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Gen 2: the development platform?

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ItsNotAboutTheMoney

Well-Known Member
Jul 12, 2012
14,987
15,637
Maine
High speed
High capacity

High voltage?
High power charging?
High gear?
High range?

There's a lot of discussion about the performance numbers and top speed, but I don't really care about that.

The next key step for EVs is to push charging to its limits.
Also, increasing the range to make it _really_ match other cars.
In addition to that, there's making them performance cars (although that's not really important for Tesla's mission).

It seems that the Roadster Gen 2 will attempt to check all the remaining boxes.
 
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Charge rate is a function of battery chemistry, the number of cells over which the spread the charge (which determines the charge rate of a given cell), and the ability/cost of the grid in any specific place to deliver the power.

The electrical grid is really bad at handling short bursts of really high use. For this reason they implement things called demand charges in which you are charged for peak demand in kW, usually averaged over a 15 minute period. It could make the cost for delivering high charge rates incredibly expensive, even in the batteries could handle more.

Tesla has talked about having onsite battery storage to help with the demand charges but I don't think they've actually implemented it. It was supposed to go along with their solar canopy supercharging stations which mostly also don't exist. So either the cost to build and maintain a battery bank at an SC is more than the demand charges or Tesla/Elon is just focusing on other things - as long as the cheap cash keeps flowing from the financial markets they have less incentive to control costs.

More info on demand charges:
A closer look at commercial electricity demand charges, and how to lower them
 
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The next key step for EVs is to push charging to its limits.
Also, increasing the range to make it _really_ match other cars.
In addition to that, there's making them performance cars (although that's not really important for Tesla's mission).

It seems that the Roadster Gen 2 will attempt to check all the remaining boxes.
Maybe. At this point we have nothing definite from Tesla as to what the new Roadsters max charge rate will be. We do know that it will have the longest range of any production EV and it will have the highest performance.