
Tesla reveals Supercharger network, Free Fill Ups - dave1619
http://www.engadget.com/2012/09/24/tesla-supercharger/
======
kamaal
The arguments in this thread are amusing to say at the least. 30 minute
charging times, high prices of Tesla cars. Yes all that is true. But this was
never about 'Electric cars are awesome now'.

I'm pretty sure cars during and before pre Henry Ford times were not very
great in terms of their overall affordability, total cost of ownership and
availability of fuel all around the country. You could trust your horse to
drive you back home on any day more than a car. Similar to that, the IBM
computers during their early days. You mobile phone is likely to have more
computing power than all the computers IBM sold a few decades back, they were
highly painful to use, maintain and use. Needless to say all these things had
huge maintenance issues.

But these things have caught on. So have automation, productivity and so many
other new things that eventually people show friction towards but later take
them to be fate accompli and learn to move forward.

Electric cars, self driving cars, wearable computing(like Google glasses) well
these really might look to be unfeasible at this time. But please, these are
just ideas which are waiting for their time to come, with a little push they
will eventually catch on.

~~~
justincormack
Electric cars are 100 years old and have not improved much, bizarrely
[http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2010/05/the-status-quo-of-
ele...](http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2010/05/the-status-quo-of-electric-
cars-better-batteries-same-range.html)

~~~
s_henry_paulson
Electric cars have improved immensely.

\- Better battery performance and lifespan. \- Improved charging time and
technology. \- Distance cars can travel in a single charge. \- Increased
torque and horsepower. \- Affordability and increases is mass production.

And most importantly, increases in the necessary infrastructure to support
long-distance travel (exactly the topic at hand)

Your comment is very uninformed.

~~~
sien
Did you read his link? The point the guy makes is completely correct.

Let's say tomorrow some grad student gets fusion going at a very low price.
The best way to use this to power cars would be to use it to create a fuel
with a high energy density. If you had 'free energy' you'd extract C02 from
the atmosphere and turn it into a hydrocarbon.

For more info look at:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density>

and this interview with Nobel Prize winning Physicist Robert Laughlin

[http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2010/08/laughlin_on_the.htm...](http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2010/08/laughlin_on_the.html)

the key quote is:

"The ones that are technically trained get it right away: hydrocarbons, which
we burned today have the greatest energy density possible of all fuels. Things
that have carbon in them. Will people fly airplanes? Usually people say yes
for the same reasons. Well, how are you going to make the airplanes fly?
Battery. Batteries are pretty heavy. Oh--you can't have airplanes unless you
have hydrocarbon fuels. You could in theory do it with hydrogen, but it's
highly dangerous, noxious fuel. Quantum-mechanically, we know the energy
content of those fuels is optimal. There will never be anything that beats
them."

A massive breakthrough in energy density for batteries might be possible but
it's unlikely. Huge resources have been put into improving batteries and while
they have improved it's not been enough to get near the energy density of
hydrocarbons.

~~~
kamaal
>>Well, how are you going to make the airplanes fly? Battery. Batteries are
pretty heavy.

 _"Heavier than air flying machines are impossible"_

-Lord Kevin.

Yet we have them today, thanks to a phenomenon in physics called Bernoulli's
principle- <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernoulli%27s_principle>

_"The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of
thinking we were at when we created them"_ \- Albert Einstein.

Why, O why do we think that problems have to, must be and will be solved at
the same level and direction of thought the problems were framed in? Besides
the whole point of a disruptive technology is that the solutions generally
come as a bolt from the blue, completely surprising even the biggest experts
in those areas. Directions from which those solutions come from are so
radically different paths than originally they would come from. And this has
not happened once, twice but many times.

Over confidence in science especially with regards to the negative aspects is
not a good direction to begin with.

~~~
base698
That's actually not how airplanes fly at all...

<http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=22977>

~~~
mikeash
Bernoulli's principle is indeed how airplanes fly. Your link shoots down the
silly equal-time theory, not Bernoulli's principle.

Basically, airplanes fly for three reasons:

1\. The wing deflects air downwards. 2\. Air moves faster over the top of the
wing than over the bottom. Much faster than the equal-transit theory
indicates. 3\. Air pressure is higher on the bottom of the wing than on the
top.

