Tesla Supercharger network

[dhanson865]

I agree it makes the network more versatile, but not sure I draw the same conclusion that that is the best approach.

Superchargers can be fairly widely spaced, I don't need one on each street corner like a gas station.

But when I get to one I'd like there to be a good chance that there is a stall free. I think that's much more likely with fewer, bigger, sites.

I could have some fancy software on my dash to locate a non-busy location, but unless I can book a slot in advance that isn't much use at small sites - several cars might turn up just before I get there ... plus I may be delayed / change my mind / whatever and then be hogging a pre-booked slot that I then don't actually use / don't use on time. Lots of hassle in trying to manage a pre-booked system too without attendants.

Hence I favour larger sites.

Larger sites, given that I will be stopping for 30 minutes or so, can also attract some amenities to help me pass the time.

Larger sites are more vulnerable to grid issues (blackout, brownout, noisy power). If you have two smaller locations one city apart with two different electric utilities supporting you might find that Site A stays up when Site B goes down or vice versa.

Knoxville Supercharger Not Working

I'm happy to have a 8 stall location relatively close to home, but I'd rather have the next 8 stalls be on the north or east side of town helping for other routes and being on different electric utilities than to double up on the west side and have 16 in one spot and still be on the same KUB grid.

Two seperate locations, one goes down, you drive to the next closest

One big location goes down, you have to charge on L2 or if you are lucky Chademo.

But once you get enough locations I'm fine with some locations being larger than others as needed for density to prevent long lines.

 

[Mkorpal]

Why not both. The way I see it, these small additions to existing location are fairly low hanging fruit. No need to go through site negotiations, permitting should be easy since it's been done before. Construction should be easy since it has also been done before. I wouldn't be surprised if Tesla had already laid the groundwork for expansion previously and got the ball rolling on it with a few simple e-mails.

 

[David99]

Why not both. The way I see it, these small additions to existing location are fairly low hanging fruit. No need to go through site negotiations, permitting should be easy since it's been done before. Construction should be easy since it has also been done before. I wouldn't be surprised if Tesla had already laid the groundwork for expansion previously and got the ball rolling on it with a few simple e-mails.

I think that's what they are doing. Many pins on the 2017 Supercharger map is in existing locations. So it means they are getting expanded. in terms of dealing with demand obviously the total amount of stalls is what counts. But if the the same amount of stalls is spread out over more unique locations that's even better. The i15 between Los Angeles and Las Vegas is a good example. It used to be only Barstow. By the end of the year (hopefully) there will be 9 stations! 2 SuC in Vegas, Primm (45 miles from Vegas), Baker, Yermo, a second location in Barstow, Hesperia, San Bernadino and Barstow 1 is also being expanded.

 

[MP3Mike]

But if the the same amount of stalls is spread out over more unique locations that's even better.

Maybe better for us, but not necessarily for Tesla. It means more places that they might need to hire security to prevent theft/vandalism.

 

[emupilot]

I ran across this proposal from Iowa to Electrify America (VW). They did outreach to identify sites interested in hosting a level 3 charger. The sites would, of course, also be potential supercharger sites. Of particular interest is where the proposed sites (interactive map on page 13 of the proposal) align with the Coming Soon pins on Tesla's Find Us map:

Dows, IA (page 54): Dows Junction truck stop, 904 Cardinal Ave
Shelby, IA (page 24): The Corn Crib, 12 East Street and Taylor's Quik-Pik, 11 East Street
Altoona, IA: Outlets of Des Moines (page 30), 801 Bass Pro Drive Northwest; Casey's General Store (page 32), 1419 1st Avenue North

The Dows supercharger in particular (target opening date 2017) pretty much has to be at that site because there's not much else in town.

 

[PeterK]

I ran across this proposal from Iowa to Electrify America (VW). They did outreach to identify sites interested in hosting a level 3 charger. The sites would, of course, also be potential supercharger sites. Of particular interest is where the proposed sites (interactive map on page 13 of the proposal) align with the Coming Soon pins on Tesla's Find Us map:

Dows, IA (page 54): Dows Junction truck stop, 904 Cardinal Ave
Shelby, IA (page 24): The Corn Crib, 12 East Street and Taylor's Quik-Pik, 11 East Street
Altoona, IA: Outlets of Des Moines (page 30), 801 Bass Pro Drive Northwest; Casey's General Store (page 32), 1419 1st Avenue North

The Dows supercharger in particular (target opening date 2017) pretty much has to be at that site because there's not much else in town.

Reminds me of the story that Burger King didn't spend a lot of money on location studies when growing their store network. They just located stores at the same intersections/exits that McDonald's did, leveraging their work.

 

[emupilot]

The Dows supercharger in particular (target opening date 2017) pretty much has to be at that site because there's not much else in town.

I called up the Dows Junction truck stop and the manager confirmed they will be a supercharger site. The thread for the supercharger is here. I'm not going to follow up with potential Shelby and Altoona sites since Tesla doesn't project them to open in 2017, but other TMC sleuths are of course welcome to do so.

 

[KJD]

Evanston WY is in permit stage.
Supercharger - Evanston WY

 

[Fiver]

Evanston WY is in permit stage.
Supercharger - Evanston WY

This makes me very happy!

 

[KJD]

This makes me very happy!

Ya me too. I like I-70 and all but I-80 needs to be an option for people.

 

[wdolson]

I-80 in Wyoming was one of the few gaps in the Western continental US where you couldn't get there from here without spending time on slow AC charging somewhere.

 

[Saghost]

I-80 in Wyoming was one of the few gaps in the Western continental US where you couldn't get there from here without spending time on slow AC charging somewhere.

Yup. Once they build Ft Stockton, the only two interstate gaps they really have left are El Paso to Tucson on I-10 and Billings to St Cloud along I-94. Amazing how far we've come.

