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Super Chargers Will Do a Lot More Than We Think?

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Hmm., Maybe they converted the "Space Needle" into a giant Tesla coil and can recharge all Pacific Northwest Tesla cars wirelessly now! :tongue:

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Prototypes:

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And of course they need the 'Hyperloop' to stop there too:
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Maybe a little corporate partnership to install at other "branded locations"...


:tongue:
 
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"Originally Posted by ElSupreme My guess is that Tesla has already covered 100% of Guinea-Bissau with supercharges. Where from any point on road in the country you can make it to a supercharge within 100 miles. In celebration of their independence from Portugal on this day in 1973.

:biggrin:

September 24 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/QUOTE]"

From wikipedia:
622 – Prophet Muhammad completes his hijra from Mecca to Medina.

Maybe first supercharger will be put along route and assist in solving social unrest in middle east. Elon will be credited with solving world peace. :cool:
 
I think rest stops are the perfect place to put the first rollout of supercharger station, most all of us are going to charge full range at home pror to a trip, stop at a 250 mile point or sooner at the rest stop charge station, have a walk around and a coffee. Back on the road for the next 250 leg, and if you like to drive more than 300 to 350 in a day you won't when you hit 60 or above. I used to drive 600 a day on trips now I keep it under 300. Life is short, also the great advantage of rest stops is I think it will really start to hit home with the ICE crowd that also is stretching their legs for the same amount of time to realize their next fillup will be $6/ gal x 20 gal = $120 and that very cool car over there just got the same distance for $10. Sure would turn the light on for me !
 
What nobody's talking about is what happens when you get to the rest stop and find that there's already a car charging, and another waiting to charge. Now that 45-minute stop is suddenly two hours. And the drive of 7 hours in the Prius or 7 3/4 in an 85-kWh Model S becomes 9 hours.

Unless there's a reservation system, I'd be reluctant to make that drive on electric.

Then at my destination the hotel would have to offer overnight charging. I expect this to come, but not for a decade or more at the places I go.

Superchargers will become obsolete once the cars have enough range to drive all day. Then all they'll need is overnight charging at hotels and motels. This is my prediction for the future. And I think it will come before there are superchargers along my routes. A 500-mile car would need roughly 170 kWh. Assuming 10 hours at the hotel (supper, sleep, breakfast) you'd need a 17 kW charger. At 240 v., that's about 70 amps. Or basically the Roadster HPC. Hotels would need a few of those, which you'd reserve when you reserve your room. This will solve the problem of availability and the trip now will take no longer in an EV than in a stinker. Of course, you'd have to make your reservation early, to be sure of a charger slot, if you're traveling during the peak season. I could see the hotels in Revelstoke, B.C. installing HPCs before I could see the likelihood of a supercharger in Castlegar. And with the 300-mile Model S on the road today, 500 miles in a decade seems within the realm of possibility.
 
Something like that Daniel isn't a worry in my mind. If you think about it that occurrence NOW will be rare if not nearly impossible. Now, if Tesla expands and drive-trains are shared with other companies, the superchargers will expand and become more comprehensive to follow suit. So, as Tesla expands, there isn't a doubt in my mind they will add one, or two extra chargers per stop and expand infrastructure.
 
What nobody's talking about is what happens when you get to the rest stop and find that there's already a car charging, and another waiting to charge. Now that 45-minute stop is suddenly two hours. And the drive of 7 hours in the Prius or 7 3/4 in an 85-kWh Model S becomes 9 hours.

Unless there's a reservation system, I'd be reluctant to make that drive on electric.

Then at my destination the hotel would have to offer overnight charging. I expect this to come, but not for a decade or more at the places I go.

Superchargers will become obsolete once the cars have enough range to drive all day. Then all they'll need is overnight charging at hotels and motels. This is my prediction for the future. And I think it will come before there are superchargers along my routes. A 500-mile car would need roughly 170 kWh. Assuming 10 hours at the hotel (supper, sleep, breakfast) you'd need a 17 kW charger. At 240 v., that's about 70 amps. Or basically the Roadster HPC. Hotels would need a few of those, which you'd reserve when you reserve your room. This will solve the problem of availability and the trip now will take no longer in an EV than in a stinker. Of course, you'd have to make your reservation early, to be sure of a charger slot, if you're traveling during the peak season. I could see the hotels in Revelstoke, B.C. installing HPCs before I could see the likelihood of a supercharger in Castlegar. And with the 300-mile Model S on the road today, 500 miles in a decade seems within the realm of possibility.
I think it is unlikely, except perhaps on the most common California area highway drives, that there will be more than one Model S charging at a time. And even less likely that the first one will have just started charging when you arrive, and even less likely that both of the two in front of you will require a full 45 min. charge from empty.

that said, I think it highly likely that there will be a reservation or at least a call-ahead system of some sort to facilitate trip planning.

also, don't discount the possiblity of having more than one charging cord per site.
 
