Tesla's First 6 Superchargers Open to Public Today | Hacker News Reader

Tesla's First 6 Superchargers Open to Public Today

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91 pointsMikeCapone63 comments

I'm really looking forward to buying my first electric car secondhand in a decade.

Should be lots of hobbyists rebuilding their own battery packs - pick up a dead car with no range left and make it like new.

Many thanks to early adopters!

Yep, this is exactly what I'm planning to do. The early adopters will dump their cars to upgrade a lot sooner than they really need to, and it'll be easy to grab one for a really low price at that time.

In that case, hope that a charger standard would emerge fast. It would be useless to buy a car that uses an obsolete charger system, that you can't charge at whatever the future standard would be. Still, maybe there will be adapters to charge cars from a different charger standard.

Tesla open-sourced their connector design and specification. Let's hope it's good enough to be reused by other manufacturers so we won't have a connector/charger war.

It looks like there already is a standard, and the Model S makes use of it (as well as the Leaf, Volt, et al).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAE_J1772

Did they standardize the side of the car for the receptacle?

It said it was a North American standard.

Fuck can we please get some international power standards for once ever.

Quit whining and buy an adaptor. And maybe a transformer.

Didn't read the article very closely?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EV_Plug_Alliance

"It said it was a North American standard."

A little confused, North America (or the individual countries) doesn't have a standard for side for gas.

I meant the connector. Point is that electric cars are pretty much just hitting the market and it would be really silly not to internationally agree on a plug for the thing. Since it takes DC power in anyway, you need to convert it from whatever arbitrary voltage AC power your given country has.

Oh, gotcha... I hope they agree on a side of the car also. ATM / Drive Throughs work well, Gas Stations do not.

Model S makes use of SAE J1772 only via an adapter, and it's not clear that the average Model S owner is going to make frequent use of J1772.

Tesla is recommending that Model S owners either install an RV style 50A 240V outlet in their homes, or else install a charging station that has the Tesla connector that is currently only used on Model S. The Superchargers also do not make use of J1772.

If hotels end up installing J1772 and not Tesla charging stations, then perhaps Model S owners will use the J1772 adapters at hotels.

Should be lots of hobbyists rebuilding their own battery packs - pick up a dead car with no range left and make it like new.

Except, aren't the battery packs a very significant portion of the value of the car? I don't see how you will be able to replace them cheaply enough to come out on top, unless you use inferior battery technology and settle for two-digit range.

Two digit range in a dirt-cheap super-fast roadster? Yes, please.

* very low two digit. If you use, for example, a bunch of lead-acid or something like that, you'll see much more than 2-3x reduction in capacity.

Even with a 6X reduction in capacity, that gives me a ~40 mile range (assuming the Tesla Roadster's 241 mile range), which is enough to get from from the house to the coffee shop to the office to the cafe and back home.

At "only" 6x reduction in capacity, you're still looking at $10,000 of battery if you get a Li-Ion battery. I'm not sure of the costs of a lead-acid, but expect 2x the weight of an equivalent Li-Ion, up to 10x the volume, and much less flexibility in shape.

Sure, if you only travel a handful of miles and you don't mind dropping $20k+ on a car with that kind of range, it works. But it isn't a panacea.

In a decade batteries should cost quite a bit less than they do now.

And why would that be? Are raw materials getting cheaper?

If you're banking on battery technology improving, don't. Battery tech marches very slowly.

Well, from the horse's mouth but Musk would disagree:

http://takingpitches.com/2012/09/22/elon-musk-the-role-of-an...

He makes it sound as though the raw material cost is not the problem.

Also, Deutsche Bank in Dec 2010:

http://bioage.typepad.com/files/1223fm-05.pdf

Relevant bit:

"Based on discussions with industry experts and several automakers, the DB Auto team has lowered its advanced lithium ion battery cost projection by about 30% for 2012. Current prices have fallen from $650/kWh+ in 2009 to about $450/kWh now, and DB’s forecast is the price to fall at about a 7.5% CAGR from 2012 through 2020 to about $250/kWh."

