Tesla Completes L.A.-to-New York Electric Model S Drive Chargers | Hacker News Reader

Tesla Completes L.A.-to-New York Electric Model S Drive Chargers

bloomberg.com

229 pointsgus_massa181 comments

>> provide 170 miles of range in a 30-minute charge

That would have still sounded impractical to me when I was still able to just drive through the night to get where I needed to be. Now that I travel with a young baby and a dog, that's about how often and for how long I have to stop for breaks anyway. This is impressive progress anyway, but I'm especially impressed now that it really wouldn't alter my own schedule much.

Just doing some quick numbers (not related to current specific locations of quick chargers and gas stations), stopping 30 minutes every 170 miles would add a bit over 6 and a half hours of stopping to a LY->NYC trip.

LA -> NYC is about 2,800 miles. If you had to stop for 30 minutes every 170 miles, that'd be 16.5 stops, for a total of about 8.25 hours of charging stops.

If you assume 25mpg in a car with a 12 gallon tank, and 10-minutes per gas station stop, the same 2,800 mile trip would require about 9.5 gas stops, or about 1.5 hours worth of total gas stops.

In the real world for drivers not going straight through, you're going to be spending at least a couple nights in a hotel when you could (assumedly) plug your car in overnight, as well as starting out with a full charge and more like 240 miles of range in the mornings. So I expect the real world difference would be about 4-5 hours of additional time waiting around for your car to charge in a Tesla vs. a traditional gas car. Not a huge difference on a 46 hour drive.

However, the mental difference of being forced to stop 30 minutes every 170 or so miles might make it feel like much longer than an additional 4-5 hours.

You'd also save about $365 in fuel costs in a Tesla vs. a gas car, but that's probably not a huge concern when you've already purchased a $75K+ car to begin with.

I just drove from Chicago to Tampa, stayed for two weeks in FL, and then drove back over the last two weeks. I did both sprints straight through in a 2008 Infiniti G37, which has a six-speed auto, V6 engine, and 20 gallon tank. At an average speed of 85 mph, the car averaged about 24mpg, giving me a range of around 420 miles per gallon (with ~60 mile reserve).

This is an edge case of course. I'm 31, and drove the entire ~15 hour drive at once with breaks only for fuel/bathroom at the same time. If I owned a Model S, I'd just fly.

It's not an edge case, but neither is it really a sensible comparison.

You have to look at the model s like the first macintosh. It does some revolutionary things very well and it's an astounding achievement. It will however take a few years to overtake the mainstream. It would be a little short-sighted to go on about how the Apple II is so much more practical, even though it was at first.

So you spend $325 on gas for that trip. Which is about a third of the monthly payment required for a Model S.

I used to really want a Model S, but I just don't think paying for that much battery is worth it as long as your commute isn't over 60 miles. Instead of a Model S, you can lease a Leaf for city driving and buy luxury gas car for road trips, both combined for a smaller total payment. Plus you now have two cars!

People seem to be missing your point, time is money. To those with lots of money time necessarily isn't as much money. Hence, the Tesla buyers have the luxury of time.

Going on a vacation for us means, the less time we spend getting there the more time we have on vacation since we have to work it in between what work allows.

Still I cannot believe even on this site all the people justifying stopping every couple of hours for thirty minutes. Even traveling with dogs that isn't necessary. Top it off, all those stops extend the trip which means yet another hotel.

Plus my number one issue, the supercharge network governs how you do your trip, which routes you take. That can simply put some locations out of practicality.

That's 1.44 metric tons of CO2 emission. A Tesla may not be as practical, but it extends the longevity of our planet for damn sure.

[EDIT] I used this website to calculate http://calculator.carbonfootprint.com/calculator.aspx?tab=4

I offset the carbon emissions through Terrapass (http://www.terrapass.com/). It's not perfect, I know, but I can't afford a Tesla at the moment without liquidating my TSLA stock.

Total cost to offset ~2 metric tons of CO2: ~$20 (http://www.terrapass.com/shop/)

That's an interesting service, it makes me wonder what other indulgence-style businesses could exist for wealthy people ...

  +--------------------------+------+--------+
  | Name                     | Qty. | Price  |
  +--------------------------+------+--------+
  | Littering                |    1 |  $6.95 |
  +--------------------------+------+--------+
  | Water lawn in drought    |    1 | $34.95 |
  +--------------------------+------+--------+
  | Let's do this mega-trip  |    1 | $19.95 |
  | in a sports car! And     |      |        |    
  | drive really fast too!   |      |        |
  +--------------------------+------+--------+

Guilt is so 2006.

Since when are services built on sound science "indulgence-style"? It wasn't like I drove to Florida on a vacation; I was taking care of a family member. I'm not supposed to go because I'm releasing ~2 tons of carbon? Bah.

There's nothing wrong with driving far distances, it's just that money negating pollution is silly to me, as incongruent as a tithe forgiving sins. You can't just wring automobile emissions out of the sky, and a donation doesn't change the fact that the extra car on the road causes other cars to slow, producing more emissions, increasing demand for road infrastructure and such.

Doesn't that already exist? Where I live, there's a fine for all three of those things.

I think the point is that more often you're stopping for more than just gas. Lunch. Bathroom. Clean your windshield. You add it up, it's longer than 10 mins anyway, so this doesn't affect you all that much.

Also I take issue with the logic that fuel savings don't matter if you're spending that much on a car anyway. I don't see it that way at all. Being able to pay like $1k/mo car payment doesn't yet put you in "money is no object" territory IMO.

Why does the level of discourse around this subject need to be so disingenuous?

There is definitely a time penalty at stops. Meals are the only one of those things that takes longer than 10 minutes. You do that maybe a couple times a day.

With the model s you are stopping about every 2.5-3 hours for 30 minutes. Exactly one or two of those stops might involve a half hour meal, where it doesn't make a difference. The rest of the time, it does. To characterize this as not "affecting you all that much" vs. a traditional gas trip is just not accurate.

But you know what? That's ok. I don't get why some enthusiasts feel the need to pretend there are no compromises. It's ok for the model s to have some drawbacks at this stage. It's early. That's how the technology cycle works. Like I said elsewhere, the model s is like the first macintosh. It's the future and it's already pretty cool. No need to pretend it does more than it can. That just polarizes people.

Disingenuous? Hey buddy, GFY.

Last year I drove from Florida to San Francisco. We did it over 5 days, my wife and I with our dog.

We stopped as-needed and always more than 10 minutes. Just filling the tank & handling payment takes that long. But in reality, you NEED to clean the windshield to clear off the bug splatter. And you NEED to use the facilities. Probably you and your passengers. And you really WANT a moment to stand up and stretch your legs anyway.

Does it always take 30 minutes? Certainly not. Twenty? Probably more like it.

"Just not accurate"? "enthusiasts need to pretend?" From where I'm sitting your comment here is a contender for A-hole of the Thread award. Congrats, you must be so proud.

I take issue with your accusations. I wrote what I wrote in good faith based on my somewhat recent experience with the cross-country road trip. I don't look politely on somebody like yourself suggesting otherwise.

You're being needlessly aggressive. The comment to which you are responding was raising a reasonable point.

You can raise a point without an ad hominem attack, mturmon. Happily standing-by my comment.

> You're being needlessly aggressive.

The first line of the abalone's post was needlessly insulting. I'm not saying that tit-for-tat is OK, but I can see what provoked the outburst.

Disagree. This kind of disproportionate outburst is not fit for HN. "Go fuck yourself" and "A-hole of the thread" have no place here.

There's one more factor: driving speed. To get more energy efficiency on long trips, it often makes sense to drive the model s around 50-55mph rather than 65+. So if you average 10mph slower over 2800 miles, that's an additional 8 hours of driving time on top of the charging time.

See comments here for a recent cross-country trip. Where the driver notes his average speed it's around 50-55mph. http://www.teslamotors.com/forum/forums/heading-cross-countr...

(Also of note: planning around cold weather seems to be a significant consideration.)

I don't think that's accurate when your using supercharging stations. Electricity costs far less than gas so if your adding more time than you save by refueling less it's basically pointless unless your could get to a much further charging station. However, there way to far apart for that to be practical so your stopping in the same locations if your doing 55 or 75.

There's one more factor: Dont I have to do a mandatory roundtrip so that I can return the individual batteries to Tesla? Thats the way their battery swap program works at the moment.

The article isn't about their battery swap program. Its about their fast charge network.

Oops, I totally missed that part. It sounds more realistic now.

The battery swap is not the 30 minute charge time, it's an actual charge of your own battery (the swap is a lot faster than 30 minutes). I don't think battery swap is currently available at these charge locations?

Correct. There are no battery swap stations in service anywhere at the present time.

Speculative: if Elon Musk's hyperloop vision happens, batteries could be loaded into pods and shipped most of their journey that way.

There's a part of this comment which makes me think I'm missing something. According to their website, the Mercedes A180 CDI ECO gets 78.5mpg.

78.5.

I own a car I would consider sporty, and I can still get over 35mpg when driving on motorways at a sensible speed.

I'm in the UK. Are we using some other metric to establish MPG or are cars in the USA really that absurd that they get your quoted 25mpg on a long journey?

Uk gallons are slightly largers than US Gallons.

(4.54 L vs 3.78 L)*

*(note how I used the universal 'Liter' measurement to stunn you all! ;-) )

If you're driving long distance, you should be stopping for a break every hour or two just to stretch your body and keep mentally alert. These stops are not quite the right rhythm, but they are not a bad idea either.

Absolutely. But 30 minutes is longer than you need for that each time. I think most people would find 30 min every 2 hours would be a pretty painful time penalty on a cross-country road trip, despite the health benefits. (That and having to drive around 55mph most of the way to get better efficiency, too.)

But it's still early days and that should improve with future cars.

A more common scenario is my experience is a quick stop to change drivers; solo you need proper breaks, if you have multiple drivers sharing the load then you can drive for a lot longer before fatigue is an issue.

If that fits your pace, that's great, but that would have driven me nuts last time I was driving cross-country.

A 30-minute break every 3 hours seems just a little bit high - if 30 minutes got you closer to the full charge, it would be fine for road trips. 4 or 5 hours seems the upper limit for reasonable "driving without a half-hour break" and taking only 1/10th of your time instead of 1/7th recharging would be more palatable.

But either way, driving screws up our concepts of convenience and efficiency. Drivers aren't rational actors, so even if you were only spending 10% of your time recharging it would make you crazy just like any other delay makes us go a bit nuts when we're behind the wheel.

Drivers aren't rational actors

That's at the heart of most of these discussions. So many of the decisions people make about driving aren't rational decisions, they're rationalized decisions.

Just to be clear, I'm guilty of this as well. I bought a large luxury station wagon (mostly) because it had rear-facing rumbleseats that I've used exactly once.

I can't stand sitting rear-facing without feeling nauseous, I'm surprised it's even a selling point.

When you're a kid, the novelty of sitting rear facing in "the way way back" is enough to stop the nausea, at least for short trips.

And if you're not a kid, there's no way in hell you're going to fit in the rear-facing seats, I'm pretty short and I still can't fit back there.

Exactly this - I remember my parents had a Volvo with similar seats and my brothers and I loved sitting back there. We always imagined we were in the gun turrets of the Millennium Falcon shooting down cars.

Grew up in a 240 wagon myself. Sometimes I would pretend a bug-spot on the windshield was a gunsight and pretend to shoot other cars, thinking of Star Wars the whole time.

haha I guess you're right, I remember some rides in the trunk long ago and not feeling sick.

If the speed limit is 70mph or 75mph, it is less than every three hours.

Isn't it counterproductive to drive a model s at high speeds cross-country? You get an extra ~40 miles of range by going 65 instead of 75.

Going 65 on a 75 highway is going to be a problem since your speed difference with most cars is what causes the problems in highway driving. Breaking flow of traffic is not a good idea.

I can assure you that doing 65mph on I-90 through South Dakota is a really, really bad idea. Its listed as 75mph and that would be the low-end for what people do. Nevermind the wind that is probably going to kill your range.

Aside from perhaps Montana/etc I've never seen a highway with a single 75MPH speed limit. There is always a lower limit for big trucks, usually 55 or 65mph. You in a Tesla driving 65 in the right lane is not going to affect traffic much. In the wide open spaces, there's enough room it doesn't matter. In cities, there's enough traffic to push realized speeds below posted limits anyway.

"Aside from perhaps Montana/etc I've never seen a highway with a single 75MPH speed limit"

Well, South Dakota I-90 where Tesla put their chargers is a single 75mph on a very busy two lane interstate with a lot of truck traffic.

Minnesota is a single 70mph on I-90. Thinking about it, I haven't seen a split speed limit in the upper plains.

"You in a Tesla driving 65 in the right lane is not going to affect traffic much."

"In the wide open spaces, there's enough room it doesn't matter."

You are going to be a nice blocker in traffic that generally flows along at 75 - 85 mph. It is a very busy truck corridor and you going 65mph is going to be a problem.

Utah has an 80 MPG speed limit north-south. It's really quite fun rolling along at 80-85. I would hate to come across someone rolling at 60, it starts to become a hazard at that kind of delta between vehicles.

Nevermind the wind that is probably going to kill your range

This is a good point, I wonder what the energy burden is going to be from that. You also need to factor in the impracticality of travel in the winter season (ie, near 0 deg F) in the east, or the very cold desert west of the Continental divide, particulalry at night (which is also extended in the winter).

