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Tesla reveals Supercharger network, Free Fill Ups

457 points by dave1619 14y ago

MikeCapone 14y ago
A lot more slides and details here: http://www.treehugger.com/cars/tesla-unveils-its-supercharger-network-drive-free-forever-sunlight.html http://www.treehugger.com/cars/tesla-unveils-its-supercharge...
spullara 14y ago
So painful that the actual article was buried because they used a different link: http://www.teslamotors.com/supercharger http://www.teslamotors.com/supercharger
- sbierwagen 14y ago
  I wonder why they used CGI renders if there's supposed to be actual stations already in operation.
  - marshray 14y ago
    One plausible explanation is photos of the actual stations are filled with lots of background clutter that just doesn't suit the mood of the presentation.
    - rocky1138 14y ago
      Or the presentation was prepared before the stations were complete.
dave1619 14y ago
I was looking forward to this announcement and watched the live announcement. The most interesting/surprising parts of the announcement to me was: 1. Superchargers are already deployed in California. Nice work, Tesla, for building it out and proving it works. 2. The whole U.S. will be covered in a few years. Great for traveling cross country. 3. It's solar-powered. I wonder if they have a electricity backup... probably, my guess. But still impressive. 4. It will be FREE for Tesla owners. I don't know how they're pulling this off. To me, this was the most shocking part. How are they going to pay for construction, rent, etc, and still afford this? It's a great extra benefit for Tesla owners... to travel around the country for free (of course you need to buy the car and maintain the car, but still). I wonder if the extra electricity generated from the solar panels will go into paying the rent for the spaces.
- trafficlight 14y ago
  It won't be free forever, but it's one less barrier to buying buying a Tesla.
  - timdorr 14y ago
    No, Elon said free for life on the the announcement.
    - ricardobeat 14y ago
      Only for Model S owners, it will presumably be phased out sometime in the next couple years.
      - sbierwagen 14y ago
        It's also only for 85KWh Model S owners. The ones with 60KWh batteries don't get free charges.
        marcamillion 14y ago
        They do get free charges - but for a nominal fee, they have to upgrade some adapter (is what Elon said).
      - timdorr 14y ago
        Why would it be? Once they're built out, the ongoing costs of maintenance is relatively cheap. It becomes a HUGE up-sell for their future vehicles if the free charging is only offered on the more expensive versions of the X and future cars.
- jws 14y ago
  3. It's solar-powered. I wonder if they have a electricity backup... It's grid electric powered. The canopy doesn't do much. Let's calculate: Guess that the canopy for each bay is 7 by 4 meters, 28m^2 Sunny spots receive about 4kWhr of solar power per square meter per day. Solar panels might be 25% efficient. Total daily power: 28m^2 * 4kWhr/m^2/day * 0.25 = 28kWhr/day Model S has an 85kWhr battery, half charge is 42kWhr. It is going to take about two days to charge off the solar.
datapolitical 14y ago
It's this kind of hybrid (paid/free) model that solves the chicken and egg problem; the more common the fuel pumps, the easier it is for people to switch to electric.
JohnsonB 14y ago
30 minutes to charge...still puzzled why Tesla has gone with the recharge model rather than the battery swap model ala Better Place.
- revelation 14y ago
  Because the battery swap model doesn't exist. It's a cool idea, but it's not right here right now.
  - JohnsonB 14y ago
    You can build swap stations incrementally though just like they are building these supercharging stations, so I don't see what the difference is, other than swapping is quicker/better.
    - todayiamme 14y ago
      You're forgetting that in the case of Telsa's car the entire battery pack is a part of the undercarriage and hot swapping in that case is quite difficult.
      - jpxxx 14y ago
        I've heard otherwise: hot-swapping was a design goal if not yet supported.
    - schiffern 14y ago
      > quicker/better Quicker may be true, but "better"? Swap stations are more expensive, they constrain vehicle design, battery shape, and battery technology upgradeability. This makes the vehicle some combination of heavier, less safe, or more expensive (pick your poison). People don't seem to realize that the limiting factor for charge rate isn't current. It's cooling. A far simpler solution would just pump coolant through the charging port so that a large off-board cooler can be used. The cells in the Leaf and Volt could be fully charged in 20 minutes with adequate cooling. Independent (though amateur) tests by RC hobbyists have demonstrated hundreds of cycles at that charge rate with little loss in capacity. http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=672512 http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=672512
zmonkeyz 14y ago
I always felt the Wildcats 3.0 comic was cancelled way too early. Now I get to see it played out in real life by Elon Musk.
revelation 14y ago
Ugh, tech reporting. Is there a original source for this somewhere? Theres some limited info at http://www.teslamotors.com/supercharger http://www.teslamotors.com/supercharger. 100 kilowatts good for three hours of driving From the announcement video, it seems they are charging at 370V with a maximum of 225 amps = 83.25kW. So that 30 minute figure for half a charge is pretty real. The cost for one such charge would be approximately 3$ with industrial prices for electricity. Given that you can feed solar power back into the grid at rates above or equal to what normal customers pay for their electricity, I could see them making break-even on this when discounting the initial investment (which will pay back hundred-fold in adoption rate for their cars).
- spullara 14y ago
  That page and the video are the source material.
ph0rque 14y ago
I understood it to be free for existing Tesla customers, not new ones...
- R_Edward 14y ago
  Right, owners of the "S" model can charge free for life. No word on what owners of subsequent models will pay for it. I'm eager to see whether they can trim that 30 minutes down to, say, a max of 15. 30 minutes every three hours is too long, but 15 would work. Get out, plug in, go take a bio break, come back, wash your windows, and you're just about ready to hit the road again. These are exciting times to live in.
  - felipemnoa 14y ago
    >>These are exciting times to live in. I agree. This is the first time I actually believe we may become oil independent in the not so distant future (i.e. decades, maybe even in our lifetimes). As soon as the market realizes that a credible replacement to oil is here I expect oil prices to crash. I wonder what will oil companies do when they realize that their markets are about to evaporate? Exciting times indeed.
  - 385668 14y ago
    Living in the future is pretty awesome. I can't wait to see what even more future brings us.
jerrya 14y ago
Is it outrageous to think that eventually this "gas" will be free because outlets will compete to have Tesla and other electric customers stuck at their restaurant, bar, store for a half hour?
- ph0rque 14y ago
  Another possible revenue stream is free for Tesla owners, and not free for other electric cars that support the "nozzle" (if Tesla allows others to use the same nozzle design).
  - sbierwagen 14y ago
    The connector on the vehicle is proprietary, but there's an OEM adapter to use SAE J1772 connectors. (like the charging station near Google Kirkland: http://tmblr.co/ZStnmwKlXAF8 http://tmblr.co/ZStnmwKlXAF8 )
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
      - sbierwagen 14y ago
        Yes, the J1772 connector has a data pin. The Tesla Roadster can negotiate charge rate: http://www.teslamotors.com/roadster/charging/j1772-mobile-connector http://www.teslamotors.com/roadster/charging/j1772-mobile-co...
  - richardw 14y ago
    If Tesla doesn't let others to use their connector, they're doing themselves a huge dis-service. We need to start off with one standard. Imagine if every petrol station had connectors for different cars, or you had to look for a special station that fit your car? Nightmare.
    - kamaal 14y ago
      >>If Tesla doesn't let others to use their connector It must be the other way around. If you want free power, design your car to use their connector standards.
SwaroopH 14y ago
World changing. Hats off to Elon Musk and his team.
Shenglong 14y ago
Tesla had a 250 million dollar operating loss in 2011 and 106 million last quarter. Add 700 million of debt onto that, and... I wonder how long they can keep up this kind of expansion. This however, is really cool.
- ricardobeat 14y ago
  Elon Musk alone has an estimated $2B fortune, so at least five years at that burn rate? :) Facebook's IPO bled much more money out to bankers than all Tesla has spent so far, it's not like they are doing bad. Tesla has the potential to take over a sizeable slice of the (huge) automobile industry.
  - veb 14y ago
    They also have on thing that I don't think Facebook has, an awesome leader with a great vision. That goes a long way in todays world.
- TeMPOraL 14y ago
  OTOH, from what I heard SpaceX recently became profitable; given that they are nowhere near the end of their plans to get spaceflight cheaper, maybe he could route some money to Tesla from there.
- nicholassmith 14y ago
  It seems like they're taking the Amazon approach, going for super long term.
brc 14y ago
Personally, I get annoyed when a company takes an existing term with a defined definition, and then decides to change the meaning. A supercharger is a mechanically driven air compressor which forces air into an engine. For a car company to take that name and redefine it into a marketing effort, well, it's annoying. Kind of like those 'turbo' buttons that used to be on the front of a PC.
- evride 14y ago
  Maybe they should have called the 'original' supercharger a "mechanical air compressor" instead of supercharger since the connection between the term and the definition is pretty weak, while Tesla's supercharger is an actual charger that charges more quickly than your average charger... making it 'super.'
  - sliverstorm 14y ago
    Maybe they had more reason to call it a supercharger than you think. Supporting evidence- A turbocharger, or turbo (colloquialism), from the Greek "τύρβη" (mixing/spinning) Turbochargers were originally known as a turbosuperchargers when all forced induction devices were classified as superchargers -- Wikipedia In other words, the turbocharger was actually the origin of the concept of "turbo" meaning boosted speed/power. I'm still looking for the origin of the "super" part.
    - mseebach2 14y ago
      "Super" means that the subject is "above" as in superstructure, superscript and superintendent. A supercharger is then a charger that's above (presumably in performance) regular chargers. "To charge" means "to load [a carriage]", "A charge" means "a [carriage] load" -- so while the metaphor is overloaded, it actually seems to applies better to charging a battery than to forcing air into a combustion engine.
      - sliverstorm 14y ago
        If we go with your interpretation of "above", it actually makes perfect sense- the intake charge is "above" ambient pressure.
svmegatron 14y ago
If these become as popular as they seem like they should, I foresee long lines at the supercharging stations. I'm sure that 1. Tesla have thought of it and 2. They will milk the positive publicity from such an occurrence, but it could still be a PITA for, eg., folks who want to get home from Vegas.
- felipemnoa 14y ago
  I actually expect higher adoption to drive improvements in charging technology. Of the top of my head a naive way to make batteries charge faster is that that they could make the individual cells as smallest as possible therefore reducing the amount of time that individual cells need to charge[1]. The batteries would be made up of thousands of these cells that could then be charged in parallel. If they can make it so that each cell can get charged in only a couple of minutes then one of the major hurdles of electric cars will be gone. [1] I'm assuming that the smaller the cell the faster that it can be charged. Anybody knows if this is true?
- danenania 14y ago
  It doesn't seem like there would be much barrier to simply adding more charging outlets if needed, would there?
- eric-hu 14y ago
  What's to keep Tesla from partnering up with major supermarkets and malls? Tesla could offer free covered parking spaces to the building owner-operators and free (or metered) charging to the customers. The owner-operators get free 'green' PR, and could see increased business as customers have an incentive to stay in the stores longer. Tesla sees a real-estate free way to offer more charging stations, a marketing cost for their vehicles that also adds value to their product.
  - veemjeem 14y ago
    Yeah, I feel like charging stations of tomorrow will be advertised in the same way "free wifi" is advertised today.
vinhboy 14y ago
As a plugin prius owner. I find it a bit annoying that they don't just work with existing charging networks like ChargePoint to help expand the accessibility of electric car charging.
- schiffern 14y ago
  They already support ChargePoint on all their cars. As for making Supercharger compatible with the SAE J1772, somehow I doubt Tesla wants a plug-in Prius lazily charging its battery for hours while a fast-charge compatible vehicle waits its turn.
kevinpet 14y ago
I notice that they have multiple stations along the 5 between SF and LA, but nothing between Gilroy and Los Angeles, which is around 350 miles. Why not a stop in Santa Maria or similar? I suspect the problem is no where isolated enough that they won't have to worry about large numbers of local residents choosing to just go to Supercharger station rather than charging at home. As an occasional use to make people comfortable with a Tesla (long trips are possible), this is probably well worth the money. But it's unlikely to sustainable if owners choose to forgo the home charger.
- andyl 14y ago
  Between SF and LA, highway 5 is faster than 101. From SF you'd go thru Gilroy, then over to 5 via Pacheco pass, then south to LA.
surrealize 14y ago
Making a "charging station" that could take the place of an existing gas station would be huge feat of engineering. When I go from the SF bay area down to LA, I get gas at kettleman city (because of the in-n-out :) and I go to the chevron station there. From google street view, it looks like that station can fuel 12 cars at a time. And when I'm there, there's often a line for a pump. A gas stop takes, say, 2 minutes. A tesla charging stop takes 30 minutes. So serving the same peak flow of cars would take 15 times as many car spots: 180. Land looks cheap in that part of the central valley, so it might be feasible to have that much space. But 180 chargers, peak, each using 100 kilowatts would use 18 megawatts. Great scott! That's a lot of power. So it looks like this is still in the range of luxury-car, low-volume stuff. I can't imagine what it would look like as a mass-market thing.
- Homunculiheaded 14y ago
  As far as mass market goes I think you're forgetting why we have gas stations in the first place. Gasoline is highly flammable and toxic so it needs to be stored properly and regulated closely. Because it's a special trip most people drive until empty and then stop by the gas station. But with charging stations every grocery store could have them in the first few rows of parking. They could waive the charing fee if you spend X amount on food (I already get gas waivers from my grocery store). As this type of thing proliferated you wouldn't charge your battery when it was almost empty but rather be continually topping it off. Only on long trips would you consciously time things like stopping for lunch so they give you enough time to charge.
  - justincormack 14y ago
    In London there are electric car chargers all over the centre in parking bays. People have them at home too. Some people just seem to use cables out of the window. You can drive without paying the congestion charge so they are quite popular.
- kiwidrew 14y ago
  > But 180 chargers, peak, each using 100 kilowatts would use 18 gigawatts. Hmm, I think you mean 18MW, not 18GW... sure, it's still a huge amount of energy, but your typical data centre can easily consume 10MW or more. And 18 megawatt-hours is equivalent to... just under 500 gallons of gasoline.
w1ntermute 14y ago
Come on, 30 minutes for a charge that'll get you just 180 miles? I just checked the 2012 Honda Civic specs[0], you can fill up with 13.2 gallons in 2 or 3 minutes, and that'll get you 13.2*32 mpg combined = 422 miles. There's no way this is gonna work unless the charging process is much faster or they swap batteries instead. 0: http://www.edmunds.com/honda/civic/2012/road-test-specs.html http://www.edmunds.com/honda/civic/2012/road-test-specs.html
- ericd 14y ago
  Are you comparing charging stats unironically and saying it's a dealbreaker if it's not just as good as the incumbent in this category? It's really not that terrible to stop for 30 minutes after 3 hours of driving. Long road trips just went from wildly impractical to almost convenient, assuming the chargers are well distributed. You could compare the 0-60 times of the Civic and say it's unacceptable that it takes the Civic twice as long to get to 60 mph, or that it only seats a measly 5 people, uncomfortably at that, or that it only has one trunk.
  - w1ntermute 14y ago
    > Are you comparing charging stats unironically and saying it's a dealbreaker if it's not just as good as the incumbent in this category? Yes, I can guarantee you that the layman doesn't give two shits about electric cars. Until it's cheaper and/or more convenient for him than gas cars, he won't switch. And until laymen switch, you won't get the economies of scale necessary for a vast charging network. > assuming the chargers are well distributed. That's a pretty big assumption. First of all, Musk said there are charging stations in several cities in California, but exactly how many are there in each city? Do you have to go to one particular location in each city for charging? Because that's DOA. There's no such thing as one convenient location for everyone. And don't forget that right now all the testing is being done in California and Nevada, both of which are well known for their plentiful sunlight. But how much energy will the solar panels be able to contribute back to the grid when installed in a place like Seattle? Far less, I'm guessing.
    - 14y ago
cloudwalking 14y ago
When will they include a solar charger with the vehicle? "Buy a Tesla. Drive it for free, forever." Add to that an engine that requires /a magnitude/ less maintenance than a gas one.
sixQuarks 14y ago
I would say Elon Musk is the greatest entrepreneur of the past century - even more so than Steve Jobs. He simultaneously created three separate companies, all in extremely complex industries, and combined all of them into one overall strategy. The precision manufacturing they learned with Space X is incorporated into the Tesla S. Their aim is to make the Model S the most reliable and problem-free vehicle due to this precision. Now they are incorporating SolarCity technology into the entire system. This is absolutely brilliant!
- peteretep 14y ago
  I would say we are starting to get towards r/circlejerk territory here, which would be a shame.
- obilgic 14y ago
  Interestingly I was expecting him to have much better presentation/communication skills though. I guess being an successful entrepreneur has nothing to do with that.
  - RutZap 14y ago
    I noticed that... he does lack some communication skills but .. in the end, the important thing is what you say and what you do, not how you say it. There are a lot of entrepreneurs out there with very good presentation skills and use a lot of buzzwords and get everybody excited but in the end, they don't produce anything. Facts before words do it for me and this guy won me with his presentation :D
  - breckinloggins 14y ago
    He's actually gotten better over time. But there's another side to this. He has this kind of humble "aww shucks" way about him that I and I suspect many people find endearing. I've said this before, but I think Mr. Musk is one of a handful of "altruistic capitalists" that, if we are to stay with capitalism as a system, we desperately need more of. His somewhat awkward but "gee I could imagine playing XBox with him" style goes well with that image.
- 14y ago
jwr 14y ago
I find it rather amazing that a single entrepreneur takes on a task normally expected from governments.
- nicholassmith 14y ago
  I agree, and I think we'll see more of it as we go along.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- aidenn0 14y ago
  Would that task be supplying the international space station, or building an EV charging structure?
Dinoguy1000 14y ago
I think we finally know the real purpose behind the Dead Space Markers...
kamaal 14y ago
The arguments in this thread are amusing to say at the least. 30 minute charging times, high prices of Tesla cars. Yes all that is true. But this was never about 'Electric cars are awesome now'. I'm pretty sure cars during and before pre Henry Ford times were not very great in terms of their overall affordability, total cost of ownership and availability of fuel all around the country. You could trust your horse to drive you back home on any day more than a car. Similar to that, the IBM computers during their early days. You mobile phone is likely to have more computing power than all the computers IBM sold a few decades back, they were highly painful to use, maintain and use. Needless to say all these things had huge maintenance issues. But these things have caught on. So have automation, productivity and so many other new things that eventually people show friction towards but later take them to be fate accompli and learn to move forward. Electric cars, self driving cars, wearable computing(like Google glasses) well these really might look to be unfeasible at this time. But please, these are just ideas which are waiting for their time to come, with a little push they will eventually catch on.
- justincormack 14y ago
  Electric cars are 100 years old and have not improved much, bizarrely http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2010/05/the-status-quo-of-electric-cars-better-batteries-same-range.html http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2010/05/the-status-quo-of-ele...