The important thing that few people seem to grasp is that _all three are
equivalent statements_. They aren't additive. There aren't three _different_
reasons airplanes fly, there's _one_ reason airplanes fly, with three
different ways to look at it.

~~~
bulltale
This interesting. You say there is one reason airplanes fly. But "deflecting
air downwards" is causing an lifting force by action=reaction (the way a
rocket works) and "air pressure is higher on bottom of the wing than on the
top" is causing a lifting force by pressure differences.

Those are different reasons, or am I mistaken here?

~~~
mikeash
Nope, they're completely inseparable. If you deflect air downwards, no matter
how you do it, you must end up creating a pressure differential where air
pressure is higher on the bottom than on the top. If you create such a
pressure differential, then no matter how you do it, you'll end up deflecting
air downwards.

Pressure is just a fancy way of saying force per area. The air pressure on the
bottom of the wing is just the downward force exerted by the wing on the air,
divided by the wing's area. The only way to deflect air is by applying a force
to it, and the only thing applying a force to it is the wing.

------
sixQuarks
I would say Elon Musk is the greatest entrepreneur of the past century - even
more so than Steve Jobs. He simultaneously created three separate companies,
all in extremely complex industries, and combined all of them into one overall
strategy.

The precision manufacturing they learned with Space X is incorporated into the
Tesla S. Their aim is to make the Model S the most reliable and problem-free
vehicle due to this precision.

Now they are incorporating SolarCity technology into the entire system. This
is absolutely brilliant!

~~~
obilgic
Interestingly I was expecting him to have much better
presentation/communication skills though. I guess being an successful
entrepreneur has nothing to do with that.

~~~
RutZap
I noticed that... he does lack some communication skills but .. in the end,
the important thing is what you say and what you do, not how you say it. There
are a lot of entrepreneurs out there with very good presentation skills and
use a lot of buzzwords and get everybody excited but in the end, they don't
produce anything. Facts before words do it for me and this guy won me with his
presentation :D

------
jerrya
Is it outrageous to think that eventually this "gas" will be free because
outlets will compete to have Tesla and other electric customers _stuck_ at
their restaurant, bar, store for a half hour?

~~~
alexholehouse
I remember talking to a friend who worked for an oil company, who told me that
the shops at gas stations actually make 2-3 times more than the revenue
generated from the gas. If you were an oil company which dealt exclusively
with the consumer (which of course non of them are) you would in fact be a
catering business which sold gas on the side.

~~~
mistercow
>I remember talking to a friend who worked for an oil company, who told me
that the shops at gas stations actually make 2-3 times more than the revenue
generated from the gas

That is completely impossible. Maybe _profit_ , but not revenue. Even my sedan
with a 17 gallon tank costs more to fill up than even a pack-a-day smoker with
a lottery addiction and a love of energy drinks is likely to spend at the
shop.

~~~
jacquesm
Former gas station owner here (don't ask). Profit is correct.

Typically a gas station makes 1 or two cents per liter. A 17 gallon tank is
approximately 68 liters so that's between $.68 and $1.36 or thereabouts in
_gross_ margin for the station. Of that they still have to operate and service
the pumps, and deal with periodic mandatory environmental upgrades and
inspections.

You have to do millions of liters per year to turn a profit on the gas. Gross
profits on store goodies are on the order or 20 to 30%. If they're
refrigerated then likely it is on the low end, if they are non-perishables
then it is on the high end.

------
dave1619
I was looking forward to this announcement and watched the live announcement.
The most interesting/surprising parts of the announcement to me was:

1\. Superchargers are already deployed in California. Nice work, Tesla, for
building it out and proving it works.

2\. The whole U.S. will be covered in a few years. Great for traveling cross
country.

3\. It's solar-powered. I wonder if they have a electricity backup...
probably, my guess. But still impressive.

4\. It will be FREE for Tesla owners. I don't know how they're pulling this
off. To me, this was the most shocking part. How are they going to pay for
construction, rent, etc, and still afford this? It's a great extra benefit for
Tesla owners... to travel around the country for free (of course you need to
buy the car and maintain the car, but still).

I wonder if the extra electricity generated from the solar panels will go into
paying the rent for the spaces.

~~~
jws
_3\. It's solar-powered. I wonder if they have a electricity backup..._

It's grid electric powered. The canopy doesn't do much.

Let's calculate:

    
    
      Guess that the canopy for each bay is 7 by 4 meters, 28m^2
    
      Sunny spots receive about 4kWhr of solar power per square meter per day.
    
      Solar panels might be 25% efficient.
    
      Total daily power: 28m^2 * 4kWhr/m^2/day * 0.25 = 28kWhr/day
    
      Model S has an 85kWhr battery, half charge is 42kWhr.
    

It is going to take about two days to charge off the solar.

~~~
schiffern
>It's grid electric powered. The canopy doesn't do much.

They're sizing the installations in partnership with SolarCity, one of Musk's
other start-ups. They claim they'll be sized such that it will generate as
much energy over the course of the year as the vehicles consume. Meanwhile,
you're estimating power output from a CG rendering on a marketing page.

You could argue whether or not they're lying, but they're certainly not
incompetent. SolarCity's sizing calculators take these (and many more)
variables into account.

~~~
sbierwagen

      generate as much energy over the course of the year as the 
      vehicles consume
    

Yeah right. At what utilization rate? A single charge is ~90KWh, and takes
half an hour. Two charges back to back are 180KWh.

jws guesses that each slot generates 28KWh/day. A ten slot charging station
would only be able to charge three cars without going into the red. Tesla
would have to build a lot of very oversized installations in a lot of sunny,
rural locations to hit breakeven.

~~~
eps
So you are basically saying that Musk is lying. This doesn't sound too much
like him, does it?

A simpler explanation would be that he's not telling the whole story, and that
perhaps they have dedicated solar farms in development/deployment or something
to that effect. Don't afraid to dream a little bigger, darling.

~~~
warfangle
Sure doesn't sound like him. He's headed up the first company to commercially
resupply the International Space Station, for pete's sake.

You bet your ass he quadruple checked those numbers.

I'm guessing that the supply at these stations will be much higher than the
demand for charging, so they'll make up the cost of "free" by selling wh's
back to the grid.

------
revelation
Ugh, tech reporting. Is there a original source for this somewhere? Theres
some limited info at <http://www.teslamotors.com/supercharger>.

 _100 kilowatts good for three hours of driving_

From the announcement video, it seems they are charging at 370V with a maximum
of 225 amps = 83.25kW. So that 30 minute figure for half a charge is pretty
real. The cost for one such charge would be approximately 3$ with industrial
prices for electricity. Given that you can feed solar power back into the grid
at rates above or equal to what normal customers pay for their electricity, I
could see them making break-even on this when discounting the initial
investment (which will pay back hundred-fold in adoption rate for their cars).

~~~
spullara
That page and the video are the source material.

------
brc
Personally, I get annoyed when a company takes an existing term with a defined
definition, and then decides to change the meaning.

A supercharger is a mechanically driven air compressor which forces air into
an engine. For a car company to take that name and redefine it into a
marketing effort, well, it's annoying. Kind of like those 'turbo' buttons that
used to be on the front of a PC.

~~~
evride
Maybe they should have called the 'original' supercharger a "mechanical air
compressor" instead of supercharger since the connection between the term and
the definition is pretty weak, while Tesla's supercharger is an actual charger
that charges more quickly than your average charger... making it 'super.'

~~~
brc
'air charge' is a specific term meaning the air entering the combustion
chamber.

So 'supercharge' is a term for 'bigger air charge'.

However, when you deconstruct it, it is a bit silly. I dislike the addition of
'super' to things anyway, it's a very lazy way of coining a term.

Maybe we should all just adopt Kompressor like the Germans. And leave
_supercharge, supercharger_ and _supercharged_ for the marketing folk to
devalue to oblivion.

Edit : I just thought of a much better name. Who wouldn't want to connect up
their Tesla to the ... wait for it..:

 _Warpcharger_

Yeah, _Warpcharger_ stations. Much cooler, and probably able to be trademarked
as well.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> Warpcharger

Nope, we'll need that after SpaceX develops FTL drives.

------
confluence
This is it - the tipping point has finally arrived.

This is a killer combination of rapidly falling prices in solar PV (thank you
China/Kyoto protocol/Global warming), meeting the falling prices of Li-ion
batteries (thank you astonishingly successful decade of
laptops/smartphones/tablets), meets a cyclic economic boom (thank you GFC),
meets rising gas prices (thank you OPEC/cheap oil/peak oil), meets anti-carbon
incentives (thank you IPCC), meets autonomous cars (thank you Google), meets
the development of nuclear fusion (thank you ITER) all combining into one
massive tailwind for the one company just on the cusp of absolutely crushing
it.

It's a complete clusterfuck of fortune, falling costs, converging secondary
technologies and economic forces concentrated in one company protected with
monopoly pricing, akin to those found by Apple, Google, YouTube, Intel, Cisco,
Microsoft, Facebook and many other tech giants.

TSLA will go 10x within the next 20 years (or get bought out before it -
unlikely) as it rides these convergent waves of progress.

Please for the love of capitalism short the crap out of it and don't buy it! I
need to get as much of this stock as cheap as possible over the next 2-3 years
of savings :D - you'd be doing me a favour!

Full disclosure: I have a significant amount of my net worth in TSLA stock and
have done so on and off for 2 years (riding cycles for fun). I used to own
AAPL - until relatively recently - whereupon I transferred all holdings to
Google/Tesla. I may be exiting Google within the next 6 months due to rapid
appreciation.

~~~
ams6110
You are smart enough to know the risks of having a significant fraction of
your net worth in one asset, so I'll spare you the lecture there.

Tipping point? No, I don't think so. It's progress, and it's good news, but 30
minutes to recharge is still a LONG time compared to the two minutes a
petroleum-fueled vehicle takes, and the best of those can go several multiples
of the Teslas range between fuelings.

~~~
freehunter
On my morning commute, it's important that fueling be quick. I have to stop at
a station and fill up, something I can't do at home. However, if I were in an
EV, I could fill up at home, while I slept. It'd be fully charged when I got
in to go to work. If I could charge 30 minutes to half at home, charging time
is nearly insignificant.

I would still love to see hydrogen cars instead. I think Honda has it right.

~~~
gusgordon
It turns out that, among other advantages for electric cars, they can carry
more energy than hydrogen cars when you take the efficiency of transferring
kinetic energy to the car into account. There was an interview with Elon Musk
where he scoffed at the use of hydrogen and the use of fuel cells.

~~~
freehunter
The advantage of hydrogen lies in the speed of refueling, which is the main
disadvantage of electric cars.

~~~
stcredzero
There's always battery swap-out. The problem with that is infrastructure cost,
though.

Seems to me that the Supercharger stations are getting the time down to 30
minutes through parallelism. If one could bring component costs down even
more, one could have more parallelism. What about 15 or 10 minute charging
times? I'm going to guess that plans are in place to exploit some serious
economics of scale when they start building $30,000 cars.

Once you have autonomous cars, this opens up the possibility of "battery
trucks" once can rendezvous with on the highway to recharge without stopping.

------
surrealize
Making a "charging station" that could take the place of an existing gas
station would be huge feat of engineering.

When I go from the SF bay area down to LA, I get gas at kettleman city
(because of the in-n-out :) and I go to the chevron station there. From google
street view, it looks like that station can fuel 12 cars at a time. And when
I'm there, there's often a line for a pump.

A gas stop takes, say, 2 minutes. A tesla charging stop takes 30 minutes. So
serving the same peak flow of cars would take 15 times as many car spots: 180.
Land looks cheap in that part of the central valley, so it might be feasible
to have that much space. But 180 chargers, peak, each using 100 kilowatts
would use 18 _megawatts_.

Great scott! That's a lot of power. So it looks like this is still in the
range of luxury-car, low-volume stuff. I can't imagine what it would look like
as a mass-market thing.

~~~
ericd
The interesting thing is that people will mainly be charging at home, though,
and will never need to visit a charging station - the car will be topped up
every morning when you leave for work. So the number of fillups needing to be
done at a station should be much lower. But an interesting point otherwise!
I'd guess that the marginal cost of the plugs is low enough that it's
feasible, though.

~~~
lgbr
But the number of people needing to fill up at this station and others just
off of major freeways wont change. The people filling up/charging at these
stations are in the middle of a trip and probably did charge while they were
at home.

Furthermore, the range on even the Tesla Model S is half that of your typical
car, so fillups are even more frequent. This could mean that highway stops
have twice as many people needing to recharge.

~~~
ericd
Yeah, that's a good point. Fortunately, I think it will be fairly cheap to
make a large number of plugs, except for maybe the beefed-up electric
infrastructure. There aren't too many rest stops right now with an industrial-
sized electric feed :-)

~~~
chiph
The Santa Fe railroad had a similar problem - how to feed an entire train of
passengers in the 30 minutes it took to take on water (steam locomotives
typically run out of water before running out of coal).

Their solution was to partner with a restaurant operator, supplying his
restaurants with fresh produce & refrigerated meat.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Harvey_Company#History>

If McDonalds was smart, they'd sponsor charging stations at their restaurants.
Park your electric car, swipe a credit card, go get your McMeal, use the
bathroom, etc.

------
svmegatron
If these become as popular as they seem like they should, I foresee long lines
at the supercharging stations. I'm sure that 1. Tesla have thought of it and
2. They will milk the positive publicity from such an occurrence, but it could
still be a PITA for, eg., folks who want to get home from Vegas.

~~~
eric-hu
What's to keep Tesla from partnering up with major supermarkets and malls?

Tesla could offer free covered parking spaces to the building owner-operators
and free (or metered) charging to the customers.

The owner-operators get free 'green' PR, and could see increased business as
customers have an incentive to stay in the stores longer.

Tesla sees a real-estate free way to offer more charging stations, a marketing
cost for their vehicles that also adds value to their product.

~~~
veemjeem
Yeah, I feel like charging stations of tomorrow will be advertised in the same
way "free wifi" is advertised today.

~~~
jlgreco
All we need now is supersized induction charging mats for electric cars.

I have a feeling that would be very dangerous for some reason, but I'm not an
EE so who knows. Certainly would be pretty inefficient though.

------
spullara
So painful that the actual article was buried because they used a different
link:

<http://www.teslamotors.com/supercharger>

~~~
sbierwagen
I wonder why they used CGI renders if there's supposed to be actual stations
already in operation.

~~~
marshray
One plausible explanation is photos of the actual stations are filled with
lots of background clutter that just doesn't suit the mood of the
presentation.

~~~
rocky1138
Or the presentation was prepared before the stations were complete.

------
kokey
I think electric cars will only really flourish once self driving vehicles
become more practical and common. That convergence, along with civilian
drones, will expand and improve our options for transport immensely, while
also improving efficiency dramatically. It's still a long way to go, but the
technologies to make it happen exists today. It's going to be more of an
infrastructure change, for example to provide specially marked routes and
stopping points for self driving vehicles. The benefits of implementing this
is going to take a while for people to realise, but doing so will be
comparable or cheaper than current mass transit projects, while offering
significantly more flexibility regarding routes and capacity. It will allow
people to improve the mobility they have with their own cars now, while
improving efficiency so people can live better in and around bigger cities.

For example, instead of bus routes, you can have a car come to pick you up at
or near home at a scheduled time, or on demand, to take you to the train
station to make a scheduled train on time. When the train arrives in the city
you can have a similar car take you to the office. The cars can manage
stopping to recharge by itself. The car routes can be updated and optimised
based on demand or congestion, new routes can be added easier than bus routes.
Software can manage your individual trips so you only have to make decisions
based on time and cost. Deliveries can be done with automated cars and flying
drones, and this can be adapted much quicker based on demand.

------
TeMPOraL
Here's a thought (disclaimer - IANAEE):

Could we charge electric vehicles while driving? Could we bury, say, some
coils under the highways and have cars have a transformer on board to draw
power from the road? That would remove the need for charging stations on a
long-distance trips almost completely.

~~~
lloeki
You're looking for an induction system here. At speed you may encounter some
unwanted force effects (think maglev).

------
JohnsonB
30 minutes to charge...still puzzled why Tesla has gone with the recharge
model rather than the battery swap model ala Better Place.

~~~
revelation
Because the battery swap model doesn't exist. It's a cool idea, but it's not
right here right now.

~~~
recuter
I've been in a Better Place car here in Israel and experienced the swap, it
works. Also, Shai Agassi recently completed a full cross country trip (North
to South). Small country, but still.

What makes you think this is not a viable solution?