> winter season (ie, near 0 deg F)

It gets into the negatives for a lot of the winter. As I type this, it is -4F in Sioux Falls (just off I-90) with a mild 5-10mph wind with an expected low of -8F tonight.

There are a lot of windmills near I-90 since you can pretty much guarantee a constant wind.

Interesting visualization of wind-energy across USA

http://rredc.nrel.gov/wind/pubs/atlas/maps/chap2/2-01m.html

Its pretty much a wash on the math. you save 400 miles of navigation when you gain 10/mph for 40 hours (a typical navigatin time). This probably costs you 1x extra stops, if you are stopping every 280 miles (=10 stops in 2800 miles). If you are getting 240 you are stopping = 11 times), but you are taking 1 extra hour for that stop. You would have to drive the 400 miles in that one extra hour to make up the difference. At least on my napkin, maybe I am wrong.

When the supercharger stations are at fixed points, an extra 40 miles isn't much help. You charge where the charging point is, not where you run out of juice.

People said exactly the same thing when the automobile was introduced and it was horribly less convenient than a horse and cart.

Of course a new tech is slightly less convenient out the outset, and of course it will only appeal to a certain percentage of the population, and of course it will get better over time.

Which side of history are those people on?

Which side of history will you be on?

The thing is it was more inconvenient than horse and cart for a long time. ( Early cars broke all the time, costed a fortune and you needed to maintain it yourself - that was basically a toy for rich kid to parade at the country club ) You get absolutely no benefit other than bragging rights for being an early adopter.

I understand that early adopters are damn useful, especially for all the startup creator here on HN. But seriously, "Right side of history" is pushing it. You can buy a regular car today and an electric one next time; it is not like electric car makers will refuse your business because you failed to be on the right side of history 10 year before.

> You can buy a regular car today and an electric one next time; it is not like electric car makers will refuse your business

Precisely. So people need to stop complaining the Tesla S doesn't meet their needs. Wait until it does, then buy one. If it never does, don't buy one, and don't complain about it.

Why is it so common for consumers to complain when a popular company makes a product that doesn't precisely fit their needs?

I personally am happy when I have no use for an expensive product, as it means I don't have any desire to spend money on it, and my $500 car will continue to meet my needs.

The side of history that can't afford a Tesla S anyway. Small-minded of me, I know.

> The side of history that can't afford a Tesla S

Yet.

There were millions that couldn't afford an automobile when they came out too you know..... Give it time, stop thinking a new product has to be everything to everyone so early on.

Range is a significant factor of the Tesla's cost, and it'd require a order of magnitude of efficiency increase to both support a cheaper model while also keeping the same charging range and keeping Tesla's profit margins in place.

Posting this on HN, of all things... processing power improved hundredfold in just 20 years. With every step, Intel just sold more of the things with better margins.

Tesla's deal with Panasonic [1] should bring their costs down by a hefty margin. Current battery tech is improving at around 7% per year. So even without a true "order of magnitude" breakthrough like lithium-air batteries, you're looking at battery efficiency doubling every decade, plus additional savings from economies of scale.

My personal suspicion is that electric cars will hit mainstream sales levels by around 2020 and by 2025 they'll dominate new car sales.

[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/markrogowsky/2013/11/06/teslas-b...

The more you make of something, the cheaper it gets to make each one. The price will come down.

uh-huh, and you can say exactly the same thing about the first cars, computers, commercial (or private) planes, and about 10 million other things.

Why do you think complaining about the Tesla is somehow different from complaining about all those other things when they were in their infancy?

I'm not sure someone who says "If that fits your pace, that's great, but that would have driven me nuts last time I was driving cross-country" is really looking to be on a particular side of history.

Yeah but a different power plant isn't that much of a historical breakthrough. For the planet, sure. But for the consumer? There's no payoff.

Yeah, but it's still cool that someone can drive across the country in a Tesla.

Shouldn't we get something like a 50% improvement in battery technology within 5 years? That should push it over the limit for most people.

Batteries have been improving at what, 6% per year? If that keeps up it will take 7 years to get 50% better.

Same, but it's only going to get better from here. Plus, if I owned a Tesla I don't think I'd be making that sort of cross-country trip again, at least not in that way.

Keep in mind, that's not the only size jump you can do. You'd probably start with a full charge, and so could drive a solid 3.5 hours before your first break. You're only limited to 170 miles if you stay just 30 minutes. Personally after 3.5 hours on the road I', looking for a food and bathroom break, which may take 45+ minutes, giving you a longer range for the next jump as well. Of course, you're more limited by where the chargers are right now, since it's not like there is one every ten miles!

Problem is that some of the Tesla chargers in the Netherlands have a maximum parking time of 30 minutes max (Picture source: http://baminfratechniek.nl/sites/default/files/domain-116/st... ). As the maximum charging time is 20 minutes, it was sufficient [claimed by the journalist]). Ofcourse I don't know if you can just move your car or reconnect to the supercharger. But 'officially' it's not allowed to charge more than 20 minutes.

Many of these chargers are also conveniently located at hotels, so when you take your inevitable sleep break you can start the day off with a full charge.

Except that really don't need these chargers if you're charging overnight. The Model S can fully recharge 240+ miles in about 9 hours using just an electric clothes dryer outlet or a "J1772" plug. Those are dirt cheap to install (labor to pull the wires through new conduit to the parking space is usually as much or more than the box that goes on the wall).

Personally, I'd rather see hotels spend a few thousand bucks to install a bunch of NEMA 14-50's outlets or EVSEs with J1772 plugs. The cost of the electricity is pretty minimal, and it's certainly no worse than the upkeep on amenities like the gym or swimming pool (which nobody ever seems to use). If it really became an issue, the hotel could always charge a $5 fee for parking in the charging spot overnight.

Sadly it still sounds unreasonable for the 196 mile (frequently business related) trip between Austin and Dallas. There will probably always be some commonly non-stop traveled distance just outside their range, but I presume it'll be marginal.

A father/daughter team was first to make the cross-country trip:

https://twitter.com/plugshare/status/427260624230309889/phot...

http://www.teslamotors.com/forum/forums/heading-cross-countr...

Not the most direct route between the two cities [1]. It looks like there are at least two parts of the route that don't follow interstates. The excursion up to South Dakota to go past Mt. Rushmore makes sense, but I can't figure out the jog into New Mexico. Unless someone's really interested in a couple of National Monuments in that corner of NM, it looks like the only reason for that jog is to go to the Four Corners Monument with the minimum travel distance through an Indian reservation.

