Tesla unveils supercharger locations

[Knut]

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2410141,00.asp

This will enable long-distance travel with their electric cars. It takes 30mins to charge, but you only need a charge every 3 hours. Oh, and they are solar powered and are free for Tesla customers.

Tesla's new model S sedan looks fantastic

http://www.teslamotors.com/models/options

Are we seeing the beginning of an electric car revolution ??

[Bertuzzied]

The oil companies are going to destroy this!!! like they did with the hydrogen car engine back in the 60s.

[endeavor]

Originally Posted by Hesla

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2410141,00.asp

This will enable long-distance travel with their electric cars. It takes 30mins to charge, but you only need a charge every 3 hours. Oh, and they are solar powered and are free for Tesla customers.

Tesla's new model S sedan looks fantastic

http://www.teslamotors.com/models/options

Are we seeing the beginning of an electric car revolution ??

This is awesome.

I'd also like to point out that Elon Musk is a heck of an entrepreneur.

[Envitro]

I checked out the Tesla showroom in the Scottsdale Mall when we were there a week ago and the Model S is freakin' fantastic. It's a really cool vehicle and I would buy one if we hadn't already purchased a new car this year.

IMHO it's perfect for city driving and the range is excellent (approx 260 miles on a full charge).

The storage is fantastic and there's tons of room in the cabin. Remember no transmission or other stuff taking up room under the floor.

Finally an EV that everyone can get on board with. Plus you can't go wrong with a giant iPad-type display and control system

[You Need a Thneed]

Will other electric cars, such as the Nissan Leaf, be able to use the stations?

[AR_Six]

I'm totally buying one of these at some point. Probably a few years out.

[photon]

Oh man I'd love one of these cars.

The solar idea is interesting but I can't imagine it would scale well; the amount of electricity available is fixed while the # of cars isn't.

And you'd have to really speed to compensate for the 30 minute downtime.

[AR_Six]

Even if the supercharging stations take off, practically speaking it's going to be a city car for the next 10 years. It's not like you're going to see supercharger stations getting set up in Revelstoke any time soon. It'll be interesting to see how this gets implemented outside the US. The fact that only six of these stations exist (and only 100 by 2015) suggests to me that it'll take a long time... to even be remotely practical they need about 1000, just in the States.

Additionally these things are referred to as "Model S" charging stations. Why wouldn't it work for every model the company makes? This is going to be important - however this technology progresses, manufacturers HAVE to get on board with a standard format for charging.

[Ozy_Flame]

Originally Posted by photon

Oh man I'd love one of these cars.

The solar idea is interesting but I can't imagine it would scale well; the amount of electricity available is fixed while the # of cars isn't.

And you'd have to really speed to compensate for the 30 minute downtime.

The article says all solar energy collected feeds into the overall Tesla power grid than its cars consume, which will always be more.

[Rathji]

You gotta wonder, what kind of person would be ok with taking 30 mins to fuel their car?

I guess if there was a restaurant, or mall nearby. Stop for lunch and get a free tank of juice.

[Knut]

Someone wanting to save $60 to $100 in fuel who is stopping anyways for lunch.

Also, their touch screen on the car is similar to a giant iPad. If they have WiFi at these stations you can kill 30mins on Calgarypuck.

[Flames89]

Originally Posted by Rathji

You gotta wonder, what kind of person would be ok with taking 30 mins to fuel their car?

Probably the type of person that would enjoy filling up their car for free

[MrMastodonFarm]

So excuse the total layman question but how much does it cost on your electricity bill per charge if you charging it at home?

I'm not a car guy at all but this is insanely interesting.

[ken0042]

When I looked at the Chevy Volt I was shocked that the guy knew the answer to the question; it was 10-12 kw/hs. So if you are on the 8¢ per kw/h plan from Enmax, that would cost you 80-96¢ to fill up the Volt. That would be enough to drive me to and from work each day.

