Tesla’s promises don’t compute with current physics and economics of batteries

I do not believe this is true at all. A lot of people do not supercharge their car often because it is super inconvenient. You need to wait at least 30 minutes to get over 50% charge. One of the great things about electric cars is that you can charge them at home just like your phone and never need to worry about “do I need to fill up to get to work?” You only need super charger when you are on road trips. So most people use superchargers only once or twice a year.

According to /r/teslamotors this perk is worth less then $1000 for the total lifespan of the car for most users (there are a few taxis which use significantly more but not normal users). This is not a lot of money considering the car starts at $70k, can easily go up to $120k and maxes out at about $260k.

Edit: the price per kWh is also wrong. Tesla currently sells electricity for an average of 20¢ kWh to consumers which do not qualify for the free super charging perk and they have said they will sell it for 7¢ to semi truck customers. So we can assume Tesla pays between 5¢ and 15¢, depending on the location and whether they have solar and powerpacks installed.

Supercharging for free is really a gimmick and free advertising for them because a lot of people who buy such expensive cars value their time above what it takes to recharge it every week. The only reason Tesla built supercharger is because they wanted to enable long distance travel for electric cars.

Not only does Tesla negotiate their electrical rate, they use PowerPacks at several supercharger sites to shave peak load to reduce and/or eliminate demand charges.

Well, the article makes it sounds like they are defying physics - "breaks laws of batteries"? Then also quotes

>“I don't think they're lying,” Jaffe said. “I just think they left something out of the public reveal that would have explained how these numbers work.”

There are no laws here, just advances in battery tech, and people believe Tesla is at the forefront of that AFAIK. Sure, they might be making claims that are hard to believe, but isn't the point of Tesla doing exactly that?

At some point the size of the connector TO the vehicle is going to be the limiting factor.

The Tesla superchargers currently charge at around 2% a minute up until about 80% which is 40 minutes to hit 80%. Tesla is advertising 400 miles in 30 minutes which is 80% of the 500 mile capacity. What is so hard to believe about a 33% improvement over a couple year old tech that is a couple years from release?

Here are current industrial/transportation/residential electric prices in US [0]. They think Tesla will pay 40c a kwh??? What a joke. Sure if you look at constant demand facilities and extrapolate their pricing model with low average demand to megachargers you can come up with a ridiculous number. You can literally run diesel generators and generate electricity for a lower cost. This is so hysterically asinine I can't believe Bloomberg published this article. Not to mention a huge amount of charging can happen overnight when drivers are sleeping and electricity prices/demand are super low.

Pushing a lot of power through a wire is a solved problem. So what they need to push 10x through one connection instead of over 10. We are talking about a modest increase in % charge rates. That is what matters. All else equal you can charge a percent of your battery capacity not some arbitrary fixed number.

This is an embarrassingly poor article. I think the one the worst things about the current tech shortage is now we have all these arts/business majors doing technology writing larping like they know the difference between a watt and an amp.

[0]https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.ph...