  - kamaal 14y ago
    Well mechanical engines were there from a couple of centuries in fact. The steam engine was invented a ton lot of years before fuel driven cars caught on.
  - s_henry_paulson 14y ago
    Electric cars have improved immensely. - Better battery performance and lifespan. - Improved charging time and technology. - Distance cars can travel in a single charge. - Increased torque and horsepower. - Affordability and increases is mass production. And most importantly, increases in the necessary infrastructure to support long-distance travel (exactly the topic at hand) Your comment is very uninformed.
TeMPOraL 14y ago
Here's a thought (disclaimer - IANAEE): Could we charge electric vehicles while driving? Could we bury, say, some coils under the highways and have cars have a transformer on board to draw power from the road? That would remove the need for charging stations on a long-distance trips almost completely.
- mburns 14y ago
  http://www.gizmag.com/kaist-olev-electric-vehicle/12557/ http://www.gizmag.com/kaist-olev-electric-vehicle/12557/
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- lloeki 14y ago
  You're looking for an induction system here. At speed you may encounter some unwanted force effects (think maglev).
- jlebrech 14y ago
  another option would be to have a laser receiver and have laser turrets along the motorway blasting energy at them.
- gaius 14y ago
  Yes - those are called trams :-)
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
kokey 14y ago
I think electric cars will only really flourish once self driving vehicles become more practical and common. That convergence, along with civilian drones, will expand and improve our options for transport immensely, while also improving efficiency dramatically. It's still a long way to go, but the technologies to make it happen exists today. It's going to be more of an infrastructure change, for example to provide specially marked routes and stopping points for self driving vehicles. The benefits of implementing this is going to take a while for people to realise, but doing so will be comparable or cheaper than current mass transit projects, while offering significantly more flexibility regarding routes and capacity. It will allow people to improve the mobility they have with their own cars now, while improving efficiency so people can live better in and around bigger cities. For example, instead of bus routes, you can have a car come to pick you up at or near home at a scheduled time, or on demand, to take you to the train station to make a scheduled train on time. When the train arrives in the city you can have a similar car take you to the office. The cars can manage stopping to recharge by itself. The car routes can be updated and optimised based on demand or congestion, new routes can be added easier than bus routes. Software can manage your individual trips so you only have to make decisions based on time and cost. Deliveries can be done with automated cars and flying drones, and this can be adapted much quicker based on demand.
confluence 14y ago
This is it - the tipping point has finally arrived. This is a killer combination of rapidly falling prices in solar PV (thank you China/Kyoto protocol/Global warming), meeting the falling prices of Li-ion batteries (thank you astonishingly successful decade of laptops/smartphones/tablets), meets a cyclic economic boom (thank you GFC), meets rising gas prices (thank you OPEC/cheap oil/peak oil), meets anti-carbon incentives (thank you IPCC), meets autonomous cars (thank you Google), meets the development of nuclear fusion (thank you ITER) all combining into one massive tailwind for the one company just on the cusp of absolutely crushing it. It's a complete clusterfuck of fortune, falling costs, converging secondary technologies and economic forces concentrated in one company protected with monopoly pricing, akin to those found by Apple, Google, YouTube, Intel, Cisco, Microsoft, Facebook and many other tech giants. TSLA will go 10x within the next 20 years (or get bought out before it - unlikely) as it rides these convergent waves of progress. Please for the love of capitalism short the crap out of it and don't buy it! I need to get as much of this stock as cheap as possible over the next 2-3 years of savings :D - you'd be doing me a favour! Full disclosure: I have a significant amount of my net worth in TSLA stock and have done so on and off for 2 years (riding cycles for fun). I used to own AAPL - until relatively recently - whereupon I transferred all holdings to Google/Tesla. I may be exiting Google within the next 6 months due to rapid appreciation.
- ZoFreX 14y ago
  So why wasn't the 2 minute full charge time that Better Place unveiled several years ago the tipping point? This is an incremental development and nothing more.
- ams6110 14y ago
  You are smart enough to know the risks of having a significant fraction of your net worth in one asset, so I'll spare you the lecture there. Tipping point? No, I don't think so. It's progress, and it's good news, but 30 minutes to recharge is still a LONG time compared to the two minutes a petroleum-fueled vehicle takes, and the best of those can go several multiples of the Teslas range between fuelings.
  - 14y ago
tocomment 14y ago
I'm not clear on where they're putting the solar panels. Are they storing the electricity? Can it charge more than one car at once?
debacle 14y ago
The 30 minute charging time kind of sucks, but it's a small price to pay for owning a completely electric car, and I'm sure it's probably up there as far as improvements go on the priority list.
AGorilla 14y ago
Look at that S car go!
protomyth 14y ago
So, at what point does the local government slap a tax to pay for the roads and how much will it be?
sbouafif 14y ago
This is a very disruptive technology. I am wondering how much surface of solar panels (and "solar power") do they need to charge to answer to all the demand on a daily basis. And by extrapolation is this can be done widely (for buildings, universities, homes...)? The oil industry should rethink its business model. And we should buy Tesla's stock right about now.
at-fates-hands 14y ago
I think its interesting to hear people constantly challenging this technology. Fist it was it couldn't be done. An electric car? No way. Then Telsa Motors comes out with an electric sports car. No way! Too expensive! Top Gear made a mockery of the car. Not feasible, what happens when you run out of charge? Then Tesla Motors figures out a way to create "re-fueling" stations for their cars. No way! 30 minutes to charge my car? WAY too long! Stupid. Whether you know it or not, each step this company takes, it's answering every one of the doubts people have about this technology. Affordable completely electric cars are a lot closer than most people think.
gubatron 14y ago
I think this conversation should be less about the electric vehicles and more about the idea of creating a decentralized solar grid. And one that will encourage existing gas station owners to do the same and bank on all that lost solar energy.
scottmcleod 14y ago
I'm glad theres at least one entrepreneur whose denting the universe versus profits, Musk for president.
omegant 14y ago
Why not a small trailer with battery packs for long trips? or if you don´t want-need to go green, it could go with an engine and a generator. You connect it to your car and that way you can add range in an easy way. It´s also fast to swap at the e-station, just 2 min...

