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Order Of Magnitude More Tesla Cars... Order of Magnitude more Superchargers?

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The Model 3, if successful and hits sales projections, will sell an order of magnitude more cars than Tesla has sold now.

Does this imply that over the next, say 5 years, Tesla will have to increase the number of superchargers by an order of magnitude as well?

Thoughts?
 
The number of Teslas on the road will increase with increasing sales (= cars per year) but also because the total number of cars increases year to year. The cars are not old, so except for a few totalled cars, about 99 % of the teslas ever built are still out there on the roads. It will be many years before the first ones will be taken out of service. My guess: average usefull life of a tesla 20-25 years (they are built to last).

But the number of superchargers needed to satisfy demand is not a linear function of the total numbers of cars using it. I would guess that doubling the number of cars calls for about a 50 % increase of supercharger stalls.

So 10 times more cars means about 3 times more plugs.

Another question will be:

- do we put more stalls in each location or
- do we open more locations

Probably both.
 
I've put this in another thread here already (but can't find it), but my prediction was (and still is) that Tesla will finish the Supercharger network at about the same density it's at today but will look for a partner. Tesla will remain in the game as a balancer for other market entrants to run charging infrastructure at a reasonable price (not the $30-40 quick charge opportunists that tried popping up when CHAdeMO came out). So eventually your choice will be a potential line at the Tesla supercharger for free vs. the $3-5 "fill up" at EnergyCo. Best market players here would be a nimble energy company or perhaps a large-scale retail/restaurant chain who want to turn it into a business.

I'd love to see Tesla continuing to operate a large refueling network at scale for free, but eventually I think the business pressures are going to get to them and they'll either scale back or sell the assets.
 
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I believe that FlasherZ's point has a lot of merit. It would seem sensible to me for Tesla to partner with a company like ChargePoint. ChargePoint already has the billing/collections/measurement side of charging in place.

You computer geniuses would know if the current Supercharger structures could add one of those swipe-card readers to the pedestals, or whether software could be developed to communicate to ChargePoint the vehicle information once the user plugs in, since there is an initial flow of data before charging initiates. ChargePoint would just collect a service fee (much like mortgage payments) and then remit the balance of the charging session fee to Tesla. Tesla would continue to maintain their Superchargers and expand the network as necessary. This plan might be what is in the works for the Model III. Model III owners would initiate Supercharging access upon delivery, and a third-party would collect the usage data, take their cut, and remit to Tesla the balance. This solves the problem of Model III owners who have no home charging available.

We do know that sooner rather than later that we will have to be paying some sort of road tax or user fee to help pay for road maintenance, repair and construction. I would submit that most of mainstream America would prefer to "pay at the pump" rather than by recording devices installed on their vehicles. And the governments would prefer to have a collection scheme in place that would be more difficult to tamper with or to record fraudulent information.

Fee stations provided by an independent third party would have to be branded as such, with no reference to any BEV manufacturer.
 
If tesla expects to attract even more customers, the supercharging technology is about 3 times as fast as the next fastest commercial charging system. So having a 400 miles per hour charging speed is going to help if theres more of them. I doubt they will make twice because of model 3, but we will see.
 
A few more things have to occur before all of this becomes reality, though. The quick charging standard will have to be declared; some will argue that a dual-cable charging unit would be sufficient, but have you looked at the price of an 80A vehicle coupler lately? And the high currents from the supercharger require even thicker conductors, so having 3 cables per stall for CCS, CHAdeMO, and Tesla is simply going to be a non-starter from a cost perspective. The companies who commercialize this will want uniform standards. Perhaps we'll see a company start with the Tesla connector, then offer an adapter for the crazy monstrosities that are CCS or CHAdeMO (adapters work better when it's a smaller connector fitting into a larger connector).

So, then you have to attack the charging current problem -- most manufacturers are happy with a 50 kW rate (although I don't know why), but those of us who are used to over double that will be frustrated with the wait times on the road trips; supercharging is already "slow" to some. Yet when a Bolt or 200-mile Leaf plugs in and can only draw 50 kW, hogging the stall for 2-3x the amount of time that a Tesla will for the same mileage, it's going to make customers unhappy. So the upstart would have to either segment the population into multiple "lanes" of charging based on speed/type, or insist upon a minimum charge rate.

I'm sure there's a contingency plan for adding metering, billing, and payment to Superchargers, but my theory is that they won't be doing that unless compelled to serve third-party cars by government mandate. I definitely think a complementary entrant would indeed do that, along with various models -- subscription, fleet bill, and point-of-sale. Tesla's free model for Tesla's cars will help keep competition pricing from going out of control.
 
It could be even simpler than that - a small API for an external authorization and accounting server (much of which is already built in somewhere) and offer the cabinets as-is. Let others do integration work with metering, billing, and payment.
 
So, during the Model 3 reveal Elon stated that by the end of 2017 - i.e. when the Model 3 starts deliveries - there will be 2x as many Superchargers and 4x as many Destination Chargers as now (worldwide). But I think it is fair to say there will be at least 2x as many Teslas (maybe more like 2.5x) on the world's roads as there are now, even BEFORE the Model 3 starts deliveries.
 
Don't forget more homes will have EV charging capabilities (there's a tax credit for that too!). Hopefully apartment and condo builders will start to incorporate EV charging into their plans as well. This should help mitigate local SC usage, although free is free...
 
I'm wondering if the incipient explosion of on-the-road Teslas and, we hope, other EVs, will be synchronic with mandates not just with new building codes but for extant housing complexes - any structures that include parking, whether through garages or parking lots - to retrofit charge sites. It seems elementary that the typical Model 3 owner will be more likely not to live in a detached home than is the Model S/X owner, and absent this action from local authorities - in the US that's at the municipality, county or state level - there is going to be a messy combination of unhappy owners ("can't charge!"), unrequited demand ("can't buy! My condo won't....."), unpleasant times at Superchargers....

Does anyone know if a thread is devoted to the updating of building codes or of progress/setbacks in the mandating of charge slots at existing parking sites?
 
It seems elementary that the typical Model 3 owner will be more likely not to live in a detached home than is the Model S/X owner
I disagree with this, which you consider “elementary”. In my experience, it is completely the opposite. Your statement, to me, reflects the big city urban mindset (although you are surprisingly from Alaska). Or it is a wealthy out of touch mindset, that poorer people live in apartments. Well, on that one, let me remind you that poor people who live in apartments buy used $8,000 cars, not $35,000+ cars, like the Model 3. In the flyover two thirds of the U.S., that is not densely urban, houses are much cheaper, and the vast majority of regular middle class people who could afford $30K+ cars do not live in apartments. Apartment living is not that common in most of middle America, which can now afford a Tesla for the first time. My experience with this comes from living almost 40 years in towns of a couple hundred thousand population in Missouri, Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, and Idaho. That correlation was very very strong, that anyone who could afford a $35K car did not live in apartments.
 
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You read far too much into that. Actuarially, there is a positive correlation between income amongst Americans and detached versus "complex" housing. As straightforward and nonjudgmental as it gets.
 
You read far too much into that. Actuarially, there is a positive correlation between income amongst Americans and detached versus "complex" housing. As straightforward and nonjudgmental as it gets.

I am reading all the factors; you are overlooking one. That statement you just made is true, but it’s not what you were saying before. If this were only that particular correlation of income to one variable (home ownership), you would be absolutely correct. But, you were tying income level to two variables, which are actually on opposite sides of the correlation. You were tying lower income to living in apartments (true), and also being able to afford an expensive car (false). Sorry, but reality check: $35,000+ is still an expensive car to most of the country, and especially to people who are too poor to afford a house.