Tesla looks to be installing a mobile supercharger at the Westfield Montgomery Mall in Bethesda, Maryland. Not from the east coast, but do you think this is a part of the store or an actual route enabler. (
Tesla Coming To Westfield Montgomery | BethesdaNow)
Very interesting! Wonder what the power source is? Hopefully not a Diesel Generator... Let's see if there was 480V 3-Phase available, then 120 kW would require 200 Amp service, 90 kW at 208V would require 350 Amp service, both some pretty hefty taps on a local panel.
Also, see my post at
Capacity of Superchargers Using an Erlang-B Model for some capacity estimates with small queues. The Erlang calculator that I used does not work going down to one stall of service, but extrapolating, the average utilization with a 2% blocking rate is about 0.05 or 1/20.
Ah, the solution! Because of the low average utilization rate, put one of the Tesla/Solar City Energy Storage Boxes in the mobile unit with many 100's of kW-hr of storage. Even supporting a 10% average use rate for 120 KW, all you would need is 208 Volt, 3-Phase, 50-Amp service for an average pull from the local grid. Its just a giant 5-wire (3 lines, neutral, and ground) UMC with storage! :wink:
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So that's it - per my estimation, the SC in Cheyenne and Kingman AZ is the last gap for an S85 to be able to drive from CA to Wash DC. I'm assuming that 175 miles between superchargers is doable with reasonable effort. There's an outside chance that I take a road trip from Chi to Tucson in late Feb and this would be the last gap. I think Kingman, AZ will go live next week also.
Woo-hoo for long distance free roadtrips!
Also, Moab should be on-line in a week or so. Have fun, but respect the Cheyenne to Silverthorne section; remember that there are an extra 35 rated miles of potential energy to get to the top of Eisenhower Tunnel at 11,000 feet from Cheyenne at 6,000 feet, and headwinds can be fierce on that climb. My advice is to plan an overnight in Boulder or Denver and do a range charge while you sleep; with that, its a breeze! (pun intended)