I use the Supercharger network a couple of times each year traveling to friends in Upstate NY. I charge at my house which is north of Boston to 100% and then charge in Albany and near their home. They don't have the ability to offer me 240V destinating charging so I charge before I reach their house and charge again as I leave their area. I don't consider this abusive by any stretch of the imagination. I thought Tesla claimed the Supercharger network was built for long distance travel and that is what I'm using it for. I think this global policy to address the easily identifiable moochers is harmful in the long run. 400kWh is quite a paltry amount when one thinks about handing Tesla $100K for a car. Does the 400KWh allotment carry over year to year or is it lost?
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I use the Supercharger network a couple of times each year traveling to friends in Upstate NY. I charge at my house which is north of Boston to 100% and then charge in Albany and near their home. They don't have the ability to offer me 240V destinating charging so I charge before I reach their house and charge again as I leave their area. I don't consider this abusive by any stretch of the imagination. I thought Tesla claimed the Supercharger network was built for long distance travel and that is what I'm using it for. I think this global policy to address the easily identifiable moochers is harmful in the long run. 400kWh is quite a paltry amount when one thinks about handing Tesla $100K for a car. Does the 400KWh allotment carry over year to year or is it lost?
Haxster
Member
Uh...Looking 5 years out, I can imagine seeing lots of beat-up, high mileage, pre-2017 Teslas being used for livery.
Canuck
Well-Known Member
Sure, I do think one should start with a full charge but not every person your visiting/staying with has an available 240V circuit for you to charge on.
stopcrazypp
Well-Known Member
He's talking about those that "freeload" off Superchargers even though they have practical alternatives at home. This move pretty much eliminates that, because supercharging is no longer free beyond the 400kWh/year.
Of course, for those living in apartments and cities who have not other practical choice than to use superchargers, that is a different case. Tesla had said that was a valid use case starting somewhere in 2014-2015 (although it was not originally part of the plan when superchargers were developed; the slower AC destination chargers were supposed to cover that use case). However, this use case was equally unsustainable (I advocated for paid urban stations, so that the road trip stations will always remain free, although choosing which stations may be a challenge, given some urban stations will necessarily be along road trip routes).
Meh. Those retired couples are still welcome to travel the US. They'll either use their current Model S, or if they upgrade, they can pay to use a supercharger after they exhaust their credits. Who cares? It's not like paying for fuel for your car is something shocking or new. The ability to drive across the US or Europe or Asia on free fuel is not an inherent right when you purchase a car. Maybe they can't justify paying for a Model S or X if they have to pay for electricity on their road trips (I find this argument non compelling: if you're spending 80 - 150k on a car and can't afford to spend a couple thousand on electricity a year for your many road trips, then you're making horrible financial decisions), that's fine. There are plenty of cars that are significantly cheaper that are excellent (I expect the Model 3 would be an excellent car for much cheaper as well). 50 - 120k buys a LOT of either gas or electricity for your road trips. No one has an inherent right to own a Model S or X. If you can't afford the car, you can't afford it.
It'll be interesting to compare the supercharger build out map of pre-Jan 2017 and one after. I doubt they'll be much change. Further, their current "no cost to me" plans are more than adequate for my current two or three times a year use of the Supercharger network. They don't need tocharge me a fee to improve it.
46% of New York City households own cars. The number for Manhattan is lower, about 30%. This is, of course, a reflection of the reach of mass transit in NYC: in the neighborhoods best served by transit, car ownership is at 25% or below, and in those worst served by transit, it's very high. But this was the grand compromise of New York City of another era: we have an extremely dense, resource-efficient core, served by mass transit (electric vehicles!) so that workers who aren't immediately local to their jobs can get there without having to drive. It's sadly less true with each passing year (and not least because the many billions of dollars in surplus taxes NYC generates compared to much of the rest of the country are poured into boondoggles like highways in eastern Montana -- but I digress).
Within a 1/4 mile radius of where I live now, there are well over 10,000 people. Because we're stacked vertically and horizontally, it takes far less energy to heat and cool us; our water runs downhill to us rather than being pumped uphill over mountains or out of the ground. We don't insist on living in a desert but planting our freaking gardens and lawns like Eden. Taking my own apartment complex as an example, 353 families live quite comfortably with a peak electrical consumption of under 500kW. But the tenor of the times is to suck money away from here to dole it out to a bunch of "individualist" cranks in low-density states who like to pretend anyone could live where they live without massive implicit subsidies; so even though more of us use it than ever, our mass transit rusts, and it takes 70 minutes, standing, to get downtown to work from where I live when it used to take 45, usually with a seat, just 10 minutes ago. More of us end up driving, and so there's more room for EVs to do good.
There are millions of cars here. Our electrical generation is comparatively clean, with a huge fraction coming from hydro (Niagra Falls) and nuclear (Indian Point, among others). We have comparatively little solar -- but, then again, many solar panels never actually generate in their service lifetimes as much energy as was used to fuse the silica which forms their PV cells and that energy is usually from very dirty coal burning, too... but again, I digress. In any case: turning as many of those cars as possible into EVs would be a huge win for everyone.
The problem, of course, is charging. Ranting at people for using local HVDC chargers -- supercharger or elsewise -- does nothing but make those of you who do it look like you can't see past the ends of your noses. Many people who have or would like to have EVs live where they cannot realistically arrange for overnight at-home charging. They must quick-charge on the way home. There is no one-size-fits-all solution.
Did you detect a certain tinge of New York nativism in the above? Believe me, I could lay it on a lot thicker. Did you find it holier-than-thou? How about that! That's exactly what it looks like to us when people from California gripe because they had to wait one time for a slot at a Supercharger and agitate for banning "local" Supercharging. Do you want the best for everyone? Do you want to see more EV use and less ICEs? Yeah? Then knock it off. Or, just keep it up, be smug, and don't do your part to make the world a better place. Your choice.
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Do Mercedes or BMW or Audi or Lexus or Maserati or Porsche or Bentley or Rolls Royce offer you free long range travel just because you spent 100k (or much, much more for some of those brands) on their cars? I'd suspect not, though I can't say for certain for every manufacturer, since I'm not generally in the market for cars in that range. You spent that money FOR A CAR. Free fuel for your car isn't some right and paying for fuel isn't something new or shocking.
After having driven the car for a while now, if you had to replace it, would you give up a current model S or X to save that $10 overage charge? You might pass up a new Tesla S or X for other reasons, but that extra charge for exceeding your annual 400kwh allotment just doesn't sound like a convincing reason.
3 to 4 years for current in production pv technologies with that dropping to 1 to 2 years with current developments not yet in production. Given the rooftop pv installations have 25 to 30 year lifetimes, you're statement is way off the mark. Additionally, blaming the energy production costs on coal makes no sense when the grid is progressively being cleaned up year after year. Eventually pv rooftop productions will be bootstrapped by clean energy.
http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy04osti/35489.pdf
<snip> [QUOTE="I do concede that a nicer way to do it is charge idle fee only if all (working) stalls are occupied. If stalls are open then nobody has to wait and there should be no impact.[/QUOTE]
I like most of the content of your post (most not quoted). However, if we get to the point that the cars can see remotely SuC status miles away, having full cars parked might adversely effect travel plans of those approaching a given Supercharger.
I like most of the content of your post (most not quoted). However, if we get to the point that the cars can see remotely SuC status miles away, having full cars parked might adversely effect travel plans of those approaching a given Supercharger.
Canuck
Well-Known Member
You expect no one to live in parts of the US?
Nice Fox/Drudge talking point but it's based on a flawed premise. Here's some actual facts from a scientific study of this very issue:
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es3038824
Part of making the world a better place has to do with how we interact with one another. Calling people "smug" and telling them to "knock it off" doesn't help in this regard.
Paid urban stations are a lovely idea, but man they're hard to put in. Case in point: I live 1/4 mile from the George Washington Bridge. Traffic heading south on I-95 then west on I-80 faces one of the longer gaps in the entire network: 190 miles from Darien, CT to Bloomsburg, PA.
Happens to be I live in a complex that owns an unused alley just south of us. Happens to be I'm an officer of the co-op board. Happens to be that alley is just wide and long enough you could get 4-6 cars into it... with a little adjustment to the shape of the next building down's back garden which is likely on our property anyhow, come to think of it. Gee, a Supercharger station in there would have a 5-minute (or less) on-and-off from the Interstate, there's plenty to do in the neighborhood, the land's basically sitting unused; you see what I mean.
Unfortunately, it also happens to be that a Supercharger is basically a megawatt load. Dropping a new megawatt load on the electrical grid here would likely mean trenching 1/4 to 1/2 mile of streets that are basically laid directly on the bedrock, disrupting service to hundreds of people at best and tens of thousands at worst, potentially blocking emergency vehicle access to dozens of buildings, etc. and you get the idea. The only way it likely works at all is if you convince one of the larger buildings nearby to rip out their heating boilers in favor of a gas turbine cogen -- not exactly the most carbon-conserving way to pump electrons into a car.
