Tesla Touts Cross-Country Trip, Aims For World Record

smaxp writes "A cross-country trip by two Model S sedans 'recorded the lowest charge time for an electric vehicle traveling across the country – a feat that is now being assessed for recognition as a Guinness World Records achievement,' according to a Tesla blog post. 'The 3464.5-mile jaunt is yet another attempt to ease range anxiety among many consumers who worry about being stranded in a car with a depleted battery pack and nowhere near a charging station. While Tesla’s Model S is too expensive for average consumers, the company plans to roll out cheaper models at some point and needs to address the fear that has stopped many people from buying electric cars, even cheaper ones such as the Nissan Leaf...'"

Comments

Call me when they can do trans-Atlantic

[TWiTfan]

Now THAT will impress me!

Range anxiety isn't really rational

[i kan reed]

Big point-proving stunts don't help with people who go "my local gas station doesn't provide chargers. I'm doomed if I get one." Because that's really in their head, more than about any particular drive being possible. Tesla has to win market share the same way every new technology does: winning enough early adopters to seem normal(and creating a support market).

Re:Range anxiety isn't really rational

[TWiTfan]

The thing that concerns me is that the various car companies have never even agreed on a standard for charging stations. So not only would I have to look for a charging station somewhere in the (currently pretty limited) areas they're available, but I also have to deal with looking for one specific to my car manufacturer. I can't just take my Nissan Leaf down to a local Tesla charger, or vice-versa.

Re:Range anxiety isn't really rational

[mlts]

Nail, head hit. It would be nice to have multiple standards for charging stations, and it work across all cars. If we can do this with phones (MicroUSB), we can do this with cars, except with some caveats:

1: Circuits may vary. One place may have a 15 amp, 120VAC circuit at best. Another place might have an 80 amp circuit to support higher chargers, with a 50 amp subpanel coming from it to handle current charging needs.

2: The charger would need some safety features, If someone stuck a fork in a charging cord and got even a tingle, the lawsuits would be flying. Most current chargers are goof-resistant, but this is definitely an issue, especially in the US where I've seen workers stick two straightened clothes hangers into an outlet, then use alligator clips between those and the prongs on a plug.

3: Patent neutral. This needs to be a benefit for everyone, as vendor-neutral chargers will help every player in the market.

4: Low voltage failsafes. US power can be dirty [1], so it should either downshift or stop trying to charge altogether if it gets under 90 volts.

5: High voltage failsafes... Same reason. Just in case someone hooked up 120VAC to 240 or vice versa. This isn't an issue in Europe and the rest of the world, but there are a lot of RVs killed each year by plugging into a 240VAC dryer outlet which is almost the same shape as a 30 amp, 120VAC receptacle.

[1]: As a RV-er, a hard-wired EMS is a must if one doesn't want to fry their A/C due to voltage sags.

Re:Still too slow.

[Joce640k]

An ICE car can make the trip in 32 hours 7 minutes.

Average 108mph?

I assume Tesla wanted this test to be legal...

But Does it Scale?

[BBF_BBF]

OK, so Tesla builds ONE string of charging stations approx. 150 miles apart that stretches across the US. So tell me how does that work when there are millions of Tesla cars on the road? Charging will take 40 minutes, but the line to get to charge will take 24 hrs.

Will Tesla be able to build enough fast charging stations when selling cars that cost less than $40K?

A lot of things work when the average selling price of your cars isclose to $100,000, you have government subsidies flung at you and/or your customers left and right, you have fewer than 100,000 vehicles in the field, your company isn't really expected to show a profit, and your customers actually *read* the users manuals (probably send corrections to technical errors in them to your engineers) and make Apple Zealots look like disinterested teens.

Re:But Does it Scale?

[geekoid]

Just like they built all the gas station before putting cars on the road.

Come on, with popularity charging stations will be built.

Gravity charging?

[Dare nMc]

I would be curious if the car is efficient enough to charge with say a 50 gallon inflatable water bladder in the trunk. IE could I drive to the top of the 9000' mountain pass with a stream, use a electric pump to fill the bladder with stream water, drive to the bottom using the regenerative brakes and empty the bladder. Would I have more energy than I started with? Obviously a steep enough grade, a few passes would eventually charge the battery enough for a few extra miles anyway. Could reduce the range anxiety getting through the mountains a bit, but wasteful on water use (unless you could dump back into the same stream.)

charging standard does exist

[mbkennel]

actually they have.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAE_J1772

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VDE-AR-E_2623-2-2#VDE-AR-E_2623-2-2

Tesla's supercharger however is proprietary because it delivers far more power than the standard mechanism permits and it is intimately linked with the battery & its control system in the car.

