> One question posed during Wednesday's Tesla quarterly earnings call involved allowing other manufacturers to access Tesla's supercharger network and Elon Musk's response was surprising.
> "This is not a walled garden."
> By that Musk means that he's open to allowing other EV manufacturers to configure their vehicles to be able to use the Superchargers. He stipulates that these manufacturers would have to pay their fair share of the costs and would have to either adopt Tesla's plug standard or include an adapter in their vehicles.
But people tend to be dominated by edge cases instead of giving up a small amount of mobility.
What is this based on? I know several people with electric cars and none of us take planes and rent cars on trips unless they're to another country. I drive to California and Austin all the time and the Tesla is the first car that I don't have to stay the night charging for.
This is the "everything is Silicon Valley" view of the world.
Another hilarious one is: "why doesn't everyone just bike to work?"
The biggest difference here is that electricity, thankfully, is the same in any form, and the key differentiator is the speed at which you can deliver it. I definitely hope that we can agree on better, faster, common, charge delivery formats, but I wouldn't want to put a hamper on innovation, particularly when the electrical automotive industry is so nascent.
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/gm-engineers-dis...
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr.#Later_life_...
> Midgley participated in a press conference to demonstrate the apparent safety of TEL, in which he poured TEL over his hands, placed a bottle of the chemical under his nose, and inhaled its vapor for 60 seconds, declaring that he could do this every day without succumbing to any problems.
Hotels have facilities that aren't used after breakfast until the evening, however they still have to have a lot of staff on-site during these hours.
You could have nice food and coffee instead of motorway service station junk, with booking facilities so you can have that coffee ready as you walk through the door and your parking spot for the charging reserved.
This could work really well in the more scenic parts of the world where there is a lot of the infrastructure built out already, just the right plugs with the right volts and amps needed.
I've been out wine tasting and have run into Tesla destination chargers.
Let's be real here. I just did a 2500 mile road trip in my brand new Model 3. While it is true that 20-25 minutes will give me enough range to drive for 120-160 miles, 20 minutes does not give me a full charge. Charging my Model 3 from ~10% SOC to 80% SOC takes 40 minutes at a Supercharger. The car charges quite quickly from 0% to 50%, but slows down dramatically after that. If you pull in to a Supercharger with 10-20% SOC, 20 minutes will get you up to 50-60% SOC at best.
That being said, I generally didn't mind this. I came to like the slower pace of stops. I know my wife is looking forward to the first road trip we take together in the car, as she always wants to stop and stretch her legs more often than I do.
I just wish more Superchargers had convenient access to 24 hour bathrooms.
So, even if I just charged every time to the daily limit, I'd still have about the same range as a gas car and I can't fill up my gas car at home on a regular basis. That benefit alone outweighs the cons of a slightly longer trip for me.
PS. Slow down. ;). If you're only getting 160 miles from the daily charge, you're driving pretty fast or using up power in some other way.