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Tesla Is Rethinking the Rest Stop For California Road Trips (bloomberg.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: In-N-Out Burgers has some new competition for attracting drivers on two heavily traveled stretches of California freeways that help link Los Angeles to Las Vegas and San Francisco: Tesla's biggest Supercharger stations yet. The charging stations in Kettleman City, off Interstate 5, and Baker, near Interstate 15, each have 40 stalls, making them the largest among more than 1,000 in North America, according to an emailed statement Wednesday. If filling up your Tesla takes half an hour, you might as well get comfortable. The Kettleman City station north of Bakersfield has a play wall for kids, a pet relief area and outdoor space for families. It's open round-the-clock, there's wi-fi and there will be food as well. But if you want to stretch your legs, the nearest In-N-Out is just across the street. And there are inevitable Tesla touches at both: solar-covered parking and Tesla Powerpacks.
They have to start somewhere. You don't have to have the capacity to charge a population of 90% electric cars when the population doesn't currently have 90% electric cars. Just pace your scaling just ahead of demand and you are fine, no need to go overboard otherwise you suck at business.
2007 called and they want their predictions back.
You can fast-charge to about 80% for one - and not in the theoretical 'we did it in the lab' but in the actual 'pull into a supercharger stall and it happens' kind of way. Battery life is something Tesla very, VERY carefully tracks and ... guess what? The packs are quite durable.
Heat management is also built into the packs since the peak power *output* is greater (though not sustained) than the supercharger input...oh, and they have to do thermal management from below freezing to over 100 degrees anyway.
And to wrap it up, no one is saying EVs are charging at parity with ICE. We aren't there yet...hence the point of TFA about rest stops so people can make use of the 30-60 minutes of down time.
You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.
About fast charging, I've seen that Tesla use Panasonic NCR18650B batteries, looking at the datasheet ( http://www.batteryspace.com/pr... ), I see a maximum charging current of 0.5C and it takes nearly 2 hours to get to 80%. I'm genuinely curious as how they manage to get so far out of specs and still maintain decent longevity. Please enlighten me because seriously, every single technical writing I've seen related to Li-ion batteries don't match real-life results, especially regarding fast charge.