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Tesla Supercharger network
- Thread starter dsm363
- Start date
I haven't visited the Rabobank charger in Salinas and so don't know whether that parking lot would be a good fit for the SC, but it wouldn't surprise me if the location is ultimately somewhere near 101 -- either Prunedale or Salinas -- because it would support both 101 traffic and also Highway 1/Monterey. Most folks who travel to Monterey, Carmel and Big Sur from the north will travel on 101 and exit 152 westbound to head to Monterey and points south. Whereever it is, I like the idea of taking some of the pressure off of Gilroy given that on weekends it is overflowing with folks from Southern Cal taking delivery of their cars and roadtripping south and also cars traveling north on I-5 who need to stop at Gilroy before their final destinations.
I'd prefer it to be Monterey, but the dot definitely looks more like Salinas, and I agree that Salinas works better than Gilroy for people leaving the Bay Area and heading down 101, and therefore will take pressure off Gilroy.
hans
P631
They could open a store in Carmel and clean up. Even better, put the supercharger at Laguna Seca and start a new racing series.
Hank42
Legacy Supporter
I searched the thread to find out what the grey dots mean in the newest announcement:http://www.teslamotors.com/supercharger but came up empty.
I'm assuming that "Summer 2013" just adds grey dots to the map as sites that will be built over the summer, and in "Fall 2013" those grey dots turn red and are operational, and new grey dots are added, which become live in "Winter 2013".
So, if I'm reading the chart right, there is nothing to get excited about until Fall 2013. when 19 more superchargers are fully activated.
I'm assuming that "Summer 2013" just adds grey dots to the map as sites that will be built over the summer, and in "Fall 2013" those grey dots turn red and are operational, and new grey dots are added, which become live in "Winter 2013".
So, if I'm reading the chart right, there is nothing to get excited about until Fall 2013. when 19 more superchargers are fully activated.
bollar
Disgruntled Member
Referring to the press release gives more context. They're coming much sooner than you might think:
bonnie
I play a nice person on twitter.
I meant Tesla owners in Canada. Winnipeg, etc. Those SC locations are handy for them.
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Not to drag this out but I disagree. Winnipegites come down I-29 through Grand Forks and Fargo. Bemidji and Brainerd just aren't high traffic nor high population areas. There is nothing but trees and lakes north of them. I agree with a previous poster that the locations were probably used to give the appearance of more widespread saturation of superchargers.
A couple things: new supercharger page on the website says "winter 2013- coast to coast travel via I-80" which is great, only at SLC, the network heads south to LA on I-15. I-80, of course heads west to San Fran. & that's my concern. I can see the new dot (next field, 2014) right below the Great Salt Lake is not in SLC, looks like a place called Lake Point which, if the SC is there, puts you within striking distance (headed west) of the next dot in Elko NV - BARELY. Next one is Lovelock NV, again it's a stretch, but it seems the next leg is the biggest stretch of all. Lovelock to Colfax doesn't seem doable to me on one charge. I have sucked lots of gas through many cars on this route many times going both directions in all types of weather. That whole traverse through Nevada is called "Basin & Range", lots of mountains culminating in the Sierra Nevada. Donner Pass anyone? Serious winter weather sometimes too! I would really like to look forward to getting to SF (Marin Co.) Gas Free in my Model X. Come to think of it, first go at it might be west-to-east coming out of Fremont! :biggrin: 3 sections, a good 200 miles each, w mountains. Anyone want to reassure me? ML
NigelM
Recovering Member
Port St Lucie, FL. I-95 jct.121 and easy access from the FL Turnpike also. Confirmed:
deonb
Active Member
From the SuperCharger announcement, about 47 minutes in:
Elon: "If there's 200 charging stations, there's probably two to three thousand ports."
So let's say 12 ports per station.
However, it's difficult to interpret exactly what he means by 'port'. A port can mean an individual plug that goes into a car, or it can mean a 120 kW charger - which currently has 2 shared plugs. He did mention Harris started off with 1 port, and was then expanded. But Harris had 2 plugs on that one charger. So by "port" I think he means a 120kW charger, but he might just mean the plug.
Now the other thing is they're going to expand the system so that there are 4 parking bays per charger, instead of the current 2. 26:38 minutes in:
Elon: "The main thing we need to do is make sure we got a lot of parking spaces available. So what the superchargers are actually capable of doing is routing power to multiple parking bays. Right now it can route power to 2 parking bays, but we're going to be upgrading that, so that it can actually route power to up to 4 parking bays. That's really just to expand the number of parking bays where you can do SuperCharging and make sure there is always an excess number of stations, except it extremely rare circumstances."
So depending on how you interpret "port" above, that 12 ports/station can mean either just 12 bays or 48 bays per supercharging station. And in the worse case of only 12 bays, that 12 bays may be sharing 3 x 120kWh chargers.
I'm of course hoping for 12 x 120kW chargers, with 48 parking bays. But that's a lot of parking space to give up.
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Thanks for the map. I frequently drive from Pennsylvania to Tennessee via I-81 in Virginia so it's disappointing to see that there are no SC's planned along this route. I'd like to see SC's at the following locations:
Strasburg, VA where I-81 hooks up with I-66.
Staunton or Lexington, VA where I-81 hooks up with I-64.
Wytheville, VA where I-81 hooks up with I-77.
deonb
Active Member
I assume it will just take the 2-car dance that the SuperChargers are currently doing, and run it over 4 cars.
The charger can't charge a battery at the full 120kW rate the whole time (battery can't handle it), so when one car's charge rate slows down towards the top part of the charge, the other car's speeds up (or at least it is supposed to - doesn't quite work yet).
So I suspect if you're 3rd and there are 2 cars already dancing, you would probably initially get little or no charge until one of the other cars are done. So the 3rd & 4th parking spot doesn't mean it will charge you up faster than if the 1st person was waiting by the car and when the charge was done, immediately unplug and left, and then you drive into his spot and plug in.
But it is a convenience factor - the first person doesn't need to immediately be present when the charge is done to remove his car. So a charge-and-leave is less of a problem. And you similarly don't have to be there for the moment the charger is open. You can plug in, initially at zero charge, and go and have something to eat for 40 minutes, without having to go out after 20 minutes and move your car into the spot before it can start charging.
That would help a lot. 4 parking spots with 4 cords for two cars that can charge at once I guess. They still need to motivate people to move when done and to let people know clearly about how much time it will take until their plugged in car started charging.
It took me a few minutes to get it, but look at this picture here:
You can see 6 plugs, but the chargers are actually the 3 white cabinets in the background. So at the moment there a 2 plugs per charger, but they're looking to increase that to 4 in the future.
Doesn't this mean that if the station is at max capacity the charging rate for each car would effectively only be 30kW? That certainly wouldn't look very good.
edit: Just saw your convenience explanation deonb, and that makes sense. I'd rather have chargers sharing all the spaces rather than in groups of 4, but I'm not sure if that's possible.
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If you consider that the Shell station at Harris Ranch appears to have over 20 gas pumps (where it only takes 5-10 minutes to fill up), it's not hard to imagine that as plug-ins grow in volume, we will definitely have locations with 48 parking spots with charging. I would not be too surprised to see this in a place like Harris Ranch say 2-3 years from now, just to handle the busy travel weekends with minimal queues.
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