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Elon Musk Suggests Tesla Model 3 Won't Get Free Supercharger Use (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader writes from a report via The Verge: In response to a question about how the company would handle an influx of Model 3s to its Supercharging stations, which are currently offered as a free service to Tesla customers, Elon Musk said at Tesla's annual shareholder's conference in Mountain View, California, "it will not be free long distance for life unless you purchase that package." He did not specify what the "package" contained, nor did he say how much it would cost as an add-on with the purchase of a Model 3. His full quote reads: "Obviously, [free Supercharging] fundamentally has a cost. [...] The obvious thing to do is decouple that from the cost of the Model 3. So it will still be very cheap, and far cheaper than gasoline, to drive long-distance with the Model 3, but it will not be free long distance for life unless you purchase that package. I wish we could, but in order to achieve the economics, it has to be something like that." Tesla did recently announce their Gigafactory Grand Opening will be held on July 29, even if it isn't scheduled to begin production on lithium ion cells until next year.
Nothing is free
From the article:
"Elon Musk addressed a question from a young Model S P85D owner about how the company would handle an influx of Model 3s to its Supercharging stations"
So basically some rich guy wanted to know if he had to share his charging station with the unwashed lower classes.
#DeleteChrome
Isn't this specified in the options when you pre-order a model 3? Why is this news?
Lo and behold, for I am a sig!
And just how is this a con? Name me any other car manufacturer that gives you free energy for life.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Just put solar panels all over the car body. Problem solved, once and for all.
Sure, for trips to the mailbox and back.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Lower margins on a mass-market vehicle means there isn't enough money to pay the electrical bill for the lifetime of the vehicle.
Are people really getting worked up over basic and obvious economic decisions?
I know two people who own Teslas, and both of them bought the in-home charger regardless of the availability of "free" charging. Topping up costs way less than a tank of gas, and they don't feel like wasting time at the station.
The only reason Tesla could offer free charging in the first place is because the electricity costs so much less than gasoline. Their "free" fillup simply was not a large value to begin with---except for the convenience it offered on long trips.
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According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
Do some math.
Insolation at the surface is about 1 kw / m^2 in perfect conditions. A good solar panel might be 20% efficient, so 200W/m^2 = 0.2 kW/m^2. Tesla battery = 60 kWh. 60 / 0.2 = 300 hours to charge the battery, per square meter of solar panel in absolutely optimal, cloudless conditions.
Also, for comparison, 1 HP = 745W.
>"You'll be stopping a[t] filling stations, getting gas, etc. just like everyone else.. the only real difference will be the type of energy being pumped in.."
Well, no, not really. With my current car, a fillup takes about 4 minutes and then I have another 380 mile range. Electrically, I would have to wait potentially an hour or more and then have something like a 200 mile range.
Sure, it will get faster and more range, but that could take many years and it might never be as convenient as gas for trips.
Yea, those Mars rovers are *really* speedy using that approach. Took one of them more than a decade to drive about 26 miles...
I'm sure you realize this, but there simply isn't enough energy from the sun hitting your car to do much traveling with. You might be able to keep the battery topped off or a bit more using the energy hitting the car, but you certainly are NOT going to be driving around town on a sunny day on the energy you collect.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
The Tesla S is approx 2 meters wide by 5 meters long, about half of which is windows. If you covered the rest with solar panels (only projected area matters), that's 5 m^2 of panels.
Figure you use the commercial 150 Watt/m^2 panels, and that's a peak generating capacity of 750 Watts. Capacity factor for solar in the U.S. is about 0.145 (this accounts for angle of the sun, weather, etc.). So (0.75 kW) * (0.145) * (24 hours) = 2.61 kWh. In other words, if you left your solar panel-covered Tesla S parked outside for a typical continental U.S. day, it would generate 2.61 kWh.
Charging efficiency of the Tesla battery is about 80%. So only about 2.09 kWh actually makes it into the battery (the rest heats up the battery and charger).
The best EPA-rated Tesla S uses 33 kWh/100 miles. So leaving your PV-encrusted Tesla parked out in the sun all day will charge the battery enough to move you 6.3 miles.
http://i.imgur.com/gHcGr.jpg
It already exists. It is called Harris Ranch, has a nice restaurant, and 15+ SuperChargers. The number of model S cars parked is pretty amazing. I always stop there for lunch. Really good beef. And I drive a Prius which will easily make the trip non-stop.
How is Elon Musk any less of a con artist than Elizabeth Holmes? I fail to see a difference.
Oh come on. The problem here is that Tesla set up the expectation that if you buy one of their cars, you got free access to these charging stations. Now everybody expects this from Tesla because it was baked into the price of the car and Tesla wasn't really out to make a profit anyway. Well, now Tesla wants to become profitable so things will have to change and their cars will have to be competitively priced so some of their cost drivers need to be addressed.
It's obvious that Tesla *cannot* continue such arrangements unless they roll a significant cost into the cost of the cars they sell. The problem is Tesla needs to market this better, reset the customer's expatiations. If Musk has any issue it's that he didn't think though the PR of this before offering an answer to the question, not that it wasn't painfully obvious what the answer needed to be.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
"Just put solar panels all over the car body. Problem solved, once and for all."
Nope. Typical efficiencies are around 0.75KWh a day per square meter. (~5 hours a day of full exposure.) If we can mount 4 square meters of solar cells on the roof and hood, it would take ~two weeks to get a full charge on the smaller 40KWh battery packs.
Note that I'm _not_ dismissing the somewhat naive belief in Solar-Powered vehicles. It's a matter of square meters and power draw. For instance, there are various techniques that exploit wind energy for actual motive power; these are commonly known as "Sails", and are most often seen on "Windmills" and "Sailboats". With that out of the way, it's a matter of powering various entertainment devices, lighting, and an ice maker. I spent a week taking measurements and figuring energy budgets, and about a square meter is sufficient space to allocate for a typical nine meter boat with a decent battery bank and some common sense.
But anybody who believes in a strictly Solar-Powered automobile is either a fool, or failed third grade math, or both.
Yea, those Mars rovers are *really* speedy using that approach. Took one of them more than a decade to drive about 26 miles...
I'm sure you realize this, but there simply isn't enough energy from the sun hitting your car to do much traveling with. You might be able to keep the battery topped off or a bit more using the energy hitting the car, but you certainly are NOT going to be driving around town on a sunny day on the energy you collect.
I'm sure you realize this, but the Mars rovers are a bad example, not the least because they are on Mars, which receives far less sunlight than the Earth, but also because their power budget is not dedicated to transportation, and their movement, well, it's offroad, because where they went, there were no roads. Not to mention the operating temperatures.
No, whatever point you want to make about the silliness of solar panels on cars, referring to the Mars Rovers is not a good idea.
Personally, though, I'd prefer to use them to keep the interior cooler.
Besides, you know the above was being silly.
A super charger is somewhere north of 400 volts at around 400 amps. That's 4x what a typical house service can draw (for the *entire* house) and it still takes an hour.
The amount of energy you transfer in 4 minutes at a gas pump is staggering. If you could charge an electric vehicle that fast, I wouldn't want to be anywhere that charging system. You'd be at around 5kv at 400A. (Or the conductors would be as big as your leg to get the voltage down) If anything goes wrong, Think flesh vaporizing arcing explosions -- not my idea of fun.
Ian Ameline
There is ONE significant difference, no TWO..
1. You are going to stop more often to recharge than refuel. Your average gasoline car goes in excess of 300 miles between stops, an electric is lucky to get you 200 on a full charge and you can count on just over 100 miles on 75% charge when you need to run the environmental controls to stay comfortable. I figure you will have to stop between 2 and 3 times more often to recharge than my minivan on that road trip.
2. You will stop longer. I can fill up my minivan, hit the bathroom and the soda fountain in about 10 min, or eat a meal in 30 and be back on the road for 300 miles. IF you can find a "super charger" your electric will need about 45 min or more to get you to 75% charge and another 125 miles or so and if you don't mind waiting 1.5 hours or so you might get nearly 200 miles out of that charge. A full 250 mile 100% charge will usually take a couple of hours or more. If you do not have access to a super charger, you can figure on 4 to 10 hours to charge from a 15A extension cord.
Please don't undersell the difference here. They are significant.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Just put solar panels all over the car body. Problem solved, once and for all.
Dude! Make a WINDMILL out of solar panels and mount it on the roof!
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
I think many of you missed my point entirely. I was pointing out all the non free energy that Pro Tesla people were making a thing of. It's not going to happen. They'll have to stop and pay to fill up, just like us ICE people do. It will just be a different form of gas.
Of course I know it'll take them longer and more stops, but that wasn't my point.
To be useful electric cars REQUIRE home charging.
Or work charging. Or anywhere you can run a 2cm cable to. If every car took 20 min to "refuel" but a refueling station had the footprint of the head-on space between 2 parking spaces instead of massive underground storage tanks I'm sure someone could figure out how to avoid grinding to a halt.
Those numbers are somewhat exaggerated. My 85kWH battery takes roughly 1 hour, 10 min to get from 5% to 100% (I've measured). To get to 80% takes about 40 minutes.
The cabin conditioning is a tiny fraction of electricity used. Realistically, a 100% charge will net ~240 miles at 75mph (say, highway 5 in CA). The AC has relatively little impact on that range (maybe 5%). The biggest impact is if you live in a really cold area. That can get you down to 200 miles on 100% charge if you're at, say, 30F ambient temp or lower. I've driven in parts of Oregon during the winter and haven't really noticed more than a ~10% hit in range at 70mph cruising speed.
It's definitely less convenient than a gas car by far. But not insurmountable as you make it out to be. On my route from SF to LA, it adds about 1 hour of drive time for a 7 hour drive. That was when there was ~150-200 miles between chargers. Now, on highway 5, there's a charger every ~100 miles. Some even less (Harris Ranch -> Buttonwillow -> Tijon -> Burbank is about ~50 miles each hop).
Trying to drive long distance without Supercharger access is a terrible idea (though I've done it for the lawls).
If the OP undersold the difference, you're definitely overselling it.
Running the AC does not cut your range in half, that's just made up. At most there's a 10% effect on range (heat or AC), and that's under pretty extreme conditions.
On a Tesla Model S you get an 80% charge in 40 minues, not a 75% charge in 45 minutes.
Why even bother with talking about the time to charge to 100%? Noone would do that on a long trip, you charge to 80% and then go.
Why even bother talking about a 15A extension cord? That's the EV equivalent of walking down the highway with a gallon jug of gasoline--something that would happen only under extreme emergent conditions (or charging at night or something).
Seriously, does the existence of EVs challenge your lifestyle sooo much that you feel the need to unleash FUD as a defense mechanism?
Home charging or battery swap charging stations. It's not hard.
Learn to love Alaska
You can actually power a car with a windmill (well, very lightweight test equipment) given a brisk headwind. Fun with physics.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
>"Home charging or battery swap charging stations. It's not hard."
Yes it is.
Home charging is *SLOW*. Very, very, very slow. For a high-range EV at 110V/20A takes many days, 220V/60A takes probably a full day from 0% to full. Besides, this won't help with long trips because the assumption is that for a long trips you leave fully charged.
Swapping batteries is nowhere near "not hard". There is no standard for that. Battery technology changes often. Batteries are often inaccessible or complex to remove or make swappable. Swapping something that weights many, many hundreds of pounds requires some very specialized infrastructure and machines. The space needed to store all these huge, heavy batteries isn't small. And last but not least, there are ownership issues. I am sure I missed other issues, but that is a good start.
I believe that supercharge stations will get better and better, and that will be the answer for trips- when you can get an 80% charge in something like 5 or 10 minutes..... but we are a long way from that technology right now.
Trust me, I am just an anxious for electric vehicles as anyone, and hope that my next car will be one... but the technology is still lacking for many uses and the prices are still quite high.
Turbochargers, superchargers - all made up terms anyway.
Turbocharger uses exhaust gas to compress an intake charge. Supercharger uses a belt driven compressor to compress intake charge.
"Turbo" and "Super" don't really mean anything and are simply marketing terms.
Just like the really big electric charger called "supercharger" - it's marketing - it means nothing. Would you have been happier if Musk called them "ultra-super-duper-chargers"?