Several cords sharing the same charger would just slow everyone down. You expect a 45-minute charge but it takes 2 1/4 hours because three cars are charging all at once. Of course, the first few cars on the road will have little or no competition. But when there are 20,000 in a year from now, many of them concentrated where there are superchargers, it will become gradually more congested.

Of course, it's all moot for me: They're not going to have chargers of any sort where I would need them for the only long road trips I take. OTOH, when cars can go all day on a charge, maybe in a decade, hotels will have an incentive to install overnight charging, which people will pay for. Even 45 minutes at a rest stop is much less desirable than plugging in in the evening and being ready to go in the morning. Until then I'll probably have to burn gas to get to Canada. The rest of the year my Roadster is all I need, and even that has double the range I really need.
 
The Blink multi-plug CHAdeMO QC stations don't split the power, rather they take turns. So you plug in two Nissan LEAFs (for instance) and one QCs to target/full, then it automatically switches over to charging the other car.
If Tesla had multiple SuperCharger plugs they could do it either way (one at a time, or power split.)
At some point, I heard someone say something about "60kW+30kW instead of 90kW" but not sure what they were talking about.
 
The Blink multi-plug CHAdeMO QC stations don't split the power, rather they take turns. So you plug in two Nissan LEAFs (for instance) and one QCs to target/full, then it automatically switches over to charging the other car.
If Tesla had multiple SuperCharger plugs they could do it either way (one at a time, or power split.)
At some point, I heard someone say something about "60kW+30kW instead of 90kW" but not sure what they were talking about.
Yeah - but it would be nice if multiple chargers should share power.

For example - let's say a site has 3 chargers which can do 100 kW max, but the site can only handle 200 kW.

With a all-or-nothing approach like the Blink setup, this means only 2 cars can charge at the same time. But, at high charge rates, the amount of power the battery can accept does not remain at the maximum for long. So 2 cars charging might both take 100 kW initially, but as their batteries fill up, the charge rate will ramp down. Allowing the 3rd station to start drawing the remainder of the available 200 kW will let the 3rd car finish sooner - and also be a bit nicer to the battery by lowering the average charge rate - and also be a bit nicer to the grid by smoothing out the load somewhat.

I think a setup like this will be a necessity in the future - if nothing else than providing additional plugs to help make sure other cars can charge because another vehicle is blocking a charger.
 
It's a basic law of the internet that all serious threads will degrade into silliness or rancor, and all silly threads will devolve into serious discussion. I'm sure if you are patient, this thread will turn silly again.
 
Yeah - but it would be nice if multiple chargers should share power.

For example - let's say a site has 3 chargers which can do 100 kW max, but the site can only handle 200 kW.

With a all-or-nothing approach like the Blink setup, this means only 2 cars can charge at the same time. But, at high charge rates, the amount of power the battery can accept does not remain at the maximum for long. So 2 cars charging might both take 100 kW initially, but as their batteries fill up, the charge rate will ramp down. Allowing the 3rd station to start drawing the remainder of the available 200 kW will let the 3rd car finish sooner - and also be a bit nicer to the battery by lowering the average charge rate - and also be a bit nicer to the grid by smoothing out the load somewhat.

I think a setup like this will be a necessity in the future - if nothing else than providing additional plugs to help make sure other cars can charge because another vehicle is blocking a charger.

Agree. Quick charging is hard on the battery pack, so dividing up the power would be preferable than taking turns at full blast.
But, I gather the electronics in the charger to split power is a lot more complicated and expensive than just "round robin" rotation.

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When did this thread turn serious? I thought all the jokes came here...

Q: Why did the chicken cross the road, roll around in the dirt, then come back again?
A: It was a dirty double crosser...
 
1 The amount of chargers in an areas grows with the demand. I've been watching it for three years.2 The Model S can also work with any other kind of plug!3 The Supercharger fills the first car and slows as the battery fills. The second car gets the remaining output from the charger.