[1] http://www.teslamotors.com/supercharger

> I can't figure out the jog into New Mexico

It looks like the two charging stations in northwest New Mexico are in Gallup and either Shiprock or Farmington, which are just about the only towns in that region of the country. A more direct route between I-40 and I-70 would be to turn north a bit further west, on US-191, but there aren't any towns on that route.

If you look north of Flagstaff in Arizona, there aren't many places to stop. They need infrastructure to place one of these stations, and they're promising that each stop will have restaurants (and hotels?) nearby.

My first thought was local politics (offers of free land in places trying to attract tourists come to mind), but I'm now leaning toward the fact that they just routed around completely barren areas where they couldn't get the station spacing correct.

Hmm, maybe this explains why they didn't go up I-15 to I-70 in Utah, even though that route gives you access to Zion NP. That first part of I-70 is pretty empty.

They're going that way. Check out the 2014 map. Bryce might be tricky, but Zion should be easily reachable.

Even on the 2015 map, northern Arizona above Flagstaff remains empty. Obviously the Grand Canyon is a factor in the northwest, but it's probably also due to them having trouble finding a location in the reservation. I've driven from Flagstaff to Moab 4-5 times, which is a lot of someone that has only lived on the east coast and recently the midwest, and it's never involved New Mexico.

The most serious issue with electric cars isn't road trips, it's the fact that if you don't own your own home, or live in a dense city with no off street parking, you likely don't have reliable access to a daily recharge overnight. That's probably half the driving population of America. 30 minutes of quick charging is fine every so often, but not every day or even every week.

This is why fuel cells continue to be pushed as a viable alternative--quick, carbonless refueling. The closest equivalent that the EV world can offer is a battery swap station, but that has a host of issues.

It's interesting now that Tesla has answered the folks saying "the most serious issue with electric cars is road trips," now we get this.

I'm a little skeptical of the "half of the driving population won't be able to charge" claim. For example, you don't necessarily need to own your off-street parking spot for the owner to upgrade it to increase its value. And I doubt on-street overnight parkers constitute anywhere close to half of the population (I'd be interested in data that shows otherwise).

Anyway, it will be many, many years before even half the driving population switches to electric. That's a lot of time to figure out charging infrastructure in cities for the rest of us.

It's Tesla that has defined the problem with electric cars as road trip refueling. Most EV dealers offer free loaners for road trips, or you can rent a car. Even vampire loads at airport parking in low temperatures is of higher priority for most drivers. They're misdirecting from the main issue to one that they can solve cheaply.

I'm saying this as someone who owns two electric cars. The infrastructure can be solved eventually, and some cities are looking into it, but even in the suburbs there are problems [2], which is why hydrogen is still out there as an alternative (albeit an immature and inefficient one), but for now, a large portion of the U.S. population cannot buy an EV.

[1] http://www.commerce.wa.gov/Documents/Demand-EVSE-Access-Gara...

[2] http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_24947237/charge-rage-...

Valid points esp. about the vampire loads in cold weather. If you remember that NYT reviewer who stalled out, if you look at the details, maybe the biggest factor was parking overnight in the deep cold at a hotel without plugging in. I found it very distasteful how Musk attacked the reporter's integrity in response.

I am just saying "a large portion of the population can't buy an EV" is like saying "a large portion of the population can't buy a Macintosh" in 1984. If the biggest problem you see is that people don't park their cars near chargers right now, that seems like a tractable problem. (And I would think much moreso than making hydrogen mainstream.)

A lot of people who might live in these markets, also probably don't own cars. In NYC, for example 55% of people DONT own cars[1]

They are right to focus on high rates of adoption with people who live in suburbs than those that live in metropolitan areas.

1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._cities_with_most_h...

Even within suburbs, many people live in apartments, condos, or park on the street or on a driveway outside of a garage.

It's an issue that makes electric impossible for me; I can reliably get a park on my street (Sydney inner-west) but I can't reliably park in front on my house.

We also have a usage pattern that mostly involves small electric-sized trips but sometimes involves a solid day of driving to get somewhere distant and back; this is always done with two or more drivers haring the load and driving near non-stop; no time for 30 minute charge breaks.

Electric cars are absolutely no use to me at the moment, but that's fine and I'll get an electric car if circumstance change in the future.

If you have an assigned spot and the federal government is paying for the recharge spot it may not be too big of a deal.

I find it fascinating how Tesla is approaching this from both ends, supplying both the vehicles and the power. If the electric vehicle trend goes their way, they'll have an enormous advantage in the market. But if Tesla goes belly-up for whatever reason and the charging stations had to close, Tesla owners could lose their primary fuel source.

I would imagine the primary fuel source for a Tesla owner would be their home charging station.

Superchargers aren't anyone's primary fuel source. Most everyone lives 50+ miles from the nearest one -- they're located along interstates, between cities rather than within cities, which avoids people using all the bays to charge up as part of their daily commute. Supercharging too often also reduces the lifespan of the battery moreso than a regular charge-up.

I believe you, but note that the Tesla website only says this:

> How often can I Supercharge, is it bad for my battery? > > Supercharging does not alter the new vehicle warranty. > Customers are free to use the network as much as they like.

http://www.teslamotors.com/supercharger

They do this to increase adoption, but it would probably still reduce the life of the battery. I doubt people would use their supercharger every day unless they happened to live next door to one. Their purpose of the supercharger network is to reduce the whole "distance-fear" that EVs have.

If tesla goes belly-up, the supercharger network won't just disappear. Whoever they sell the charging infrastructure to probably won't offer it to Tesla drivers for free, but it's not just going to disappear.

There are many other companies besides tesla who offer public charging, like Blink & Chargepoint. Tesla owners can still recharge their vehicles at these stations even though the charge rate is probably slower.

According to this http://www.thetruckersreport.com/infographics/cost-of-trucki... the average semi truck driver spends $70,000 a year on fuel. I have to wonder how this could change with a big rig sized version of the Supercharger stations. Nationwide trucking with (basically) free fuel.

The trucks could hold a lot more batteries.

I'm curious if I'd want a Model S (top model) or a BMW 535d or other mid-luxury diesel sedan in Germany in a couple years.

Around the city, sure, big advantage to the Tesla. For Autobahn trips at 150-250 km/h, stopping every 1-2h would get old fast, even if every service stop had a supercharger.

If you're going that fast, you'll have to stop every 1-2h to refuel in just about any car, ICE or EV. On the one hand, yeah you might have to stop for a little longer in a Tesla, but on the other hand you're going to save shitloads of money: driving that fast is massively inefficient, so you're going to spend a lot of cash on fuel in an ICE, whereas the superchargers are free.

