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I agree but I could see an advantage of locking the chargers to just Tesla owners for a limited time period of maybe a year or two. If they were placed 100 miles apart, most other cars couldn't really use them anyway (easily). It might help Tesla sales until the broader charger market grows and Tesla could open their network to anyone at that point.
SByer
'08 #383
Ok, to play devil's advocate for a second. Let's think about the future. What is the target for charging? Let's assume batteries get cheap enough and gravimetrically dense enough that we could choose any battery size we want. What size would you choose? For, say, a medium-sized SUV-like vehicle that America likes to buy? And drive cross country? And, in terms of infrastructure needed for people to feel comfortable, every chunk of added mile counts, and you want to eliminate just about all range anxiety issues? So, say, 500mi? 600mi? We're talking a 250kWh or 300kWh battery. Now, charge time - an hour is a long time. Hydrogen (if, if, if) will hit at about 20 minutes (but not hit on the range, duh). So, let's go for half hour. Well now, that CHAdeMO connector isn't looking so hot, is it?
Things are in flux now. A little more uncertainty extends the time things are in flux, leaving wiggle room for better standards to be created (now that we finally have people thinking about such things). Current standards cover AC charging sufficiently. Combo standards - which would definitely be better than two connectors - are coming along slowly, but may not cover the desired power wanted. Extending the time of uncertainly while also playing the 'if your standard covered what we want...' game may not be such a bad thing.
And, if you plan for it, there is plenty of room to bring the required wires to a location in the car that they can be hardwired to an 'adapter' for that country's predominant standard, with perhaps a bypass if needed to get maximum capability. After all, we're talking about a big transformer on one side, a few thick wires, a connector, and some more thick wires - and a bit of signaling. As long as there are only a handful of standards worldwide and not dozens, the signaling generator won't be expensive. And, let's face it, the likelihood that politics would allow a global standard are darned near zero. This or that local/regional/continental manufacturer will almost certainly be able to throw enough money at preventing that so they can lock up a piece of the pie.
So, I suspect that Tesla really isn't committed to a (set of) connector(s) yet. They don't have to be until way late in the game (say, 2 months before FCS). And there are games afoot we don't know about.
Elon's not stupid.
Things are in flux now. A little more uncertainty extends the time things are in flux, leaving wiggle room for better standards to be created (now that we finally have people thinking about such things). Current standards cover AC charging sufficiently. Combo standards - which would definitely be better than two connectors - are coming along slowly, but may not cover the desired power wanted. Extending the time of uncertainly while also playing the 'if your standard covered what we want...' game may not be such a bad thing.
And, if you plan for it, there is plenty of room to bring the required wires to a location in the car that they can be hardwired to an 'adapter' for that country's predominant standard, with perhaps a bypass if needed to get maximum capability. After all, we're talking about a big transformer on one side, a few thick wires, a connector, and some more thick wires - and a bit of signaling. As long as there are only a handful of standards worldwide and not dozens, the signaling generator won't be expensive. And, let's face it, the likelihood that politics would allow a global standard are darned near zero. This or that local/regional/continental manufacturer will almost certainly be able to throw enough money at preventing that so they can lock up a piece of the pie.
So, I suspect that Tesla really isn't committed to a (set of) connector(s) yet. They don't have to be until way late in the game (say, 2 months before FCS). And there are games afoot we don't know about.
Elon's not stupid.
I'm not singing the praises of the J connector. I agree it's only "OK" compared to what it could be but it took 9 years for the new J1772 to go through all the political, regulatory, standards, compliances etc etc,. to get to the point where we were last year to start making them. Even with a 300 mile range, in two years from now when Model S sales need to hit their stride and break out of the early adopter phase, there will be customers who will look at thousands of J plug stations around and hesitate. To not have that option for car buyers sounds like a stupid move from a very smart man. But I also suspect the fat lady is still in her dressing room.
So in the 'pie in the sky' world of tomorrow where the price of batteries becomes incidental, and they have chemistry that supports very rapid charging, I would think you could have stationary packs on a 'trickle charge' (say 10kW) storing up lots of charge (say up to 300kWh) so that when a vehicle occasionally pulls up for a quick charge you could do a pack to pack dump at very high current levels and get the vehicle back up to charge in a matter of minutes.
But then there is the whole other approach that pack swap catches on and so we don't worry about charge times on high capacity packs because the swap machine switches you over in minutes regardless of capacity. If we were stuck at 20kW charging and pack capacity kept growing from year to year I imagine that pack swap would get more and more attractive. People tend to want to take a pit stop every few hours of driving, so some sort of ultra-rapid "flash charge" or pack swap would probably make more sense then trying to get infinite pack capacity.
