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100 Supercharger Stations
- jws 13y agoCumulative total energy delivered to date: 4.9 million kWh That works out to about $250,000, or about $10 per Tesla Model S sold to date. Early days and all, but it looks like about $100† tacked on to the selling price of the car covers lifetime supercharger network power use. Capital expenditures to build them probably dwarf their electric bills. ␄ † To the limits of Fermi Estimation
- tdiggity 13y agoIt's a $2000 upgrade fee to use the superchargers (on the 60kWh battery). The $2000 fee is included in the 85kWh battery model.
- thecolorblue 13y agoI didn't think that was correct but it does say that down in the 'How It Works' section. Its interesting how the skate over that one little detail.
- maxerickson 13y agoHow did you pick your electricity cost? It's a lot lower than I would guess.
- jws 13y ago$0.05/kwh. About what industrial users pay in most of the US.
- grecy 13y agoI thought superchargers were solar powered?
- lutusp 13y agoThat's for the future. Apropos, the source of power for electric cars is a frequent discussion issue among environmentalists. In some parts of the country, for example the Northwest, there's a lot of hydroelectric power, so an electric car is better for the environment than a gas-powered car. But in places where most of the power is generated using coal, it's not so clear-cut -- owning an electric car or a gas-powered car might have roughly equal effects on the environment.
- TheSpiceIsLife 13y agoFactor in nuclear-as-drop-in-replacement for coal, or future solar / wind generation capacity then purchasing an EV now still makes sense. Cars are on the road for 20+ years, new generation capacity is coming online constantly, so I think it makes sense for people to buy EVs.
- ams6110 13y agoEVs make sense for some people. But not most people. Not yet.
- grecy 13y ago> But not most people. Not yet. Out of curiosity, what do you think needs to change for them to make sense for most people? I personally feel the Model S has made an enormous step towards "makes sense" for a lot of people, and I have to think the X will "make sense for most"
- wfjackson 13y agoI guess one of the benefits is that you're decoupling the energy transfer method from the energy source. If there is new development of solar, wind, geothermal, wave energy etc. electric cars will be ready to receive energy from them versus trying to replace ICE cars. Even if the energy is derived from coal, cleaning the waste products at the factory is easier and is easier to upgrade the filters rather than replacing catalytic converters with better ones on regular cars.
- Omniusaspirer 13y agoOne hell of a disparity between that and my parents paying ~$.18/kwh in rural Michigan.
- jws 13y agoYour rural parents don't make nearly the use of the physical wiring that cost so much to install. It shows in the rate.
- lostlogin 13y agoThat and slamming consumers is what the power companies do (here in New Zealand). See the commerce commission report (2009 - and there have been large price increases since) that found profits unreasonably high. http://www.comcom.govt.nz/dmsdocument/192 http://www.comcom.govt.nz/dmsdocument/192
- xupybd 13y agoAlso a kiwi here. Read the summary and it said the commission closed the investigation. Looks like every thing was legal, just the power companies maximising profits. Exactly what companies should do.
- hengheng 13y agoAny battery has a hard time storing an amount of energy that costs the same as itself during its lifetime. This is opposite to combustion engines, which can pump infinite amounts of dollars through their cylinders. It's an insanely smart offering.
- sokoloff 13y agoIC engines are far from infinite. In fact, most can "only" burn in the neighborhood of 3-5K gallons of fuel per cylinder before requiring a major overhaul. It's admittedly quite a bit more than the supercharger equivalent, but it's far from infinite.
- throwaway0010 13y agoWas curious, did the math: 3-5K gallons * 6 cyl * 25 mpg = 450,000 to 750,000 miles. removed my incorrect math re: dollars of fuel per engine
- rallison 13y ago3,000 gallons per cylinder * 6 cylinders * $4 per gallon = $72,000 5,000 gallons per cylinder * 6 cylinders * $4 per gallon = $120,000
- mikeash 13y agoDouble-check your math: it's $4 per gallon, not $4 per mile. If you're putting 5,000 gallons through each of six cylinders at $4 per gallon, that works out to $120,000 of gas. Certainly outweighs the cost of the engine by a decent factor.
- throwaway0010 13y agowhoops, thanks!
- fancyketchup 13y agoI suspect the energy cost is a little higher than that because a commercial electricity customer (like Tesla) will often be subject to 'demand charges,' which are assessed based on the highest power used in a billing period. Since the point of a supercharger is to deliver a lot of power, the demand charge may be quite high. I still agree with your conclusion though... Capital still dwarfs energy, even if they pay several times what you estimated.
- Mvandenbergh 13y agoI doubt that any individual super-charger station is a large enough load to be charged for their peak usage. It's a big load but nothing like a smelter or even a small factory.
