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Comment by colmmacc | Hacker News Reader

Tesla Model S owner here. By choosing spots and times strategically I've gotten nearly 400MPH charging at the existing stations and the difference it makes to convenience is amazing. Super looking forward to 1000MPH! At that rate I can likely make it to Squamish BC, from Seattle, and back, with only one ~20 minute charge in between. That's still about 4x or 5x for the time I would spend filling an ICE car, but getting to around 20 minutes - instead of an hour - feels like an important threshold. I can chill out or catch up on e-mail or something for 20 minutes without feeling the need to go walk, or check out the weird strip mall or Jack in the Box that the charging station I use was planted beside.

Also it's been clear since the Tesla Semi truck was announced that some major change in charging infrastructure would be necessary. This doesn't seem quite enough for /that/ though, I wonder if another rev is coming.

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Tesla Semi has multiple packs that can be charged in parallel. The Megacharger will (likely) be 4 Superchargers combined. 1MW should be enough ;)

re: announcement, I'm surprised not much has been said about the flagship cars (S/X). With their current battery architecture (using 18650 batteries), they're not capable of 250kW charge rates. I wonder if they have recently updated them to new 2170 battery packs or if they're going to do that soon.

Elon said specifically on the most recent Tesla conference call that there are no current plans for 2170-based packs on the Model S & X.

Folks are speculating that a Model S/X refresh will be announced at the end of the Model Y unveiling next week.

It'd make sense, as both have had massive price drops recently, and haven't had a battery upgrade in two years.

You might need to get a Model 3/Y if you want to hit 1000mi/hr charging. The Model S likely won't be capable of it.

Yeah, this is closing the gap in a significant way. It's still not "charge on the way to work" fast, but it wouldn't be a painful delay on the way home. More important, it's an improvement. I still switch back and forth between my Model S and an ICE car--I can't remember a time when the gas station experience ever got better.

One of the big benefits of electric in my view is that you can just let it charge overnight in your own garage. There's simply no need to charge on the way to work. (Yeah, this only works if you do have a garage, but that covers a lot of people.)

>There's simply no need to charge on the way to work

Why not simply charge at work?

It makes little sense to charge on route vs at destination; unless your commute is longer than your battery range, but you would probably not have purchased an EV.

Yeah, in many ways that would make more sense. For one thing, the sun is likelier to shine during the day, so PV electricity can go into your car.

Unfortunately, the practical reality is that at home you're likely to have a garage where you can charge (though I'm of course aware that many people don't!) while at work your car is likely to be in a large parking lot without outlets.

The logical conclusion is that we should invest in widespread outlet infrastructure in pretty much all parking lots. We're just not there yet, which is why I phrased my first comment in the way I did.

Body panels made of solar-cells would be nice, combined with charging from stations or at home when there is not enough sun. Is probably not doable with current technology, but maybe some day

Aren't solar-cells on the car like multiple magnitudes less power than regular level 2 chargers?

There was a lot of talk about why Tesla wasn't putting solar panels on the cars when the Model S was still new, and I thought the general consensus was it would need crazy amounts of time in direct sunlight to even make any kind of significant impact on the charge.

I mean just look at this announcement. They are talking about 250kW charge rates at peak for SuperCharging V3, and at those charge rates you'd get 75 miles of range in 5 minutes. A solar panel about the size of the car would put out maybe around 250w (give or take a lot, it's been a few years since i looked into what they can put out). Some extremely inaccurate napkin math would put it at less than a mile per hour of charge while in direct sunlight. It's just not worth it (in my opinion) in almost all cases, and probably won't be for a LONG time.

A regular solar panel is a large flat area that's oriented to maximize solar exposure. Solar cells on a car wouldn't capture nearly as efficiently. You'd be much better off spending the money on traditional PV than on putting cells on cars.

And that is why I did write "Is probably not doable with current technology, but maybe some day". We need to have much more efficient solar-cells to make this work in real life. But is it more unrealistic than getting charged from the road while driving? One step on the way is getting them enough efficient to charge the car while it is parked outside at work

You'd have to make the surface area of the car a thousand times larger than it currently is. Or, if you could make your solar panels 100% efficient, it would only need to be 200 times larger.

You don't want a "car" that big.

But you don't need that much every day. You need to charge the amount you use every day during the time the car is outside during the day, or only part of that. What if you can use the car every day and only have to charge it at a station once a week or month? Then there is even one less reason to use an ICE for those that can't charge at home

If you assume that your car could charge 8 whole hours a day in full sunlight, then you could get away with having your solar panels be just 25 times larger than your car. You still don't want a car that large. Solar panels on an electric car have never made sense, and we're not close enough to the sun for them to ever make sense. Maybe the Mercury colonists can use solar-powered cars. There's more sunlight there, and less gravity and air to slow the cars down, so it might actually work out.

Just charge your car at home, at night, when the electric prices are lowest. Since most people don't drive hundreds of miles every day, people with home chargers (or chargers at their work) won't have to visit a charging station unless they're going on a long trip. That's the only time it makes sense to use rapid charging; the rest of the time the charging can be much slower. If you have a charger at home, you could go years without having to visit a supercharger. A whole category of human activity could one day disappear, and people will wonder how they ever had time to visit a gas station every day of their lives.

Already done:

https://electrek.co/2019/03/04/sono-sion-electric-car-solar-...

You're guaranteed a hassle-free charging spot at home, but elsewhere it's very likely there are fewer charging spots than vehicles wanting to use them, and/or the charging spots and day-long parking places are separate and you have to go move the car once charged.

The difference between 90 seconds to fill up and 3 minutes to fill up is negligible. The appetite for improvement isn't there because the marginal is small.

The difference between 3 minutes and 20 minutes is still enormous. Pretending for a minute that superchargers were as common as petrol stations, that there were never queues and you always started charging immediately. I would still not consider that a reasonable time to spend waiting around so I can finish a journey.

I agree it's a huge improvement, but it doesn't get close to making the gap insignificant

It also depends on where and how you drive, park etc.

To me, the difference between filling up on gas and 20 minutes on a Supercharger not only isn't enormous, but literally doesn't matter. But that's because I charge at home, usually drive only around the city and when I go on a trip where I need to supercharge, it's a few hours between chargers and by that time I need to take a ~20 mins break for coffee anyway.

If I had to use them to charge, yep, 20 mins would be enormous.

When they added credit card readers to all the pumps?

My local Shell station recently switched from card readers to an app and QR codes. No thanks. If I'm really desperate I'll fill up there and go inside to pay (maybe 3 times in the past year), otherwise I now go out of my way to fill up elsewhere.

At least your card can't get skimmed that way. Of course contactless would be the ideal.

I wonder if one day highways will have wireless power transfer that can meter you as you go.

With the added bonus of being ice free in winter due to the losses?

At least it will provide a nice warm refuge for the local wildlife...

Germany is building a wired one on A1 (5km length). Overhead contact line for trucks and looks ugly: http://www.thedrive.com/news/13448/germany-to-install-overhe...

How are overhead lines any more ugly than a sprawling freeway?

Well in my country, they try to hide electrical lines by burying them. When some works are there and there are air electrical lines, they usually do just that.

I'm getting a wall:

    No Access
    The web page you were trying to visit is not accessible in your country.

Lithuania (Europe) here. Is this GDPR thing or something more?

FWIW I can view the site in Israel.

The article has this Youtube video embedded, which shows the overhead contact lines:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8l9ieoIazc

No problem from Latvia. But there are plenty of articles if you search for "germany ehighway"

I am in UK and it's all fine.

No problem from Germany. Interesting, why would they block Lithuania?

They are working on it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNQPikt13Lk&t=3m14s

I would be happy with a pantograph-style sliding contact on the roof!

So a trolleybus[0], but for personal vehicles?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolleybus

I dream of wireless charging on the way. Hopefully, not too far into future.

Ubeam.com have made it possible. On a smaller scale though

ubeam is well known to be nonsense. They can't even charge phones or transmit any meaningful amount of energy.

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