And lots others on Google. I don't know enough about it to judge who is credible but I do believe that laptop batteries don't cost as much as they used to. It's not like Moore's Law, but I think prices have been falling pretty steadily.

I love the design of the stations, and how it calls back to that '50s and '60s gas station design that celebrated the promise of the future. Seems really appropriate.

Hm, waiting 30 minutes for half a charge. This doesn't scale at all. If there's a queue of only one car you'll be there for an hour.

I'm sure it will scale with the number of cars on the road. Right now, there are very, very few Teslas driving around and I bet nobody will encounter such a wait (or if they do, it will be rare). As the build more cars, they will presumably build more stations as well as expanding the existing ones.

Thanksgiving travel is an interesting question, though. Amtrak certainly finds that there's a huge demand spike at Thanksgiving that just doesn't happen at other times of the year.

Indeed, but I'm pretty sure that they're aware of the problem and will scale these up so that queues are very rare.

Besides, most people probably won't need a 150 miles charge most of the time. If you're going back home and need just an extra 30 miles to be safe, that won't take long.

Have you seen the locations? These are for intra-state transit. Not for getting home from work. The locations are really only for making long trips feasible you would otherwise need to rent a "real-car" to take. Like SF to LA or what not (or tahoe, or La to vegas). In that context, it both seems less likely to find a backup at a station (because few tesla owners would not just Fly, be realistic), but a bit more of a hassle (extra 1 hr on a 5 hr drive, etc). You'd also expect to see "full" charges, because of the destinations.

TL;DR Its not the local/commuter crowd they are catering too.

_____________

Edit: Locations - Only the LA and Fremont are even somewhat near major metros.

SF/SValley to Tahoe = 1x (Fremont)

SF LA corridor = 3x+1 (harris ranch, tejon ranch, gilroy, LA)

LA to Vegas Corridor = 1x (barstow)

SF-Tahoe-via Fremont seems the most likely actual drive for the target audience. Its only 1 of 6 locations.

I am not sure they should scale any worse than any turnpike rest-stop with food, the average time any person parked there stays there would be about the same (and chances are, people are going to want something to snack on while they wait). (On that note, I heard an idea in another HN thread about this that certain small businesses may provide charge-ups for free to customers. The power cost would be negligible (installation a bit more of an investment), and currently it would attract a likely profitable demographic. This variation of the idea should certainly scale.)

The one problem I see is if you could actually get enough power to a place like this the size of a parking lot.

The mock ups only had a couple of chargers evident. Think that was the issue people alluded to. park your car in 1 of 3 spots and go have a cafe = nbd for 30 min. but it you are #4, your stuck for 60 min, increasing your trip time ~20% vs regular car (etc). If you are #7 you're there for 90 min. But honestly, are there going to be 7x $100k teslas in Barstow? I doubt all at the same time...

Bigger problem is you can't take the PCH with your sweet car =/

You can't also drive the PCH at 75mph... trade-offs :)

(and that's probably even a bit slow for I5)

trade-offs :)

...like horsepower vs torque ! :D

certain small businesses may provide charge-ups for free to customers

I just spotted a free electric car charging spot at a drugstore in Seattle (Wallgreen's on Market st. in Ballard). It made me feel like I was in the future.

I saw a pizza delivery guy plugged into a Walgreens charging station near Seattle last week! Don't know if he was in the process of delivering a pizza at the time, but he had the doohickey on the roof.

This assumes that the person inside the diner/cafe is nice enough to come out and move their car at exactly 30 min. If he is getting food, he could end up just leaving the car in the charging spot for an extra 15-30 minutes while he finishes up.

People don't think about the fact that you'll start off every morning with a "full tank." The 80kW ModelS has a range of 250 miles, what % of your trips are more than that?