~~~
spullara
Israel is only 263 miles from north to south. The Tesla S (85kwH)can go 300
miles. Seems like the Tesla might be overkill for that country.

~~~
kamaal
Hmm,

This seems to be a perfect use case for Israel.If you are a regular office
goer, charge once and may be use it for a whole week and half.

------
Shenglong
Tesla had a 250 million dollar operating loss in 2011 and 106 million last
quarter. Add 700 million of debt onto that, and... I wonder how long they can
keep up this kind of expansion.

This however, is really cool.

~~~
ricardobeat
Elon Musk alone has an estimated $2B fortune, so at least five years at that
burn rate? :)

Facebook's IPO bled much more money out to bankers than all Tesla has spent so
far, it's not like they are doing bad. Tesla has the potential to take over a
sizeable slice of the (huge) automobile industry.

~~~
veb
They also have on thing that I don't think Facebook has, an awesome leader
with a great vision.

That goes a long way in todays world.

------
SwaroopH
World changing. Hats off to Elon Musk and his team.

------
at-fates-hands
I think its interesting to hear people constantly challenging this technology.

Fist it was it couldn't be done. An electric car? No way.

Then Telsa Motors comes out with an electric sports car. No way! Too
expensive! Top Gear made a mockery of the car. Not feasible, what happens when
you run out of charge?

Then Tesla Motors figures out a way to create "re-fueling" stations for their
cars. No way! 30 minutes to charge my car? WAY too long! Stupid.

Whether you know it or not, each step this company takes, it's answering every
one of the doubts people have about this technology. Affordable completely
electric cars are a lot closer than most people think.

------
kevinpet
I notice that they have multiple stations along the 5 between SF and LA, but
nothing between Gilroy and Los Angeles, which is around 350 miles. Why not a
stop in Santa Maria or similar?

I suspect the problem is no where isolated enough that they won't have to
worry about large numbers of local residents choosing to just go to
Supercharger station rather than charging at home. As an occasional use to
make people comfortable with a Tesla (long trips are possible), this is
probably well worth the money. But it's unlikely to sustainable if owners
choose to forgo the home charger.

~~~
andyl
Between SF and LA, highway 5 is faster than 101. From SF you'd go thru Gilroy,
then over to 5 via Pacheco pass, then south to LA.

------
jwr
I find it rather amazing that a single entrepreneur takes on a task normally
expected from governments.

~~~
aidenn0
Would that task be supplying the international space station, or building an
EV charging structure?

------
w1ntermute
Come on, 30 minutes for a charge that'll get you just 180 miles? I just
checked the 2012 Honda Civic specs[0], you can fill up with 13.2 gallons in 2
or 3 minutes, and that'll get you 13.2*32 mpg combined = 422 miles. There's no
way this is gonna work unless the charging process is much faster or they swap
batteries instead.

0: <http://www.edmunds.com/honda/civic/2012/road-test-specs.html>

~~~
ericd
Are you comparing charging stats unironically and saying it's a dealbreaker if
it's not just as good as the incumbent in this category? It's really not that
terrible to stop for 30 minutes after 3 hours of driving. Long road trips just
went from wildly impractical to almost convenient, assuming the chargers are
well distributed.

You could compare the 0-60 times of the Civic and say it's unacceptable that
it takes the Civic twice as long to get to 60 mph, or that it only seats a
measly 5 people, uncomfortably at that, or that it only has one trunk.

~~~
w1ntermute
> Are you comparing charging stats unironically and saying it's a dealbreaker
> if it's not just as good as the incumbent in this category?

Yes, I can guarantee you that the layman doesn't give two shits about electric
cars. Until it's cheaper and/or more convenient for him than gas cars, he
won't switch. And until laymen switch, you won't get the economies of scale
necessary for a vast charging network.

> assuming the chargers are well distributed.

That's a pretty big assumption. First of all, Musk said there are charging
stations in several cities in California, but exactly _how many_ are there in
each city? Do you have to go to one particular location in each city for
charging? Because that's DOA. There's no such thing as _one_ convenient
location for everyone.

And don't forget that right now all the testing is being done in California
and Nevada, both of which are well known for their plentiful sunlight. But how
much energy will the solar panels be able to contribute back to the grid when
installed in a place like Seattle? Far less, I'm guessing.

