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Tesla Completes L.A.-to-New York Electric Model S Drive Chargers

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Re: Tesla Completes L.A.-to-New York Electric Model S Drive Chargers

#141

Post by abalone »

codex wrote: post #133

The most serious issue with electric cars isn't road trips, it's the fact that if you don't own your own home, or live in a dense city with no off street parking, you likely don't have reliable access to a daily recharge overnight. That's probably half the driving population of America. 30 minutes of quick charging is fine every so often, but not every day or even every week. This is why fuel cells continue to be pus…

It's interesting now that Tesla has answered the folks saying "the most serious issue with electric cars is road trips," now we get this.

I'm a little skeptical of the "half of the driving population won't be able to charge" claim. For example, you don't necessarily need to own your off-street parking spot for the owner to upgrade it to increase its value. And I doubt on-street overnight parkers constitute anywhere close to half of the population (I'd be interested in data that shows otherwise).

Anyway, it will be many, many years before even half the driving population switches to electric. That's a lot of time to figure out charging infrastructure in cities for the rest of us.

Re: Tesla Completes L.A.-to-New York Electric Model S Drive Chargers

#142

Post by secabeen »

pedalpete wrote: post #126
baddox wrote: post #118

Does anyone have any idea what the current bandwidth of the LA-NY route is? In other words, given how many chargers exist along the route, how many Tesla cars can make the trip per unit time? Obviously, if you assume the optimal arrangement—each car being separated from the next by exactly 30 minutes—each charge plug can support 48 cars per day. That's also assuming that the chargers are arranged such that each leg b…

I think you also need to take into account how many Model S cars are making a cross-country journey at one time. I'd suspect it is less than 10 (how many people drive from LA-NYC or vice-versa?). Strangely, this is a great example of not over-engineering and pre-selling the capabilities of your product. Tesla knows that the number of people who will make this cross-country journey is small. They are fairly certain th…

This is true. Last week, the total number of Tesla vehicles using the superchargers was 450. Now, certainly the weather was a factor in that, and usage is much higher over holiday weekends, but it can be quite low.

Re: Tesla Completes L.A.-to-New York Electric Model S Drive Chargers

#143

Post by abalone »

btilly wrote: post #139
atourgates wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just doing some quick numbers (not related to current specific locations of quick chargers and gas stations), stopping 30 minutes every 170 miles would add a bit over 6 and a half hours of stopping to a LY->NYC trip. LA -> NYC is about 2,800 miles. If you had to stop for 30 minutes every 170 miles, that'd be 16.5 stops, for a total of about 8.25 hours of charging stops. If you assume 25mpg in a car with a 12 gallon t…

If you're driving long distance, you should be stopping for a break every hour or two just to stretch your body and keep mentally alert. These stops are not quite the right rhythm, but they are not a bad idea either.

Absolutely. But 30 minutes is longer than you need for that each time. I think most people would find 30 min every 2 hours would be a pretty painful time penalty on a cross-country road trip, despite the health benefits. (That and having to drive around 55mph most of the way to get better efficiency, too.)

But it's still early days and that should improve with future cars.

Re: Tesla Completes L.A.-to-New York Electric Model S Drive Chargers

#144

Post by Guvante »

codex wrote: post #133

The most serious issue with electric cars isn't road trips, it's the fact that if you don't own your own home, or live in a dense city with no off street parking, you likely don't have reliable access to a daily recharge overnight. That's probably half the driving population of America. 30 minutes of quick charging is fine every so often, but not every day or even every week. This is why fuel cells continue to be pus…

If you have an assigned spot and the federal government is paying for the recharge spot it may not be too big of a deal.

Re: Tesla Completes L.A.-to-New York Electric Model S Drive Chargers

#145

Post by tobtoh »

MartinCron wrote: post #112
agumonkey wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't stand sitting rear-facing without feeling nauseous, I'm surprised it's even a selling point.

When you're a kid, the novelty of sitting rear facing in "the way way back" is enough to stop the nausea, at least for short trips. And if you're not a kid, there's no way in hell you're going to fit in the rear-facing seats, I'm pretty short and I still can't fit back there.

Exactly this - I remember my parents had a Volvo with similar seats and my brothers and I loved sitting back there. We always imagined we were in the gun turrets of the Millennium Falcon shooting down cars.