457 points by dave1619 14y ago

A lot more slides and details here: http://www.treehugger.com/cars/tesla-unveils-its-supercharger-network-drive-free-forever-sunlight.html http://www.treehugger.com/cars/tesla-unveils-its-supercharge...

spullara 14y ago

So painful that the actual article was buried because they used a different link: http://www.teslamotors.com/supercharger http://www.teslamotors.com/supercharger

sbierwagen 14y ago
I wonder why they used CGI renders if there's supposed to be actual stations already in operation.
- marshray 14y ago
  One plausible explanation is photos of the actual stations are filled with lots of background clutter that just doesn't suit the mood of the presentation.
  - rocky1138 14y ago
    Or the presentation was prepared before the stations were complete.

dave1619 14y ago

I was looking forward to this announcement and watched the live announcement. The most interesting/surprising parts of the announcement to me was: 1. Superchargers are already deployed in California. Nice work, Tesla, for building it out and proving it works. 2. The whole U.S. will be covered in a few years. Great for traveling cross country. 3. It's solar-powered. I wonder if they have a electricity backup... probably, my guess. But still impressive. 4. It will be FREE for Tesla owners. I don't know how they're pulling this off. To me, this was the most shocking part. How are they going to pay for construction, rent, etc, and still afford this? It's a great extra benefit for Tesla owners... to travel around the country for free (of course you need to buy the car and maintain the car, but still). I wonder if the extra electricity generated from the solar panels will go into paying the rent for the spaces.

trafficlight 14y ago
It won't be free forever, but it's one less barrier to buying buying a Tesla.
- timdorr 14y ago
  No, Elon said free for life on the the announcement.
  - ricardobeat 14y ago
    Only for Model S owners, it will presumably be phased out sometime in the next couple years.
    - sbierwagen 14y ago
      It's also only for 85KWh Model S owners. The ones with 60KWh batteries don't get free charges.
      - marcamillion 14y ago
        They do get free charges - but for a nominal fee, they have to upgrade some adapter (is what Elon said).
    - timdorr 14y ago
      Why would it be? Once they're built out, the ongoing costs of maintenance is relatively cheap. It becomes a HUGE up-sell for their future vehicles if the free charging is only offered on the more expensive versions of the X and future cars.
jws 14y ago
3. It's solar-powered. I wonder if they have a electricity backup... It's grid electric powered. The canopy doesn't do much. Let's calculate: Guess that the canopy for each bay is 7 by 4 meters, 28m^2 Sunny spots receive about 4kWhr of solar power per square meter per day. Solar panels might be 25% efficient. Total daily power: 28m^2 * 4kWhr/m^2/day * 0.25 = 28kWhr/day Model S has an 85kWhr battery, half charge is 42kWhr. It is going to take about two days to charge off the solar.

datapolitical 14y ago

It's this kind of hybrid (paid/free) model that solves the chicken and egg problem; the more common the fuel pumps, the easier it is for people to switch to electric.

JohnsonB 14y ago

30 minutes to charge...still puzzled why Tesla has gone with the recharge model rather than the battery swap model ala Better Place.

revelation 14y ago
Because the battery swap model doesn't exist. It's a cool idea, but it's not right here right now.
- JohnsonB 14y ago
  You can build swap stations incrementally though just like they are building these supercharging stations, so I don't see what the difference is, other than swapping is quicker/better.
  - todayiamme 14y ago
    You're forgetting that in the case of Telsa's car the entire battery pack is a part of the undercarriage and hot swapping in that case is quite difficult.
    - jpxxx 14y ago
      I've heard otherwise: hot-swapping was a design goal if not yet supported.
  - schiffern 14y ago
    > quicker/better Quicker may be true, but "better"? Swap stations are more expensive, they constrain vehicle design, battery shape, and battery technology upgradeability. This makes the vehicle some combination of heavier, less safe, or more expensive (pick your poison). People don't seem to realize that the limiting factor for charge rate isn't current. It's cooling. A far simpler solution would just pump coolant through the charging port so that a large off-board cooler can be used. The cells in the Leaf and Volt could be fully charged in 20 minutes with adequate cooling. Independent (though amateur) tests by RC hobbyists have demonstrated hundreds of cycles at that charge rate with little loss in capacity. http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=672512 http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=672512

zmonkeyz 14y ago

I always felt the Wildcats 3.0 comic was cancelled way too early. Now I get to see it played out in real life by Elon Musk.

revelation 14y ago

Ugh, tech reporting. Is there a original source for this somewhere? Theres some limited info at http://www.teslamotors.com/supercharger http://www.teslamotors.com/supercharger. 100 kilowatts good for three hours of driving From the announcement video, it seems they are charging at 370V with a maximum of 225 amps = 83.25kW. So that 30 minute figure for half a charge is pretty real. The cost for one such charge would be approximately 3$ with industrial prices for electricity. Given that you can feed solar power back into the grid at rates above or equal to what normal customers pay for their electricity, I could see them making break-even on this when discounting the initial investment (which will pay back hundred-fold in adoption rate for their cars).

spullara 14y ago
That page and the video are the source material.

ph0rque 14y ago

I understood it to be free for existing Tesla customers, not new ones...

R_Edward 14y ago
Right, owners of the "S" model can charge free for life. No word on what owners of subsequent models will pay for it. I'm eager to see whether they can trim that 30 minutes down to, say, a max of 15. 30 minutes every three hours is too long, but 15 would work. Get out, plug in, go take a bio break, come back, wash your windows, and you're just about ready to hit the road again. These are exciting times to live in.
- felipemnoa 14y ago
  >>These are exciting times to live in. I agree. This is the first time I actually believe we may become oil independent in the not so distant future (i.e. decades, maybe even in our lifetimes). As soon as the market realizes that a credible replacement to oil is here I expect oil prices to crash. I wonder what will oil companies do when they realize that their markets are about to evaporate? Exciting times indeed.
- 385668 14y ago
  Living in the future is pretty awesome. I can't wait to see what even more future brings us.

jerrya 14y ago

Is it outrageous to think that eventually this "gas" will be free because outlets will compete to have Tesla and other electric customers stuck at their restaurant, bar, store for a half hour?

ph0rque 14y ago
Another possible revenue stream is free for Tesla owners, and not free for other electric cars that support the "nozzle" (if Tesla allows others to use the same nozzle design).
- sbierwagen 14y ago
  The connector on the vehicle is proprietary, but there's an OEM adapter to use SAE J1772 connectors. (like the charging station near Google Kirkland: http://tmblr.co/ZStnmwKlXAF8 http://tmblr.co/ZStnmwKlXAF8 )
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
    - sbierwagen 14y ago
      Yes, the J1772 connector has a data pin. The Tesla Roadster can negotiate charge rate: http://www.teslamotors.com/roadster/charging/j1772-mobile-connector http://www.teslamotors.com/roadster/charging/j1772-mobile-co...
- richardw 14y ago
  If Tesla doesn't let others to use their connector, they're doing themselves a huge dis-service. We need to start off with one standard. Imagine if every petrol station had connectors for different cars, or you had to look for a special station that fit your car? Nightmare.
  - kamaal 14y ago
    >>If Tesla doesn't let others to use their connector It must be the other way around. If you want free power, design your car to use their connector standards.

SwaroopH 14y ago

World changing. Hats off to Elon Musk and his team.

Shenglong 14y ago

Tesla had a 250 million dollar operating loss in 2011 and 106 million last quarter. Add 700 million of debt onto that, and... I wonder how long they can keep up this kind of expansion. This however, is really cool.

ricardobeat 14y ago
Elon Musk alone has an estimated $2B fortune, so at least five years at that burn rate? :) Facebook's IPO bled much more money out to bankers than all Tesla has spent so far, it's not like they are doing bad. Tesla has the potential to take over a sizeable slice of the (huge) automobile industry.
- veb 14y ago
  They also have on thing that I don't think Facebook has, an awesome leader with a great vision. That goes a long way in todays world.
TeMPOraL 14y ago
OTOH, from what I heard SpaceX recently became profitable; given that they are nowhere near the end of their plans to get spaceflight cheaper, maybe he could route some money to Tesla from there.
nicholassmith 14y ago
It seems like they're taking the Amazon approach, going for super long term.

brc 14y ago

Personally, I get annoyed when a company takes an existing term with a defined definition, and then decides to change the meaning. A supercharger is a mechanically driven air compressor which forces air into an engine. For a car company to take that name and redefine it into a marketing effort, well, it's annoying. Kind of like those 'turbo' buttons that used to be on the front of a PC.

evride 14y ago
Maybe they should have called the 'original' supercharger a "mechanical air compressor" instead of supercharger since the connection between the term and the definition is pretty weak, while Tesla's supercharger is an actual charger that charges more quickly than your average charger... making it 'super.'
- sliverstorm 14y ago
  Maybe they had more reason to call it a supercharger than you think. Supporting evidence- A turbocharger, or turbo (colloquialism), from the Greek "τύρβη" (mixing/spinning) Turbochargers were originally known as a turbosuperchargers when all forced induction devices were classified as superchargers -- Wikipedia In other words, the turbocharger was actually the origin of the concept of "turbo" meaning boosted speed/power. I'm still looking for the origin of the "super" part.
  - mseebach2 14y ago
    "Super" means that the subject is "above" as in superstructure, superscript and superintendent. A supercharger is then a charger that's above (presumably in performance) regular chargers. "To charge" means "to load [a carriage]", "A charge" means "a [carriage] load" -- so while the metaphor is overloaded, it actually seems to applies better to charging a battery than to forcing air into a combustion engine.
    - sliverstorm 14y ago
      If we go with your interpretation of "above", it actually makes perfect sense- the intake charge is "above" ambient pressure.

svmegatron 14y ago

If these become as popular as they seem like they should, I foresee long lines at the supercharging stations. I'm sure that 1. Tesla have thought of it and 2. They will milk the positive publicity from such an occurrence, but it could still be a PITA for, eg., folks who want to get home from Vegas.

felipemnoa 14y ago
I actually expect higher adoption to drive improvements in charging technology. Of the top of my head a naive way to make batteries charge faster is that that they could make the individual cells as smallest as possible therefore reducing the amount of time that individual cells need to charge[1]. The batteries would be made up of thousands of these cells that could then be charged in parallel. If they can make it so that each cell can get charged in only a couple of minutes then one of the major hurdles of electric cars will be gone. [1] I'm assuming that the smaller the cell the faster that it can be charged. Anybody knows if this is true?
danenania 14y ago
It doesn't seem like there would be much barrier to simply adding more charging outlets if needed, would there?
eric-hu 14y ago
What's to keep Tesla from partnering up with major supermarkets and malls? Tesla could offer free covered parking spaces to the building owner-operators and free (or metered) charging to the customers. The owner-operators get free 'green' PR, and could see increased business as customers have an incentive to stay in the stores longer. Tesla sees a real-estate free way to offer more charging stations, a marketing cost for their vehicles that also adds value to their product.
- veemjeem 14y ago
  Yeah, I feel like charging stations of tomorrow will be advertised in the same way "free wifi" is advertised today.

vinhboy 14y ago

As a plugin prius owner. I find it a bit annoying that they don't just work with existing charging networks like ChargePoint to help expand the accessibility of electric car charging.

schiffern 14y ago
They already support ChargePoint on all their cars. As for making Supercharger compatible with the SAE J1772, somehow I doubt Tesla wants a plug-in Prius lazily charging its battery for hours while a fast-charge compatible vehicle waits its turn.

kevinpet 14y ago

I notice that they have multiple stations along the 5 between SF and LA, but nothing between Gilroy and Los Angeles, which is around 350 miles. Why not a stop in Santa Maria or similar? I suspect the problem is no where isolated enough that they won't have to worry about large numbers of local residents choosing to just go to Supercharger station rather than charging at home. As an occasional use to make people comfortable with a Tesla (long trips are possible), this is probably well worth the money. But it's unlikely to sustainable if owners choose to forgo the home charger.

andyl 14y ago
Between SF and LA, highway 5 is faster than 101. From SF you'd go thru Gilroy, then over to 5 via Pacheco pass, then south to LA.

surrealize 14y ago

Making a "charging station" that could take the place of an existing gas station would be huge feat of engineering. When I go from the SF bay area down to LA, I get gas at kettleman city (because of the in-n-out :) and I go to the chevron station there. From google street view, it looks like that station can fuel 12 cars at a time. And when I'm there, there's often a line for a pump. A gas stop takes, say, 2 minutes. A tesla charging stop takes 30 minutes. So serving the same peak flow of cars would take 15 times as many car spots: 180. Land looks cheap in that part of the central valley, so it might be feasible to have that much space. But 180 chargers, peak, each using 100 kilowatts would use 18 megawatts. Great scott! That's a lot of power. So it looks like this is still in the range of luxury-car, low-volume stuff. I can't imagine what it would look like as a mass-market thing.

