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Tesla reveals Supercharger network, Free Fill Ups

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Re: Tesla reveals Supercharger network, Free Fill Ups

#71

Post by w1ntermute »

ericd wrote: post #67
w1ntermute wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are you comparing charging stats unironically and saying it's a dealbreaker if it's not just as good as the incumbent in this category? Yes, I can guarantee you that the layman doesn't give two shits about electric cars. Until it's cheaper and/or more convenient for him than gas cars, he won't switch. And until laymen switch, you won't get the economies of scale necessary for a vast charging network. > assuming the…

Day to day it is already more convenient, because you charge mostly at home - you never have to go to the gas station in the first place. It's pretty rare that I have to drive more than 100 miles in a day, and when I do, I'm really happy to stop for half an hour here and there to stretch my legs.

> because you charge mostly at home

One of Musk's arguments for the supercharger was that it doesn't use non-renewable sources of energy. If you're charging at home, you're doing just that, since you're relying on the power plant for energy.

Re: Tesla reveals Supercharger network, Free Fill Ups

#72

Post by sbierwagen »

schiffern wrote: post #54
sbierwagen wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

generate as much energy over the course of the year as the vehicles consume Yeah right. At what utilization rate? A single charge is ~90KWh, and takes half an hour. Two charges back to back are 180KWh. jws guesses that each slot generates 28KWh/day. A ten slot charging station would only be able to charge three cars without going into the red. Tesla would have to build a lot of very oversized installations in a lot o…

> 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 would need ~2000KW of solar panel capacity. So you'll need 8,000 250 watt panels. That'll cover 9,600 square metres, (2.6 acres-- if you're lying them flat, which you won't. A big dedicated solar generation station will use tilted one-axis tracking, which will use a lot more ground space) and cost you (at $410 a panel) a cool $2.4 million.

(Google's big solar installation at Mountain View, the one that got so much press, was only 1700KW. Our tiny electric car charging station has to be 17% bigger than it.)

Electric car charging uses a lot of power. Solar is great, I love solar, but it's not space-efficient, or cheap. Either Tesla is going to build a national solar generation network on the scale of Germany's move into solar power, all on their own dime, or they're lying through their teeth about charging draw/solar production breakeven.

Re: Tesla reveals Supercharger network, Free Fill Ups

#73

Post by felipemnoa »

R_Edward wrote: post #46
ph0rque wrote: post #14

I understood it to be free for existing Tesla customers, not new ones...

Right, owners of the "S" model can charge free for life. No word on what owners of subsequent models will pay for it. I'm eager to see whether they can trim that 30 minutes down to, say, a max of 15. 30 minutes every three hours is too long, but 15 would work. Get out, plug in, go take a bio break, come back, wash your windows, and you're just about ready to hit the road again. These are exciting times to live in.

>>These are exciting times to live in.

I agree. This is the first time I actually believe we may become oil independent in the not so distant future (i.e. decades, maybe even in our lifetimes). As soon as the market realizes that a credible replacement to oil is here I expect oil prices to crash. I wonder what will oil companies do when they realize that their markets are about to evaporate?

Exciting times indeed.

Re: Tesla reveals Supercharger network, Free Fill Ups

#74

Post by Danieru »

alexholehouse wrote: post #53
jerrya wrote: post #20

Is it outrageous to think that eventually this "gas" will be free because outlets will compete to have Tesla and other electric customers stuck at their restaurant, bar, store for a half hour?

I remember talking to a friend who worked for an oil company, who told me that the shops at gas stations actually make 2-3 times more than the revenue generated from the gas. If you were an oil company which dealt exclusively with the consumer (which of course non of them are) you would in fact be a catering business which sold gas on the side.

Slight pedantry note: revenue and earnings are not the same thing.

Re: Tesla reveals Supercharger network, Free Fill Ups

#75

Post by darrinm »

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.…

Let's keep in mind that electric car owners "fill up" their cars at home. Unlike gas stations these charging stations are only for unusual situations. Most the people you see at gas stations aren't on 200 mile plus trips.