Re: Tesla Completes L.A.-to-New York Electric Model S Drive Chargers

#146

Post by jccooper »

baddox wrote: post #118

Does anyone have any idea what the current bandwidth of the LA-NY route is? In other words, given how many chargers exist along the route, how many Tesla cars can make the trip per unit time? Obviously, if you assume the optimal arrangement—each car being separated from the next by exactly 30 minutes—each charge plug can support 48 cars per day. That's also assuming that the chargers are arranged such that each leg b…

Stations seem to vary between 4 and 10 bays each. The "cross-country" route has quite a few rural stations with only 4 bays each, and sometimes several in a row.

Maximum 192 cars can thus pass the narrow part of the route each 24 hours.

Actual real-world capacity is going to be less, of course. Maybe a quarter of that (50) before you start running into waits. At 100 per day, you could almost guarantee a wait.

It'll be a while before there's 50 Teslas going through Mitchell, South Dakota per day. But 50 is nothing compared to the amount of other cars going though there right now. Tesla will be fine at their current level, but a large amount of electric cars with similar charging needs would require a lot of infrastructure. I think you'd need 800+ bay Superchargers to handle a modest 10,000 cars per day across a corridor. About the size of a WalMart Supercenter lot. I don't even want to calculate the power feed that'd need.

Re: Tesla Completes L.A.-to-New York Electric Model S Drive Chargers

#147

Post by codex »

abalone wrote: post #141
codex wrote: post #133

The most serious issue with electric cars isn't road trips, it's the fact that if you don't own your own home, or live in a dense city with no off street parking, you likely don't have reliable access to a daily recharge overnight. That's probably half the driving population of America. 30 minutes of quick charging is fine every so often, but not every day or even every week. This is why fuel cells continue to be pus…

It's interesting now that Tesla has answered the folks saying "the most serious issue with electric cars is road trips," now we get this. I'm a little skeptical of the "half of the driving population won't be able to charge" claim. For example, you don't necessarily need to own your off-street parking spot for the owner to upgrade it to increase its value. And I doubt on-street overnight parkers constitute anywhere c…

It's Tesla that has defined the problem with electric cars as road trip refueling. Most EV dealers offer free loaners for road trips, or you can rent a car. Even vampire loads at airport parking in low temperatures is of higher priority for most drivers. They're misdirecting from the main issue to one that they can solve cheaply.

I'm saying this as someone who owns two electric cars. The infrastructure can be solved eventually, and some cities are looking into it, but even in the suburbs there are problems [2], which is why hydrogen is still out there as an alternative (albeit an immature and inefficient one), but for now, a large portion of the U.S. population cannot buy an EV.

[1] http://www.commerce.wa.gov/Documents/Demand-EVSE-Access-Gara...

[2] http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_24947237/charge-rage-...

Re: Tesla Completes L.A.-to-New York Electric Model S Drive Chargers

#148

Post by chaz »

fit2rule wrote: post #14

I hope actually that Americans learn to drive less , not more, as a result of these sorts of changes in the market. It always amuses me that a majority of American life is lived on the road. For all the pleasures of the free and the brave, they love their little cages..

Lots of Americans drive around great distance, but for commutes, it's shorter than average. More public transportation would be great but not always economically viable.

> According to organization’s time use data, the average commuting time in the United States is about 28 minutes (similar to a separate measure from the United States Census Bureau). That is 10 minutes shorter than the average commuting time for all member countries, of 38 minutes, and longer than the time spent traveling to work in only three rich countries (Israel, Denmark and Sweden).

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/14/world-of-commut...

Re: Tesla Completes L.A.-to-New York Electric Model S Drive Chargers

#150

Post by jccooper »

ssmoot wrote: post #19
fit2rule wrote: post #14

I hope actually that Americans learn to drive less , not more, as a result of these sorts of changes in the market. It always amuses me that a majority of American life is lived on the road. For all the pleasures of the free and the brave, they love their little cages..

There's no quick way to get from Dallas to Houston, Austin or San Antonio. Taking Southwest will take just about as long and then you won't have a car on the other end. There's no rail (that I'm aware of) to make those trips convenient or cost effective either. On top of all of that it would be cheaper to drive an electric vehicle than any of the other options. Going on family vacation to Chicago we take Amtrak. Whic…

Houston to Dallas via Amtrak is possible. It's also about 20 hours and $70. And leaves once a day.

Sure, you say, that's because there's no direct route. True. San Antonio's better: 5 hours and $34. Still leaves once a day. At 7pm.

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