Re:charging standard does exist

[mbkennel]

LMGTFY

http://www.teslamotors.com/charging#/basics

Public charging station adapter (J1772, 80 amp capable)

http://www.mynissanleaf.com/wiki/index.php?title=Charging_System

All LEAFs have a SAE-J1772 Level 1/Level 2 charging port.

http://cmaxchat.com/?tag=kilowatt-hour

The Ford C-Max Energi uses a J1772 compatible charge station

Re:MOD PARENT DOWN!

[master_kaos]

Hey! You are the speciest insulting pigs in that manner you blockhead nincompoop!

Re:Still not good enough.

[master_kaos]

then rent a car. Seriously all these people say "but it can't do this!" well it's not meant for that application no matter what tesla tries to shove down your throat.
99% of the time I am driving it is <50km Another .5% of the time <150km the other .5% of the time I may run into issues. But guess what, that two days a year Ill just rent a car instead. Honestly even know sometimes I'll rent a car for long trips.. ill rent a fun driving car just to try something new.

You wouldn't buy a coupe if you had a family of 5, just like you shouldn't buy a Tesla if you are consistently driving far range.

Gas car rentals to supplement electric cars.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

When you buy it in bulk gas cars can be rented for less than 25$ a day unlimited miles. Electric car makers can easily throw in 28 days of gas car rental as a sweetener to induce sitting-on-the-fence customers.

Also time is ripe for rental car companies to offer a simple car rental accounts to electric car, bus/rail commuter, bicyclers, elderly etc. I imagine if they come up with a model like 50$ a month gets you two days of rentals, and the unused days accumulate, once the customers reach something like 28 days of rentals they just pay a small annual fee to keep the account current. The might even provide a couple of electric charging stations and brag about their green credentials.

Re:Exactly how much fossil fuel was burned...

[amicusNYCL]

Tesla addresses that issue on their site:

http://www.teslamotors.com/goe...

44% of US power generation comes from coal, with 23% from natural gas and 20% from nuclear. They have a map that shows each state's breakdown. If you're charging in Washington, Idaho, or Oregon, for example, you're not using a lot of fossil fuel. If you're charging in Wyoming, Indiana, or Kentucky, on the other hand, then it's mostly coal. If you're charging in Vermont then you might as well be fellating a tree, but without the splinters.

Re:not exactly correct

[Sprouticus]

According to the info I found the Leaf will lose an additional 10% of capacity(70% vs 80%) over the course of 10 years (not 3) if fast charging is used. Not great but not horrible. For an informed buyer, you are not seeming to be very informed.

There are plenty of challenges for Electric cars, no need to exaggerate them.

Re:What I don't get...

[Anonymous Coward]

While the percentage is probably off, the basic math is fine.

Since I don't care to hunt down the numbers, I'll start with some blatant hypothetical guesswork.

First assume a perfectly rigid spherical Tesla Mark Math which has 25% of its mass devoted to batteries and gets 400 kilometers to a charge (across perfectly rigid perfectly flat surfaces with an infinite coefficient of friction).

If we double the batteries, we now have 800km worth of charge, but the carsphere also weighs 25% more. This results in an actual range of 800 / 1.25 or 640 km.

Now, since I've done the completely fictional numbers, I've changed my mind about getting real numbers.
A Model S allegedly weighs 2108 kg with no passengers. The larger range option allegedly gets 500 km to a charge, and a forum post that I can't track back to a better source claims that over 1500lbs are battery.

For convenience, I will round total carmass to 2200 kg with driver, batterymass to 680kg and batteryrange to 500km.
Using the same process of math as above, this suggests that adding another 680kg batterypack would adjust the range from 500km to 760km. More than a 25% increase, but I'm not dealing with real-physics either. In a world of ideal math, doubling the battery increases the distance by about 50%. This world is far too squishy to be that world, so there are other limiters that will reduce the effective performance.