Re: Tesla reveals Supercharger network, Free Fill Ups

#76

Post by surrealize »

kiwidrew wrote: post #60
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.…

> But 180 chargers, peak, each using 100 kilowatts would use 18 gigawatts. Hmm, I think you mean 18MW, not 18GW... sure, it's still a huge amount of energy, but your typical data centre can easily consume 10MW or more. And 18 megawatt-hours is equivalent to... just under 500 gallons of gasoline .

Crap! You're right, how embarassing. I edited my comment.

Re: Tesla reveals Supercharger network, Free Fill Ups

#77

Post by Osiris »

spullara wrote: post #26
jerrya wrote: post #20

Is it outrageous to think that eventually this "gas" will be free because outlets will compete to have Tesla and other electric customers stuck at their restaurant, bar, store for a half hour?

That is actually pretty insightful — pretty easy to get back the $3 that it costs. I can definitely see "free charge with purchase".

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.

Re: Tesla reveals Supercharger network, Free Fill Ups

#78

Post by ericd »

w1ntermute wrote: post #71
ericd wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Day to day it is already more convenient, because you charge mostly at home - you never have to go to the gas station in the first place. It's pretty rare that I have to drive more than 100 miles in a day, and when I do, I'm really happy to stop for half an hour here and there to stretch my legs.

> because you charge mostly at home One of Musk's arguments for the supercharger was that it doesn't use non-renewable sources of energy. If you're charging at home, you're doing just that, since you're relying on the power plant for energy.

Err, not necessarily... at that point, it's decoupled, and can come from any source, which can be changed at any time. And your whole argument was about convenience, but now you seem to be darting to a tangential argument.

Once the car fleet is fuel-agnostic, it becomes much easier to shift into whatever clean power source ends up working well, or whatever mix of clean and dirty works well. In terms of dirtiness, it's not hard to make the average impact of a car on the environment better... I think even pure coal might be cleaner with these things due to efficiency gains. In any case, I don't particularly care if their solar proposal ends up panning out overall - it's more or less irrelevant to the feasibility of the plan, other than for PR and making the people who implement them look good.

Re: Tesla reveals Supercharger network, Free Fill Ups

#79

Post by r00fus »

w1ntermute wrote: post #69
toomuchtodo wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get that Honda Civic then; I'm going to hold onto my Model S reservation. I have to drive more than 180 miles in a day? Oh no! I'll have to rent a car from Enterprise or Zipcar! Fueleconomy.gov says it costs $3,550/year to fuel my 2008 Infiniti G37 (at $4.75/gal, premium), and $400/year to fuel my Model S (assuming 15K miles/year). That's a savings of over $15750 over 5 years (assuming the price of petroleum-based fu…

> Fueleconomy.gov says it costs $3,550/year to fuel my 2008 Infiniti G37 (at $4.75/gal, premium), and $400/year to fuel my Model S (assuming 15K miles/year). That's a savings of over $15750 over 5 years (assuming the price of petroleum-based fuels doesn't go up, which it will). Don't be absurd. Getting either an Infiniti or a Model S makes absolutely no sense if you're interested in saving money. The base model MSRP…

If we're really talking about the most economic option, perhaps living near your work and walk/bike could put your commute gas at zero and yearly down significantly.

At some point, comparing a luxury car with an cheap base brand is an apples to oranges comparison. If I didn't buy my Prius I sure as hell wouldn't have bought a Civic or Corolla... more likely a luxury vehicle.

Re: Tesla reveals Supercharger network, Free Fill Ups

#80

Post by sbierwagen »

ricardobeat wrote: post #47
timdorr wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, Elon said free for life on the the announcement.

Only for Model S owners, it will presumably be phased out sometime in the next couple years.

It's also only for 85KWh Model S owners. The ones with 60KWh batteries don't get free charges.
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