Heh. The BMW 535d mentioned has a 70L tank, and even on worst-case drives (sporty behaviour, not highway), it's quoted (by users) around 15L/100. On standard highway (not unlimited-speed autobahn, euro highway 120~130km/h) it's quoted (again by users) around 7~8L/100.

edit: and do note: your 5~10mn refuelling break on a normal car brings you back to full range, on a Model S it's 170 miles not the original 260-ish.

[0] http://www.bmwblog.com/2011/03/16/the-diesel-driver-reviews-...

At 160-180 km/h in a rental 116d with winter tires I was actually getting about 6L/100km. I was able to do Berlin to Auschwitz (Poland) on a single tank, with 0.2 tank left over. (Poland technically has speed limits I think, but they weren't enforced) For a combination of high-speed-autobahn and city/etc driving, I was basically refilling for EUR 65 or so every 600-700km.

The rental 116d couldn't do >200 km/h, so I'd probably want something a bit bigger, but even a 123d would be a reasonable option. I was thinking 535d just in case I had to have passengers.

Regrettably the 328d is the smallest diesel BMW bothers to bring to the USA.

Part of that now might be that we went from dirtier diesel than Europe to cleaner (at least, lower sulfur, but I think otherwise cleaner) in the past few years, and have more strict emissions standards. But that shouldn't necessarily hurt the 2.0 diesel.

Sporty behavior not on a highway is still going to get better consumption than extremely high speed driving, because wind resistance rises as the square of the velocity. If you double your velocity, then air drag increases by 4x, so if users are quoting 8L/100 on 120-130km/h then you can expect to get about 32L/100 going 250km/h.

With a 70L tank at 250km/h you may well exhaust the tank in under an hour. These are worst case numbers though, so if you drive a bit slower, then 1-2 hours between refueling seems like a reasonable estimate.

Actually it doesn't look that bad.

http://www.automobile-catalog.com/economy/2014/1900655/bmw_5...

Fuel consumption:

in liter / 100 km

Estimated fuel consumption by constant speeds on top gear, steady ride without acceleration or braking, flat concrete or tarmac surface, no wind

by 50 km/h (31 mph): 8 l/100 km

by 60 km/h (37 mph): 6.8 l/100 km

by 70 km/h (44 mph): 6.5 l/100 km

by 80 km/h (50 mph): 4.9 l/100 km

by 90 km/h (56 mph): 4.9 l/100 km

by 100 km/h (62 mph): 4.9 l/100 km

by 120 km/h (75 mph): 5.2 l/100 km

by 140 km/h (87 mph): 5.6 l/100 km

by 160 km/h (100 mph):6 l/100 km

by 180 km/h (112 mph):6.5 l/100 km

by 200 km/h (124 mph):7 l/100 km

by 220 km/h (137 mph):7.6 l/100 km

by 240 km/h (149 mph):8.4 l/100 km

by 260 km/h (161 mph):9.3 l/100 km

Clearly around 200 km/h is where the wind resistance (and gearing) is starting to become a factor, but I think you could probably hit 280 or so without being over 12 l/100km.

The other factor is that when I've driven >250 km/h I've gotten tired much faster, as you need to be hyperaware. (I did almost 200mph in a "very nice" Corvette Dubai-Abu Dhabi for about 20 seconds, and could see the fuel dial dropping)

200-250 seems like a reasonable high cruise speed for parts of the Autobahn, though.

The smarter option is probably Berlin to Munich/Frankfurt/Prague/etc. by train, of course, but I like having a car.

Your link says that those are "estimated fuel consumptions", but I'm somewhat inclined to doubt the veracity of these estimates: between 120 km/h and 240 km/h wind drag is going to quadruple, and ICEs get lower efficiency at higher RPM. So if the efficiency falls by less than 50% when you double the speed, then that implies that tire drag and internal friction represent the majority of the force you're overcoming at highway speeds, which is definitely incorrect. Something doesn't add up.

Cars have geared transmissions. Cars designed for the Autobahn (most high end German cars) have gearing optimized for decent cruise range at 120-180 km/h.

The engine is sized for peak acceleration (and marketing). It has a turbo (in the 535d; the 550d has 3....), which helps somewhat without adding more fuel consumption, but still, a 300hp engine is pretty big.

Basically, to cruise along at 120kph in a reasonable car with reasonable Cd probably is about 20-30hp (yay for mixing metric and imperial units...). Wind is probably 20hp of that. The engine is less efficient at low output (specific output), so you won't get fuel consumption at 10% power which is only 10% of peak fuel consumption.

Wind resistance does go up, but your engine also gets to operate more within its power band. With the right gearing, you can stay within the optimal RPMs and be close to the design power level of the engine at a reasonable cruise speed.

Empirically, I've driven big heavy cars fast for long distances, and gotten reasonable fuel economy; especially big German cars with big diesel engines. What kills them is stop and go, or when you have a smaller car with, say, 5 gears, and you are running it at redline to keep your desired speed.

What is awesome about electric cars is you could get much more efficiency in the motor across a range of power levels, plus regen. What is not at all awesome is the power density of lithium ion batteries.

   ...between 120 km/h and 240 km/h wind drag is going to quadruple...

Your figures here are an idealization. Real results are not going to match this because air resistance and fuel consumption are not a smooth process. (Some versions of the Tesla S even have active suspension, which really makes things interesting.) I expect you'd need some pretty serious finite element modeling, and engine modeling, to really understand the linkage.

> Sporty behavior not on a highway is still going to get better consumption than extremely high speed driving, because wind resistance rises as the square of the velocity.

It's a heavy car, and one built for highway, ramping up and slowing down all the time is extremely expensive.

> With a 70L tank at 250km/h you may well exhaust the tank in under an hour.

No. That would be a fuel consumption of above 28L/100, that's twice the worst case I've seen from any user of the car.

Hell, you can run long-haul trucks with a better efficiency than that: http://newsroom.scania.com/en-group/2011/05/27/scania-fuel-e...

> These are worst case numbers though

They're closer to lunacy than worst-case numbers (and the autobahn is not free-speed throughout). Although we'd need an actual 535d with an actual driver to know for sure.

Calling my numbers "lunacy" will, unfortunately, not change the laws of physics. If you drive twice as fast, air drag multiplies by four, and the energy to overcome that air drag has to come from somewhere. At highway speeds air drag is the only appreciable force at work. Tire drag makes a little bit of difference too, but that will be more than canceled out by the fact that ICE efficiency drops at higher RPMs.

Your "long-haul truck" citation is irrelevant to this discussion because those numbers are for drastically slower speeds than the ones you're talking about.

> Calling my numbers "lunacy" will, unfortunately, not change the laws of physics. If you drive twice as fast, air drag multiplies by four, and the energy to overcome that air drag has to come from somewhere. At highway speeds air drag is the only appreciable force at work.

As you will. Not that this changes a thing, the Model S's efficiency will also drop further, thus further lowering its range. The issue remains, even driving at inane speeds, the Tesla will have a significantly lower range than the 535d.

Heh.

250km/h for 2 hours on a 70 litre diesel tank in a BMW 535 would require > 73% efficiency of the engine, which car engines don't reach.

Calculations assume: Coefficient of rolling resistanc) = 0.01 Mass = 1700kg Coefficient of drag = 0.25 Frontal area = 2.2 m^2

...and those numbers are on the kind side to the car.

On the other hand, 150km/h would require < 20% efficiency to last 2 hours.

Writing calculations is a bit tiresome, so I'm not going to worry about it unless/until someone provides some calculations producing significantly different numbers.

>If you're going that fast, you'll have to stop every 1-2h to refuel in just about any car

Yeah, no. No way in hell, actually. You think driving 150-200 for 2 hours would drain a 70-80 Liter gas tank? I drive 50 minutes to work each day going that fast, I have an 80 Liter tank and I have to stop for gas once every 5 business days. You can calculate yourself that this equals to a "little" more than 2 hours of net driving time.

Is that within speed limit there? I didn't know that

Many stretches of the federal roads in Germany merely have an 'Advisory limit' with no legal maximum in good weather.

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

If this sounds crazy, keep in mind that getting a drivers license in Germany isn't a one-day affair with minimal testing standards like it is in the US. Getting a German driving license is somewhat laborious but the upside is that German drivers are pretty darn safe and have amazing discipline on the road.

http://www.amcham.de/services/drivers-license/us-citizens-in...

The nice thing is most US states have reciprocity with Germany, so you don't actually have to take the tests.

I noticed a fair number of "bad" (by German standards) drivers on the southern Autobahnen over the past few weeks, but they were mainly non-Germans; I'm 99% sure the drunk guys in the 15 year old Honda were US military, and by the plates, most of the other bad drivers were also not German. So it's not foolproof, but still the standard is far higher, and the roads are well maintained.

What I noticed most acutely was the lack of objects-in-road, vs. California. Not sure if that's due to the general lack of pickup trucks, people hauling junk, etc., or due to laws/training/maintenance.

It's also because people in Germany have manners. In California, or the rest of US, people just throw garbage on the side of the road. It's so infuriating! I once saw a guy throw a cigaret pack on the ground literally, and I kid you not, literally 3 feet away from a garbage can. I had to "kindly" insist that he picks it up and disposes of it properly. It's like some people here were raised by fucking wolves or something. I see people throw fast food bags, half way full drink cups, and plastic bags out of their cars on the freeway all the time.

Pretty sure he meant debris, not trash. Stuff that falls off trucks because it hasn't been properly secured. I've had a number of close calls due to large items blocking entire lanes on the freeways.

Yeah, I mean like a sofa, bumper, etc. I leave a larger-than-usual amount of space between me and the car in front of me, but in heavy traffic, you can't always evade, particularly if the car in front is a high-clearance truck, and the object clears that car, but not necessarily my normal-height sedan. Within hours of being back in SFBA I'd run over a boot, then another shoe (possibly the boot or another shoe), in separate directions of 101. It struck the front bumper and didn't seem to catch on anything underneath, but I was worried.

Roadside trash sucks, too, for different reasons.

(I call 911/CHP to report this stuff frequently, on average once a week or more. They send a CHP car or two out to road-break and remove it, or CHP+Caltrans if it's big.)

Worth noting that US military that are stationed in Germany must take a test before receiving a US Army Europe license (they run the program for all US military in Germany) in order to drive in Germany. Based on my experience (got there in 2004), the test was not that easy and did require a bit of studying, especially for road signs and the rules at intersections, which are a little bit different than US rules, from what I can remember.

The US military is semi-enlightened with regard to traffic safety in that they often insist on extra training even for domestically stationed personnel. For example some branches and some bases require all enlisted personnel to undertake basic motorcycle safety training before they are permitted to ride motorcycles, even though most states do not require such training. There are also branches and/or bases where servicemen returning from overseas deployments are required to take refresher driving courses before they are permitted to drive their cars again. On any installation the local regulations are up to the post commander; some of them are more strict than others.

It is amusing that the US military is in some ways the most highly regulated and the most European-like in their regulations, due to the fact that commanders have broad authority and the services provide universal health care and housing for enlisted men and their families. They have good incentives to establish standards of vehicle safety.

A lot of that is that losing your forces due to non-combat accidents can hurt your mission. In addition to broad authority to regulate lives, they're given responsibility for accomplishing a mission; that doesn't really exist in the wider world (what is the "mission" of the USA, or really any country, w.r.t. its citizens? This becomes a philosophical debate rapidly.)

IIRC, more junior enlisted Marines were dying from motorcycle accidents, per capita, back at their home bases (it might have been specific to San Diego), than in combat in Fallujah.

(OTOH, they went overboard with things like the PT belts...)

The USAFE/USAREUR driving test is way more difficult than any test in the states. But still far easier than the tests the Germans themselves have to pass.

The priority road concept, with unmarked intersections, is one that wouldn't work all that well in the US.

I believe they also require a regular safety check of all vehicles that would determine your car was capable of safely driving at speed on the autobahn.

There is no "speed limit" per se on the Autobahn.

Within specified areas.

Inside cities/towns, the limits are often both strictly enforced and dynamic. That is: they change with traffic conditions and are signaled via electronic signboards.

Germany also has some horrific auto accidents, though the death rate per 100k population/yr. is less than half that of the US, at 4.4 vs. 10.4.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...

Great progress on the supercharger buildout [1]! That said, traveling from LA to NY via New Mexico and South Dakota is a pretty funny route.

[1] http://www.teslamotors.com/supercharger

Looks like we were writing at the same time. See my other comment for some ideas about the route.

Does anyone have any idea what the current bandwidth of the LA-NY route is? In other words, given how many chargers exist along the route, how many Tesla cars can make the trip per unit time?

Obviously, if you assume the optimal arrangement—each car being separated from the next by exactly 30 minutes—each charge plug can support 48 cars per day.

That's also assuming that the chargers are arranged such that each leg between chargers is less than 170 miles. The article doesn't indicate whether this is the case.

I think you also need to take into account how many Model S cars are making a cross-country journey at one time. I'd suspect it is less than 10 (how many people drive from LA-NYC or vice-versa?).

Strangely, this is a great example of not over-engineering and pre-selling the capabilities of your product. Tesla knows that the number of people who will make this cross-country journey is small. They are fairly certain that the stations can therefore handle the load. They are proving it is possible, and likely don't have to worry about people actually doing it.

This is true. Last week, the total number of Tesla vehicles using the superchargers was 450. Now, certainly the weather was a factor in that, and usage is much higher over holiday weekends, but it can be quite low.

Stations seem to vary between 4 and 10 bays each. The "cross-country" route has quite a few rural stations with only 4 bays each, and sometimes several in a row.

Maximum 192 cars can thus pass the narrow part of the route each 24 hours.

Actual real-world capacity is going to be less, of course. Maybe a quarter of that (50) before you start running into waits. At 100 per day, you could almost guarantee a wait.

It'll be a while before there's 50 Teslas going through Mitchell, South Dakota per day. But 50 is nothing compared to the amount of other cars going though there right now. Tesla will be fine at their current level, but a large amount of electric cars with similar charging needs would require a lot of infrastructure. I think you'd need 800+ bay Superchargers to handle a modest 10,000 cars per day across a corridor. About the size of a WalMart Supercenter lot. I don't even want to calculate the power feed that'd need.

I hope actually that Americans learn to drive less, not more, as a result of these sorts of changes in the market.

It always amuses me that a majority of American life is lived on the road. For all the pleasures of the free and the brave, they love their little cages..

You really have no idea what it's like in America, do you?

We don't have high-speed rail, and public transit is reserved for only the most densely-populated cities. We don't drive because we want to, or because we're stubborn, or because we don't know any better. We drive because for all intents and purposes it is the only reasonable method for getting from point A to point B.

But don't worry, I'm sure you've still got plenty of other reasons to feel smugly superior.

Gee, how did this happen? I always find this line of thought amusing. It's like people just woke up one day to the America we have now and then pretend its forever.

Distances aren't big because "but America is so big!", they are because cheap gas enabled people to live hours away from their place of work or everyday infrastructure in some suburb. If we would properly price gasoline for the collective damage its consumption causes, this nonsense would disappear tomorrow (and Teslas would be sold out, because you know, they have none of these problems).

Distances aren't big because gas is/was cheap, they're big because nobody wants to pay $2,000/month for a crappy one-bedroom apartment within biking distance of their job. Distances ARE big because America is so big, and even now there's still plenty of land to be cheaply bought and decently priced housing built upon.

For the past decade everyone's been balking at the rising gas prices, and so far as I know no two places have magically become closer together as a result.

Yeah, nobody wants to live in those apartments, that's why the rents are so high!

Or you know, people eventually grow up / start families and realize for a short commute they could raise a child in a much safer environment with better facilities out in the suburbs. Or even they themselves one day decide they want a garden, and a personal swimming pool, and a house.

If you hate your children and want them to die in a dystopian post-Oil-Age future then yes, shuttling them around the exurbs in a car makes perfect sense.

Nobody, with a ±1% margin of error.

Sure, if you leave out the reality that the US had already expanded to the west coast by the time the car was invented.

So? They went straight for the west coast and skipped all the barren nonsense in the middle. In most every vast country, population density is a function of distance to water.

Kansas had a million people in it by the time the car was invented, the middle was not skipped.

Yep, good ol' Mississippi River goes straight up the middle.

Yep. I live in a pretty typical American town (not a big city, not a huge amount going on here) and doing even the simplest things takes a lot of driving.

Want to go to the grocery store? That's about 7 miles away. Want to do some general shopping? That's 6 miles away. Want to go to an actual mall, with a variety of stores? That's 20 miles away.

After moving to California 3 years ago I've seen stretches of Utah, Arizona, Nevada, Idaho, and of course California I'd never have seen without a car. Gotten to go to places impractical with any other transportation. I can't really imagine not having a car for my weekend trips.

I get not wanting to stay in a car for 40 minutes each way on a weekly commute, but being trapped in a city like LA or San Francisco with no access to the boundless natural beauty and adventure would cause me to go nuts. Hipster coffee shops and artisanal food only do so much for my sanity.

I'm not saying you shouldn't drive your car everywhere.

I am saying, you shouldn't be doing it every day. That, right there, is one of the unhealthiest lifestyles, for everyone.

The average American spends an hour a day in their car. This number changes over the years, of course, but generally Americans spend a large portion of their lives, consuming gas. Its just built into the nations life-lines at this point.

Weekend trips with the car would be great! Alas, thats not how America uses its cars ..

The thing is the infrastructure has been long established where the transition to more commuters using public transit is going to take a long time. In LA, they are putting in more public transit options, but the reality is most people commute too long of distances to their jobs for it to be practical to utilize it. So, these options will only be practical for a small population. Otherwise, your options are: 1) Drive an hour in traffic or 2) Spend 3+ hours on public transit (but in a cramped bus). What's your pick for the daily? This also limits your freedom (yep I said it.) to get groceries or do other errands with the little time you have after work which would add additional time to your commute.

Are you American? Your perspective seems a little overgeneralized than reality. Don't get me wrong gas consumption is certainly an issue here. Hopefully Tesla drives the auto industry in the right direction.

One hour a day (on average) hardly seems like a LARGE portion of one's life. Surely, it adds up, but lets say you average being awake 15 hours a day, that's 1/15th of one's life. Not large in my opinion, and certainly no where close to being a majority.

An aside...personally, I spend...8 minutes (or less ) in a car each day.

Can you share the source for the data on how much time the average American spends in a car?

A quick google search points to an even higher average (101 minutes), in 2006: https://web.archive.org/web/20100526113417/http://www.revolu...

The thing is you'd only be "trapped" with no access to the natural beauty because everyone opts for cars instead of public transport.

Norway has a population density about 1/10th of the US (to get away from the "but the US is so big" argument that inevitably comes up), yet when I lived in Oslo, I could stroll along the main central city streets, and catch light rail to pretty much the middle of the woods in 20 minutes, regular rail to the central mountain massifs in a few hours, or a bus to the beach in 15 minutes.

That only works because of heavy investment in public transport over decades, probably in part because car ownership became common much later - Norway wasn't particularly wealthy until the oil revenues started pouring in in the 70's. Culturally the car has never gotten the same position as in the US. Even households that have 2-3 cars will often rely on public transport for commutes.

There'll always be areas where not having a car is impractical because of density - not everyone can sanely get away with not having a car in Norway either; and there's always be places that will be tricky to get to without a car - whether rented for the trip or your own. But the US is in the current situation because you've favoured the car for so long that everything is geared for it.

Of course it's self-perpetuating. I've spent quite a lot of time in the Bay Area, without a drivers license (never bothered to learn to drive as I've never had any use for a car in Oslo and now London), and if I'd lived there I'd have gotten a license as quick as - I'm generally quite flexible about walking long distances just for the walk, and happy to take things easy and wait for a bus or a train , but even somewhere like the Bay Area with a population density well over the places I grew up had so horrible public transit coverage it'd drive me crazy.

The youth of today tend to focus way too much on the impracticalities and expense of driving. I have friends that live in SF and never drive anywhere, but they also don't like to do anything that isn't city related. Going to Yosemite or the middle of Utah on a whim would never cross their mind. Going on spontaneous road trips to places without public transit is something I do regularly.

