Are people ordering the second 10KW charger?

[swegman]

I visited the Rockville MD service center today to talk to the service people. I did this because one person in the DC store told me the second charger can be added at a later time, while a second sales person told me it can not be later added. I figured the service people would know the correct answer. The service people told me the second charger can not be easily added at a later time. While anything can be added later, they told me it would be very difficult to do so, would take a very long time to add it and install new firmware to control the second charger, and thus said that if I am considering it, it will be better and cheaper to order it with the car.

They also told me that if the intention is to have a redundant system in a 14-50 charge line, this will NOT work. They told me the second charger will not take over if the first charger should happen to fail.

Regarding the 12 volt battery failure issue, they told me that they have been told by the factory that it is a firmware issue. They also said that they have not seen a dead battery in the DC area (not sure if this is true; I thought I read of someone in VA that had a bad battery, but I could be mistaken).

 

[Robert.Boston]

One point of some relevance: your expenditures on the EVSE equipment have a favorable tax treatment, while your spending on electricity does not. Depending on your tax circumstances, that could reduce the after-tax cost of the EVSE by one-third or so.

Still, I think your conclusion is generally sound: given your low cost of power, it's not worth it. Furthermore, even if there is a savings, it could quickly get eaten up if you charged outside of the 1a-5a window (e.g. you had a lot of errands in the morning and then went to Baltimore for dinner and an evening concert), or by other peak-hour uses in your house.

 

[andrewket]

One point of some relevance: your expenditures on the EVSE equipment have a favorable tax treatment, while your spending on electricity does not. Depending on your tax circumstances, that could reduce the after-tax cost of the EVSE by one-third or so.

Still, I think your conclusion is generally sound: given your low cost of power, it's not worth it. Furthermore, even if there is a savings, it could quickly get eaten up if you charged outside of the 1a-5a window (e.g. you had a lot of errands in the morning and then went to Baltimore for dinner and an evening concert), or by other peak-hour uses in your house.

Just for completeness, Dominion Electric's EV plan requires the installation of a second meter just for the EV. So other peak-hour uses in the house would still be billed at regular residential rates. This is why I even considered running two circuits; one behind the "EV" meter, and one behind the "regular" meter. With both wired, I could charge outside of the window at normal rates. But it turns out it's really not worth it

A

 

[smorgasbord]

$2200 / $0.04310 = 51,044 kWh needed to break-even.

The easiest way to run these numbers is by miles. Tesla states things in Ideal Miles. You get 3 miles per kWh. The UMC puts in 31 miles per hour, the HPC puts in 62 miles per hour.

How many miles do you drive a day? If less than 120, then there's no way the second charger/HPC will save you money no matter what plan you're on, since that fits within the 4 hour window even with the UMC.

I'm going to get twin chargers regardless if I do the HPWC for reasons earlier stated (road trips, resale, future).

As a Tesla stockholder, I encourage you to buy options you don't need:
Road Trips: What existing chargers putting out more than 40amps are on any your past or probable future road trip routes? In VA, I'll bet none.
Future: Who's going to install L2 chargers putting out more than 40 amps when the only 2 cars that can use them are both Teslas?
Resale: Who's going to want to spend additional money in 5-10 years for a feature they won't use? Heck, even features people do use don't retain anywhere near their incremental cost in resale value.

 

[lolachampcar]

not many high current charge points in the wild today but in a year or two????

 

[mknox]

If you do plan to keep the car for 10+ years, you may want to get the twin chargers for future-proofing in case Sun Country or some similar operator moves into your area.

While I may not keep the car quite that long, this in a nutshell is why I am opting for the twin chargers.

 

[Zextraterrestrial]

not many high current charge points in the wild today but in a year or two????

Superchargers should be 'plentiful' by then. Otherwise I might have added a 2nd charger

 

[agileone]

This is the only option that I figured I would not need since I started lusting for Model S. But, as a Canadian, Sun Country changed my thinking in the last few months. It makes road tripping in Canada possible now. I also took the supercharging option, for future proofing, but this is one option I wonder if I will ever see my money's worth ...

 

[mknox]

This is the only option that I figured I would not need since I started lusting for Model S. But, as a Canadian, Sun Country changed my thinking in the last few months. It makes road tripping in Canada possible now. I also took the supercharging option, for future proofing, but this is one option I wonder if I will ever see my money's worth ...

I figure Sun Country's high power chargers will be useful in Canada, especially when off the beaten path a bit, and hopefully they'll have Superchargers on the Detroit to Chicago corridor so I can road trip to my daughter's place.

 

[jerry33]

Future: Who's going to install L2 chargers putting out more than 40 amps when the only 2 cars that can use them are both Teslas?

That is true today. Will it still be true over the many years I hope to keep this car? (Assuming I live that long).

 

[RDoc]

I'm still thinking that if one assumes that people will keep installing public chargers in the future that a lot of them will be DC fast chargers. In the US they'll likely have both CHAdeMO and SAE dual plugs for awhile. As cars go to bigger batteries, I think there's going to be a lot more interest in much faster charging than 240V @ 70A. As the market for DC chargers grows they should get cheaper, and a lot of the cost of installing a charge point isn't dependent on the charge rate anyway.

 

[ClearwaterBchSteve]

I'm still thinking that if one assumes that people will keep installing public chargers in the future that a lot of them will be DC fast chargers. In the US they'll likely have both CHAdeMO and SAE dual plugs for awhile. As cars go to bigger batteries, I think there's going to be a lot more interest in much faster charging than 240V @ 70A. As the market for DC chargers grows they should get cheaper, and a lot of the cost of installing a charge point isn't dependent on the charge rate anyway.

RDoc: For me, the 2nd charger would have only been useful on road trips (which I won't be doing too many of and >40A public chargers are virtually non-existant at this point) 240V/40A is quite sufficient for home charging. I am anticipating a fully deployed super charger network and your statement regarding DC fast chargers intrigues me. Do you know if the onboard super charger hardware will remain Tesla super charger specific or could it be used with other DC fast chargers in the future?

 

[mnx]

While there may not be many public chargers that put out 80A, there are many people out there who have or will have HPWC's in their garage who might be willing to let you top up on a road trip.

I ordered the twin chargers...

 

[RKM]

I'll need to make the twin charger decision very shortly. The questions that I have are...

1. What are Tesla's plans for a Supercharger network in Canada, how soon and how extensive (locations)?

2. How many of the Sun Country Highway chargers are high current (sufficient to benefit the second on-board charger)?

Does anyone have any insight on these questions?

 

[Doug_G]

I'll need to make the twin charger decision very shortly. The questions that I have are...

1. What are Tesla's plans for a Supercharger network in Canada, how soon and how extensive (locations)?

2. How many of the Sun Country Highway chargers are high current (sufficient to benefit the second on-board charger)?

Does anyone have any insight on these questions?

1. There's been some talk of a couple along the 401 / 40 corridor. No idea on timing.

2. Most of the installed Sun Country Highway chargers are high current, but not all. I don't have an exact number.

 

[Robert.Boston]

If I were in Canada, I would definitely get the twin chargers because of the Sun Country Highway. Ditto for California. Frankly, I'm beginning to regret not getting twin chargers here in New England, because we do drive up to Canada from time to time.

 

[Futurist]

From what I heard from the Tesla Service guys is, that the cars with a single charger charge a lot slower even at 240/30A than the ones equipped with dual chargers. With two, they balance the load in a master-slave-configuration. Cars with one charger take between 20 and 40% longer on very same NEMA 14-50 outlet.

 

[Plug Me In]

There was a post not long ago from an owner who had a second charger added after his car was delivered. Cost was about $4K if I remember correctly. As for me, I'm leaning away from the twin chargers as I'm trying to keep the car below $85K (only because before this, 40K was far and away the most I've ever paid for a car) and I think its only regular benefit here on the east coast is future proofing. FYI, I'm an average 15 mile/day, max 1000 mile/month driver.

 

[RDoc]

RDoc: For me, the 2nd charger would have only been useful on road trips (which I won't be doing too many of and >40A public chargers are virtually non-existant at this point) 240V/40A is quite sufficient for home charging. I am anticipating a fully deployed super charger network and your statement regarding DC fast chargers intrigues me. Do you know if the onboard super charger hardware will remain Tesla super charger specific or could it be used with other DC fast chargers in the future?

It's my understanding that the new SAE J1772 combo plug communications protocol and electrical interfaces are compatible with Tesla's and that they could (and hopefully will) produce a simple dumb adapter. What I'm hoping is that they'll replace the current J1772 adapter with a SAE combo plug adapter so it could be used with both AC and high current DC chargers. Even if the grid connection was a normal 240V @ 200A, I believe that would allow about 40 kw DC. Considering the other costs associated with putting together a charging station, adding the equivalent of 4 Tesla chargers doesn't sound like it would be a big additional expense but it would more than double the charging rate over AC systems.

 

[100thMonkey]

Looks like there is one more reason for the second charger!

Cross post from:http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/showthread.php/10398-Model-S-Technical-Mechanical-Issues/page104

One thing that I haven’t seen in any blogs is something that I noticed when I’m charging my car. I have the dual charger and am using a NEMA 14-50 outlet. I noticed when charging that the small display will show the current charge rate such as “20 miles/hr”. I then noticed that the big center display stated the same charge rate “20 miles/hr” however just under it is stated “+15 miles”. I inquired about this and was informed that the extra 15 was the bonus that I was getting from the dual charger. I’m glad that I paid the extra for the quicker charge.