Further downtown the electrical supply situation may be a little better, and at least the roads aren't right on the rock, but there's a 200-year tangle of water pipes, gas lines, electrical distribution, subways... dense places have dense infrastructure and it's usually old and ill-documented too. Tesla would be biting off an awful lot trying to put Supercharger stations on this island. It's no surprise the only one in NYC is at an airport twenty miles from downtown (did I mention that airport has a large gas cogen facility?).
Maybe paid Supercharging will provide the incentive for them to do this. I hope so! But it's an awfully tough nut to crack.
(P.S. We are about to redo our (many blocks of) roofs and our 10+ separate electrical services; if anyone from Tesla/SolarCity wants to do a sexy demonstration project that is likely to be an utter engineering quagmire, just let me know. ;-))
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Let's just say I find it quite an irony indeed to see certain "individualists" living in places where people in other parts of the country have to subsidize their lifestyles with tens (perhaps hundreds) of billions of dollars of road construction/maintenance and water projects over time.
Did you actually read that paper? I doubt it, since it notes that, in fact, it's only recently that the entire PV industry has been net energy positive. Many solar panels still do not generate in their service lives the amount of energy used to make them. And given where most solar panels are manufactured, it's a sad fact that that energy comes from mercury- and carbon- spewing coal fired generation. One day, we can all hope it'll get better, but though solar panels are helpful, they are not nearly such an alabaster-white proposition as some would have it now.
Thank you for making my point for me. Those of you who choose to live in different places in different ways lecturing those of us who have little option but to use our "local" Superchargers, and agitating to cut off our access to them, is smug, unhelpful, and offensive. I see I did a good enough job echoing the tone of some of those messages to get you all riled up. Now you know what we feel like.
Canuck
Well-Known Member
Right - net energy positive. So you retract your original argument? Or are you still anti-solar because of what it took to get the industry off the ground?
I'm not riled up at all. I enjoy the debate but I don't see the need to call people names like "smug". Speaking of which, I quoted Elon Musk to you and asked if he was "smug" for not allowing locals to charge? Well, to be fair, he did say "it’s cool to do it occasionally, but that it’s meant to be a long-distance thing”. I didn't see a Manhattan exception either.
No, I really like my 85D and will probably replace it with a Tesla vehicle in the future. I understand that I'm grandfathered and this change is not likely to impact me for years, I nonetheless feel a basic understanding of the Supercharger network has changed. Given the high cost of electricity from high cost gas fired plants for my home, my Tesla already doesn't come anywhere near the fuel cost savings Tesla claims. If they implement regional cost based Supercharging, then the Tesla's cost advantage on long trips shrinks even more.
One more thing, is the 400kWh consumption based on charge stored into the battery or energy delivered by the supercharger into the car including waste heat and energy to run the a/c?
I'm still entirely correct to note that many solar panels (and by extension, many solar panel installations) are not even net energy neutral; never mind net carbon neutral. So does it rankle when people roll out their holier-than-thou attitudes because their houses are covered in panels (heck, I've seen houses with only the north-facing aspect bearing panels -- and not in the Southern Hemisphere either!) while they tell me I shouldn't use my local Supercharger? Why yes. Yes, it does.
Is it about doing the right, thing, or being able to feel like you're superior for doing the right thing? I suggest it's the former that counts. Whether you're Donald Duck or Elon Musk. Who, incidentally, sometimes seems to run his mouth off without thinking particularly hard first -- despite all the good he does.
If you can't handle seeing people called "smug" (or much worse) when they're exhibiting exactly that attitude, I suggest that, indeed, you are much more likely to be happy in California than in New York. Around here, thanks, I'm glad people will be up front and call me a buttocks polisher if that's what they think I am. Which is why I live here -- not there.
But it takes all kinds. Whether they choose to live in the same place, or different places. No matter what Elon Musk thinks, nor how poorly he might choose to express himself (nor how well!). And no, I don't think the man's a god who is incapable of attitudinal or expressive flaws such as smugness. I'm pretty sure the air's cleaner, the world's just a little cooler, and people around me are happier if we've got more EVs here and less ICE cars, and I'm also pretty sure that if the rabid fraction of TMC members agitating to ban "local" supercharging get their way, that is less likely to happen. So I know where I stand; and from here, I think a bunch of smug busybodies should stop overextending their Californian experience to the whole world. It's different here. The same shoe doesn't necessarily fit.
mblakele
FSD Beta (99)
California is a net contributor to the federal budget. Rich states like California and New York send a lot of tax revenue to the feds. A little bit of that comes back for local projects, but most of it goes to poorer areas. Well, they need it.
2016’s Most & Least Federally Dependent States
US Net Federal Tax Return | The Atlas of World Statistics (older data, but a nice visualization)
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