Slashdot Mirror
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.
Not 40x50kW. 20x145kW max. Each Tesla Supercharger (excluding the new urban superchargers) delivers a max of 145kW to up to two stalls, with a maximum of 120kW per stall.
Most supercharger stations aren't battery buffered, but the new ones (and particularly large ones) increasingly are. This isn't designed so much as to provide backup power when the grid is down (although it will do so at low demand times) as it is to buffer out the surges between vehicles, reducing the peak draw and thus getting lower demand charges on their power bill. It also lets them incorporate the solar awnings (not the majority of the power delivered, but still useful).
We gotta go to a crappy town where I'm a hero.
You lack vision, but I see a place where people get on and off the freeway. On and off, off and on all day, all night. Soon, where Toon Town once stood will be a string of gas stations, inexpensive motels, restaurants that serve rapidly prepared food. Tire salons, automobile dealerships and wonderful, wonderful billboards reaching as far as the eye can see. My God, it'll be beautiful.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
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.
"The median range for electric cars these days is just short of a single tank of gas, around 380km."
Ahem ... A typical North American sedan will have a practical range of about 300-400 miles on a tank of gas -- that's 480-645km. Of course, some folks prefer absurd vehicles with worse mileage. But I assume they have larger fuel tanks to compensate.
I also don't believe for a second that the median range of current EVs is 380km although I'm sure that a few can manage that on a nice Spring day starting with 100% charge on a reasonably new battery pack.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey