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As the brand-new owner of a 60-kWh Tesla Model S, I was eager to try out a Supercharger, the ultrafast 90-kilowatt DC fast-charging stations that Tesla is establishing along Interstate highways across the country.
Model S owners--and nobody else--will be able to plug in and grab up to 150 miles of extra range in 30 minutes, about the time it takes to empty their bladders and then eat a fast-food meal and/or check their mobile devices. Astonishingly, the Superchargers are free for Model S owners.
So far, Tesla Motors [NSDQ:TSLA] has installed five Superchargers in California and two along I-95 between Boston and Washington D.C.
Tesla claims it will have more than 100 Supercharger stations by 2015, enabling the Model S to make long cross-country trips just like a gasoline car.
For me, the nearest Supercharger is at the service area on I-95 in Milford, Connecticut, about 85 miles from my home in New York's Hudson Valley. Though my car's EPA range of 208 miles should manage the round trip without a recharge, I figured it would be fun to try out the Supercharger experience.
And it would be my first long trip in the car, a chance to check the accuracy of the "rated range" readout--also called the Guess-O-Meter--that so commands the attention of any electric-car driver.
Hopefully, my fate would be better than that of reporter John Broder of The New York Times, whose Model S famously ended up on a flatbed truck, out of juice, when he attempted a trip to the Milford Supercharger after leaving his Model S unplugged on a very cold night.
Unlike Broder, I started with a full charge. He had unwittingly charged the car in "Standard" mode, which--in the name of long-term battery health--stops charging at 90 percent of battery capaacity.
For my trip, just to be sure, I set the charger on "Max Range", which takes the charge to the full 100 percent. As I pulled out of my driveway on a cool 40-degree morning, the "rated range" read 198 miles.
Still new to the car, I drove conservatively, cruising at 60-65 mph on open stretches and accelerating gently on more congested two-lane roads. Under those conditions, the Tesla's "Guess-O-Meter" was spot on. After about two hours, I pulled into the northbound side of the Milford service area showing 116 miles of range remaining--82 miles less than what I started with.
So far, so good. But where the heck was the Supercharger?
The picture on the Tesla website shows what looks like a four-bay carport, conspicuously Tesla-logoed, and flanked by a 15-foot-high sculpted phallic column of no obvious purpose. (A nod to the SpaceX Falcon 9, perhaps?)
But I could see nothing like that anywhere around.
Eyes swiveling, I drove slowly past the parking area, past the gas pumps, past the restaurant pavilion, finally to the truck ghetto at the far end of the service area.
No carport-cum-phallus.
And now, I realized, I was stuck. Traffic flow through the service area is one-way only. There was no going back.
I parked the car and backtracked on foot. After a few minutes of searching, I found the Supercharger station. No carport. No phallus. Just two adjacent spaces in the regular parking lot, each with a gas-pump-like charging station and a miniscule Tesla logo.
I can now understand why John Broder drove around in circles in the parking lot at Milford. Tesla CEO Elon Musk implied that he was trying to run down the battery on purpose; Broder said he just couldn't find the Supercharger. I can relate to that.
Luckily, both spaces were empty. But of course my car was now at the other end of the service area, marooned by "Do Not Enter" and "Wrong Way" signs.
If I wanted to charge up, my only legal recourse was to continue north on I-95, get off at the next exit, get back on I-95 southbound, drive to the next exit south, get off, get back on northbound, and return to the service area.
Fuhgeddaboudit.
I looked around for cops, saw none, and drove the wrong way back past the gas pumps to the Supercharger, encountering no other cars during my nefarious 20-second dash.
Have an opinion?
Down the road, if a similar car was built, I could see Tesla opening up the chargers to others (at a cost, I'm sure)
why should Tesla foot the bill for every EV out there?
Also, it wouldn't "fry" anything since the super chargers don't even the same way. How fast a battery can charge usually correlates to how much current the charger can pump out.
If Volt and Leaf's battery can crank out over 100KW, then they can handle the power that Superchargers produces... Also, Volt doesn't come with DC chargers..
A drop in the ocean as far as the US economy is concerned.
MW
*http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-09-24/tesla-building-250-000-chargers-for-model-s-drivers-in-high
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3fO_OHpyYw
It's not hard, the navigation system should make sure that even the dimmest driver doesn't miss the mark.
The appearance of the superchargers is well known by the fans since Brodergate and one might have known there is no huge obelisk present at this site.
Maybe the point of this exercise was to give the Broder story more credibility but I'm not buying it.
I think its great they have food there and although its apparently not up to everyone's standards (ahem...) its better than a few we have here. One QC is at a gas station with nothing but "7-11" type food and a taco truck if you are lucky enough to be there during their business hours.
sounds like Tesla needs to put a "stop charge" button on their unit. the unplug delay is a bit "weird" and I see people possibly breaking stuff down the line
A more typical long distance drive is less than 600 miles, and at most a Model S will take a couple of hours longer doing that trip because it needs to stop twice to recharge.
Considering that for the rest of the year a Model S driver doesn't need to visit gas stations at all, while the ICE driver needs to go once every week or two, the Model S saves time overall, while being at least acceptable on a road trip of any length.
I am NOT sure that is true with today's MPG. Typical driver drives less than 40 miles per day. That is about 200 miles per week. Typical ICE cars have a range of 350 miles to 400 miles. Hybrids can easily get 500 miles range and diesels are known to go farther... Prius is known to go for 600 miles between fillups... So, it is NOT all that extreme.
Sure Tesla is more comparable to a luxury sedan instead of Prius, but the point is that BEV's biggest "threat" is actually high MPG hybrid...
I hope it all improves by then. In the mean time, an EV with a range extender still makes the most sense at this point.
There are pros & cons to that, but if their company goes under, at least they'll have driveable cars. I'd be curious to know: What provisions are there for Fluence ZE owners in Israel if Better Place goes out of business?
-don't bash Tesla, it's the best way to make what you are standing for even more unpopular than it already is with EV fans
-don't spout nonsense, it's great that your little Renault minus the battery costs only a third of the Model S, but that's for the same reason obviously that a Corolla would only cost a third of an A7 or an XF.
-realise that people will spot the flaws in your logic. Even if BP had 42 stations operational (I think it's more like half that): for the cost of those stations Tesla could probably realise 400+ fast chargers. It's just a cheaper way to make a dense grid and Tesla is working on it.
Realistically, different environments and different use-cases will require different approaches There is no one-size-fits-all in transportation.
Lastly, your EV doesn't cost a third of a Tesla. You don't own the battery (which is a huge portion of the cost of an EV) but instead lease it. For a fair comparison, best to include 5 to 7 years of battery lease price, and compare against EVs with similar sized batteries. 22kWh compared to 85kWh.
It's only accurate to the extent that your driving approximates the average power consumption used during the EPA test. In fairness, the EPA test is a decent generalization which means it's not a terrible number if you drive conservatively.
But the "Projected" range is an actual guess by the car as to your range based on current conditions. It's the only actual guess-o-meter on the car, so it would be nice if you referred to that instead of rated range.
The article might leave some readers thinking that the "rated range" readout would be meant to be the expected range under given driving conditions. That is not the case. It shows range under (fixed) official EPA test conditions. So to speak, when the car is turned on in the garage, and doesn't know yet how fast you will drive, or about the future temperature outside.
I also haven't heard the term "Guess-O-Meter"... except for the Leaf, which is different. In the Model S, that's more the "projected range", which can be displayed on the center console, for example based on the actual consumption during the last 30 miles of actual driving.
Tesla does not make that claim for the 60 kwh cars. They say that starting with a near empty battery a Supercharger will fill the battery about half way in 30 minutes. For the 85 kwh cars that works out to about 150 miles which you frequently see mentioned. However it obviously works out to something less for the 60 kwh cars.
Like Tesla or anyother company hires dimwits that can't do basic math? Of course Tesla knows they need superchargers closer together. They've only had time and money enough 2 whole SCs on the whole East coast these reports have found a fundemental flaw? It doesn't work for many people right now, but let them get a few more up. Everyone seems so impatient. As far as finding the stations I watched 6 Tesla owners find those staions at night in a snow storm I believe. Yes, people clearly need to be on the look the first time, but really?
Compare that with Mr Broder's approach of supposedly driving round and round in circles looking for the supercharger - when he had 0 miles of range remaining and the car was indicating it was on reserve power.
In either situation, I would have done what you did. Park and go to ask someone (or find it myself).
Mr. Broder's review did the Model S a disservice because he didn't:
1. read the manual
2. use common sense and fully recharge
3. use his correspondences with Tesla tech support to defend his circumstances
However, Mr. Musk was also to blame for his:
1. hasty accusations (the parking lot assumption)
2. evasive responses (never mentioned the conversations between Mr. Broder and Tesla tech support)
3. cherry-picking (concluding NYT admitted fault; it did not)
I applaud Tesla as a pioneer, but Mr. Musk didn't handle this fiasco well.
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