It looks like, that Tesla Model S will support 440/480V and this means 3-phase charging not only for Europe but also for North America. But what connectors will be used?
not 480V single phase (means phase-phase), max voltage is 277V according to JB Straubel. It can only be 3-phase with 277V in star.
I would like to know what this J1772 looks like and what the costs are. I would have thought it was in the base price with the car or is it one of a list of overheads I need to learn about? If there aren't many roadside chargers then the quoted range may be an issue for me.
These are made by Coulomb Technology. They currently only produce units that are level II limited to 30 amps.
Since they're designed for employees to recharge during the workday, anything more than level 2 @ 30A would probably be overkill in 99.5% of cases.
Yeah, they're all the 210V/30A variety. It's too bad, because I think the 30A plugs are kinda flimsy (not because it's only 30A) - but they've been testing them (though there really hasn't been enough cars using them to really call it a valid test). On the other hand, one of the HPC's had it's Tesla connector dropped and it had to be replaced (the metal ended up with a facture in it that had enough of an offset towards the center to prevent connection), so maybe cheap-and-easy-to-replace is a better way to go.
By the by, http://mychargepoint.net/earthday/ is 'giving' out ChargePoint cards (catch: if you want to be able to use the not-free stations, you still need to put down a $25 deposit). Still, nice of them.