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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."
Tesla has made a map of where they intend to put the stations and how far you can drive from them. http://www.teslamotors.com/supercharger
SIGSEGV caught, terminating
wait... not that kind of sig.
Third, fast charges are very inefficient by comparison to level 2 chargers-- there's a lot of waste energy.
As much waste energy as carting around an inefficient internal combustion engine, that gets at best 30% efficiency? I think not.
I am artificially intelligent.
Just wait until the Tesla Tow Truck. Then you'll see a lot of Teslas pulling Fords.
I feel like this is trying to force the current gas station paradigm (refuel, adding 300-500 miles of range in 5-10 minutes) onto EVs, when that paradigm doesn't really fit well.
Based on a little Googling, Tesla's Superchargers can apparently charge 50% of an 85 kwh battery in about 30 minutes. Not bad (a bit over twice the charge rate of DC fast charging on a Leaf), but based on the EPA estimated range of 265 miles, that gives you about 130 miles of range. So every 130 miles, you stop for 30 minutes - more if all Superchargers at a station are in use. While I'm all for taking frequent breaks on long trips, this is a lot more than the usual 10 minutes every few hundred miles.
To match gas station refuel times, the power requirements get ridiculous pretty fast. Superchargers put out 120 kw according to Tesla. Let's say we have a hypothetical battery that can take a full 85-kwh charge (265 miles) in 5 minutes like a gas pump. That's 12 times faster than the Supercharger rate of half-capacity in 30 minutes, or 1.44 MW per car! By way of comparison, most (many?) homes in the US have 240-volt, 100-amp service, or 24 kw maximum available power. 1.44 MW is equivalent to 60 homes all maxed out and about to trip breakers! If a typical charging station will service a similar number of cars as a gas station, multiply that by maybe 10 - or 600 maxed out homes. For one refueling station. Insanity. It gets even worse if you want more than 265 miles of range in 5 minutes.
The bottom line is that even if battery technology gets there, how will the grid handle such quick charging? I see that being the bigger obstacle to EV road trips as convenient as gas-powered trips are now.
The easier solution is to shift the paradigm - how we think about and use our vehicles. Everyone could have an EV for commuting and regular driving within its nominal range. You charge at night or any other time when you're not using the car anyway - NOT when you are on a trip and just want to keep going (but can't, until you wait to recharge). If/when you need to take a long road trip, you take a gas-powered car. Either an extra car in your household, a rental, borrowed from someone you know. Whatever. Or if you're not hauling a bunch of stuff, maybe it makes more sense to fly.
As a current EV owner (Nissan Leaf), I've already made the switch in paradigm - and I love it. I'm saving tons of money on fuel costs, driving my Leaf over 16k miles per year. Pretty much every trip within its range will use that car, because it's cheaper and fun to drive. Going to Vegas (from SoCal)? We use the other car. Or any longer trip. Most multi-driver households have multiple cars, so road trips shouldn't really be an issue. I think this kind of strategy makes way more sense than seriously increasing travel time (waiting to charge) or the failed battery swap idea.
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.
I'm guessing that you've never had to build a gasoline station. Environmental assessments. Underground excavation. Costly double-walled tanks and plumbing. Inspections. Insurance in case you contaminate the local soil or water with spilled fuel. And it's not like you get a pipeline direct to the station--every gallon you sell has to be trucked in.
~Idarubicin
If you improve one inefficient plant, that automatically improves 10000 EVs.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
I'm really looking forward to this. Last weekend I took my model S down to Big Sur to do some camping and used a bit more power than I anticipated while driving over dirt roads and due to a headwind driving back north. On my way back I had to stop for a bit in Monterey at a level 2 charger to add a few miles before I could reach the Gilroy supercharger. I ended up having to unplug a Volt who was taking up an EV only spot (and was apparently there for many hours according to a Leaf owner parked across from me).
Of course their announcement shows that this summer a supercharger will be installed in or near Monterey, which would have solved that problem, and there are more on the way along Highway 1.
In fact, it looks like they'll be building some near some of the other out-of-the-way places I like to travel around the state. It looks like at least one is going in along Highway 395 along the Eastern Sierra.
The fact that they are reducing charging time is another bonus. 200 miles in 30 minutes for "free" is awesome. I enjoy the superchargers. It's often nice to chat with other Tesla owners there. When I stopped in Gilroy to charge I had 8 miles left. The fellow who pulled in next to me was down to 2 miles, and like me he had taken his car over a bunch of dirt roads. A standard level 2 charger gives me around 15-20 miles of range per hour. At a Supercharger I can get 15-20 miles of charge in 3 minutes!
While charging I can go stretch my legs, get a meal, check email, surf the web or whatever so I don't consider the delay that big of an issue.
Out of all the times I've used a supercharger I have never had to wait and there are usually plenty of places nearby to eat or shop while charging, even during Memorial Day weekend.
The superchargers really make road trips possible with electric vehicles. Sure, it's not as fast as filling a gasoline car, but 30 minutes for 200 miles is not bad! I suspect that when Tesla comes out with their 3rd generation coupe it will charge even faster since it will be a smaller and lighter vehicle.
Tesla seems to be well ahead of anybody else out there in terms of EV technology. Their batteries have the highest energy density for the lowest cost as well as a very compact electric motor. They spent a lot of effort on battery safety as well. I don't think synchronous motors can compete with induction motors when it comes to power density and I'm sure the cost of induction motors is also lower since there are no rare-earth magnets involved. The 420HP/445ft-lb induction motor in my Tesla is the size of a watermelon.
The Tesla power connector design is also much better than the J1772 Frankenplug or the huge CHaDeMo connector. Both the J1772 frankenplug and the CHaDeMo connectors are the size of a softball vs the much smaller Tesla connector. They have a small J1772 adapter and I'm sure they'll come out with additional adapters in the future for the frankenplug if it becomes popular.
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