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What's the Ideal Distance Between Superchargers?

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Cattledog

Active Member
Supporting Member
Feb 9, 2012
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5,942
San Antonio, TX
We know the network is in its infancy, but what do people think is the ideal distance between supercharger stations. Seems like about 75 miles - that way you can cruise and go three legs or book it and go two. Book it and go three if downhill or tailwind, or if opposite go two. Also seems it would alleviate a syndrome of running up the back of the same people at each charging station and the potential for bottle necks that might bring.

With over 40,000 miles of interstates, and tens/hundreds of thousand of miles of highways in all states (like 101 and 395 in California), that's a lot more than 100 superchargers! We might likely see a free Tesla network on major routes like I-5, I-10, I-80, I-95, etc. and a licensed network on other routes.

Thoughts?
 
Agreed on 150 miles for minimum distance. Also because the charging speed goes down when the power draw heats up the batteries.

The 75 mile would be nicer but not really required.

The current sparse placement of superchargers encourages use of specific roads for those rare long trips. That's perfectly fine for a while (if Tesla really takes off; maybe 10 years?) and eventually other charging mechanisms should fill the gaps.

Ideal is, of course, at every Starbucks. :wink: That way you never need to plan at all.
 
...

With over 40,000 miles of interstates, and tens/hundreds of thousand of miles of highways in all states (like 101 and 395 in California), that's a lot more than 100 superchargers! ...
100 is just the projected total by the end of 2013; about double that (US & Can.) is targetted for 2015-6.

I'll be interested to see what the plans are for Europe!
 
My worry is at 150 miles apart everyone has to stop at the same ones. While it's a good first step, it can't be the end game of the network, unless they are going to increase the number of chargers per stop. I hope they collect good data and come up with a good algorithm for figuring out the the spacing and number of chargers per. I already sense bottle necks on I-5 and there aren't even that many cars out there yet.
 
One every 75 miles is a lot more than one every 150.
How much would you like to contribute to pay to have more built?
Frankly, I hope that Tesla liscences their charge ports and superchargers to other manufacturers. I would love to see it become the new standard!
 
A single supercharger plug can deliver 20 half hour charges every 10 hours fully utilized.
The most important case for supercharger utilization is the worst case, and the worst case is likely to be weekend days in the "summer".
On a theoretical 300+ mile road between 2 cities ( 1 half hour stop required ) with 10,000 Model S cars, where 10% of the cars make the trip between the 2 cities once per year on one of 24 weekends in the summer - ( 48 possible days ) during hours between 10AM and 8PM, you need 1 supercharger plug to support all those cars.
But this assumes that all the cars arrive at perfect times to leave when the last one finishes. To deal with clumping you need more. If you change the scenario to worry about 8 high demand vacation weekends instead - the number of superchargers required triples.

When thinking about a longer road, if you take 2 supercharger plugs and space them 75 miles apart, or have 2 chargers at one location they are almost equivalent in utility.
However if you spread them apart that makes the drop-in charging more problematic. If you get to the first location and it is already in use, you either wait or drive on 75 miles.
If both chargers are at the same location, and if one is busy, you can just go to the other.

They need to balance more locations closer together with adding additional capacity at the existing locations. I think that they should not spread out to add capacity until they have at least 4 or 5 at each location. ( Spreading out to cover more area is a different story )
 
My worry is at 150 miles apart everyone has to stop at the same ones. While it's a good first step, it can't be the end game of the network, unless they are going to increase the number of chargers per stop. I hope they collect good data and come up with a good algorithm for figuring out the the spacing and number of chargers per. I already sense bottle necks on I-5 and there aren't even that many cars out there yet.

As I said the ones on I-5 are 115 miles apart and you will still need to stop at each one if you travel at freeway speeds, since the speed limit is 70MPH and the traffic moves faster than that. If you travel the 230 miles at 60 mph to be sure you can make it takes 3 hours 50 minutes. At 75 mph it takes 3 hours 4 minutes. So I'll be going faster and stopping more often. :smile:
 
There are 1366 CHAdeMO chargers in Japan.

Japan is smaller then California.

So in California alone there should be well over 1400 SuperChargers.

But not all of them have to be Tesla specific SuperChargers, SAE Combo should do the trick just fine (up to 100kW charging).

And CHAdeMO for Leafs is just like SuperChargers for Model Ss :wink:

- - - Updated - - -

PS. Meeting current density of high power chargers in Japan probably will still produce far from "ideal" distances between chargers, but would be a huge step forward in that direction.
 
Zzzz, you're not taking into account that the Model S goes 2-4x as far as a Leaf on a charge.

The relationship between vehicle range and number of fast chargers needed is not linear. With a 4x range car you may need less than 1/4 the fast chargers.

Don't forget the difference between # of chargers and # of locations. The Leaf may want chargers scattered around the city but the Model S needs them concentrated on intercity routes.
 
My ideal spacing is one in each of the major cities along each of the routes I would take. Which is not exactly mileage based, more irregular. So, going along the NYS Thruway route, an installation in each of Albany, Utica, Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo, Erie, Cleveland, Toledo. Hmm; I guess that's roughly every 100 miles, but more frequent in some places and less frequent in others. I guess they may have to be more frequent than the cities in more rural areas, and less frequent than the cities in the super-urbanized areas like the Northeast Corridor, but in the Rust Belt I think "one per city, none in the countryside" is a pretty logical way to do it.

There's some logic to this; most trips begin or end in a city and it's nice to be able to get a "full charge" the night of arrival or the day of departure, in case there is a lack of overnight charging (as there still is in many places).
 
What is ideal for the 85 kw battery will be different for the 60kw

Lithium doesn't like to be charged below 20% or above 80% so that limits the useful battery range to 60% of the EPA rating:

60 kW car: 125 miles
85 kW car: 160 miles

I would recommend no long distance drivers buy the 60 kW car, and instead buy the maximum capacity battery Tesla sells: 85. Then install superchargers along all the crosscountry interstates (I8, I10, I40, I70, I80, I90, et cetera) at 160 miles minimum, so the batteries can be maintained between 20-80% charge & maximize their lifespan.
 
150 - 160 miles sounds about right, but I'd encourage Tesla to have superchargers closer together if the terrain around them has significant elevation changes that will impact range. Supercharging locations that are subject to extreme temperatures probably ought to be somewhat closer together as well.
 
I like a 120 mile spacing to be conservative for 60's in bad weather. Eventually, there should be fill ins at half of that or 60 miles. That provides more capacity, bale outs for poor battery managements and redundancy for Supercharger failures.

If you are navigating to a Supercharger, the Nav page should automatically provide Supercharger status, number of stalls in use, number vacant, any blockage history in the last few hours, etc. If there are problems, or a high blocking rate, the Nav App should suggest alternative Supercharger sites; a great method of load spreading and providing a safety net for Supercharger failures or problems.

Just a few rants from a retired engineer who used to design highly reliable, high availability systems. :wink: