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Elon's "350kW... a children's toy" tweet and the Model 3

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EVs need to be "more like ice" in terms of ability to charge faster and have greater range. That is an indisputable fact and is necessary if EVs ever want wide spread adoption. I'm not sure why you keep poo pooing on the obvious.
First, I think everyone on this thread has agreed that faster charging would be welcome. However, where we disagree is that you insist that Tesla's current supercharging is insufficient for wide spread adoption, and you purport to represent "most people". The market speaks: the Model S sales are by far most in its segment, and the 400k pre-reservations clobber annual sales for any car in its class. There seem to be plenty of people willing to buy under the current conditions. Tesla is currently supply constrained, not market constrained. I dispute your "indisputable" view.

Personally, I would rather see more super chargers than faster ones. Or maybe split the difference... more and a little bit faster.
 
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TL;DR - Supercharging is way better than other BEV charging alternatives, but could still be improved vs. gas station "recharge rates."

65 years ago, one grabbed a long handle at the side of the gas-up pump, and pumped. The fuel slowly filled a five gallon glass tank with markings on the side. The charge was about 9 cents a gallon as I remember. Then you placed the hose valve into the car tank and let gravity drain the glass. You might need to do this again. A car got around 15 miles per gallon.

So now we are working on improving refueling electric vehicles. We have done well, I think, to have come so far so quickly. Way better than how long it took us to get to be able to fill a 20 gallon tank in 5 minutes. It will only improve. Patience....
 
A refuel in under 15 minutes would also give each vehicle an additional 3 ZEV credits (from 4 to 7). Depending on the market rate for ZEV credits, that could be worth an additional $9k-$12k per Model 3 sold. So yeah, I'm guessing the goal is to deliver as many vehicles with 500kW+ charging ability. The financial motivation is there.

The ZEV "fast refueling" incentive ends with Model Year 2017 (this year). Tesla earns 4 credits per car today. They will earn either 3 or 4 credits for 2018 through 2025.

There is no government incentive to make "500kW+" charging for any vehicle. It is my belief that any such "over 350kW" charge rate is for trucks at 500a * 1500v or more (750kW to 1MW).


CARB-ZEV credits per vehicle:

Starting Model Year 2018 (enacted 2016):

Range per UDDS test protocol:

Actual credit value is 1% of UDDS range plus 1/2 credit
Example - 249 miles UDDS * 1% = 2.49 + 0.5 = 2.99
This vehicle earns 2 credits
No fast fueling credit

350 miles range ---- Credit per vehicle: 4
250 miles range ---- Credit per vehicle: 3
150 miles range ---- Credit per vehicle: 2
50 miles range ----- Credit per vehicle: 1
 
65 years ago, one grabbed a long handle at the side of the gas-up pump, and pumped. The fuel slowly filled a five gallon glass tank with markings on the side. The charge was about 9 cents a gallon as I remember. Then you placed the hose valve into the car tank and let gravity drain the glass. You might need to do this again. A car got around 15 miles per gallon.

So now we are working on improving refueling electric vehicles. We have done well, I think, to have come so far so quickly. Way better than how long it took us to get to be able to fill a 20 gallon tank in 5 minutes. It will only improve. Patience....
Dude, you don't LOOK that old!
 
Because it's not an indisputable fact by any means.

To charge an EV at the speed of an ICE requires battery chemistry that doesn't remotely exist yet.

Sigh.

"More like." Not "exactly like".

EVs need to be more like ICE in terms charging time and range (at a competitive price point) to reach widespread adoption. Indisputable fact. Tweet Elon. Email whomever. See what they say.
 
This equates to a 1200kW charge rate, which is 12C in battery terms -- which is unheard of with the chemistries in use today.

Yeah, I think under perfect conditions you might be able to push 4C for a few percent of the charge and taper down to 2C very shortly after that and then continue to taper down to what Model S owners are used to for the second half of the pack.

Of course the fix for that if money is no object (or cells become very very very cheap) is to double or triple the pack size and hide a larger portion at the top of the pack so that degradation is hidden and more importantly the perceived C rate is higher than the actual C rate.

If you have the base Model 3 at 50 kWh, and a optional 75 kWh pack and you drive both cars like they have 40 kWh usable then you can push the charge rate higher on the 75 kWh because it has 1.5 times the capacity.

Now imagine if you could shove a 100 kWh in the car and hide 10 or 20 kWh. Vs the actual 75 kWh pack it can charge 1.33 times faster and vs the actual 50 kWh pack it can charge twice as fast (if both are starting from near 0%). I keep wanting to make comparisons to hard drives and "short stroking" or RAID but neither are concepts the average user would relate to.

No one wants to pay for the bigger pack and have a ton of kWh hidden so you end up with people sitting through the taper if they don't grok but otherwise if you get higher kWh packs in it opens the door for faster charging.

As pack sizes increase, my drive to work doesn't change in length. Thus my charging rate for the same trip will increase / time spent waiting for a charge will decrease. I've got a 15 mile commute each way, maybe 40 miles a day total. The bigger the pack the faster it charges to 50% or 40% or whatever lower level I choose because I don't need the range. But I'll take the convenience if everyone else pays for the tech to go there.
 
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Sigh.

"More like." Not "exactly like".

EVs need to be more like ICE in terms charging time and range (at a competitive price point) to reach widespread adoption. Indisputable fact. Tweet Elon. Email whomever. See what they say.

We don't have to tweet Elon - he already spoke on that:

"A typical Supercharger time maybe 20 to 30 minutes long, which works out well when you've been driving for 3 or 4 hours - as it matches the time needed to visit the restroom, have a bite to eat or grab a coffee and be on your way. So you can imagine a typical journey may start at 9:00am, drive for 3 hours - by noon you want to stop and visit a restroom, grab a bite to eat and be on your way. We've positions the Supercharger in places where that's convenient to do. So it matches what I'd call the convenience inflection points of long distance travel.
There may be the rare occasion where somebody wants to drive non-stop for 10 hours and wear diapers or something, but that's unusual."


It sounds like you're part of the unusual case, so maybe a Tesla is not for you. But it's unusual enough that it should not hinder widespread adoption, once people manage to understand how it works.

The majority of people will spend less time waiting for a Tesla to charge in a year than they used to spend filling an ICE. EVEN if what they do at your Superchargers is plug in and then stand next to it twiddling their thumbs like at a gas station. If you combine Supercharging with another activity like eating, you're FAR ahead. This trade-off is not a difficult message to sell... to most people.
 
No. It definitely would. I make a 7-hour one-way drive several times a year (so nothing major, though I have in the past driven Florida<>Ohio once/twice per year also).

I can do my 7-hour drive with one pit stop (gas, food, restroom). I really don't need more than 15-20 minutes. Even if I need to make a second stop, I still won't be delayed anywhere close to an hour in total.

But using EVTripPlanner with an S60 with 19" wheels (which is as close to the base battery/wheel 3 as you can likely get), it calculates 2.5 hours of charging time. An extra 2 hours of travel and I haven't even left the state? That's absolutely pita-level.

Look, if you like taking significantly longer to travel from point A to point B, good for you. That's terrific. It's wonderful. I'm happy for all of you. But most of the world disagrees with you. If the purpose of my trip is to get to point B, that means I'm not at all interested in spending several extra hours of my day sitting on highway exits in towns I otherwise would never visit.

Was I willing to deal with the additional hassle - because for me it IS an hassle - of longer travel times on shorter/moderate-range trips? Yes. Was I willing to deal with it on longer drives like said Ohio<>Florida route? Absolutely not (hello, airport). But charging 4 times as fast would be an huge deal/improvement. That wouldn't be much different than my current 7-hour drive. And it would open up the possibility of me driving interstate instead of just intra.

Current Tesla owners shouldn't be telling people, "Oh, it's not so bad" or "Oh, you'll actually like the additional rest while driving." That's just not how the rest of the world works. The rest of the world wants the convenience of fast refueling like is currently available at gas stations. The rest of the world wants the convenience of longer range than current EVs don't allow for. There shouldn't be Baghdad Bob-ing of the issue.
Those trip planner sites are really bad at predicting charging times. I have done South Carolina to Orlando twice now in my 60D and charging adds about 45 to 60 minutes to the trip. And now that there is a different Supercharger on the route I take that is faster, I can probably knock another 10 minuets off of that time.
 
A 5 minute supercharge sounds fantastic. 5 minutes is about the length of time I have to spend at a petrol station. Completely dismisses any lingering objections to electric cars in my view (with the sole remaining exception being the price).
 
A 5 minute supercharge sounds fantastic. 5 minutes is about the length of time I have to spend at a petrol station. Completely dismisses any lingering objections to electric cars in my view (with the sole remaining exception being the price).

Easy. Put all Superchargers 40 miles apart. You can charge 5 minutes at each one of them and keep going forever.

(Somewhat snarky way of saying "5 minutes Supercharge" is a meaningless statement unless you qualify to what state of charge).
 
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Thinking this through, I think the better argument for the necessity of faster charging to broad adoption is throughput. If, say, 50% of the long distance highway traffic were BEV, how many fast chargers would you need to keep them all on the road @ 40 minutes per charge vs 10? We may be beginning to see hints in the heavily tesla'd Bay Area. All this assuming a significantly faster taper is somehow achievable...
 
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Thinking this through, I think the better argument for the necessity of faster charging to broad adoption is throughput. If, say, 50% of the long distance highway traffic were BEV, how many fast chargers would you need to keep them all on the road @ 40 minutes per charge vs 10? We may be beginning to see hints in the heavily tesla'd Bay Area. All this assuming a significantly faster taper is somehow achievable...

Agreed that would help. Though it actually wouldn't make the road trip experience necessarily better. But it would of course make local charging a LOT better - which is also important for adoption.

But the current 40 minute charge during a road trip is already at the point where lunch stops are a bit too short, and people have complained about now having to move their cars in the middle of lunch due to the new 5 minute idle rule.

Let's say the chemistry change from lithium to ... uhh... di-lithium (crystals?), and the charge time drops to e.g. 10 minutes and then you're forced to move your car. That is now actually a pita time - 10 minutes is a long time to twiddle your thumbs, but too short to do anything else.

But there is an another way to address congestion that doesn't require waiting for a miracle discovery... build more Superchargers.
 
Easy. Put all Superchargers 40 miles apart. You can charge 5 minutes at each one of them and keep going forever.

(Somewhat snarky way of saying "5 minutes Supercharge" is a meaningless statement unless you qualify to what state of charge).

Ok, to be specific - charge the battery to 85%/90% in 5 minutes from a very low charge.

I think Elon or someone else was recently quoted as saying they are looking at bringing the average charge time down to 10 minutes.

Those could be realistic speeds if the supercharger network keeps improving, the power grid can support it and the battery on the car is able to handle it.
 
I fully hope (and expect) my model 3 to be capable of 400kW charging. But even if all it has is the current Model S type charge scenario, I'd be perfectly happy since it's 100% workable/convenient. So anything extra for the charging is just icing on the Gigafactory-produced cake.
 
I expect that it will be possible, in the future, to improve charging speeds from what they are today; but I do question whether 350 kw is both achievable and desirable. Here's why:

This is a tremendous amount of power, and will require cooling of cables (even the cables inside the car). There are some SCs with cable cooling, but it looks like this was done to make the cables thinner and easier to handle. For 350 kw, you will need incredibly thick cables. (Maybe the station has to be fully robotic to support this).

This charging rate & everything to support it will add a lot of cost. A lot. You have gone way past the point of diminishing returns. If we want EVs to become popular, we don't want to do things that add to their cost.

My long trip experience with supercharging has been this: by actual calculation, charging has added less than 15% to my travel time (as opposed to ICE). Specifically, I often go back and forth between central AL and Orlando. With no stops, this is a 9 hour drive. I supercharge in Auburn AL (45 min including time between interstate and the Auburn mall), Tifton, GA (25 mins) and Lake City FL ( 35 mins). The charging time (total 105 min.including time spent to get from interstate to SC)is just shy of 20%; however, when traveling by ICE on the same route, in the past I have made 3 10-minute stops, so taking that out makes the added time 14% (not 30+%, as has been stated earlier in the thread). This assumes destination charging (which I do have on this trip).

Now I will grant you, there are people (with an iron butt, I guess) who are inclined to make this trip all in one shot; yes, you could drive a VW diesel and wear diapers. This is not my idea of a good time, and it isn't even safe due to driver fatigue. Man, if you are in that much of a hurry, you need to fly. From a practical standpoint, doing such long trips and spending only a few percent of the trip time at stops isn't likely if you have passengers, especially kids and pets.

Therefore, I agree with an earlier post that given limits on Tesla's capital, I'd prefer them to build more superchargers than put the same $$ into elaborate, ultra-high power charging systems (that really don't buy you than much, except for bragging rights).
 
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IIRC, that "speed bonus" provision goes away for model year 2018, and ZEV credits 2018+ are based solely on vehicle range. Part of why Toyota is abandoning hydrogen.

Slightly off topic, but if this means there is an incentive for Tesla to get super fast charging in Model S and X as soon as it can in 2017, then this thread just made my day :)
 
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Therefore, I agree with an earlier post that given limits on Tesla's capital, I'd prefer them to build more superchargers than put the same $$ into elaborate, ultra-high power charging systems (that really don't buy you than much, except for bragging rights).

More superchargers would certainly alleviate things like queues and range anxiety but right now, I know I can get 400 miles on a 45-litre tank if I drive like a saint (my current record is around 415 miles during the hottest days of summer when the engine is more efficient).

I will likely only be able to afford the base Model 3 which will be 215 miles (more like 200, and I won't even charge it to max to preserve longterm battery life, so more like 180).

That's quite a reduction. As others have said, with road trips you'll want to take regular breaks anyway, but as far as my job is concerned I'm based in the West Midlands, and if I'm driving down to London to visit a customer I'd like to make it there and back without having to seek a supercharger.
 
As pack sizes increase, my drive to work doesn't change in length. Thus my charging rate for the same trip will increase / time spent waiting for a charge will decrease. I've got a 15 mile commute each way, maybe 40 miles a day total. The bigger the pack the faster it charges to 50% or 40% or whatever lower level I choose because I don't need the range. But I'll take the convenience if everyone else pays for the tech to go there.
You don't need SCs, just charge at home. Basically zero downtime for you.