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In Preparation For Model 3, Tesla Plans To Double the Size of Its Supercharger Network This Year (fortune.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Fortune: Tesla says it will double the number of electric vehicle chargers in its network this year as the automaker prepares for the production of its mass-market vehicle the Model 3. The plan, announced Monday in a blog post on the company's website, will grow its global network of Superchargers from more than 5,400 today to more than 10,000 by the end of the year. Tesla, which had previously announced in its annual shareholder letter plans to double the network in North America, did not disclose the cost of such an ambitious expansion. Many sites will soon enter construction to open in advance of the summer travel season, according to Tesla. The company says it will add charging locations within city centers as well as highway sites this year. The goal is to make "charging ubiquitous in urban centers," Tesla says in its blog post. The company says it will build larger sites along busy travel routes to accommodate several dozen Teslas simultaneously. These larger sites will also have customer service centers.
It would be nice if Tesla included charging for other vehicles. There are only so many sites on major routes where you can connect a megawatt or two of chargers to the grid, and Tesla has been fighting other networks to get them.
It would just kind of suck if all the best spots were Tesla only. I say that as someone who plans to buy a Model 3.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Would be even better if there was a practical way to plug other vehicles into the network.
(Pay Tesla for a Menekes adapter + fee/plan to access the supercharger network ?...)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
they demonstrated a working prototype that swaps batteries, see youtube
They did some testing with battery replacement but it doesn't look like it led to anything useful so far.
It's also a very limited solution.
The battery is essentially the whole underside of the car.
You need a mechanism that unscrews the underside of the car, disconnects all connectors, takes the battery into a storage facility and gets you a new battery, then reconnects everything.
You also need to do this for multiple models, at different sizes, so probably some kind of movable robotic screwdriver arm, you probably need to house it in some sort of drive-through structure, pay mechanics to maintain each one.
How many of those do you think they'd find cost-effective to build, for the few people who can't stop and charge for half an hour after driving 300 miles straight?
And if the do build them, great, they've created a solution for Tesla customers, but they don't server any car like a gas station would.
Alternatively, put more research into higher powered charging.
Tesla recently filed a patent for a system that also pushes coolant from the charging station through the battery pack's cooling system, which should reduce the charging time significantly due to heat generation being a significant part of the problem.
Another concept is aluminium-air batteries that are non rechargable but 8x as energy dense as lithium battery and lighter too. The idea is the car has a normal battery (e.g. with 100 mile range) and it could switch to the aluminium-air battery which could offer another 1000. Ordinarily the driver wouldn't tap the second battery but its there if they need it, and it could be switched out when it's exhausted.
In Preparation For Model 3, Tesla Plans To Double the Size of Its Supercharger Network This Year
Great. Now the plug will be too big for older cars ;-)
Exactly this. The concept of "battery swapping" is at least as difficult as the concept of "engine swapping" (for someone else's engine, at that). It can be done, but you're dealing with a very large, heavy component critical to vehicle structure, with sensitive connections, and very high value, which high stockpiling requirements - multiplied by the number of batteries on the market. And mandating that everyone use the same battery pack will never fly - not out of stubbornness, but because different vehicles represent entirely different capacity needs, power needs, form factors, price ranges, etc, and the technology is a constantly moving target. The sort of battery you're going to put in a 2wd luxury sedan is not the sort of battery you're going to put in an electric jeep, which is not the same sort of battery you're going to put in in a sports car, which is not the same sort of battery you're going to put in a delivery truck, which is not the same sort of battery you're going to put in a motorcycle... (continues ad nauseum).
Battery swap is fun to prototype, but it's not at all practical. Faster and faster charging is the way forward. Which BTW comes inherently with increased capacity. If you go from a 100kW pack made of cells that can charge in half an hour to a 200kW pack made of cells that can charge in half an hour**, then you're going from charging at 200kW to 400kW, and doubling the kilometers-range-per-hour-spent-charging.
** - Pretending that charging is linear, rather than fast in the beginning and slow at the end, for simplicity's sake. ;)
Very well; let this abomination unto the Lord begin!
