The 30 minute charging time kind of sucks, but it's a small price to pay for owning a completely electric car, and I'm sure it's probably up there as far as improvements go on the priority list.
Tesla reveals Supercharger network, Free Fill Ups
211–220 of 281 posts
Re: Tesla reveals Supercharger network, Free Fill Ups
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
> quicker/better Quicker may be true, but "better"? Swap stations are more expensive, they constrain vehicle design, battery shape, and battery technology upgradeability. This makes the vehicle some combination of heavier, less safe, or more expensive (pick your poison). People don't seem to realize that the limiting factor for charge rate isn't current. It's cooling. A far simpler solution would just pump coolant th…
cooling ? The Roadster has a water-cooled battery pack, and I assume the Model S does too.
It's not the size of the pipes. It's the size of the chiller.
Re: Tesla reveals Supercharger network, Free Fill Ups
#213Earlier 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 :)
I'm doing 86 miles (43 one way) a day if I don't go into town (then its and extra 13 one way). Housing shortages will do that to you.
My commute here takes less time than my 30 mile (15 one way) commute in the Twin Cities.
Re: Tesla reveals Supercharger network, Free Fill Ups
#214Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did you read his link? The point the guy makes is completely correct. Let's say tomorrow some grad student gets fusion going at a very low price. The best way to use this to power cars would be to use it to create a fuel with a high energy density. If you had 'free energy' you'd extract C02 from the atmosphere and turn it into a hydrocarbon. For more info look at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density and this…
>>Well, how are you going to make the airplanes fly? Battery. Batteries are pretty heavy. "Heavier than air flying machines are impossible" -Lord Kevin. Yet we have them today, thanks to a phenomenon in physics called Bernoulli's principle- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernoulli%27s_principle "The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them" - Albert Ein…
That's actually not how airplanes fly at all...
Re: Tesla reveals Supercharger network, Free Fill Ups
#215Earlier 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!
Right, and iron horses will never replace real ones in farming because they are too heavy and use up too much coal.
Take a look into graphene-based supercapacitors. It _is_ possible to charge an electric car in a few minutes. It's just a matter of time. [and no, we're not talking EEStor. We're talking multiple research universities actively looking into the technology. Angstron Materials is one.]
Re: Tesla reveals Supercharger network, Free Fill Ups
#216Look at that S car go!
Re: Tesla reveals Supercharger network, Free Fill Ups
#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
3. It's solar-powered. I wonder if they have a electricity backup... It's grid electric powered. The canopy doesn't do much. Let's calculate: Guess that the canopy for each bay is 7 by 4 meters, 28m^2 Sunny spots receive about 4kWhr of solar power per square meter per day. Solar panels might be 25% efficient. Total daily power: 28m^2 * 4kWhr/m^2/day * 0.25 = 28kWhr/day Model S has an 85kWhr battery, half charge is 42…
>It's grid electric powered. The canopy doesn't do much. They're sizing the installations in partnership with SolarCity, one of Musk's other start-ups. They claim they'll be sized such that it will generate as much energy over the course of the year as the vehicles consume. Meanwhile, you're estimating power output from a CG rendering on a marketing page. You could argue whether or not they're lying, but they're cert…
The source I worked from, http://www.teslamotors.com/supercharger , contains only this about solar power…
And, at many locations, solar cells mounted on the weather canopy charge your Model S with solar energy.
I'm sure SolarCity projects will be supplying more power than Teslas use, but not from these charging stations. (Unless virtually no one uses the stations, which is probably not the plan. There'd be no reason to install 4 parallel charging stations if you were charging less than one car a day. Another possibility is that they build car ports that cover many parking spaces in a lot to support each charging bay. That's not what the picture shows, but it would work.)
I can't find an original source for the idea that the stations will produce more power than they consume, but it appears, attributed to Musk, in both Engadget and Huffington post. Most other articles on the event don't have it. It seems to have come from an oral presentation.
The good news is, if a Tesla S goes about 2 miles on 1 kWhr of power and if an average person drives about 10k miles per year, that is only 14kWhr/day. Each bay would supply the typical power requirements of two Tesla S cars.
Update: The press release is out now, http://finance.yahoo.com/news/tesla-motors-launches-revoluti...
It clearly says the stations will make more power than they consume. So either they are huge compared to the picture, or Tesla S drivers aren't much for road tripping.
Re: Tesla reveals Supercharger network, Free Fill Ups
#218So, at what point does the local government slap a tax to pay for the roads and how much will it be?
Re: Tesla reveals Supercharger network, Free Fill Ups
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
> jws guesses that each slot generates 28KWh/day Again, this is a guess based on a CG rendering on their website. That drawing doesn't constrain Tesla's engineering talent in any way – even without using extra land they could put up solar shade structures over adjacent parking spaces.
Adjacent parking spaces, eh? To go from 3 charges a day to 6, right? Assume you've got a couple dozen slots, charging 100 cars a day. (Far, far fewer than an equivalently-sized gas station. If we're going to transition to an electric-only transportation infrastructure, then car changing stations are going to become a common sight) That's 9 megawatt-hours a day. A random solar panel calculator I found guesses that wou…
Yes, in a couple years there will be more electric cars, but solar power installations are getting less expensive every year. I don't know how long until there are enough electric cars to need "Germany-sized" solar installations, but when they do they'll pay a lot less than Germany did.
I don't think Elon Musk would green-light the "100% solar power" line without doing the math. Again: you can argue about whether he's lying, but I can guarantee you he knew exactly the scale of what he was promising. That makes it all the more impressive, imo.
Re:lying, I'm imagining at some point they'll transition over to "we buy 100% solar power for SuperChargers", which is fine by me since it's functionally equivalent to what they're doing now.
Re: Tesla reveals Supercharger network, Free Fill Ups
#220Here's a thought (disclaimer - IANAEE): Could we charge electric vehicles while driving? Could we bury, say, some coils under the highways and have cars have a transformer on board to draw power from the road? That would remove the need for charging stations on a long-distance trips almost completely.
Yes - those are called trams :-)