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There are no Superchargers near me, or anywhere near my route to family on the holidays. Tesla's network outside of California is so sparse as to be useless for

There are no Superchargers near me, or anywhere near my route to family on the holidays. Tesla's network outside of California is so sparse as to be useless for much of the country. Here's the map of Tesla's 613 supercharging stations (right) versus 27000 public non-Tesla chargers (left): http://i.imgur.com/Ktg8h3W.png http://i.imgur.com/Ktg8h3W.png So the fact that Tesla has no good answer to remote charging for most of the US hasn't stopped it from selling cars outside of California. You're more likely to have a non-Tesla quick charger on any given route than a Supercharger, and if you own a non-Tesla EV/hybrid, you'll probably be able to use it "out of the box", where a Tesla will need a $450 plug adapter. If I want to drive west, I won't run into a Tesla Supercharger for about 250 miles -- outside the Model 3's range -- but I'll pass 9 quick chargers from other operators on the way. Long-term to reach millions of EV unit sales a year, car makers -might- need a better answer to charging away from home, if other technology and social changes don't obviate the need. In those coming years, Blink/Chargepoint/etc have lots of time to continue expanding their networks -- including adding more quick chargers, more plug types, and more reliability -- and can likely do it faster than Tesla or any other single company can on their own.

vvanders 11y ago
Those chargers top out at 45kw thought(real world, I have the CHAdeMO adapter). Superchargers are 120kW which makes a huge difference when you have more than 100mi of range.
- dangrossman 11y ago
  Both CHAdeMO and SAE Combo can do 100kW+. They're installed at lower amps because the only customers plugging in are Leafs and hybrids that don't need that capacity yet, not because the standards don't allow higher power. The supply will come to meet the demand when it actually shows up. A 45kW charger that exists on your route is better than a Supercharger that doesn't, too.
  - vvanders 11y ago
    Yup, they can do that, but there's not a single one installed in the US and I doubt there will be when the Bolt is released. Also now you've got a bunch of chargers installed and you don't know which ones are 45kW, 60kW and 100kW. With Superchargers you know that you'll have 120kW chargers at each location.
    - maxerickson 11y ago
      No argument that Supercharger=120kW is easier, but why wouldn't people mapping other charging stations record the available power? (at which point you can easily make a 100kW map or whatever)
      - vvanders 11y ago
        People don't list 45kw vs 60kw today on plugshare(or the system cab act up as what happened with a lot of Nissan units that were "rated" for 60 but couldn't handle it).
        maxerickson 11y ago
        Sure, not every data collection is going to do the sensible thing. OpenStreetMap has a proposal to document the exact sockets that are available: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:amenity%3Dcharging_station#Socket http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:amenity%3Dcharging_st... An app that shows charging stations while highlighting the ones that will be fastest is a really obvious thing to provide, especially while the stations are a bit sparse. So I would expect it to get easier to find stations as we go forward, not harder. (I agree that Supercharger=fast charging is an advantage, I just don't think it is really a big deal)
mikeash 11y ago
"Tesla's network outside of California is so sparse as to be useless for most people." This statement is exaggerated beyond all connection to reality. Yes, there are holes, but coverage outside of California is still quite good for the most part. If you live in or need to travel to Arkansas or West Texas or North Dakota then you're going to have trouble, but the vast majority of the population is covered at this point. Non-Tesla chargers vastly outnumber Tesla chargers, but the speed just isn't adequate. Most of them are far too slow for long trips. The fast DC chargers that are out there are just barely adequate. You'll top out at maybe 150MPH of charging, while Tesla's can hit 360MPH.
- dangrossman 11y ago
  I'm really not exaggerating. Look at that Supercharger map again. Put a pinpoint on it randomly, and imagine this is where you live. Put another pinpoint 120 miles away, and imagine this is where you have family in the next city over. 99% of the time, there will be no Supercharger anywhere near the line between you and your destination. That's the kind of trip people actually make and have range anxiety about -- visiting the grandparents for Christmas -- not the road trip to the other side of the country where you can plan on driving the wrong way for 70 miles to get onto the nearest Tesla-covered route. It's these trips that the Supercharger network is pretty useless for, because it only exists in this weird east-west-north-south grid with entire states empty in the middle of half the lines it draws. Chargers aren't like cell phone stations; they don't provide "coverage" to some radius, they're single points of utility.
  - chroma 11y ago
    That thought experiment isn't very useful, because people aren't randomly distributed across the continent. Much of the plains and rockies are empty of people.[1] 1. https://johnstonarchitects.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/pop_lg.jpg https://johnstonarchitects.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/pop_l...
    - jschwartzi 11y ago
      This may be true, but this is also exactly the kind of country you might want to drive through on your way from your home to a destination.
yourapostasy 11y ago
I can see it now, the dangrossman of turn-of-the-20th-century pointing out that these new-fangled motor carriages need these so-called fuel pumps, and t'ain't any in a 10-county region 'round 'im. The OP's point stands, for the target market. dangrossman, to some extent myself, and others like us, are not the target market. And that's okay. This is the Zen of new tech that drags in a significant logistical tail along with it. For those whom the tech works, great, for all others...wait. We are still years away from the days when EV's are soccer-mom-mainstream. In the early days of motor cars, people (mostly men) planned their trips around known fueling and maintenance garages, and we are in a similar phase right now with EV's. Be happy with your internal combustion/diesel/hybrid vehicle until the EV industry works out the infrastructure and products so you can drive to your grandparents without planning the trip, and be happy there are millions of customers in the intervening years willing to shell out the R&D bucks ahead of you to make that eventuality possible. The really interesting options EV's open up are in fuel sourcing. The power generation/storage tech is approachable enough that individuals or small groups can source their own if desired, and with software-mediated assistance, even perform small-scale "load balancing". We've barely scratched the surface in these directions.
- dangrossman 11y ago
  Funny, I don't know how you got this impression. I drive a Leaf, one of those "new-fangled" EVs, as I've mentioned elsewhere on this page. I plan around that range every day, not just theoretical holidays at grandma's. My comment was about how carmakers other than Tesla are going to be able to sell EVs to early adopters despite not having the Supercharger network because (a) the Supercharger network isn't near most routes in much of the US, and (b) the non-Tesla charging network is even larger and still growing.
  - yourapostasy 11y ago
    I think the GP pointing out the Supercharger network as a positive selling/marketing point when contrasting with other EV manufacturers is valid, but it read to me like you were discounting their position; sorry I misread, I can see what you are getting at now. My reply was meant to address that in such early days with early adopters like yourself, gaps in infrastructure for certain individuals---even early adopters like you---are part of the landscape. The Supercharger network was never meant to be a fast-growing, practical, charging network, it served a different purpose and that it doesn't fit your individual use case, I'm claiming, is A-OK in this early state of the market. I suspect the Supercharger network was initially only meant to address a marketing point: an EV couldn't drive cross-country in a roughly comparable time span as an ICE. This was an extreme form of the range anxiety played upon by detractors. The Supercharger stations went a long ways towards defusing that sales objection for the target market. Turn back the pages of history and you'll find exactly the same marketing stunt was performed for ICE's. People planned expeditions across the country on rutted dirt and mud tracks that were only charitably called roads, and staged fuel in advance like mountain climbers staged base camps with supplies, at extraordinary cost and effort. If my suspicion is correct, then the Supercharger network not being near most routes means it was never meant to really serve most routes, only sufficiently enough routes to serve its key initial purpose to TSLA. If that purpose happened to fit some small target market, then TSLA is happy to take that market (and any adjacencies they can take for a marginal cost of adding a Supercharger station here or there), but I don't think TSLA plans on the Supercharger network becoming the way to recharge. The closest analogy I can think of for the net is Google Fiber. I don't think GOOG plans on GF becoming the way to access the net, they are just pointing/prodding the way forward. That leaves me wondering though, if the non-TSLA charging networks have built their charging stations to be easily upgrade-able to higher voltages and amperages in the future; the ones I've casually inspected don't seem to lead to some conduit or similar infrastructure that can easily swap for bigger buss bars or similar. Ripping and replacing all that pavement and underground infrastructure to bring in more current has got to be murder on the capital budget. Someone must have made the calculation and figured out that the adoption rate is too slow to build in that expand-ability up-front.