Didn't see this coming at all! Nope! Huge surprise!
In the Model 3 launch video Musk clearly says the Model 3 will be supercharger "capable". Anyone paying attention will have noticed that Musk did not promise free supercharging. Why some Model 3 reservation holders expect this is a mystery.
In other news, none of the manufacturers of any of my ICE powered cars have given me free fuel either.
When I get my Model 3, I will be perfectly content to pay for all the electricity I use to charge my car.
I've argued with a number of people on the Tesla forums on how stupid this is.
Covering every horizontal surface other than the windows on a car would be frightfully expensive and it would add more weight. The body under the cells would need to be more rigid to prevent the cells from cracking, plus since cars are rarely perfectly flat there would have to be an expensive cover over the cells. It would have to stand up to rocks and other things as well as the flexing a car normally has while driving. If you think denting a normal hood is expensive, imagine how expensive it would be if it were covered with solar?
It's far better to instead install solar on your roof rather than the very limited return one would get with solar added to a car.
I know someone with a Fisker Karma which does have solar on the roof. From what I have read it costs around $5000 to add the solar to the roof of the Karma for a very limited rate of return. It's not going to be as efficient as a normal solar panel since it will not be aimed towards the sun, plus it needs a much thicker coating over the panels in order to protect them. Additionally, it adds weight to the car as well as the extra support for those panels to prevent cracking or damage from various things encountered while driving. Someone ran the numbers and figured out the rate of return is around 500 years until the panel pays for itself. It barely adds anything to the range of the car and is mostly used to keep the 12v battery topped off and to help cool the interior. It's also going to be expensive since you want to try and keep the solar panels from getting too hot. The solar panels on my house are quite light with plenty of air circulation under them. They're also perfectly flat and aimed at the sun so they're a lot more efficient and a lot cheaper.
For my Tesla I much prefer having the panoramic roof where I can just open it a bit to help keep the car cool. On top of that, the panoramic roof adds additional head room and it's nice to open when the weather is nice. The glass used is amazing in that it does not let much heat into or out of the car.
Solar on the roof of a car might generate 100 watts. It would take around 3 hours of sun to add one mile of range since my car (with my driving and sticky tires) typically takes almost 300Wh/mile.
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Actually it usually takes a lot less time and is far more convenient since it only takes me 5 seconds to plug in at home at night and 5 seconds to unplug in the morning in the comfort of my garage. I don't have to periodically pull into a gas station, get out my credit card and wait for my car to fill up. The only time I need to wait to charge is if I'm traveling a long distance. Also, there are usually things to do within easy walking distance while the car is charging. Even on long trips I can often charge at the hotel. At my recent stay in Reno the hotel had a couple Tesla charging spaces where I could charge and the hotel I happened to pick out in the middle of nowhere happens to have a Tesla charger (I didn't realize this when I selected the hotel). I asked if they had a 220v outlet I could use and they said they just installed a Tesla charger there... the person on the phone thought the owner was crazy at first. The nearby town has a population of only around 500 people. Tesla is being quite smart about charging, offering establishments deep discounts or even free installation of destination chargers as well as listings on their maps.
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You are going to stop more often to recharge than refuel.
You very rarely "stop to recharge" in an EV. You just charge at the same time as you are doing other things, such as sleeping or shopping.
You will stop longer.
The same applies. You are stopped there *anyway* so you aren't stopping longer.
Yes, if you try to drive 1000 km in a Leaf, it's not going to be fun. But that aren't designed for that. If you do it in a Tesla, their range and charging speed are well aligned to the typical human comfort requirements (drive 2.5 hrs -> stop 20 mins -> drive 2.5 hrs -> stop 60 minutes -> drive 2.5 hrs -> stop 20 minutes -> drive 2.5 hours). Sure, there are a minority of people who are like this but most people aren't.
- Chuq
automotive arts
I'm picturing a hillbilly sipping a latte.
- Chuq
You know me!
You are welcome on my lawn.
Typical panels are about 25% efficient, and there is about 12 square meters of exposed body area on a decent mid-sized sedan. Assuming a decent angle to the sun, you can get almost 3kWh but are at best likely to get ~2.3kWh (remember, one side is most likely not going to be facing the sun directly at all and parts of others at extreme angles, though incidental light from surrounding terrain might be enough for it to get some usable energy, otherwise we're looking at a rough total of 4kWh if all sides were exposed.)