If you're driving 500 miles a day two days in a row to cover a total of 1000 miles, can the early adopters really expect to find a suitable 240 V, 30-50 A charging station at their hotel, or are they going to resort to stopping at a supercharger and not charging at the hotel?

Today, when faced with that decision, you will drive your second gasoline powered car.

This isn't either/or.

What a confusing name. Did they really need to reuse a term that is already very well defined in the automotive world?

I fully agree. From the title I had assumed that Tesla had added a new model with a supercharger option.

http://www.teslamotors.com/supercharger

This is a terrible blogspam site citing yet another blogspam site. The new information in here is "open today".

I would like to actually see pictures of these stations, or mind you, a video! Not the old rendering.

The images embedded in that article aren't zoomable right now. Until they are, here are direct links to the fullsize images:

Current supercharger locations: http://media.treehugger.com/assets/images/2012/10/Tesla-supe...

Supercharger mockup: http://media.treehugger.com/assets/images/2012/09/Tesla-Supe...

Long-term plan: http://media.treehugger.com/assets/images/2012/09/Tesla-Supe...

Supercharger close-ups: http://media.treehugger.com/assets/images/2012/09/Tesla-Supe...

Charging dashboard: http://media.treehugger.com/assets/images/2012/09/Tesla-Supe...

thanks. is the radius the full range or half the range? i mean - if you want to drive to tahoe, can you get back again? i guess the idea is that you have a charger at your cabin by the lake (or maybe they are villas, i am a little out of my social class here) so you can charge up before you come home?

Looks like the radius is half the range. A Tesla Model S gets 300 miles per charge, and the distance from Barstow, CA to Vegas is about 150 miles: http://bit.ly/PGUXSU

oh, thanks. that's very nice of them. i really didn't expect that level of honesty.

I do wonder how many of these will be put up before a state imposes an electric tax equivalent to the gas tax. That is going to be some fun math with politicians.

30 minutes for a half charge, or less than 5 for a full tank(with 4X the range)? The time is going to need to be cut drastically(though I'm not sure how without violating the laws of physics) before this business model will be able to gain any significant traction.

Even their future expansion plans won't allow for cross-country trips.

I'd bet a super small subset of their customers will ever take a 4 day drive. They will fly, it would be cheaper.

How would it be cheaper if the refueling stations are free?

Hotels, food, etc. If the goal is the destination rather than the journey, I imagine airlines will be the most efficient form of long distance travel for the forseeable future.

How much will flying cost in the future?

Cheaper? Not sure about that. I've done a couple 3000+ mile drives and the price was pretty comparable to a flight (in terms of fuel). If you have more than one person in the car, it's cheaper than flying.

And these are electric cars we are talking about. I would imagine they would beat the cost of flying every time.

but you must not forget, time is money.

Of course. And don't forget you need a place to stay and food to eat on the way as well. I was just referring to the cost of transportation.

Why not? Musk specifically stated during the revelation of the Superchargers that it would be possible to travel from LA to NY in a Tesla car for free in 2 years.

It's not appropriate for people who want to do cross-country trips, just like a pickup truck isn't appropriate for a single college student with nothing to haul.

Oddly enough, I fit that mold pretty well.

But I have a Nissan Hardbody, which is a small engine truck. Good gas mileage, reliable as hell.

I like it.

I know they are still a very expensive part of the car, but I look forward to when you can pull up and simply swap out an empty battery for a full one (easily automated).

Better Place (http://www.betterplace.com/) does this with their electric cars. They set up around ~10 "swapping stations" around Israel, and additionally installed charging stations in most malls.

Does anyone have any real pictures of these stations?

Here's one: http://green.autoblog.com/2012/09/24/tesla-supercharger-netw...

I'm super surprised that the plans for 2013 don't include a charging station in the Bay Area, seeing as they're headquartered here.

So telsa vehicles can drive on water now. Neat.

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