition to the east & west coasts, islands in Colorado, Illinois, and Texas will grow together to cover nearly the entire continental US by 2015. The two biggest obstacles for electric cars are high cost and range problems. Cost is still a problem, but this move to blanket the US with supercharger stations could fix the range half of the e-car equation."

Comments

... with government funds and subsidized charging.

[eepok]

First, 100 fast chargers does not a nationwide blanket make.
Second, these things are extremely expensive to install (especially if they're not immediately next to major power lines). We're talking hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Third, fast charges are very inefficient by comparison to level 2 chargers-- there's a lot of waste energy.
Fourth, fast chargers are most likely to be used midday when electricity is at its costliest.

So, they're expensive to install, wastes electricity, and are most likely to be used when electricity is at its most expensive. Thus, if they want to install them and want people to use them, there's going to have to be massive subsidies.

Or Tesla's spending themselves into a hole again because they figured out that the quagmire that is proprietary charging payment systems has stymied adoption and they're going to just do it themselves... because their product depends on it! And because they missed out on the only true future for battery-electric vehicles: Battery Swapping!

bah...Humbug

[rmdingler]

The negligible benefit of POV's that recharge from the fossil-fueled grid makes the entire carbon footprint thing a moot point. Essentially, the more individuals who take advantage of the electric automobile, the less the overall benefit to us as a community. We can barely/not quite barely amp the grid up in Texas and California to cover the summer's A/C demands... the supply is not there for millions of drivers to switch from a fossil fuel to electricity generated from the burning of fossil fuels.