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Tesla reveals Supercharger network, Free Fill Ups

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Re: Tesla reveals Supercharger network, Free Fill Ups

#201

Post by krenoten »

confluence wrote: post #192
chucknelson wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about diversification?

Diversification doesn't work. It not only leaves your risk essentially the same in case of catastrophic market failure (see GFC/debt crisis - bonds are safe RIGHT?). It also cuts your returns in half and brings you down along with everyone else - and gives you a false sense of security - nothing is safe - not even shorting the world (end of the world/counter party/regulatory risks). As an investor you must think long…

You're ignoring local failure, the much much much more common occurrence.

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

Re: Tesla reveals Supercharger network, Free Fill Ups

#202

Post by confluence »

krenoten wrote: post #201
confluence wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Diversification doesn't work. It not only leaves your risk essentially the same in case of catastrophic market failure (see GFC/debt crisis - bonds are safe RIGHT?). It also cuts your returns in half and brings you down along with everyone else - and gives you a false sense of security - nothing is safe - not even shorting the world (end of the world/counter party/regulatory risks). As an investor you must think long…

You're ignoring local failure, the much much much more common occurrence. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic

Local failure is obviously much more common than catastrophic failure (although the latter does have a much greater impact).

I like to think of it in terms of car crashes and catastrophes.

Companies are represented by cars - I pick good cars, with good people driving them, surrounded by a safe environment and hope they don't crash - it's how risk works.

Hurricanes destroy everyone - no matter how good the driver is - no exceptions.

The whole point of investing is to make above and beyond the S&P 500 benchmark over the long term - and that requires taking concentrated risks where one must bet on the right drivers with the right cars in awesome environments (most critical) and watching the horizon warily for distant hurricanes (debt crisis/nuclear war/WWIII/currency devaluations/governmental collapse).

I really can't do any more than that. It's a trade off obviously.

I understand local failures quite well - I rely on my ability to make decisions to mitigate that risk and the fact that I'm still young (older people should not do this).

Re: Tesla reveals Supercharger network, Free Fill Ups

#203

Post by richardw »

kamaal wrote: post #174
richardw wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Tesla doesn't let others to use their connector, they're doing themselves a huge dis-service. We need to start off with one standard. Imagine if every petrol station had connectors for different cars, or you had to look for a special station that fit your car? Nightmare.

>>If Tesla doesn't let others to use their connector It must be the other way around. If you want free power, design your car to use their connector standards.

Well, you can't get the free power if Tesla legally prevents you from using the connector because they're looking to create a near-term advantage. That's the key. My comment was that Tesla would be harming themselves by not allowing others to use it. Others would come up with a standard and now you'd have all these Tesla vehicles with a non-standard connector.

Re: Tesla reveals Supercharger network, Free Fill Ups

#204

Post by troels »

madisp wrote: post #175
jaggederest wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, electric cars are never going to be completely practical for people with a daily commute beyond 150 miles or so. But if you're commuting 3 hours a day total, you have bigger issues with your life, to be honest. Move closer to where you commute!

I'd say a 150+ mile daily commute isn't practical :)

Depends on the speed with which you can travel. During rush hour, even 1.5 miles is unbearable.

Re: Tesla reveals Supercharger network, Free Fill Ups

#205

Post by philhippus »

surrealize wrote: post #50

Making a "charging station" that could take the place of an existing gas station would be huge feat of engineering. When I go from the SF bay area down to LA, I get gas at kettleman city (because of the in-n-out :) and I go to the chevron station there. From google street view, it looks like that station can fuel 12 cars at a time. And when I'm there, there's often a line for a pump. A gas stop takes, say, 2 minutes.…

When every car on the road is electric, it will be feasible to have special "charging lanes" on the highways. In fact the whole road network could eventually be made to safely deliver charge to moving vehicles. Perhaps without the need to use the battery at all on these roads.

