Anyone upgrade to dual chargers after delivery?

[ldgrmnmc]

Great thread.....very helpful..I'm still a newbie on highway drives....I have a S70D without the dual charger. When I put GPS for long trips, I was a bit surprised to see charging times estimated at 40-50 minutes commonly (thought supercharging with 15-25 minutes). BUT, and this is where I need help, a dual charger won't improve charging times at a supercharger? I see on the Tesla ad for the dual charger option that.....your Model S will be able to get up to 58 miles of range per hour of charge when charging with the either the Wall Connector with 24' Cable or Wall Connector with 8.5' Cable. The dual chargers allow twice the conversion capacity as the single charger when the power is available. No mention of supercharger improvement, so I assume dual chargers doesn't help.......thanks for helping me out.

 

[Steve2498]

You are correct, dual chargers are not a factor when supercharging, the super chargers bypass the car's onboard charger(s).

I have dual chargers and am glad to have the flexibility, but I could manage without it.

 

[JSergeant]

Late to this thread, but I am just returning from a cross-country trip which included Manitoba and Saskatchewan. Sun Country has many 72 amp chargers in Canada (and they are the only charging option in that part of Canada). Having dual chargers would have been a big benefit. I am going to look into whether I can add this option, although I had read that it's not available as an upgrade for new Model S's.

 

[TexasEV]

Once again, as it says all over the Tesla web site, higher amp AC chargers (whether the old dual chargers or the newer 72 charger rather than 48A) has nothing to do with supercharging. Supercharging is DC. Dual chargers only come into play when plugged into a source of high amp AC such as HPWC or high amp level 2).

 

[mikeash]

Just to explain a little bit further: the grid provides AC, but your battery wants DC. The "charger" is the unit which takes AC from the grid and puts out DC for the battery. A single charger can only handle so much power, but they can be ganged together in order to handle more power.

Superchargers use stacks of the same chargers used in the cars. The cars have one or two, while the superchargers have something like a dozen all hooked together. They convert the AC to DC out in the cabinet, then feed the DC directly into your car. Using a bunch of chargers all stacked together is why they can achieve such high speeds.

As far as charging times go, it depends on how much of a charge you need. It sounds like you might be looking at trips where the superchargers are a little farther apart than usual.

 

[wcfinvader]

I'm planning a trip at the end of the summer where an 80 amp destination charger is available and may be handy to charge at 80 amps (I won't be spending the night at the charger).

How many times have you charged above 40 amps?
Was the upgrade "worth it"?

I certainly like the idea of dual chargers but I'm not sure about the practicality in the real world.

Any input is appreciated.

For one trip Dual Chargers are not worth it IMO. We upgraded to Dual Chargers when they reduced the price to 2k for the upgrade. Still a lot of money but we have more than gotten our money out of it. We charge only at 80 amps now and it gives us more freedom. We live a half hour from the nearest major city and the Superchargers are being built to far away for us for use if we needed when we are local. It's very nice to have a full charged car in 2 hours if something comes up. 4 hours to a full battery if completely depleted. We wouldn't care much for the 72 amp charger honestly because of the slower charge rate and the fact that there is no redundancy. Funny how our Classic 85 is better than the New Models in this respect. Keep in mind this is coming from a family that has driven 80k miles with our Model S in less than 2 years. Someone who drives less (which is the VAST majority) would make much less sense for Dual Chargers.