I'm not trying to solve the public policy problems--just pointing out that cars have immense practical value and aren't just metal coffins.

When I went to Norway for vacation I was able to go to the wilderness on ferries like you suggest, which is great.

but being trapped in a city like LA or San Francisco with no access to the boundless natural beauty

In SF, you can always to take the ferry to Marin.

There's no quick way to get from Dallas to Houston, Austin or San Antonio. Taking Southwest will take just about as long and then you won't have a car on the other end.

There's no rail (that I'm aware of) to make those trips convenient or cost effective either.

On top of all of that it would be cheaper to drive an electric vehicle than any of the other options.

Going on family vacation to Chicago we take Amtrak. Which is really nice/relaxing. But it's not the fastest and far from the cheapest way to travel for a family of four.

I'll be pretty pumped for the day the I-45 corridor to Houston gets a few DC quick-chargers and I can drive the Leaf to visit family in Galveston.

Houston to Dallas via Amtrak is possible. It's also about 20 hours and $70. And leaves once a day.

Sure, you say, that's because there's no direct route. True. San Antonio's better: 5 hours and $34. Still leaves once a day. At 7pm.

>It always amuses me that a majority of American life is lived on the road.

Exactly how long do you think most people's commutes are???

Have you considered that some people do feel free when driving their cars?

Its a fallacy. There is no greater enslavement than petroleum, my friend.

Obligatory: http://simpsonsgifs.tumblr.com/post/596042619/it-sounds-like...

It's self-driving cars that will finally make people feel safe walking to get places again. Electric cars will make that choice more pleasant for reasons of sound and smell. I agree, the trend is toward unwinding the prisoner's dilemma of car dependence, and more people walking means more people feel safe walking. Self driving cars could make car share super practical, which means fewer cars overall. That plus more and more people working from home, to me means the future has a chance to be alright.

Why would electric cars change that?

Density is how you remove reliance on the car.

Lots of Americans drive around great distance, but for commutes, it's shorter than average. More public transportation would be great but not always economically viable.

> According to organization’s time use data, the average commuting time in the United States is about 28 minutes (similar to a separate measure from the United States Census Bureau). That is 10 minutes shorter than the average commuting time for all member countries, of 38 minutes, and longer than the time spent traveling to work in only three rich countries (Israel, Denmark and Sweden).

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/14/world-of-commut...

A perfect solution would be to switch your empty battery with a full one and just go. Let the charging station fill it up.

Are there any drawbacks to this?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5V0vL3nnHY

Tesla already demoed this.

This is pretty cool. But the problems I see are infrastructural scaling issues. To get a 2min throughput, you'd need at least 15 batteries stored below. That may sound reasonable, but then you realize it's only Tesla. And probably only compatible with one model of Tesla. Not very future-proof. I don't have audio at the moment, so maybe he discussed that.

Charger stations seem the better option. But I still think there could be bottleneck issues if electric cars really took off. You could reach some midpoint somewhere, say, Primm, NV, and be stuck there circling lots for hours waiting for a charger station to free up (assuming one could circle a lot for extend periods of time on a dead battery). The gas station there is pretty much hell on earth already.

Tesla have already announced that they will build multiple vehicles with the same battery form-factor as the Model S.

(I mean, you wouldn't even need a press release to know this - it's blatantly obvious that Tesla will do their best to capitalize on the massive investment that the Supercharger network represents).

A new battery is not as good as a few years old one. So equal swapping one for the other doesn't quite work. Tesla's proposed solution is that you have to come back and pick up your battery.

I thought of the same idea. May be removing/replacing a whole set of battery is not that simple.

It's too bad you couldn't just hitch a secondary external battery pack to a mini-trailer hitched to the car for long distances. Roll into a station, unhitch the pack, swap for charged one, go on your way maybe 15 min later.

I know there are proposals for swappable internal packs, with automatic swap machinery at the station, but a trailer hitch and external plug requires a lower capital investment, and is much less intrusive to the vehicle design.

I thought the whole problem with "just add more batteries" is that you drive up mass and thus reduce power efficiency, thus leading to a cycle of diminishing returns? I don't know how far along that curve a Tesla Model S is though.

Or for reaching the distant city a gasoline generator in the small trailer. Making it a plugable hybrid.

Or build said generator into the car and sell the whole thing for half the price of a Tesla :)

[x] http://www.chevrolet.com/volt-electric-car.html

Is it reasonable to buy a Model S now hoping that within 6-7 years you can swap out the "old" tech batteries for newer / better / faster / higher capacity battery packs which will be introduced in 5-7 years?

If so, it wouldn't be a bad long-term car for those of us who like to keep cars more than 5 years.

Yes. The cars were designed with that sort of future compatibility in mind. That is how they were able to implement and demonstrate the battery pack swapping station. While I personally don't believe there will ever be as many battery swap stations as there are super chargers, it is quite believable that in 5 to 10 years I'd be able to drive somewhere and swap out my aging battery pack for a new one that will have a higher capacity than what my original pack had when new.

As long as they maintain the same form factor and interface, yes.

Alternatively, you could find someone to build your own pack in 5-10 years.

The battery is removeable (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5V0vL3nnHY) so I guess it's reasonable to assume upgrades will be available (if the company still exists/we're still buying cars).

These superchargers are great but I think in many cases it would be more practical to fully charge overnight at a hotel. (not sure how likely a hotel would be to accomodate this) Hopefully hotels begin to build-out electric outlet access for some of their parking spaces. The beauty of charging overnight is you don't need to buy a special charger so the infrastructure would be relatively inexpensive.

Imagine if you could simply rent a fuel-cell (hydrogen?) for long trips and connect it in the trunk... Or even just renting extra batteries. (although quite heavy and inconvenient to carry)

I'm fully convinced electric cars are a big component in tje future of transportation but there are many challenges to solve. Also ET3/hyperloop seems promising.

Unrelated: That pond / front water thing on http://www.teslamotors.com/supercharger seems like it would be unnecessarily easy to drive or walk into.

Good to see the network growing. I may still be sorta impractical, but at least Tesla is putting a foot forward and expanding their charging network. In the end, this alone could push their sales higher since no other vehicles (brands) can charge on the supercharger network.

So in, lets say, 5 years...would you rather buy an electric car with an established and easy to use charging network. Or a different brand electric car that is just launching their charger network? Tesla for the long term

If I needed to make a long road trip, I'd lease a car that is good for long road trips and rent my Tesla to someone (or not).

If I wanted to make a long road trip, I might not mind more frequent stops.

This is what the future looks like people!

McDonalds or Cracker Barrel ought to get in on this at a corporate level.

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