vvanders 11y ago

Those chargers top out at 45kw thought(real world, I have the CHAdeMO adapter). Superchargers are 120kW which makes a huge difference when you have more than 100mi of range.

dangrossman 11y ago
Both CHAdeMO and SAE Combo can do 100kW+. They're installed at lower amps because the only customers plugging in are Leafs and hybrids that don't need that capacity yet, not because the standards don't allow higher power. The supply will come to meet the demand when it actually shows up. A 45kW charger that exists on your route is better than a Supercharger that doesn't, too.
- vvanders 11y ago
  Yup, they can do that, but there's not a single one installed in the US and I doubt there will be when the Bolt is released. Also now you've got a bunch of chargers installed and you don't know which ones are 45kW, 60kW and 100kW. With Superchargers you know that you'll have 120kW chargers at each location.
  - maxerickson 11y ago
    No argument that Supercharger=120kW is easier, but why wouldn't people mapping other charging stations record the available power? (at which point you can easily make a 100kW map or whatever)
    - vvanders 11y ago
      People don't list 45kw vs 60kw today on plugshare(or the system cab act up as what happened with a lot of Nissan units that were "rated" for 60 but couldn't handle it).
      - maxerickson 11y ago
        Sure, not every data collection is going to do the sensible thing. OpenStreetMap has a proposal to document the exact sockets that are available: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:amenity%3Dcharging_station#Socket http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:amenity%3Dcharging_st... An app that shows charging stations while highlighting the ones that will be fastest is a really obvious thing to provide, especially while the stations are a bit sparse. So I would expect it to get easier to find stations as we go forward, not harder. (I agree that Supercharger=fast charging is an advantage, I just don't think it is really a big deal)

mikeash 11y ago

"Tesla's network outside of California is so sparse as to be useless for most people." This statement is exaggerated beyond all connection to reality. Yes, there are holes, but coverage outside of California is still quite good for the most part. If you live in or need to travel to Arkansas or West Texas or North Dakota then you're going to have trouble, but the vast majority of the population is covered at this point. Non-Tesla chargers vastly outnumber Tesla chargers, but the speed just isn't adequate. Most of them are far too slow for long trips. The fast DC chargers that are out there are just barely adequate. You'll top out at maybe 150MPH of charging, while Tesla's can hit 360MPH.

