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Comment by rymate1234 | Hacker News Reader

Cars are able to drive outside of populated areas, so the satellites might be useful for that purpose

Teslas aren't really able to drive far outside populated areas.

watch cpg grey drive on a desolate road in Nevada. can't get much further outside of population in the lower 48 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_naDg-guomA

You can only drive about 1h30m if you want to make sure that you are able to come back from where there are no chargers...

That's really a weird way of looking at it. Most people won't drive in one direction and turn back and refuse to use a super charger.

https://i.imgur.com/leKbJ4k.jpg (Map from April this year)

Most super chargers are within about 120 miles of each other, so at 65mph, you have about 2 hours between them. They've done a pretty impressive job building out the infrastructure

I thought that most people wanted to avoid having to stop their trip for charging while driving because it takes too long (I don't even like to stop for gas and it is much quicker)... it's weird that you would not choose the best solution to your problem (and spend more money while doing it), but I guess some people don't care about time or money.

Also, what are those white spots on the map? Unpopulated areas with no charger in a 2h radius?

Your idea of what a tesla is like is far off. My 2012 tesla can drive over 250 miles. If I really gun it in the winter in the mountains its over 200. Then 30 mins charging at a supercharger. The new S can go over 370 miles without charging. 60 miles an hour * 4 hours, people stop to eat or pee.

I'm talking about a round trips of course... so you have to cut that in half if you can't or don't want to charge while on your trip (if you want to be able to come back home).

Most of the car trips that I do are round trips... and I would guess that yours are too?

Makes more sense?

I see what you are getting at. I don't have to go round trip very often and worry about charging because I have enough range, but also because because there are chargers everywhere and I can charge on the way back if needed. Most trips I take are within round trip range of my car. of course it's more convenient not to have to charge.

plugshare.com is a good site that shows all the chargers. supercharge.info is a 3rd party site that shows tesla chargers only, plus where the ones under construction are. tesla.com has one too.

I go skiing a lot, and there's one thing you learn - you use a lot of energy going uphill. An ev has much more accurate energy usage so you notice, gas cars of course use more energy doing more work too. But the huge difference is going back, going downhill, your electric car basically glides down hills for free, and because you are recharging the battery when you do moderate breaking, I can drive 20+ miles back and end up with more range than I started out with.

In Seattle I can easily go round trip to the 3 ski areas around town.

Basically I don't worry about it because I could charge on the way back if I needed it, and in 6 years of day trips I only charged once or twice on the way home - the one I remember was when I went to mt rainier for a week with no charging.

> I don't have to go round trip very often

I'm willing to bet that you are an outlier

So.... you can drive 500 miles without charging?

Me, I can approach 250 miles at 60 on the freeway, but 200-220 is easy with skis, 4 people, a bunch of equipment.

The latest model goes 370. not 500.

Neat video, really drives home how essential super chargers are to the usefulness of electric vehicles. Sitting for 12 hours in a trailer park to get another 200 miles of range is insane.

Also, this guy has some serious driving PTSD or something, he's so scared of cars that he thinks its dangerous to drive on an empty highway at night. Yikes.

???

People have driven them around Australia. Can't get much further away from populated areas than that.

e.g. https://www.topgear.com/car-news/electric/woman-drove-her-te...

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