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Supercharger growth

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The last time I was there, there were two others besides myself.

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I'd say it won't end in my lifetime. I suspect I'm not the only person who prefers to drive on state highways rather than the interstate. So far there are zero state highways covered.

The free market will step in. At a certain density of Tesla owners someone will open locations that cater to them. A restaurant operator would love to have access to a large number of people who pretty much have to come to their location. I guess I should shut up and open one of these places to demonstrate it :)
 
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Yesterday: Woodstock, Canada (mentioned already) and Cabazon, CA

Today: Atlanta, GA, 2 in France (Nancy, Toulouse), and 2 in Germany (Malsfeld, Herzsprung)

Total of 307?
 
We can also hope that Tesla adds in-car information about the status of supercharger sites, including information about other people's plans based on navigation info. As the SC network gets denser, we'll be able to adjust routes and/or charging stops based on congestion.

For a few weeks now, I've been talking up something like this as part of a "road trip" Nav update for Autopilot - incorporate EV Planner type route energy modelling, pull in real time weather/forecasts for the model, and create a virtual reservations page on a central server while it is routing you through superchargers.

Then it can tell you what charge level you need at this supercharger (assuming you either let Autopilot drive or drive at the setting you have the speed warning set for,) and even how long it estimates that will take to charge when you pull in (and mobile app real time countdown to monitor if desired?) It won't be able to commit to a time until you start charging because you might have bad luck in pairing, of course.

It also gives the car the chance to route you past superchargers it knows are not working or are going to be mobbed when you get there (something there's no way any other system can do, since all they can tell you about is right now or the past.)

Tesla has the information to do this, and it'd make trips involve much less effort and planning forethought than even a gas car - and create another competitive advantage for them for relatively little effort (just coding and the server maintenance,) while also optimizing the existing stalls so that they may not need to invest as much in hardware.

With a company as innovative and committed as Tesla, I suspect something like this is fairly inevitable, eventually. Hopefully it comes sooner. :)
Walter
 
Sag, the ability to notify us of inoperable Superchargers is very important, and Tesla needs to develop a notification system for us when we are on the road. However, let's peer about 5 years down the road: I will make the following assumptions, but feel free to adjust them to anything you like. Tesla will offer a 120 kWh for the S and X. The model 3 will come with a 60 and an 85kWh choice. Ranges will vary from 210 miles on the Model 3 60 to 350 miles on the S with the 120. Superchargers will be spaced anywhere from 30 miles in urban settings to a maximum of 175 miles in rural locations.

There will be no way that any computer algorithm, heuristic or model that will know definitely whether a Tesla driver within x miles of a Supercharger will even stop to charge. Some drivers are just commuting. Other drivers are bypassing one or more Superchargers for diverse reasons. Even others are close to their destination and will charge at another time.

It would make more sense to me to have us notify Tesla in advance of our route and our intentions to Supercharge along that route. Then the software can determine based upon our battery when to stop and even for how long. This data would drive the information relayed to us. Commuters and locals need not apply!
 
Sag, the ability to notify us of inoperable Superchargers is very important, and Tesla needs to develop a notification system for us when we are on the road. However, let's peer about 5 years down the road: I will make the following assumptions, but feel free to adjust them to anything you like. Tesla will offer a 120 kWh for the S and X. The model 3 will come with a 60 and an 85kWh choice. Ranges will vary from 210 miles on the Model 3 60 to 350 miles on the S with the 120. Superchargers will be spaced anywhere from 30 miles in urban settings to a maximum of 175 miles in rural locations.

Okay. In a world with Superchargers every 40 miles I'm not sure if Tesla will bother with 120 kWh batteries, but I don't think it will really affect this discussion one way or another anyway.

There will be no way that any computer algorithm, heuristic or model that will know definitely whether a Tesla driver within x miles of a Supercharger will even stop to charge. Some drivers are just commuting. Other drivers are bypassing one or more Superchargers for diverse reasons. Even others are close to their destination and will charge at another time.

Agreed. There's no way Tesla can be certain if folks driving on their own will pull in to a given Supercharger at any time. (Though it can make a pretty good guess if they go all Big Brother on you and keep track of your typical driving locations and charging habits - but that's also beyond the scope of this discussion.)

It would make more sense to me to have us notify Tesla in advance of our route and our intentions to Supercharge along that route. Then the software can determine based upon our battery when to stop and even for how long. This data would drive the information relayed to us. Commuters and locals need not apply!

It sounds like you haven't entirely grasped what I was talking about - which may not be surprising if the only version you saw was the post in this thread, because I summarized it very quickly here.

My vision for the 5 years from now road trip goes something like this:

Through the phone or voice interface you tell the car you're going to Grandma's house.

The car digs grandma's address out of the contacts list, and grabs your current location.

From the onboard maps it builds a preliminary routing.

It passes that over the cellular connection to Tesla's server, and asks for updates along/near that route.

Tesla hands back current weather, traffic, Supercharger status, and anticipated "reservations" loading of the Superchargers within 40? 100? miles of your path.

The car runs EVPlanner type energy usage analysis on the planned route, using the current SoC and real time weather along with some combination of your historical driving habits and your chosen settings for speed/efficiency.

The car realizes that you won't get to Grandma's house without charging, and based on the settings you've selected previously, it adjusts the route through a series of Superchargers.

As it is setting up the Supercharger string, it notices one that is out of order and another that has 8 people planning to arrive about the same time you might (in the data Tesla passed the car earlier.) Instead of planning for those two, it plans to charge higher at the stops before them and drive right past. It considers what will give you the least overall time, including detours to slightly out of the way but less loaded superchargers. It may even factor in some sort of "favorite locations" list of charging stops you liked/disliked in the past.

Once it has iterated a workable plan, the car passes this back to Tesla, which goes into the server's "reservations" page for other cars to consider as they plan.

Finally, it hands this route back to the driver, with estimated drive and charge times and possibly lists of POI at the various superchargers.

If Autopilot is engaged on the freeway portion of the route, the car automatically shifts lanes to drive itself down the route it laid out, needing human intervention only as it gets off the freeway.

As you pull in to each stall and plug in, the car tells you "23 minutes needed here" or "35 minutes at this stop." (It can't tell you for certain until you plug in because you might end up sharing a charger stack. Once you're plugged in, the time needed should be completely predictable.) There's a screen on the Tesla mobile app that fills with a countdown of the time needed for anyone that's neurotic/in a hurry and off exploring the points of interest.

As you pull out of each supercharger and start down the road, the car updates Tesla's server with new ETAs for its "reservations." (And pulls down updates for weather/traffic/status, which if they change enough might result in changes to future legs of the route - it should probably do this every time it plugs in, too.)

That's the structure I was trying to explain earlier, though I summarized it very quickly. No black magic, not even big brother data mining - just coordinating all of the navigation system travel plans of cars that are driving to known destinations. The car would probably begin attempting to bypass a location when it shows ~80% of the stalls are likely to be full, because as you said there are going to be a number of cars not in the system or not matching the plan no matter what.
Walter
 
Sag, the ability to notify us of inoperable Superchargers is very important, and Tesla needs to develop a notification system for us when we are on the road. However, let's peer about 5 years down the road: I will make the following assumptions, but feel free to adjust them to anything you like. Tesla will offer a 120 kWh for the S and X. The model 3 will come with a 60 and an 85kWh choice. Ranges will vary from 210 miles on the Model 3 60 to 350 miles on the S with the 120.

That's certainly one way to kill Tesla sales past the early adopter stage.

I go to a lot of car shows and the number one excuse for not purchasing a Tesla is "I get 500 miles with my current car". It's the same reason I won't get a Leaf--50 to 70 miles just won't cut it for me--50 miles won't even get me to work and back. I can live with 250, but it's a pain on trips (I actually thought that it would be an easy 300 and I could eke out another 50, but it's really 250 with no reserve.)
 
After 5 new openings yesterday, there's already been another 4 today! That's 9 in 2 days, and the day has barely started in the US.

New today:
Culver City, CA
Northhampton, UK
Villach, Austria
Bad Fallingbostel, Germany.


Since Benz and Chickensevil were discussing whether 1 SC/day is likely to be the rate going forward, or whether we'll see an increase in the rate of openings, Tesla have opened 14 SCs in 5 and a half days.

This must be a temporary blip, but still suggests that 1 per day might be a pretty conservative estimate for 2015.
 
I suspect I'm not the only person who prefers to drive on state highways rather than the interstate. So far there are zero state highways covered.
I can think of a few exceptions: at Sagamore MA, which is at the intersection of MA-3 and US-6; and the N/S pair on the Merritt Parkway in CT. But the exception proves the rule, that Tesla has been focused on the interstate system in the U.S. Like you, Jerry, I often prefer the older federal highways. Their lower speeds result in better Wh/mile and lower stress.
 
It seems that the holidays will always test the capacity of the SC network. Tesla definitely does not want to spoil anyone's holiday by having inadequate capacity leading to long waits. This is not the sort of conversation we wish to have around the holiday table. Instead, you want happy Tesla owners bragging about how convenient their drive to the family gathering had been. So I would expect Tesla to ramp up installations toward year end in any year. Handling holiday peak demand is essential for positive word of mouth.

If I am correct in this, we may see the pace of installations ease up after the holidays as other priorities compete. Of course, right now Tesla is in such a phase of rapid expansion, we may not see a let up. But looking forward to a time when there is plenty of geographical coverage, the next phase of ensuring local capacity may see distinct seasonality in new installations.
 
