Tesla's First 6 Superchargers Open to Public Today

http://www.treehugger.com/cars/first-6-tesla-superchargers-open-public-today.html

by MikeCapone • 14 years ago

91 63 14 years ago

ck2• 14 years ago

I'm really looking forward to buying my first electric car secondhand in a decade.

Should be lots of hobbyists rebuilding their own battery packs - pick up a dead car with no range left and make it like new.

Many thanks to early adopters!

w1ntermute2• 14 years ago

Yep, this is exactly what I'm planning to do. The early adopters will dump their cars to upgrade a lot sooner than they really need to, and it'll be easy to grab one for a really low price at that time.

ovi256• 14 years ago

In that case, hope that a charger standard would emerge fast. It would be useless to buy a car that uses an obsolete charger system, that you can't charge at whatever the future standard would be. Still, maybe there will be adapters to charge cars from a different charger standard.

Tesla open-sourced their connector design and specification. Let's hope it's good enough to be reused by other manufacturers so we won't have a connector/charger war.

ben10402• 14 years ago

It looks like there already is a standard, and the Model S makes use of it (as well as the Leaf, Volt, et al).

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

sliverstorm4• 14 years ago

Should be lots of hobbyists rebuilding their own battery packs - pick up a dead car with no range left and make it like new.

Except, aren't the battery packs a very significant portion of the value of the car? I don't see how you will be able to replace them cheaply enough to come out on top, unless you use inferior battery technology and settle for two-digit range.

MartinCron3• 14 years ago

Two digit range in a dirt-cheap super-fast roadster? Yes, please.

aptwebapps3• 14 years ago

In a decade batteries should cost quite a bit less than they do now.

sejje2• 14 years ago

Even their future expansion plans won't allow for cross-country trips.

brianbreslin• 14 years ago

I'd bet a super small subset of their customers will ever take a 4 day drive. They will fly, it would be cheaper.

Stefan_H• 14 years ago

How would it be cheaper if the refueling stations are free?

jonny_eh• 14 years ago

How much will flying cost in the future?

refurb2• 14 years ago

Cheaper? Not sure about that. I've done a couple 3000+ mile drives and the price was pretty comparable to a flight (in terms of fuel). If you have more than one person in the car, it's cheaper than flying.

And these are electric cars we are talking about. I would imagine they would beat the cost of flying every time.

w1ntermute2• 14 years ago

Why not? Musk specifically stated during the revelation of the Superchargers that it would be possible to travel from LA to NY in a Tesla car for free in 2 years.

danielweber• 14 years ago

It's not appropriate for people who want to do cross-country trips, just like a pickup truck isn't appropriate for a single college student with nothing to haul.

sejje2• 14 years ago

Oddly enough, I fit that mold pretty well.

But I have a Nissan Hardbody, which is a small engine truck. Good gas mileage, reliable as hell.

I like it.

ben10402• 14 years ago

I love the design of the stations, and how it calls back to that '50s and '60s gas station design that celebrated the promise of the future. Seems really appropriate.

rheide• 14 years ago

Hm, waiting 30 minutes for half a charge. This doesn't scale at all. If there's a queue of only one car you'll be there for an hour.

cryptoz• 14 years ago

I'm sure it will scale with the number of cars on the road. Right now, there are very, very few Teslas driving around and I bet nobody will encounter such a wait (or if they do, it will be rare). As the build more cars, they will presumably build more stations as well as expanding the existing ones.

jnw23• 14 years ago

Thanksgiving travel is an interesting question, though. Amtrak certainly finds that there's a huge demand spike at Thanksgiving that just doesn't happen at other times of the year.

MikeCapone• 14 years ago

Indeed, but I'm pretty sure that they're aware of the problem and will scale these up so that queues are very rare.

Besides, most people probably won't need a 150 miles charge most of the time. If you're going back home and need just an extra 30 miles to be safe, that won't take long.

001sky3• 14 years ago

Have you seen the locations? These are for intra-state transit. Not for getting home from work. The locations are really only for making long trips feasible you would otherwise need to rent a "real-car" to take. Like SF to LA or what not (or tahoe, or La to vegas). In that context, it both seems less likely to find a backup at a station (because few tesla owners would not just Fly, be realistic), but a bit more of a hassle (extra 1 hr on a 5 hr drive, etc). You'd also expect to see "full" charges, because of the destinations.