I am fuel agnostic because I do not believe the electric cars currently fix any problems that I care about - there are 7.5b of us. The most effective planet saving measure is condom. Everything else is maybe necessary if improvement to the point of proven helping issues at stake AND being feasible for common man.
As for the vehicle, charging network etc - I do not quite understand the excitement. When Tesla or whoever fixes the problem bespoken above and in the subject then it can move on to fixing the price of a vehicle. When it becomes affordable for a common man I will think about buying one. Till then I will use a vehicle that burns oil, gas or whatever. As long as it is affordable and gets things to move where I want. Good however that other people get excited to the point of parting with the money. Development needs its supporters. Whether this is the solution of our problems I doubt. In any case I look at it be the iteration that solves two problems indicated.
Did you seriously just divide Earth's total land area by the number of chargers? Great to know that I can pop over to a Tesla supercharger when I'm in the middle of Antarctica, Greenland or the Sahara.
Tesla Superchargers are only found in:
* The US (not including Alaska)
* Southern Canada (and not all of southern Canada)
* Europe
* Israel
* UAE
* Southeast coastal Australia (plus one in the west, and a couple in NZ)
* Japan
* South Korea
* East China
In the US, Superchargers are spaced 50-100 miles apart along all but a handful of interstates (the latter to be added by the expansion), as well as smaller highways in more densely populated areas (many more to be added by the coming expansion). Which is more than enough to drive cross country. Note that we're only talking about superchargers; there are also many more slower chargers in place.
Comparing it to gas stations is a stupid comparison, firstly because there are vastly more cars on the road, and thus vastly more gas stations needed. But beyond that is the more basic point: EVs don't do most of their charging at superchargers. Gas vehicles must fill up at gas stations. EVs overwhelmingly don't fill up at superchargers. Superchargers are for trips.
Very well; let this abomination unto the Lord begin!
Instead of pulling into a supercharger and spending up to an hour recharging, couldn't they just pop my battery out and put a fully pre-charged on back in?
Technically possible but economically infeasible. Tesla's were designed to allow this and it proved to be economically not viable. They had a program and shut it down. For it to really work you would have to have a standard sized battery pack, widely used, with a customer base far larger than Tesla is likely to achieve in the near future to justify the cost of the infrastructure. To understate things greatly, swapping out a car battery pack is a wee bit harder than changing a laptop or cell phone battery. It requires significant and expensive automation to do quickly, not just a burly guy with a wrench and a lift. For it to make any kind of economic sense you need a critical mass of EV owning customers which we are in no danger of reaching in the next 5-10 years at minimum.
Realistically, fast recharging is a better solution in the long run due to network effects. It's going to be nigh-impossible to get car makers to agree on a standard sized battery pack and battery mounting system. Unless you have a substantial network of battery swap stations available (which we don't) there is no added value to swapping the batteries over existing infrastructure. It's comparatively easy to incrementally improve the charging infrastructure for fast charging. It's almost economically impossible to build a useful battery swap network incrementally. Worse, if fast (less than 20 min) recharging ever becomes viable any investment in a battery swap network would become instantly unprofitable.
So does Tesla follow Apple on the battery replacement issue?
Are you seriously comparing the $12000+ battery pack on a car designed to last the better part of a decade to the one in your cell phone? No, Tesla is not following Apple's lead on batteries. That would not be wise of them nor practical.
Slashdot is making progress. I'm glad to see a discussion on electric cars on this forum where no-one is whining "electric cars will never work, you can't go more than 200 miles without needing to refuel... customers don't want electric..." etc,etc,et.
When even the luddites accept a technology as here to stay you know the technology is a success.
Now to win over the space luddites.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Yes, that was a typo. Very clear what I meant, though. :)
Very well; let this abomination unto the Lord begin!
An EV battery is not some 12V with a couple leads sticking out of it. Just like an engine, it requires rigid attachment to the frame, integration with the airflow circulation, etc. It's not just sitting in some compartment that you can open up, it generally runs the length of the entire vehicle, having a meaningful impact on structural strength. The EV pack is also significantly heavier than most car engines (~500-600kg for Teslas - you can get whole cars lighter than that). And HV connectors are a lot more sensitive than just some random wire. When it comes to engineering, designing the HV connectors to survive numerous removal / reconnection connection cycles without degradation is one of the hardest parts. It's one thing to demonstrate simply swapping it once, but ensuring reliability is a much more challenging part.
Beyond that, your comparison of a car engine not designed for swapping with an EV pack designed for swapping is facetious.
Very well; let this abomination unto the Lord begin!
I wish Tesla had stuck with the original plan of including a small gas powered generator. That said I'm pretty sure that as the Model 3 gains market share you'll see someone commercially producing a small efficient generator on an attractive trailer complete with matching body styling and signal lights. Then you can either buy one to keep in a shed until you need it for long trips or rent one from a place like U-Haul or something.
Tesla is coming out with their 4th model. Who else has at least 3?
(Note I'm not counting proto-types, concept cars).
e.g.: Renault. :
the "zero emission" (Z. E.) currently familly covers
- Twizzy : a tiny in-city micr-car/quad (since 2012)
- Zoé : a small compact (since 2012)
- Fluence : a sedan (since 2011)
- Kangoo Z.E. : a pannel-van (since 2011)
(All of them in production. I ignore the concept cars, because they vary a lot regarding final production models - specially the Zoe)
I mostly know them because I'm mainly driving Zoés through the local carsharing, and they have a lot of marketing/outreach.
Note that : due to intricate difference of the European market (densely populated city centers, most people commute less than 50km per day) Renault went the opposite way from Tesla.
- Cheap small cars (Twizy, Zoe) where released from the nearly beginning, whereas Tesla started with big expensive cars first (went through Roadster, Model S sedan, Model X suv, before finally starting Model 3 any time soon).
- Small battery first (22kWh for all first, then progressively intoducing big batteries - like 43kWh for the current Zoe). Tesla would never stood any chance in the US if they didn't have 50~70kWh from the beginning.
- a tiny flea like the Twizy makes entirely sense in the densely populate cities of Europe (continent known for things such as Smart, Mini, etc. and even BMW C3 scooter). Such class of cars barely exist in the US because you people are affraid of being crushed if you don't own the biggest SUV possible. Tesla would have been laughed of if they attempted something like this in the land of the hummer.
- an electric minivan like Kangoo actually makes sense in a dense European city, even with a 22kWh battery - most typical trips for which such an utility vehicle might be needed are well within the battery's range - Tesla isn't even considering minivans yet.
Nissan is partly owned by Renault, so they probably have similar offerings (quick search returns: New Mobility Concept, Leaf, Kubistar).
Citroën/Peugeot has also several electric models : ...and a couple of others that I'm too lazy to properly research.
- C-Zero / iOn : compact (since 2009)
- Berlingo Electric : van (since somewhere 2008? replaces the 1991(!) C15 electric - these are *really* old tech and use NiCd battery) (Again in Europe this did make sens for their use pattern - Post office.)
- e-Mehari : convertible compact SUV (since 2016)
VW has also a certain choice of electric vehicle :
- eUP! : small compact since 2013.
- e-Golf: compact since 2012
- Camper (yup, the iconic one comes back in electric version) : tough still concept in 2017, full production expected in 2020.
More funny example :
The entire fleet in the Swiss village of Zermatt is build by a local small scale workshop since 1977. It covers a very diverse range of vehicle (taxis, utility, etc.) but these are custom built on a per-unit basis (it's a very small production, only for the village) (also, as the vehicles only drive within the village, range is definitely NOT a problem, and the vehicles can very easily benefit from battery swapping).
There are probably other companies featuring more than a single model. I'm just too lazy to research further.
Again, this is due to Europe being a completely different market from the US.
Range isn't much critical (as mentioned above, most daily commutes are under 50km), electricity doesn't rely on fossils, etc.
And as such electric vehicles have been available for quite some time (as mentioned above : Citroen provided the French Post Office with
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