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Comment by rheide | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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