TL;DR Its not the local/commuter crowd they are catering too.

_____________

Edit: Locations - Only the LA and Fremont are even somewhat near major metros.

SF/SValley to Tahoe = 1x (Fremont)

SF LA corridor = 3x+1 (harris ranch, tejon ranch, gilroy, LA)

LA to Vegas Corridor = 1x (barstow)

SF-Tahoe-via Fremont seems the most likely actual drive for the target audience. Its only 1 of 6 locations.

crazcarl• 14 years ago

This assumes that the person inside the diner/cafe is nice enough to come out and move their car at exactly 30 min. If he is getting food, he could end up just leaving the car in the charging spot for an extra 15-30 minutes while he finishes up.

klinquist2• 14 years ago

People don't think about the fact that you'll start off every morning with a "full tank." The 80kW ModelS has a range of 250 miles, what % of your trips are more than that?

jnw23• 14 years ago

If you're driving 500 miles a day two days in a row to cover a total of 1000 miles, can the early adopters really expect to find a suitable 240 V, 30-50 A charging station at their hotel, or are they going to resort to stopping at a supercharger and not charging at the hotel?

revelation• 14 years ago

This is a terrible blogspam site citing yet another blogspam site. The new information in here is "open today".

I would like to actually see pictures of these stations, or mind you, a video! Not the old rendering.

lelf• 14 years ago

http://www.teslamotors.com/supercharger

protomyth4• 14 years ago

I do wonder how many of these will be put up before a state imposes an electric tax equivalent to the gas tax. That is going to be some fun math with politicians.

sixothree• 14 years ago

Does anyone have any real pictures of these stations?

missing_cipher• 14 years ago

Here's one: http://green.autoblog.com/2012/09/24/tesla-supercharger-netw...

mbell• 14 years ago

What a confusing name. Did they really need to reuse a term that is already very well defined in the automotive world?

error54• 14 years ago

I fully agree. From the title I had assumed that Tesla had added a new model with a supercharger option.

ujeezy2• 14 years ago

The images embedded in that article aren't zoomable right now. Until they are, here are direct links to the fullsize images:

Current supercharger locations: http://media.treehugger.com/assets/images/2012/10/Tesla-supe...

Supercharger mockup: http://media.treehugger.com/assets/images/2012/09/Tesla-Supe...

Long-term plan: http://media.treehugger.com/assets/images/2012/09/Tesla-Supe...

Supercharger close-ups: http://media.treehugger.com/assets/images/2012/09/Tesla-Supe...

Charging dashboard: http://media.treehugger.com/assets/images/2012/09/Tesla-Supe...

andrewcooke2• 14 years ago

thanks. is the radius the full range or half the range? i mean - if you want to drive to tahoe, can you get back again? i guess the idea is that you have a charger at your cabin by the lake (or maybe they are villas, i am a little out of my social class here) so you can charge up before you come home?

ujeezy2• 14 years ago

Looks like the radius is half the range. A Tesla Model S gets 300 miles per charge, and the distance from Barstow, CA to Vegas is about 150 miles: http://bit.ly/PGUXSU

daimyoyo• 14 years ago

30 minutes for a half charge, or less than 5 for a full tank(with 4X the range)? The time is going to need to be cut drastically(though I'm not sure how without violating the laws of physics) before this business model will be able to gain any significant traction.

WatchDog• 14 years ago

So telsa vehicles can drive on water now. Neat.

ainsleyb• 14 years ago

I'm super surprised that the plans for 2013 don't include a charging station in the Bay Area, seeing as they're headquartered here.

reustle• 14 years ago

I know they are still a very expensive part of the car, but I look forward to when you can pull up and simply swap out an empty battery for a full one (easily automated).

turbahn• 14 years ago

Better Place (http://www.betterplace.com/) does this with their electric cars. They set up around ~10 "swapping stations" around Israel, and additionally installed charging stations in most malls.

Tesla's First 6 Superchargers Open to Public Today

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