Homunculiheaded 14y ago
As far as mass market goes I think you're forgetting why we have gas stations in the first place. Gasoline is highly flammable and toxic so it needs to be stored properly and regulated closely. Because it's a special trip most people drive until empty and then stop by the gas station. But with charging stations every grocery store could have them in the first few rows of parking. They could waive the charing fee if you spend X amount on food (I already get gas waivers from my grocery store). As this type of thing proliferated you wouldn't charge your battery when it was almost empty but rather be continually topping it off. Only on long trips would you consciously time things like stopping for lunch so they give you enough time to charge.
- justincormack 14y ago
  In London there are electric car chargers all over the centre in parking bays. People have them at home too. Some people just seem to use cables out of the window. You can drive without paying the congestion charge so they are quite popular.
kiwidrew 14y ago
> But 180 chargers, peak, each using 100 kilowatts would use 18 gigawatts. Hmm, I think you mean 18MW, not 18GW... sure, it's still a huge amount of energy, but your typical data centre can easily consume 10MW or more. And 18 megawatt-hours is equivalent to... just under 500 gallons of gasoline.

w1ntermute 14y ago

Come on, 30 minutes for a charge that'll get you just 180 miles? I just checked the 2012 Honda Civic specs[0], you can fill up with 13.2 gallons in 2 or 3 minutes, and that'll get you 13.2*32 mpg combined = 422 miles. There's no way this is gonna work unless the charging process is much faster or they swap batteries instead. 0: http://www.edmunds.com/honda/civic/2012/road-test-specs.html http://www.edmunds.com/honda/civic/2012/road-test-specs.html

ericd 14y ago
Are you comparing charging stats unironically and saying it's a dealbreaker if it's not just as good as the incumbent in this category? It's really not that terrible to stop for 30 minutes after 3 hours of driving. Long road trips just went from wildly impractical to almost convenient, assuming the chargers are well distributed. You could compare the 0-60 times of the Civic and say it's unacceptable that it takes the Civic twice as long to get to 60 mph, or that it only seats a measly 5 people, uncomfortably at that, or that it only has one trunk.
- w1ntermute 14y ago
  > Are you comparing charging stats unironically and saying it's a dealbreaker if it's not just as good as the incumbent in this category? Yes, I can guarantee you that the layman doesn't give two shits about electric cars. Until it's cheaper and/or more convenient for him than gas cars, he won't switch. And until laymen switch, you won't get the economies of scale necessary for a vast charging network. > assuming the chargers are well distributed. That's a pretty big assumption. First of all, Musk said there are charging stations in several cities in California, but exactly how many are there in each city? Do you have to go to one particular location in each city for charging? Because that's DOA. There's no such thing as one convenient location for everyone. And don't forget that right now all the testing is being done in California and Nevada, both of which are well known for their plentiful sunlight. But how much energy will the solar panels be able to contribute back to the grid when installed in a place like Seattle? Far less, I'm guessing.
  - 14y ago

cloudwalking 14y ago

When will they include a solar charger with the vehicle? "Buy a Tesla. Drive it for free, forever." Add to that an engine that requires /a magnitude/ less maintenance than a gas one.

sixQuarks 14y ago

I would say Elon Musk is the greatest entrepreneur of the past century - even more so than Steve Jobs. He simultaneously created three separate companies, all in extremely complex industries, and combined all of them into one overall strategy. The precision manufacturing they learned with Space X is incorporated into the Tesla S. Their aim is to make the Model S the most reliable and problem-free vehicle due to this precision. Now they are incorporating SolarCity technology into the entire system. This is absolutely brilliant!

peteretep 14y ago
I would say we are starting to get towards r/circlejerk territory here, which would be a shame.
obilgic 14y ago
Interestingly I was expecting him to have much better presentation/communication skills though. I guess being an successful entrepreneur has nothing to do with that.
- RutZap 14y ago
  I noticed that... he does lack some communication skills but .. in the end, the important thing is what you say and what you do, not how you say it. There are a lot of entrepreneurs out there with very good presentation skills and use a lot of buzzwords and get everybody excited but in the end, they don't produce anything. Facts before words do it for me and this guy won me with his presentation :D
- breckinloggins 14y ago
  He's actually gotten better over time. But there's another side to this. He has this kind of humble "aww shucks" way about him that I and I suspect many people find endearing. I've said this before, but I think Mr. Musk is one of a handful of "altruistic capitalists" that, if we are to stay with capitalism as a system, we desperately need more of. His somewhat awkward but "gee I could imagine playing XBox with him" style goes well with that image.
14y ago

jwr 14y ago

I find it rather amazing that a single entrepreneur takes on a task normally expected from governments.

nicholassmith 14y ago
I agree, and I think we'll see more of it as we go along.
deleted 14y ago
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aidenn0 14y ago
Would that task be supplying the international space station, or building an EV charging structure?

Dinoguy1000 14y ago

I think we finally know the real purpose behind the Dead Space Markers...

kamaal 14y ago

The arguments in this thread are amusing to say at the least. 30 minute charging times, high prices of Tesla cars. Yes all that is true. But this was never about 'Electric cars are awesome now'. I'm pretty sure cars during and before pre Henry Ford times were not very great in terms of their overall affordability, total cost of ownership and availability of fuel all around the country. You could trust your horse to drive you back home on any day more than a car. Similar to that, the IBM computers during their early days. You mobile phone is likely to have more computing power than all the computers IBM sold a few decades back, they were highly painful to use, maintain and use. Needless to say all these things had huge maintenance issues. But these things have caught on. So have automation, productivity and so many other new things that eventually people show friction towards but later take them to be fate accompli and learn to move forward. Electric cars, self driving cars, wearable computing(like Google glasses) well these really might look to be unfeasible at this time. But please, these are just ideas which are waiting for their time to come, with a little push they will eventually catch on.

justincormack 14y ago
Electric cars are 100 years old and have not improved much, bizarrely http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2010/05/the-status-quo-of-electric-cars-better-batteries-same-range.html http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2010/05/the-status-quo-of-ele...
- kamaal 14y ago
  Well mechanical engines were there from a couple of centuries in fact. The steam engine was invented a ton lot of years before fuel driven cars caught on.
- s_henry_paulson 14y ago
  Electric cars have improved immensely. - Better battery performance and lifespan. - Improved charging time and technology. - Distance cars can travel in a single charge. - Increased torque and horsepower. - Affordability and increases is mass production. And most importantly, increases in the necessary infrastructure to support long-distance travel (exactly the topic at hand) Your comment is very uninformed.

