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New Roadster Goodies for 2014
- Thread starter hjr
- Start date
adiggs
Well-Known Member
I'm mentally positioning myself the same as Doug - in my case I don't want to get my hopes up and would rather expect nothing and be delighted.
On the other hand - the extreme corporate concentration on one single car was necessary for both the Roadster and Model S. As an investor and future Model X owner, I'm looking for evidence that Tesla can walk AND chew gum all at the same time starting with 2014. To continue significant growth and speed conversion of the market, Tesla needs to start working two vehicles at the same time, and then three. Maybe someday have 5 whole different designs all being worked at the same time. Or at least, that's what I'm looking for.
I just shake my head
Musk says he has something cool for Roadster owners in 2014, and we get through a little more than one month of 2014 without the announcement and people think he has forgotten? Man dear. What a sad lot many of us are. There are months of 2014 ahead. I hadn't expected to hear anything in the first half of the year let alone the first month. A little patience people!!
Musk says he has something cool for Roadster owners in 2014, and we get through a little more than one month of 2014 without the announcement and people think he has forgotten? Man dear. What a sad lot many of us are. There are months of 2014 ahead. I hadn't expected to hear anything in the first half of the year let alone the first month. A little patience people!!
dhrivnak
Active Member
Does anyone know if it is possible for the Roadster to charge while driving if you bypass the charge port door? Now that I have a trailer hitch added to my Roadster, mainly for a bike rack, I wonder if I could pull a small motorcycle trailer with a generator inside. I figure with an 8KW generator I could go on 500 mile trips in a day. Since they are not letting us charge at the super charger sites I wonder if the system would allow us to tie into the cables on the car side and route my new wires to an Anderson plug next to the trailer hitch. It would be a simple connection if the software would not stop me. That way I could have travel trailer to be used on those few times I need to drive more than 300 miles in a day.
Raffy.Roma
Rome (Italy)
David you know that I thought just to this? You are a genius. Maybe that you could try to implement this "charge while driving system"?
If you managed to implement such a system you could also get a patent for it. Personally I would be very interested to such a system.
Maybe that you could use an additional battery rather than a generator for the "charge while driving system"?
The Tesla Roadster's parent of sorts (the AC Propulsion T-Zero) could tow a trailer with a generator on it.
tZero Redux : EVWORLD.COM
tZero Redux : EVWORLD.COM
Raffy.Roma
Rome (Italy)
I gave a look to Google but it seems to me that this tZero Redux is only a prototype. Anyway I would like that something like this could be implemented on the Roadster to double the range if it is needed.
Edit: I would like the trailer carried an additional battery not a generator.
Last edited:
Tesla 940
Member
I understand, and have limited experience with the fact, that generators can NOT be used to charge the Roadster in 240 v mode. Solve all the problems and I will be interested in the modification.
Raffy.Roma
Rome (Italy)
As far as I know generators can be used to charge the Roadster. They only need to have a pure sine wave. Apart from this I would prefer an additional battery to be placed on the trailer rather than a generator.
Yes, but only a few models have been successfully used to charge a Roadster. Most will not work.
It's a good idea but unfortunately won't work very well for a couple of reasons. First is what you already suspected, that you can't charge and drive at the same time. It would require some complex hardware and software changes, especially in the 1.5 which uses the motor for an inductor of sorts.
The other problem is that a trailer would probably reduce your range at about the same rate or more than a generator would add back to it. The net gain would be zero unless you had a rather large, very high quality generator with a perfect sine wave. Most generators wouldn't work. The only way this idea could really help would be if your trip took you on a route that had no charging opportunities. You could stop when you got low and run the generator for a few hours.
I've driven over 600 miles in a day and I think you probably have too? I had to stop twice and charge at 70A both times. But it's a long day.
dhrivnak
Active Member
My problem has been lack of high speed charging. There is nothing over 30 amps and now it looks like Blink has limited their chargers to 24 amps. And I thought 30 amps were slow. My record is 500 miles in 24 hours, and then only when there are no issues.
Tesla 940
Member
I have "crunched the numbers" numerous times for my 935 mile trip from Long Beach to Taos and figure something close to 48 hours - about 475 miles per day. The only high capacity charger that I'm aware of is in Barstow - everything else would be 40/240 at best.
Unfortunately I think I see a sad trend taking place. No one is thinking about installing high-amp AC charging anymore. Leaf owners have become a numerous and powerful lobby. They could care less about anything over 30A and are pushing harder every day for Chademo. The only other car that can do 70A AC is the Model S and they aren't pushing for high-amp chargers either. They're gunning for more superchargers and I don't blame them. Our best bet is to continue forming our own network of shared high-amp HPCs. It hasn't helped any that most of the Tesla stores have replaced their Roadster chargers with Model S HPWCs.
I think you hit the nail on the head. Instead of max power Level II we're probably going to start seeing a lot more Level III chargers. Great for Model S but leaves Roadster in the dust.
I doubt this would end up being practical (Roadster frame isn't built for towing, among other things), but in any case it can definitely *NOT* be done with the first generation of roadsters. For the first batch (I think it ended with the 1.5's), Tesla licensed a patent where they reused much of the driving power electronics during charging to reduce component costs. Eventually the patent was designed-out and the drive & charging electronics became independent beasts.
//dan.
//dan.
strider
Active Member
I can't install iOS7 on my iPhone 3GS or Windows 8 on my old laptop or get e-mail on my old Palm Pilot or..... Technology marches on. Supercharging will take over inter-city travel and L2 will be for home and overnight charging. There just aren't enough cars that can charge at high L2 levels to matter.
I don't think it is too original Raffy.... its called the Chevy Volt. It drives only in electric mode, but has a small engine running a generator.
What I would like to see is a fix that allows us to take advantage of the Superchargers even at a charge rate much slower than an S can handle... at the very least I would like to use the network to charge at the highest safe load a Roadster battery can take. It would probably be cheaper for them to put a HSWA at each supercharge station with a Roadster connector to keep it in the family.
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