(Smaller gaps along I-25 and I-29 in various places that could really use one or two, as well.)

 

[Fiver]

It's kind of amazing there is more Supercharger activity in Croatia than there is in North Dakota, Arkansas, & Maine, combined.

 

[viperboy]

Looks like Dublin CA expansion, Culver City CA expansion, and Florida City are all live now (per each of their respective threads)

 

[gowthamn]

Any idea when charging speed and range will improve?

Specifically, I should be able to drive 2.5 hours without a charging stop and charge for just 20 minutes and then travel another 2.5 hours.
I am probably looking for high speed charging.
I cant convince myself to buy an EV without this.

 

[jerry33]

Any idea when charging speed and range will improve?

Specifically, I should be able to drive 2.5 hours without a charging stop and charge for just 20 minutes and then travel another 2.5 hours.
I am probably looking for high speed charging.
I cant convince myself to buy an EV without this.

That is the way it works now. Sometimes it's two hours 15 minutes depending upon the distance to the next SC.

 

[GSP]

It's kind of amazing there is more Supercharger activity in Croatia than there is in North Dakota, Arkansas, & Maine, combined.

It makes sense for a California company; that is named after Nicola Tesla.

Memorijalni centar "Nikola Tesla" Smiljan

GSP

PS. The link has a language selection on the right side of the home page

 

[GSP]

Yup. Once they build Ft Stockton, the only two interstate gaps they really have left are El Paso to Tucson on I-10 and Billings to St Cloud along I-94. Amazing how far we've come.

(Smaller gaps along I-25 and I-29 in various places that could really use one or two, as well.)

I-80 in Pennsylvania is another route that needs one or two superchargers. I-29 is completely unserved from Winnipeg to Omaha. I consider that a huge gap to fill.

Another huge (non-interstate) gap I would like to see covered is the trans-Canadian highway from Calgary to Parry Sound, but at least it has Sun County 80 Amp charge stations.

GSP

 

[wdolson]

Any idea when charging speed and range will improve?

Specifically, I should be able to drive 2.5 hours without a charging stop and charge for just 20 minutes and then travel another 2.5 hours.
I am probably looking for high speed charging.
I cant convince myself to buy an EV without this.

Charging speed probably isn't going to improve significantly for a while. There are rumors of 350KW chargers, but I think those will be for the semi truck packs (which will be big enough to take that kind of current even with today's cells). There are no cells in production or close to production that have the combination of capacity, life time, and charge rate as the current cells Tesla is using. There are about 8 factors that need to be weighed with every li-ion chemistry and a lot of them might be very good in one area, but are not widely used because they suck in other areas. For example there are some chemistries that can charge a lot faster than the cells Tesla use, but they have about 1/5 the capacity and have shorter life spans.

If you were willing to extend your wait to more like 40 minutes, the current S100D can easily fit your needs now. When I took my S90D down to California last year my charging stops were around 40 minutes if there wasn't a problem with the supercharger (Some California superchargers had problems last year due to damage from overheating, we'll see if Tesla has fixed the problem later this summer). The drive time between stops was about 2 1/2 to 3 hours. I drove 600 miles in one day on one leg and I arrived a lot less worn out then when I've done that in an ICE. Having to get out and walk around, maybe get something to eat, etc. every few hours does wonders to help fatigue levels.

Historically I've been fairly aggressive about "let's get there" when on road trips, but my trip last October was probably one of the best road trips I've had in many years.

I've also done a number of day trips where I needed to top off at a supercharger to make sure I got home OK. On the most recent one, we only needed about 10-20% bump to get home and we were hungry so we stopped with about 20% charge left, walked across the parking lot to a Panera, ordered to go, used the restroom, and headed back to the car. By the time we got there, the car was around 80% full charge. The computer in the car will also tell you when you can unplug to get to your next destination with the reserve you set. It's handy for minimizing supercharging stops, if that's your goal.

Supercharging makes road tripping a little longer on the road, but it doesn't cost anything and you arrive without a lot of aches and pains from being behind the wheel all day. For everything else I do (99% of the time), this car is vastly superior to anything I have ever driven. I rarely use autopilot because it's too much fun to drive it myself, and historically I haven't really liked driving.

 

[WannabeOwner]

I cant convince myself to buy an EV without this

Yeah, fair enough. "Different folks, Different strokes" and all that.

I'm presuming you need to drive more than 200 miles "often" ?

Of course over here that isn't very common most times I just need "a bit more than 200 miles" in a day so I stop for just long enough to charge a-bit-more to get me home / to destination, where I then charge overnight / whatever. Its different to driving an ICE and putting 600 miles in the tank once a week ... but given I never have to think about it except on the days when I drive more than 200 miles it works fine for me.

Supercharger will give me 5 miles a minute, sometimes a bit more, so even 50 miles extra in order to make it home is only 10 minutes. By the time I've had a pee and got a coffee more time than that has elapsed.

Also, in the last year I've driven nearly 25,000 miles. Assuming I put 600 miles of "Range" into an ICE, at each refuel stop, that's 40 stops that I've saved. Here we rarely have pay-at-pump, so its anywhere between 5 and 10 minutes to stand-and-pump and then stand-in-line to pay. So over the year I've saved somewhere between 3 and 7 HOURS not pumping gas ... and at my annual mileage I'm saving £320 PER MONTH on fuel

Historically I've been fairly aggressive about "let's get there"

Me too. But using AP1 is so much less tiring than actually driving that I just let the car chug along at speed-limit-plus-a-bit, and a sensible & safe follow-distance, I ignore the people who cut in (they obviously think they are more entitled to that tarmac than I am ... I know they are wrong, so that's fine ), and I arrive fresh and relaxed, compared to yesteryear.