Mercedes-Benz high-power charging goes large at Starbucks
electrek.co
electrek.co
Spare capacity will depend on the planning in place at the time of sizing the power distribution, e.g. if it was going to be a growing industrial area or not, otherwise they have to either fund the upgrade or wait for distribution kit to get old and be replaced.
Getting permits and contracts for a few megawatts is not simple. It is basically a small factory!
Some people don't see electric cars / chargers as ideology that must remain absolutely pure of oil. Some are just pragmatic - it's a good car that runs cheaply, and supercharger is critical infrastructure that needs a reliable backup.
It’s normally the anti-EV people that seem to go for this angle as a kind of “gotcha”. They are normally the ones spreading the “all the chargers run on diesel generators” misinformation too.
Can you run a charger on a generator? Probably. Is it standard practice or mildly common? Absolutely not.
> Tesla uses local diesel generators to handle spikes.
This suggests that it is a standard solution for a reasonably common problem for Tesla. Common enough that it is seen as the accepted solution by the company.
The only instance I have ever seen of this was an attempt as anti-EV misinformation which was debunked. It is not a common solution at all.
It would definitely be a viable solution in some places and I am not against it, but for some reason the anti-EV lot want to push a narrative that it is common when it is not.
There is no diesel plant there regardless of how much people want there to be. It’s up to you to prove that there is a diesel plant. It’s just so weird that people want there to be one there, as some sort of climate change denying “gotcha” or something.
no, it's not. I'm not interested in or taking a side on the diesel question, I don't care about it. I'm appointing myself judge of the English language employed, a topic I'm really good at and do care about, and I've made my ruling. They have not ruled out anything that Tesla is doing, they are simply ruling out what they are doing and ruling out Tesla's actions as not theirs.
>I see no wiggle room in what was said.
that's why I was appointed judge
> but that building is not what Tesla leases; they are not coming out and saying that Tesla does not have diesel, they're saying "that's Tesla, not us"
No one is arguing about what Tesla leases.
Harris Ranch said:
> The building indicated is not, nor has it ever been a diesel plant.
That does not equate to “that’s Tesla, not us”.
Doesn’t matter who leases it, owns it now or owned it in the past. They are asserting that it isn’t a diesel plant and has never been a diesel plant. The misinformation said it was and they are saying this is not the case. There is zero wiggle room in their statement regardless of who owns or leases the building.
the Ranch says the building "is now a storage facility and office for the Harris Ranch Express BBQ management team, also featuring a walk-in refrigerator." Therefore, Tesla does not use or lease that building.
the Ranch says "While we host Tesla’s charging infrastructure, it is crucial to note that Tesla merely leases the property from Harris Ranch. We neither own nor operate the charging station." They don't own the charging station, it is not their property. It is Tesla's property. When you rent an apartment, it is your property, you get to say "stay off my property" and to the police "you can't search my property without a warrant"
the Ranch says, "There are no diesel plants or diesel generators on our property, a point we fervently assert" says nothing about Tesla's property. They drew a line between Tesla's property (leased from the Ranch) and the Ranch's property. Then thy issued a denial that does not include what Tesla is doing.
is how you should be reading those statements; you're welcome. Like I said, I don't have a belief or a suspicion or a care about what Tesla is doing, I have no dog in this fight. Just explaining how to analyze what the Ranch said.
Has somebody perhaps made a mistake and said "it's in that building"? Maybe, but neither the Ranch nor Tesla has said that Tesla is not doing this, and the Ranch could be hiding behind that error to mislead us about what Tesla is doing.
I think you’re wrong ( and know it ) and you’re digging even deeper with stuff like “When you rent an apartment, it is your property” to “win” and that is severely uninteresting to me.
Their statement uses the word property, and the word building. You don't. You need to use both words properly to see the distinction they and I are drawing.
> The building indicated is not, nor has it ever been a diesel plant.
This statement does not contain the word property. This statement tells you all you need to know. You do not need to know who owns this building, who owns the Tesla charging infrastructure or who owns the land that the charging station is on or anything else.
People spreading misinformation were saying this building was a diesel plant. That statement tells you it isn’t. You now have all the information needed.
If you look nearby any DC fast charger you will usually see a number of heavy duty electrical cabinets containing the electrical equipment (and increasingly batteries) that power the chargers.
I think the answer is it depends on the local power lines. But I don't think 400kw is unusual for industrial and commercial service.
Solid state batteries are now real enough that you can buy them at Home Depot.[1]
[1] https://www.homedepot.com/p/YOSHINO-Solid-State-Portable-Pow...
I’ve seen video of the Cybertruck getting more than 330kw, and the Lotus cars seem to charge at high rates too. But 200kw each is a fine charge whilst getting a coffee
The question is how reliable they can be - if a charger is broken, it doesn’t matter what the numbers on the label say
Their actual peak charge rate is something like 235 kW which is still nothing to sneeze at.
https://carnewschina.com/2024/04/02/zeekr-001-fastest-chargi...
I wonder what percentage of starbucks this is viable at.
Only in America.
What it actually reminds me of though, is the taste of a shot that was pulled then stored in a fridge. I wouldn't be shocked find out that they store excess shots for later drinks and they end up even more bitter.
It’s still a pretty dark roast, but way more tolerable.
Still expensive for what it is.