[You Need a Thneed]

Originally Posted by MrMastodonFarm

So excuse the total layman question but how much does it cost on your electricity bill per charge if you charging it at home?

I'm not a car guy at all but this is insanely interesting.

The charge that Tesla is giving away at these stations uses about $3-4 worth of power. So, your power bill would go significantly up, but it would cost only about 1/5th to 1/3rd of what it would cost in gasoline to drive a similar car the same distance. Also, in a gasoline car, you have other maintanance costs that you don't have in a fully electric car. There's no transmission, no oil changes, less brake wear, etc.

Originally Posted by AR_six

Additionally these things are referred to as "Model S" charging stations. Why wouldn't it work for every model the company makes? This is going to be important - however this technology progresses, manufacturers HAVE to get on board with a standard format for charging.

It will not work with the Tesla Roadster, as the roadster's batteries cannot handle the level of current input that comes from these stations. All future Tesla models would be able to use these stations. Standardization is happening between manufacturers, but it's not completely there yet. Adapting stations to different standards for the time being shouldn't be a big cost. These 6 stations are just the Tesla branded stations, there will be more stations around the country/continent.

[You Need a Thneed]

Originally Posted by ken0042

When I looked at the Chevy Volt I was shocked that the guy knew the answer to the question; it was 10-12 kw/hs. So if you are on the 8¢ per kw/h plan from Enmax, that would cost you 80-96¢ to fill up the Volt. That would be enough to drive me to and from work each day.

Wikipedia says that the Volt has a 16 kWh battery pack, of which it can use 10.3 kWh. The Nissan Leaf has a 23 kWh battery, and the Tesla Model S can be equipped with up to an 85kWh battery pack. If we say that power is 10 cents a kWh on average, a full charge on a Tesla Model S uses $8.50 worth of power, which theoretically is enough to drive about 500 km. My Kia Rondo, as an alternative example, uses about $50-60 worth of gas to drive 500 km.

[Hemi-Cuda]

for a city car this would be awesome, but i couldn't buy one as my only car since i drive to BC regularly and enjoy taking roadtrips. once the drivetime starts approaching 6 hours with easy access to recharge stations, then i'll jump on board

[Rathji]

Originally Posted by Flames89

Probably the type of person that would enjoy filling up their car for free

But a full charge is like a couple bucks on normal power at your house. This isn't about saving money, it is about convenience, which doesn't fully jive with taking 30 mins.

edit: Don't get me wrong, this is an awesome development, they just need to make sure they have something for these people to do for 30 mins.

[photon]

Originally Posted by Ozy_Flame

The article says all solar energy collected feeds into the overall Tesla power grid than its cars consume, which will always be more.

Sure, I can claim anything I want, being able to deliver it and have it scale up is a totally different thing.

For each unit area of solar panel there is a maximum amount of electricity possible to generate, so there is a maximum # of cars serviceable. If the # of cars exceeds that, you have to put in more solar panels, which eats up land area very fast.

So the car has an 85kWh battery. How big a solar panel do they need to feed that?

Lets say 10W per square foot of solar panel, and we'll assume 8 hours worth of sun for a day (which is probably unreasonably optimistic). 80Wh / sq ft, we need 8500Wh, which is 100 square feet of solar panels running all day to charge one Tesla once.

That's 10' x 10' square. A few of those and you use up the area of the charging station.

Want to charge a 2nd car that day, double that. Scale that up, how many cars pass through an average gas station a day? And cars only need gas once a week, though that would be offset by most people charging from home for their regular driving.

They say they work with SolarCity and their solar carport system to generate the electricity, which is a great idea (since it's using "dead" space anyway), but it would still only scale so far, eventually you'll have solar panels on every roof in a city.

Anyway it gets more into a discussion about solar power in general.

My only point was that it's easy to do stuff like that when you're talking a low # of vehicles, not that it wasn't worth doing.

[HELPNEEDED]

I forgot electricity comes from a clean source.

/sarcasam