- alexkiritz 13y agoDefinitely more power than a small factory. A six station supercharger could be pulling 500 kW. Up until 2012, demand charges from Souther California Edison kicked in at 20 kW at a rate of $17 per kW. One of the first 50 kW quick-chargers in LA county was shut down for months after the owner realized that operating it would tack on an extra $1000 to his monthly bill.
- njloof 13y agoSo I can't buy a Tesla in New Jersey, but now I can charge one there.
- gcoguiec 13y agoAnd the FTC blog supports direct car sales as good for consumers : http://www.ftc.gov/news-events/blogs/competition-matters/2014/04/who-decides-how-consumers-should-shop http://www.ftc.gov/news-events/blogs/competition-matters/201...
- maratd 13y ago> So I can't buy a Tesla in New Jersey Sure you can. Just go to their website.
- krschultz 13y agoMy coworker lives in NJ and owns a Tesla, seems to have no problem getting service or anything. I believe he ordered it from the website directly.
- shiftpgdn 13y agoHe likely 'took delivery' in another state and then transferred the title/registration into NJ. At least this is how it is done in Texas where Tesla sales are also banned.
- clamprecht 13y agoWow, I had no idea their network was already this good: > The network is already robust enough to support long-distance drives on the most popular routes across America, wherever it be a cross country trip from Los Angeles to New York, an East Coast jaunt from Rhode Island to the southern tip of Florida, or an epic 12,000-mile journey to every corner of the United States. I'm not sure if I've just been out of the loop, or if they aren't doing a good enough job pimping their supercharger network. This removes one of the perceived problems with electric cars - long road trips. Does anyone here have real world experience doing a long road trip with a Tesla S, using the supercharger network?
- Nogwater 13y agoThere's a nice interactive map here: http://www.teslamotors.com/supercharger http://www.teslamotors.com/supercharger It looks like you can do cross country road trips if you take a specific route through the middle of the country. By the end of this year, it looks much better.
- js2 13y agoI am impressed. A yearly trip of mine is from Raleigh, NC to Long Island by way of Norfolk, VA, CBBT, Delmarva peninsula, Cape May ferry and Garden State parkway. That'll be doable by the end of the year if I'm reading the map correctly.
- beambot 13y agoThe decision to bypass the I-80 corridor in favor of a more northernly route is curious. Wonder what spawned that?
- dredmorbius 13y agoPossibly population and buyers. The norther route puts you close to Minneapolis and Madison / Milwaukee. Larger populations, also more liberal, generally, than a slightly more southern route. The I-80 corridor fills in if you go to the end of 2015. Prioritization.
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- gtaylor 13y agoHere's a map of the stations, if anyone is interested: http://www.teslamotors.com/supercharger http://www.teslamotors.com/supercharger
- TheSpiceIsLife 13y agoSo within ~20 months it'll be possible to drive almost anywhere in the USA in a Tesla S, and back to a Supercharger charging station? That's pretty impressive! As demand for vehicle based electricity use increases the demand for new electricity generation capacity will increase. All this in a protracted economic depression. Interesting times.
- tonylemesmer 13y agoThank heavens its possible to charge at places other than these stations otherwise it would be pretty annoying to have to drive a couple hundred miles to recharge. But this is great for long journeys.
- sengstrom 13y agoI wonder if using the supercharger deteriorates the battery more than a more gentle charge (I am warned about this for fast charging my Leaf). Find it interesting that they ask that question on the supercharger FAQ but don't answer it: "How often can I Supercharge? Is it bad for my battery? Supercharging does not alter the new vehicle warranty. Customers are free to use the network as much as they like."
- dangrossman 13y agoI am not a battery scientist, but from everything I've read, using the supercharger should have no effect on battery life long-term. So long as it's kept within certain charge and temperature ranges, the only thing that counts down the lifetime of the battery cells are actual charge cycles, which you can pretty conveniently measure in miles of normal driving use (expected up to 30% loss after 100K miles, and the 5+ year old Roadsters actually averaged just 15% loss after 100K miles with older battery tech). The supercharger doesn't do anything that would reduce that life expectancy; it communicates with the battery about its health and charging speed begins to slow progressively after about 50%.
- warble 13y agoNot really true, there's many variables including how 'full' you charge the battery, how much you discharge it, what the charge and run temps are, it's not a simple equation. For example, if you don't charge and discharge the battery fully, you can get many many times more cycles out of them. Charging quickly does release more heat, which can reduce the lifecycle of the battery, but there are workarounds to minimize this. I am not an expert at battery chemistries, but I work with EV charging systems quite a bit.
- fancyketchup 13y ago> Charging quickly does release more heat, which can reduce the lifecycle of the battery, but there are workarounds to minimize this. I suspect that's why the GP was warned not to quick-charge his/her Leaf too often: The Leaf battery does not have an active cooling system.
