Northern California has probably the highest concentration of Model S owners of anywhere in the country, and maybe the world, and yet we cannot go directly East across the country (on route 80 or 50) due to the lack of superchargers in Nevada. It looks like very few (maybe 3?) would be required to connect with the existing cross country supercharger network. Does anyone have any information on Nevada superchargers? Is there any way to encourage their development?
The Tesla website SC map at Supercharger | Tesla Motors shows two Superchargers coming to highway 80 by the end of this year (move the slider bar at the bottom of the map to see them), probably in or close to Winemucca and Elko. It's only 165 miles from Reno to Winemucca, and 124 miles from Winemucca to Elko. Easy. Elko to Salt Lake is 230 miles but it's pretty flat so if you keep it to 65mph or less and start with a full charge you should be okay. Nothing is shown for highway 50 in Nevada and I doubt Tesla has plans for any SCs on that route.
The I-80 dots are probably not correct since 230 miles is too far between superchargers. To date, nobody has found any evidence of planning or construction beyond Truckee.
Agreed, I was only guessing those NV locations based on the website map, and we know the actual locations may not not match up with the displayed points. Maybe one will be somewhat east of Elko which will reduce the distance to Salt Lake. While so far there are no reports of those NV locations starting construction, there are still over four months to go in 2014. Plenty of time...
There is a reason they call Highway 50 across Nevada "The loneliest road in America"... I manage to drive it every few years. It's a two lane road most of the way... wild and beautiful across Nevada mountains and desert valleys. However, even plugshare doesn't show anything until you get to Ely (three different RV parks) but it's about 300 miles (and lots of mountains).
Wells NV, 50 miles east of Elko makes more sense than Elko for two reasons:Winnemucca-Wells is 174 milesWells-SLC is 181 milesIdeal distances.But ALSO - Wells is on the wonderful N-S Rte 93 (terminal locations are Jasper AB and Wickenburg, AZ). Tesla already has SpCs extant or planned for several of Rte 93's locations, and a 93-specific SpC route would be a terrific future adjunct to the SpC build-out. I have detailed in a letter to the SpcTeam a list of appropriate sites for same...I MiGHT have also shared this on a previous thread in this specific forum.
It's a lot more interesting drive than I-80, especially with at least a quarter moon by night. Reading "Basin and Range" by John McPhee, Basin and Range: John McPhee: 9780374109141: Amazon.com: Books prior to your drive may give you more appreciation of the scenery as well, and Great Basin National Park is just off the eastern end of U.S. 50 in Nevada. Even if Tesla comes out with a small AWD CUV or wagon on the Gen 3 platform in a few years, unless they provide SC access to places like this it will be a non option for me. BTW, I think it's one of their biggest mistakes to be devoting so much effort to rural interstates for transcontinental trips so early in the SC deployment (when most people will fly), instead of enabling weekend trips to common regional destinations within 6 hours driving of major Tesla concentrations, with higher priority to those locations within 4 hours and highest priority to those that can be reached by a 60 with only a single SC stop. S.F. Bay Area to Tahoe is a perfect example of the latter, and yet it's only being finished two years after SC deployment began, and people won't be able to easily get a Model S, especially a 60, to Yosemite Valley from S.F. or S.J. until Manteca is done. Meanwhile, Billings and Bozeman several hundred miles from any major population center are done or permitted.
The problem with Wells is that it's 180 miles from Salt Lake City. You have to have a supercharger in West Wendover NV/Wendover UT because it's 120 miles from there to Salt Lake City with absolutely nothing in between.
There's no way that the two dots between Truckee and Salt Lake are enough, but that's what Tesla is showing on the 2014 and 2015 maps. They look like Lovelock and Elko. Personally, I think 4 is the best solution. Fernley (Gigafactory!), Winnemucca, Elko, Wendover.
I know that Primm, NV is supposed to be coming soon, but yes, it would be much more beneficial for Nor Cal folks to get across northern NV if there were more SpC's up there...I doubt they'll be there by year's end though as the map says. If the gigafactory comes to Reno, NV that'll sure help.
I agree with the points you all have made. While the Nevada supercharges show on the map as being completed by the end of 2014, there has been absolutely no indication that they are indeed in process. Of more concern, it does not seem that the two shown on the map would be sufficient to complete the connection to Salt Lake City. While I agree that superchargers that allow medium length trips from home would be useful (especially up the North Coast of California, where there are very few chargers of any sort), it seems that with only 3 or 4 superchargers across Nevada Tesla would open up access to the entire national supercharger network to Northern Californians. I have to think that quite a few people, like myself, would be interested in cross country trips next Spring And Summer if we could go directly and not have to detour through Southern California.
(LMB spouse) @miimura +1. That's what I come up with every few months when I plan the I-80 Superchargers in NV.
Tesla has a lot of fish to fry so to speak with all of the things it currently has going on. Supercharger development is extremely important, but they've really got a lot on their plate, with Gigafactory, Model X production, earnings, etc, etc. I think that unfortunately we've had to manage our expectations of what timeline is announced and what reality ends up being. I'm really glad Barstow is under development to expand, hopefully that'll really help the congestion there. I don't think Northern NV is going to be a priority for Tesla like putting out the fires so to speak at the current superchargers, and the ones under construction. It seems the crews rotate and when they get stuck they do not start another job, I don't know how efficient that is, seems to be not very, but there could obviously be more than meets the eye. In any case, hopefully threads like these will let TM know that it is something we miss and then maybe it'll speed up the process, because hope isn't a strategy.
I think it's a question of priorities - how many people take cross-country road trips versus the number that take weekend trips? If you provide robust SC networks around major urban concentrations of Teslas out to a radius of say 350 miles, then you already have an embryo SC network in place that just requires a few extra ones to make the connection between clusters. For example, take I-10 from Texas to Florida. Connecting Houston to New Orleans, New Orleans to Mobile, and Jacksonville to Tallahassee, you only need a few more to join up Houston to Jacksonville. I-70 is even more obvious; Join up St. Louis to Kansas City and Indianapolis with just one or two SCs in between each, and you can connect off both ends. My biggest pet peeve is I-90 in the Northwest. Does it really make more sense to complete I-90 from Seattle through to Minnesota across some of the least populated and lowest density states in the lower 48, before I-90 from Cleveland to Boston? I mean, New York supposedly comes in 2nd to California in the number of Teslas, so why is Tesla building out Montana now? It's 770 miles from Seattle to Old Faithful, but only 350 miles from SLC ditto, so why aren't I-15, U.S. 20 and 26 north of SLC higher priority than I-90 across Idaho and Montana? And so on. Personally, I feel that if taking a family road trip was so important to Elon, he should have paid for the 7 SCs in MN, SD, and WY out of his own pocket (they should have been used for I-70 or I-80/76 between Chicago-Denver instead), until such time as I-90 is complete across the country, when he should be reimbursed (but not before 12/31/2015 at the earliest). He can certainly afford it.
What you're saying is all true, but the Superchargers are and always have been partially about marketing. If you go hang out on ICE forums, you'll see people talking about how BEVs are a "leash" that ties you to your home. We all know that's not true, yet it's a common belief among the general public. The Supercharger network serves two purposes: 1) making it possible in practice to drive your (Tesla) BEV everywhere you want to go; and equally-importantly 2) challenging the common misconception that you can't drive your BEV everywhere you want to go. Is a transcontinental supercharger route kinda stupid at this point? Well, yea, from a practical point of view it is. It helps very few owners make trips they want to make. Is the particular transcontinental route they chose kinda dumb? Well, yea, I-90 adds hundreds of miles to most transcontinental trips. But the transcontinental supercharger route isn't (at this point) really meant for practical trips (though it does help build that capability for the future). It's meant to burn into the public's consciousness that "Wow, I could drive a Tesla from New York to Los Angeles in about the same amount of time as my current car. I could totally see myself doing that." Most people simply don't have enough vacation time to make that kind of drive a practical proposition, yet virtually all car buyers judge cars on that criterion. Consequently, it's important for Tesla gallery employees to be able to tell prospective Tesla buyers that yes, you really can drive this car from NY to LA.
Charging at level 2 chargers and spending hours waiting at RV parks is intolerable for 99% of the population. I am an obsessive enthusiast who can't wait to get a Model III, but supercharging is the minimum acceptable recharging speed for me. I desperately want to dump the ICE, but I don't want a car which comes with conditions - I want a car that will take me where I want to go when I want to go there in a reasonable amount of time.
I understand the PR benefit of having a transcontinental route for the reasons you state, but if a transcontinental route is so important, then surely an efficient transcontinental route, one that doesn't add 700 miles to the trip or require installing SCs in frozen ground in empty states in the middle of the coldest winter in years, and which will serve much larger numbers of Tesla owners (see Theres Now At Least One Tesla Model S Registered In All 50 US States | Inside EVs ), makes more sense? LA-Chicago-Philadelphia-NY via I-15/I-70/I-95 (and/or I-76/I-78/I-55 and I-80) would make sense for the initial route. Swinging hundreds of miles out of your way so you can drive across eastern Wyoming, South Dakota and southern Minnesota, not to mention actually backtracking through NM and Utah, makes absolutely no sense. At least the latter detour is no longer required, now that I-70 west of Denver to I-15 to LA is complete (well, except for one more SC between Barstow and LVG). The sooner they finish I-70 east to St. Louis, and add another SC in between STL and Normal (Springfield would be nice) for winter use by 60s heading to/from Chicago, plus extend I-70 all the way to Wheeling, the better. And forget about Bozeman for now; if you want to extend I-90 in the PNW, at least build out from the end; don't start in the middle.
The other I-90 superchargers are no doubt in some stage of site procurement and permitting. If one site is quick to get through the permitting stage, there's no need to delay construction. There have been various isolated superchargers before like Mitchell SD and I-70 in Kansas which were soon connected to the network.