It seems that the holidays will always test the capacity of the SC network. Tesla definitely does not want to spoil anyone's holiday by having inadequate capacity leading to long waits. This is not the sort of conversation we wish to have around the holiday table. Instead, you want happy Tesla owners bragging about how convenient their drive to the family gathering had been. So I would expect Tesla to ramp up installations toward year end in any year. Handling holiday peak demand is essential for positive word of mouth.

If I am correct in this, we may see the pace of installations ease up after the holidays as other priorities compete. Of course, right now Tesla is in such a phase of rapid expansion, we may not see a let up. But looking forward to a time when there is plenty of geographical coverage, the next phase of ensuring local capacity may see distinct seasonality in new installations.

Actually the larger ramp last year was post Christmas/New Year throughout the month of January. But keep in mind a lot of that was also caused by the delays since these were chargers they were originally supposed to have online BEFORE December finished. This is because it was in support of the cross country chain which was supposed to be completed for a holiday trip for Elon... which of course we know fell behind schedule, because the permitting process is a PITA.

So I don't know that this is anything different from last year, in the sense that they had target goals for "end of 2014" that they have been trying to meet, and falling behind, and it is very likely that we will see another decent surge in January/February as a lot of these that were slated for "end of 2014" finally come online. If there is one thing I have learned it is that it is impossible to really get a good idea of how long it is going to take from them initially starting to pursue a city spot in earnest and getting approval for construction. Seems to me like this process can take upwards of 6 months. So if they haven't already started reaching out for location points for roughly half of their 2015 map that too is going to fall behind and get bumped into 2016.
 
I agree with all your points. The thing I would highlight is that seasonality is something we may well see in the future, and it is nothing to fear. If the pace does pull back over next quarter, FUDsters like PS may try to make something out of it. So I would like investors to have understanding and reasonable expectations and not fall prey to FUD. It makes sense for Tesla to plan year round for and execute holiday year end pushes.
 
It seems that the holidays will always test the capacity of the SC network. Tesla definitely does not want to spoil anyone's holiday by having inadequate capacity leading to long waits. This is not the sort of conversation we wish to have around the holiday table. Instead, you want happy Tesla owners bragging about how convenient their drive to the family gathering had been. So I would expect Tesla to ramp up installations toward year end in any year. Handling holiday peak demand is essential for positive word of mouth.

If I am correct in this, we may see the pace of installations ease up after the holidays as other priorities compete. Of course, right now Tesla is in such a phase of rapid expansion, we may not see a let up. But looking forward to a time when there is plenty of geographical coverage, the next phase of ensuring local capacity may see distinct seasonality in new installations.
I would not expect the rate of superchargers to decrease. What is happening because of the increase in revenue, the percentage of revenue spent on chargers is decreasing despite the increased pace. Look at their map for 2015. That does not reflect a decrease in rate at all
 
I agree with all your points. The thing I would highlight is that seasonality is something we may well see in the future, and it is nothing to fear. If the pace does pull back over next quarter, FUDsters like PS may try to make something out of it. So I would like investors to have understanding and reasonable expectations and not fall prey to FUD. It makes sense for Tesla to plan year round for and execute holiday year end pushes.

Sure, I can agree with that. I was just hoping to clarify that it didn't seem like it was a "holiday" thing and more of a "year end" thing, which will undoubtedly overflow into next year because of all the stupid delays in permitting and site selection.

But the anti-FUD point is key. They ONLY complaint anyone can have on the Supercharger growth is something that is out of Tesla's hands (for the most part) and the only way for Tesla to get "better" is to just start sooner and/or build in a larger estimation buffer just so it doesn't "appear" like they are missing targets. But really noone can fault them for how fast (or slow) they are building out. I think people just don't appreciate how hard it is to do some 300+ site selections, negotiations, purchases/lease agreements, permitting, council meetings, finally getting approval for contractors to build, etc.
 
In many areas, it's hard to distinguish between year end and holidays. It may be interesting to watch developments in China. The Chinese New Year is in February, and from what I hear the the country pretty much shuts down for a couple of weeks. So if Tesla is trying to hit holiday targets in China, we can expect the pace to stay up through January.
 
China super charger station deployment is in "insane" mode. Currently 50 (including 3 in HongKong) super charger stations up online. With this speed, I think it's easily to hit 150 by end of 2015. Also the super charger corridor connecting Beijing and Shanghai openned up.

In many areas, it's hard to distinguish between year end and holidays. It may be interesting to watch developments in China. The Chinese New Year is in February, and from what I hear the the country pretty much shuts down for a couple of weeks. So if Tesla is trying to hit holiday targets in China, we can expect the pace to stay up through January.
 
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