dangrossman 11y ago
I'm really not exaggerating. Look at that Supercharger map again. Put a pinpoint on it randomly, and imagine this is where you live. Put another pinpoint 120 miles away, and imagine this is where you have family in the next city over. 99% of the time, there will be no Supercharger anywhere near the line between you and your destination. That's the kind of trip people actually make and have range anxiety about -- visiting the grandparents for Christmas -- not the road trip to the other side of the country where you can plan on driving the wrong way for 70 miles to get onto the nearest Tesla-covered route. It's these trips that the Supercharger network is pretty useless for, because it only exists in this weird east-west-north-south grid with entire states empty in the middle of half the lines it draws. Chargers aren't like cell phone stations; they don't provide "coverage" to some radius, they're single points of utility.
- chroma 11y ago
  That thought experiment isn't very useful, because people aren't randomly distributed across the continent. Much of the plains and rockies are empty of people.[1] 1. https://johnstonarchitects.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/pop_lg.jpg https://johnstonarchitects.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/pop_l...
  - jschwartzi 11y ago
    This may be true, but this is also exactly the kind of country you might want to drive through on your way from your home to a destination.

yourapostasy 11y ago

I can see it now, the dangrossman of turn-of-the-20th-century pointing out that these new-fangled motor carriages need these so-called fuel pumps, and t'ain't any in a 10-county region 'round 'im. The OP's point stands, for the target market. dangrossman, to some extent myself, and others like us, are not the target market. And that's okay. This is the Zen of new tech that drags in a significant logistical tail along with it. For those whom the tech works, great, for all others...wait. We are still years away from the days when EV's are soccer-mom-mainstream. In the early days of motor cars, people (mostly men) planned their trips around known fueling and maintenance garages, and we are in a similar phase right now with EV's. Be happy with your internal combustion/diesel/hybrid vehicle until the EV industry works out the infrastructure and products so you can drive to your grandparents without planning the trip, and be happy there are millions of customers in the intervening years willing to shell out the R&D bucks ahead of you to make that eventuality possible. The really interesting options EV's open up are in fuel sourcing. The power generation/storage tech is approachable enough that individuals or small groups can source their own if desired, and with software-mediated assistance, even perform small-scale "load balancing". We've barely scratched the surface in these directions.

dangrossman 11y ago
Funny, I don't know how you got this impression. I drive a Leaf, one of those "new-fangled" EVs, as I've mentioned elsewhere on this page. I plan around that range every day, not just theoretical holidays at grandma's. My comment was about how carmakers other than Tesla are going to be able to sell EVs to early adopters despite not having the Supercharger network because (a) the Supercharger network isn't near most routes in much of the US, and (b) the non-Tesla charging network is even larger and still growing.
- yourapostasy 11y ago
  I think the GP pointing out the Supercharger network as a positive selling/marketing point when contrasting with other EV manufacturers is valid, but it read to me like you were discounting their position; sorry I misread, I can see what you are getting at now. My reply was meant to address that in such early days with early adopters like yourself, gaps in infrastructure for certain individuals---even early adopters like you---are part of the landscape. The Supercharger network was never meant to be a fast-growing, practical, charging network, it served a different purpose and that it doesn't fit your individual use case, I'm claiming, is A-OK in this early state of the market. I suspect the Supercharger network was initially only meant to address a marketing point: an EV couldn't drive cross-country in a roughly comparable time span as an ICE. This was an extreme form of the range anxiety played upon by detractors. The Supercharger stations went a long ways towards defusing that sales objection for the target market. Turn back the pages of history and you'll find exactly the same marketing stunt was performed for ICE's. People planned expeditions across the country on rutted dirt and mud tracks that were only charitably called roads, and staged fuel in advance like mountain climbers staged base camps with supplies, at extraordinary cost and effort. If my suspicion is correct, then the Supercharger network not being near most routes means it was never meant to really serve most routes, only sufficiently enough routes to serve its key initial purpose to TSLA. If that purpose happened to fit some small target market, then TSLA is happy to take that market (and any adjacencies they can take for a marginal cost of adding a Supercharger station here or there), but I don't think TSLA plans on the Supercharger network becoming the way to recharge. The closest analogy I can think of for the net is Google Fiber. I don't think GOOG plans on GF becoming the way to access the net, they are just pointing/prodding the way forward. That leaves me wondering though, if the non-TSLA charging networks have built their charging stations to be easily upgrade-able to higher voltages and amperages in the future; the ones I've casually inspected don't seem to lead to some conduit or similar infrastructure that can easily swap for bigger buss bars or similar. Ripping and replacing all that pavement and underground infrastructure to bring in more current has got to be murder on the capital budget. Someone must have made the calculation and figured out that the adoption rate is too slow to build in that expand-ability up-front.