~~~
underwater
The Tesla site shows the locations. They look to have one in each city, but
its not as big of an issue as your make out. The only need to make them
convenient for travelers. Locals can always charge at home. That's something
you can't do with a gas-powered car.

~~~
w1ntermute
> Locals can always charge at home.

In which case you're just pushing the negative environmental effects to the
power plant.

~~~
njharman
> . Until it's cheaper and/or more convenient for him than gas cars, he won't
> switch.

You keep changing your argument. It's fuckload more convient to almost never
have to go to the gas station, change oil, coolant, transmission fluid.
Fuckload cheaper too.

Fail, go back to troll school.

~~~
w1ntermute
> You keep changing your argument.

Strawman, I never changed my argument.

> Fuckload cheaper too.

Oh really? Have you seen how much a Model S costs?

You need to work on your reading comprehension and math, go back to school.

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datapolitical
It's this kind of hybrid (paid/free) model that solves the chicken and egg
problem; the more common the fuel pumps, the easier it is for people to switch
to electric.

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cloudwalking
When will they include a solar charger with the vehicle? "Buy a Tesla. Drive
it for free, forever."

Add to that an engine that requires /a magnitude/ less maintenance than a gas
one.

------
sbouafif
This is a very disruptive technology. I am wondering how much surface of solar
panels (and "solar power") do they need to charge to answer to all the demand
on a daily basis. And by extrapolation is this can be done widely (for
buildings, universities, homes...)?

The oil industry should rethink its business model. And we should buy Tesla's
stock right about now.

------
omegant
Why not a small trailer with battery packs for long trips? or if you don´t
want-need to go green, it could go with an engine and a generator. You connect
it to your car and that way you can add range in an easy way. It´s also fast
to swap at the e-station, just 2 min...

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MikeCapone
A lot more slides and details here:

[http://www.treehugger.com/cars/tesla-unveils-its-
supercharge...](http://www.treehugger.com/cars/tesla-unveils-its-supercharger-
network-drive-free-forever-sunlight.html)

------
ph0rque
I understood it to be free for _existing_ Tesla customers, not new ones...

~~~
R_Edward
Right, owners of the "S" model can charge free for life. No word on what
owners of subsequent models will pay for it. I'm eager to see whether they can
trim that 30 minutes down to, say, a max of 15. 30 minutes every three hours
is too long, but 15 would work. Get out, plug in, go take a bio break, come
back, wash your windows, and you're just about ready to hit the road again.

These are exciting times to live in.

~~~
felipemnoa
>>These are exciting times to live in.

I agree. This is the first time I actually believe we may become oil
independent in the not so distant future (i.e. decades, maybe even in our
lifetimes). As soon as the market realizes that a credible replacement to oil
is here I expect oil prices to crash. I wonder what will oil companies do when
they realize that their markets are about to evaporate?

Exciting times indeed.

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debacle
The 30 minute charging time kind of sucks, but it's a small price to pay for
owning a completely electric car, and I'm sure it's probably up there as far
as improvements go on the priority list.

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vinhboy
As a plugin prius owner. I find it a bit annoying that they don't just work
with existing charging networks like ChargePoint to help expand the
accessibility of electric car charging.

~~~
schiffern
They already support ChargePoint on all their cars.

As for making Supercharger compatible with the SAE J1772, somehow I doubt
Tesla wants a plug-in Prius lazily charging its battery for hours while a
fast-charge compatible vehicle waits its turn.

------
tocomment
I'm not clear on where they're putting the solar panels. Are they storing the
electricity? Can it charge more than one car at once?

------
zmonkeyz
I always felt the Wildcats 3.0 comic was cancelled way too early. Now I get to
see it played out in real life by Elon Musk.

------
scottmcleod
I'm glad theres at least one entrepreneur whose denting the universe versus
profits, Musk for president.

------
protomyth
So, at what point does the local government slap a tax to pay for the roads
and how much will it be?

------
Dinoguy1000
I think we finally know the real purpose behind the Dead Space Markers...

------
gubatron
I think this conversation should be less about the electric vehicles and more
about the idea of creating a decentralized solar grid. And one that will
encourage existing gas station owners to do the same and bank on all that lost
solar energy.