Re: Tesla reveals Supercharger network, Free Fill Ups

#206

Post by betterth »

jaggederest wrote: post #173
Swizec wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I understand 30 minute charging is amazing . To paraphrase Richard Hammond: "Forgetting something at home when I go to work would be a 2 day round-trip because it's so far no electric car has the range. I would have to spend one night recharging the car somewhere in the middle" His problem has just been solved. Sure, it might take him 3.5 hours (random number) instead of just 3. But that's insanely better t…

Honestly, electric cars are never going to be completely practical for people with a daily commute beyond 150 miles or so. But if you're commuting 3 hours a day total, you have bigger issues with your life, to be honest. Move closer to where you commute!

I think people don't understand how disruptive electric cars will be, when combined with autonomous cars.

When all you do is pull out your cellphone, select a route and a car picks you up in 5 minutes, takes you to your destination, and leaves... you don't worry about range and electricity and recharge.

You just use it, and the system can intelligently maintain battery levels and recharging across the fleet, ensuring efficiency.

Heck, such a system could provide gasoline or hybrid cars for trips that required them.

Re: Tesla reveals Supercharger network, Free Fill Ups

#207

Post by freehunter »

adriand wrote: post #182
madisp wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say a 150+ mile daily commute isn't practical :)

Frankly, if I can't get there in less than 1/2 an hour on my bicycle, I don't think I'm interested.

Try doing that in the midwest. Finding jobs gets hard and apartments are rare and low quality, so it's not uncommon to have to settle on a 20 minute (or much more) commute by car on the freeway. There are also no bike lanes. Commuting long distances isn't great, but moving more people into the city isn't always the best option either. We learned that in the 1900's

Re: Tesla reveals Supercharger network, Free Fill Ups

#208

Post by freehunter »

ams6110 wrote: post #189
confluence wrote: post #184

This is it - the tipping point has finally arrived. This is a killer combination of rapidly falling prices in solar PV (thank you China/Kyoto protocol/Global warming), meeting the falling prices of Li-ion batteries (thank you astonishingly successful decade of laptops/smartphones/tablets), meets a cyclic economic boom (thank you GFC), meets rising gas prices (thank you OPEC/cheap oil/peak oil), meets anti-carbon ince…

You are smart enough to know the risks of having a significant fraction of your net worth in one asset, so I'll spare you the lecture there. Tipping point? No, I don't think so. It's progress, and it's good news, but 30 minutes to recharge is still a LONG time compared to the two minutes a petroleum-fueled vehicle takes, and the best of those can go several multiples of the Teslas range between fuelings.

On my morning commute, it's important that fueling be quick. I have to stop at a station and fill up, something I can't do at home. However, if I were in an EV, I could fill up at home, while I slept. It'd be fully charged when I got in to go to work. If I could charge 30 minutes to half at home, charging time is nearly insignificant.

I would still love to see hydrogen cars instead. I think Honda has it right.

Re: Tesla reveals Supercharger network, Free Fill Ups

#209

Post by _ea1k »

jaggederest wrote: post #173
Swizec wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I understand 30 minute charging is amazing . To paraphrase Richard Hammond: "Forgetting something at home when I go to work would be a 2 day round-trip because it's so far no electric car has the range. I would have to spend one night recharging the car somewhere in the middle" His problem has just been solved. Sure, it might take him 3.5 hours (random number) instead of just 3. But that's insanely better t…

Honestly, electric cars are never going to be completely practical for people with a daily commute beyond 150 miles or so. But if you're commuting 3 hours a day total, you have bigger issues with your life, to be honest. Move closer to where you commute!

The Tesla has ~180 mile range on a 30 minute charge. 150 miles one way with a charger at the office sounds quite practical based on that. It'd actually be less disruptive than a gasoline vehicle.

Re: Tesla reveals Supercharger network, Free Fill Ups

#210

Post by vidarh »

tjoff wrote: post #81
Osiris wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At $0.11/kWh, the Roadster at 53kWh would take almost $6 to completely fill. Though if these stations charge using solar power and store the power in a battery pack to discharge when a car hooks up, it could potentially cost them a lot less than $0.11/kWh, depending on the cost of building the station itself.

Solar will hardly be efficient enough, unless you'd have a whole solar farm beside each station... Also add maintenance of all those batteries and I bet you'd have a really hard time to motivate solar for economical reasons.

According to the article it sounds like the devices are hooked up to the grid, but use solar effectively to offset the cost - Musk claim they will feed more energy into the grid than they'll take out while charging cars.
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