Drop your calculation by an order of magnitude and then some. ~26 hours at 2.3kWh
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Yes, home charging is slow.
I have no idea how we'll manage to find the 8 hours to charge a car at home.
As for road trips, maybe someone should invent a company that rents gas vehicles.
I'm waiting on buying a gas vehicle until it can travel across the ocean.
Mars also has next to no atmosphere. According to Wikipedia: "Sunlight on the surface of Mars would be much like a moderately cloudy day on Earth". (source)
I don't' know if Model 3 customers will have to pay for charges or not but then again I never bought into this "electricity for free forever" business model to begin with.
But it isn't too hard to predict that eventually you will have a charging station reservation system that can be accessed from within the car. I can already order food that way at many restaurants even with a complicated order -- there is no reason a charging station couldn't deliver the same predictable service. For pay or for free.
If the market gets big enough you will have 3rd parties installing paid-for charging stations and contracting to Tesla, Nissan, Chev, BMW to get listed on their reservation systems.
But anybody who believes in a strictly Solar-Powered automobile is either a fool, or failed third grade math, or both.
That's not very fair or nice. Plus, you're wrong.
First of all, I believe that the proposed idea was not for a strictly solar powered vehicle but rather a battery-powered vehicle with solar for range extension and powering things like AC.
Secondly, quick google search showed some solar options that deliver much more power than you are saying. There are solar modules out there with efficiency around 25%, which means somewhere around 250W/m2. Multiply by 4m2 and 5 hours and that yields 5kWh for 5 hours in the sun. That's about 7x higher than your claim. Care to explain yourself? Are you manipulating numbers intentionally to make a point?
Solar on the roof of a car might generate 100 watts.
What kind of tiny solar panel are you talking about here??? 1 square meter should generate 250W at 25% efficiency. The top surface of a car is MULTIPLE square meters.
Why is this modded "insightful"??
You don't get that sort of efficiency for multiple reasons. First of all, the solar panel is not pointed towards the sun. In fact, given how the roofs of most cars are curved, at least half of the cells will be angled away from the sun at any one time. You don't want a perfectly flat roof for aerodynamic reasons, plus on most cars it would look quite ugly. In the northern hemisphere the panels would be pointed south but on a vehicle this would not be the case. Second of all, due to the coatings required to have a smooth curved surface you are going to lose a lot more light. You want a smooth surface as well which will reflect a lot more light. A fair amount will also likely be lost to reflections. Also, most solar panels are not 25% efficient.
Flat panels like one might normally see are pointed towards the sun. They have a thin flat layer above the solar cells and a lot of ventilation under the cells to help keep them cool since the cells lose efficiency when hot.
This is not the case on a car. Take the Fisker Karma, for example. On the roof it has a smooth curved clear cover with the cells underneath. That top layer needs to be a lot thicker than the layer on a flat panel for a number of reasons. Next, the roof needs to be kept quite rigid to prevent cracking which means that a more substantial structure is needed to support the cells. This adds a lot of weight. Then you either need to build a cooling system or some other method to keep the cells from getting too hot since not only does it reduce efficiency, but it also reduces the lifetime of the cells. All of this also adds weight to the vehicle where you don't want it (for handling purposes you want the weight to be as low as possible) and makes the roof thicker, so other compromises are required to prevent the reduction of headroom (which the Fisker Karma lacks).
Solar panels on the roof don't need to be designed to handle all the vibration and whatnot that cells on a car would have to handle. They don't need to be as rigid either. They need to be able to stand up to wind and hail, but that's not as bad as what the panels on a car would have to handle. Cars tend to flex and bend as they drive, going over bumps in the road, etc. The panels don't need to be nearly as strong as those in a car. Besides, if they break, they're not that expensive to replace.
I'm familiar with both since I have solar on my roof and I have a close relative with a Fisker Karma which has the entire roof of the car covered with solar.
Curved thin-film cells could be used instead. The drawback is that they are a lot less efficient but it would also be cheaper.
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