TeMPOraL 14y ago

Here's a thought (disclaimer - IANAEE): Could we charge electric vehicles while driving? Could we bury, say, some coils under the highways and have cars have a transformer on board to draw power from the road? That would remove the need for charging stations on a long-distance trips almost completely.

mburns 14y ago
http://www.gizmag.com/kaist-olev-electric-vehicle/12557/ http://www.gizmag.com/kaist-olev-electric-vehicle/12557/
deleted 14y ago
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lloeki 14y ago
You're looking for an induction system here. At speed you may encounter some unwanted force effects (think maglev).
jlebrech 14y ago
another option would be to have a laser receiver and have laser turrets along the motorway blasting energy at them.
gaius 14y ago
Yes - those are called trams :-)

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

kokey 14y ago

I think electric cars will only really flourish once self driving vehicles become more practical and common. That convergence, along with civilian drones, will expand and improve our options for transport immensely, while also improving efficiency dramatically. It's still a long way to go, but the technologies to make it happen exists today. It's going to be more of an infrastructure change, for example to provide specially marked routes and stopping points for self driving vehicles. The benefits of implementing this is going to take a while for people to realise, but doing so will be comparable or cheaper than current mass transit projects, while offering significantly more flexibility regarding routes and capacity. It will allow people to improve the mobility they have with their own cars now, while improving efficiency so people can live better in and around bigger cities. For example, instead of bus routes, you can have a car come to pick you up at or near home at a scheduled time, or on demand, to take you to the train station to make a scheduled train on time. When the train arrives in the city you can have a similar car take you to the office. The cars can manage stopping to recharge by itself. The car routes can be updated and optimised based on demand or congestion, new routes can be added easier than bus routes. Software can manage your individual trips so you only have to make decisions based on time and cost. Deliveries can be done with automated cars and flying drones, and this can be adapted much quicker based on demand.

confluence 14y ago

This is it - the tipping point has finally arrived. This is a killer combination of rapidly falling prices in solar PV (thank you China/Kyoto protocol/Global warming), meeting the falling prices of Li-ion batteries (thank you astonishingly successful decade of laptops/smartphones/tablets), meets a cyclic economic boom (thank you GFC), meets rising gas prices (thank you OPEC/cheap oil/peak oil), meets anti-carbon incentives (thank you IPCC), meets autonomous cars (thank you Google), meets the development of nuclear fusion (thank you ITER) all combining into one massive tailwind for the one company just on the cusp of absolutely crushing it. It's a complete clusterfuck of fortune, falling costs, converging secondary technologies and economic forces concentrated in one company protected with monopoly pricing, akin to those found by Apple, Google, YouTube, Intel, Cisco, Microsoft, Facebook and many other tech giants. TSLA will go 10x within the next 20 years (or get bought out before it - unlikely) as it rides these convergent waves of progress. Please for the love of capitalism short the crap out of it and don't buy it! I need to get as much of this stock as cheap as possible over the next 2-3 years of savings :D - you'd be doing me a favour! Full disclosure: I have a significant amount of my net worth in TSLA stock and have done so on and off for 2 years (riding cycles for fun). I used to own AAPL - until relatively recently - whereupon I transferred all holdings to Google/Tesla. I may be exiting Google within the next 6 months due to rapid appreciation.

ZoFreX 14y ago
So why wasn't the 2 minute full charge time that Better Place unveiled several years ago the tipping point? This is an incremental development and nothing more.
ams6110 14y ago
You are smart enough to know the risks of having a significant fraction of your net worth in one asset, so I'll spare you the lecture there. Tipping point? No, I don't think so. It's progress, and it's good news, but 30 minutes to recharge is still a LONG time compared to the two minutes a petroleum-fueled vehicle takes, and the best of those can go several multiples of the Teslas range between fuelings.
- 14y ago

tocomment 14y ago

I'm not clear on where they're putting the solar panels. Are they storing the electricity? Can it charge more than one car at once?

debacle 14y ago

The 30 minute charging time kind of sucks, but it's a small price to pay for owning a completely electric car, and I'm sure it's probably up there as far as improvements go on the priority list.

AGorilla 14y ago

Look at that S car go!

protomyth 14y ago

So, at what point does the local government slap a tax to pay for the roads and how much will it be?

sbouafif 14y ago

This is a very disruptive technology. I am wondering how much surface of solar panels (and "solar power") do they need to charge to answer to all the demand on a daily basis. And by extrapolation is this can be done widely (for buildings, universities, homes...)? The oil industry should rethink its business model. And we should buy Tesla's stock right about now.

at-fates-hands 14y ago

I think its interesting to hear people constantly challenging this technology. Fist it was it couldn't be done. An electric car? No way. Then Telsa Motors comes out with an electric sports car. No way! Too expensive! Top Gear made a mockery of the car. Not feasible, what happens when you run out of charge? Then Tesla Motors figures out a way to create "re-fueling" stations for their cars. No way! 30 minutes to charge my car? WAY too long! Stupid. Whether you know it or not, each step this company takes, it's answering every one of the doubts people have about this technology. Affordable completely electric cars are a lot closer than most people think.

gubatron 14y ago

I think this conversation should be less about the electric vehicles and more about the idea of creating a decentralized solar grid. And one that will encourage existing gas station owners to do the same and bank on all that lost solar energy.

scottmcleod 14y ago

I'm glad theres at least one entrepreneur whose denting the universe versus profits, Musk for president.

omegant 14y ago

Why not a small trailer with battery packs for long trips? or if you don´t want-need to go green, it could go with an engine and a generator. You connect it to your car and that way you can add range in an easy way. It´s also fast to swap at the e-station, just 2 min...