Another angle with a world of super cheap, high capacity batteries would be desire to reclaim battery space for passengers and luggage, and/or to reduce weight for better performance. So I guess I am saying there will probably be a turning point someday where we hit max desired onboard pack capacity and people start looking at optimizing the pit stop experience and shrink the onboard pack size for performance and space reasons.
And all of this changes if someone invents the portable fusion reactor or some-such to make a real range-extended, not petroleum powered electric a reality.
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gg_got_a_tesla
Model S: VIN 65513, Model 3: VIN 1913
An analogy to the world of scuba diving (40+ years experience of 'charging' tanks that we can learn from). Scuba tanks take 10-12 minutes to charge, each. If you've got a boat load of divers, that could be a couple of hours to charge them all, but divers are only willing to wait an hour between dives.
Solution 1: each diver takes 3 tanks on the boat, to give him three dives during the day and a slow charge overnight. Aka battery swap.
Solution 2: an array of large tanks is deployed at the charging station. Overnight, and during dives, these large storage tanks are charged. Then, when a dozen divers turn up, their tanks can be charged in a couple of minutes. Aka stationary packs at charge stations.
Interestingly, with both solutions available, and 40+ years experience, neither solution has 'won'. Both are in widespread use today. In general, the multiple tank approach is used when there is no access to charge stations, and the storage tank approach used at the stations themselves.
The exchange with Elon was just after the conclusion of the meeting proper, with a crush of people around trying to ask questions. Consequently, I am not certain of exactly what words were used or intended. I am pretty confident, though, that he was challenging the use of a J1772 connector because it could not handle enough power.
W.Petefish
Active Member
Personally I prefer the connector that Tesla currently has, It has the feel of hooking up a connection, not the pumping gas feel of the J1772. On that note, I would prefer to have multiple charging connectors on the Model S, that being a J1772, the current Tesla connector, and a DC fast charge connector.
In the DC fast charge connector the wires are going to have to be thick to handle the amount of amperage that the LV3 would put out. If smaller wire were to be used you would have a real fire hazard on your hands from the wire heating up. I've had a personal experience with wires heating up when using my UMC at a 40 amp charge rate, mind you 6 gauge wire with a mild temp increase.
It occurs to me that even a distributed load over 3 wires would be 66a per wire at the max rate.
CHAdeMO charging connector:
In the DC fast charge connector the wires are going to have to be thick to handle the amount of amperage that the LV3 would put out. If smaller wire were to be used you would have a real fire hazard on your hands from the wire heating up. I've had a personal experience with wires heating up when using my UMC at a 40 amp charge rate, mind you 6 gauge wire with a mild temp increase.
It occurs to me that even a distributed load over 3 wires would be 66a per wire at the max rate.
CHAdeMO charging connector:
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For DC charge the full current is carried by both wires. Let's assume 480 VDC at 150 amps. It they use solid wire that would be at least #1 gauge with 90C insulation. Since the wire will be stranded it will be even bigger.
Something tells me they're going to have to go to higher voltages, or some people won't be able to handle the cable!
Something tells me they're going to have to go to higher voltages, or some people won't be able to handle the cable!
Fast Charging stations are likely not to be Self Serve both for this reason and the voltages involved.
The current Tesla connector is no more capable than J1772, so there is not much point in keeping it (or having both).
W.Petefish
Active Member
Frankly, not really. An hour is exactly the appropriate amount of time to have lunch or dinner, and a reasonable time for an average appointment or meeting. An hour is *exactly* the target charging time. Longer than an hour is too long; but if you get the charging time down to an hour with 400 miles driving in between, don't worry too much about getting the charge time lower. You've covered most of the market, except for the "drive straight through without stopping" lunatics, who aren't safe on the road anyway.
Agreed. On our recent road trip, my wife was getting impatient with the three hour charge time, especially the second time (return trip). I didn't mind because it was fun to drive electric, but she isn't so much into that. It didn't help that I had to drive like an old lady to get the range. Her comment: "What's the point of this sports car if we have to drive slow?"
Three hours to 50% makes for a trip that takes twice as long. One hour to 80% would have made a huge difference, because our stop would have been shorter and I could also drive faster.
It would be nice to have an inverse of the current J1772 to Tesla adapter (that lets Roadsters use J1772 now) so that J1772 vehicles could use Tesla plugs.
Assuming Tesla goes away from the old "amp" Tesla proprietary on future vehicles, there will still be some number of Tesla EVSEs out in the world (e.g., Harris Ranch, UK extended range network, ...) so an adapter to the old could be handy.
Tommy
Member
Due to tax credits expiring at the end of this year for installing a home charger, I made a point last month of asking Tesla directly (via e-mail to corporate) if their wall mount charger for the Roadster would work on the Model S. They could not give me a definitive answer even though I explained the loss of the tax credit if I waited to install in 2012. So, I would agree with you on your assessment regarding the Model S charging connector.
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