- cpprototypes 13y agoTesla is interesting, but there may be an upcoming battle between EV and fuel cells since it seems Toyota, Honda, and Hyundai are supporting fuel cells instead of EV. But Tesla is not alone (Nissan, BMW) so this may be a battle that will split the industry. A big part of this fight will be infrastructure. Currently, gas powered cars have these advantages: - Fast refuel time (Only a few minutes to fill a tank) - Ubiquitous (Gas stations everywhere) - Standardized (Gas station nozzle works in any car) EV is currently very weak in these areas. Recharge time is orders of magnitude longer than filling a gas tank. The common expected use case is to charge at home overnight, but this excludes a huge fraction of the population (anyone living in an apartment/condo). Apartment owners have little incentive to install chargers. And there's a standardization problem. Nissan Leafs cannot charge at Superchargers. There's a lot of fragmentation in this field. The fuel cell cars are avoiding these issues and they may take a lot of the market that EV currently doesn't serve well. Hydrogen stations are often publicly funded and not tied to a specific auto manufacturer. Refuel time is similar to gas stations. And they are slowly building more and more hydrogen stations (in California). It seems California is being used as a test market for fuel cell cars. If it succeeds, then there could be a strong nationwide push. To someone living in an apartment/condo, fuel cell cars have a lot of advantages. Many assume that the EV is the successor to the ICE vehicle. But that may not be true.
- coryrc 13y agoFuel cell fillers are slower than gas and not much faster than quick-charge stations. EV charging stations are ubiquitous. Fuel cell fillers are outrageously expensive. All US cars can charge with J1772. CHadEMO and SuperChargers have the same power output, so adapters will be possible and reasonable. Oh, and hydrogen-fueled cars are far less efficient wells-to-wheels than electrically-fueled. We can't afford to be paying more for fuel.
- eyesee 13y agoA (comically large) CHAdeMO to Tesla adapter will be available for about $1000. CHAdeMO has a maximum output of 500V/100A or 50 kW, whereas Tesla Superchargers are presently 120 kW. http://shop.teslamotors.com/collections/model-s-charging-adapters/products/chademo-adapter http://shop.teslamotors.com/collections/model-s-charging-ada...
- gojomo 13y agoI notice the 100th station is in New Jersey, one of the two states that bans self-serve gas stations. I'm hoping Tesla owners don't have to ask an on-duty attendant to plug-in their vehicles there.
- cjg_ 13y agoTechnically it is not a gas station. What does the law say?
- gojomo 13y agoI'm sure the coverage would have mentioned it if such an absurdity applied. (I was just poking fun at New Jersey, where I grew up.) More background on the anachronistic restriction: http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/09/18/new_jersey_self_service_gasoline_the_madness_must_stop.html http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/09/18/new_jersey_se...
- smackfu 13y agohttp://lwd.dol.state.nj.us/labor/lsse/laws/Retail_Gasoline_Act_and_Regs.html#19613 http://lwd.dol.state.nj.us/labor/lsse/laws/Retail_Gasoline_A... If you scroll up, you can see the definitions of terms. It's just gasoline and doesn't even apply to diesel. So, no, it wouldn't apply to Tesla.
- Dirlewanger 13y agoEven funnier is that they mention "New Jersey legislators" were at the opening; New Jersey being the most recent state to ban the sale of Teslas. Granted the aforementioned probably weren't on the side of Chris Crisco, but still.
- mkz 13y agoWhen's the hyperloop coming?
- lerouxb 13y agoI don't live in America and haven't seen a Tesla charging station, so maybe some of these obvious ideas are already happening, but: * You'll have at least 20 minutes of waiting for your car to charge, during which time Tesla could be selling you snacks and/or fast food. Filling stations in most countries already follow that proven business model. * These charging stations have solar panels on the roof, so they presumably already have the necessary inverters and whatever other infrastructure to pump electricity back to the grid. Tesla could make some deals to put panels up on nearby buildings who could save on capital costs by just piggybacking off Tesla. They could become a power utility company over time. * Teslas are quite expensive, so Tesla owners (and therefore drivers) are generally affluent, which are the kind of customers local businesses would want to attract. So having a charging station nearby could be something malls might even pay for or want to subsidise. Similarly the land around a supercharger station in what is otherwise "the middle of nowhere" could become significantly more valuable, so if Tesla purchases extra cheap land around stations placed along interstate highways they could stand to make quite a bit of money selling that to property developers afterwards. I guess what I'm saying is if Tesla plays their cards right, then Tesla cars could be like giving away razor handles for cheap.
- bryanlarsen 13y agoVariations on your second point are definitely in the plans. The Tesla charging stations are being put up in conjunction with Solar City, a solar panel leasing company, which was founded by Elon Musk's cousins.
- smackfu 13y agoThese Supercharger stations are generally already on someone else's property, like a hotel or mall near a highway.