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Supercharger growth

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Currently 280 superchargers open with 21 in production. Does not include those with permits. I find this amazing it was maybe 18 months ago there were 6. They will break 300 easily this year. I would not be surprised to see this double within next 6 months. The market only appears focused on number of cars produced and not growing infrastructure that will support increased production
 
Currently 280 superchargers open with 21 in production. Does not include those with permits. I find this amazing it was maybe 18 months ago there were 6. They will break 300 easily this year. I would not be surprised to see this double within next 6 months. The market only appears focused on number of cars produced and not growing infrastructure that will support increased production

Yeah, people seem to be thinking about this wrong.

While the model S is unquestionably a great car, it is the Supercharger network that makes it a potential replacement for any gas car, and the Supercharger network that constitutes the biggest competitive advantage Tesla has/the biggest barrier to a competitor rising to beat them.

I have no doubt that GM/Ford/Audi/etc could build a car that's close enough to the Model S to be real competition if they chose to. (Might not be able to make an equal or better car for the same money, but that's a side issue.)

However, unless Tesla lets them buy in to the Superchargers, it'd take years for them to get anything close to the same utility from the notional car, which means they couldn't sell it to most people anyway.
Walter
 
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Totally agree, Chickenlittle. And we also have a plethora of idiot wannabe financial writers who do not understand how inventory works at Tesla. Especially on SA, there are people out there who believe that inventory is growing, so there must be a problem. They have no clue that inventory must grow to reflect business growth. They think inventory = unsold cars. Frustrating to no end but you can't fix stupid.

Anyway, back to the SC network ... Wow. Just wow. I'm so impressed at how fast they've expanded the network, despite the fact that it's actually been quite slow here in Canada. This is one hell of a competitive advantage. Just imagine where they will be the moment a competitor comes out with anything similar to the S / X / 3. They'll have effectively global coverage while competitors have nothing, which might be why they are all sticking to hybrids.
 
Really? 21 in production? Is there a way to find out where those are in North America? I will be taking a trip next summer and there are a couple gaps (I90 in Gilette area, Wyoming) and then on to Oregon and California, and to come back there is a large gap from Carson City, Nevada, to Salt Lake City, Utah. I would like to find out if the ones in those gaps are going up. It seems they would be good ones--they help complete the I90 and I70 western routes...
 
And I forgot so say, I had not really thought about this issue this clearly until this thread--Tesla is years ahead in their EV network as well as their EV actual production. Others will have to pay to use that network (I imagine they have to pay if they can even use it, but why not charge them a reasonable amount and make money and keep being the one with the network). Another piece of evidence, IMHO, showing other car companies have not really embaced EVs at all.

Phil,
I had not seen that site--I'll check it out. Thanks!
 
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Not sure I agree that other car companies could not quickly catch up. Imagine if BMW or another dealer simply installed free chargers at each of their dealerships. Not complaining mind you -all good for the advancement of the EV world.

Speaking as a construction electrician, I view the tremendous advantage of EVs as the ease with which charging stations can be installed. They are inexpensive and should be installed everywhere. You cannot accomplish that with Hydrogen fuel cell filling stations.
 
Not sure I agree that other car companies could not quickly catch up. Imagine if BMW or another dealer simply installed free chargers at each of their dealerships. Not complaining mind you -all good for the advancement of the EV world.

How many BMW dealers are there in the middle of Kansas or Nebraska?

The dealers are in the middle of the population centers, not where you need DCFC stations to be. And even if all of the dealers agreed to do it and set aside spaces and had suitable food/shopping resources nearby, it'd still be a whole lot of investment to make it happen (though it could potentially take less time to build, since they'd already have sites and have less trouble getting permits.)
Walter
 
Not sure I agree that other car companies could not quickly catch up. Imagine if BMW or another dealer simply installed free chargers at each of their dealerships. Not complaining mind you -all good for the advancement of the EV world.

What charging speed? Even if they get 50kW, you want to wait around 2 hours at a stealership?

BMW doesn't have a car that can accept even that reduced speed.

Agree with @Chickenlittle that Superchargers aren't just a competitive advantage but the key to worldwide acceptance of electric vehicles. If the other automakers don't figure it out "soon" then they are likely to get lapped by TM before they are out of business a la Kodak.
 
Currently 280 superchargers open with 21 in production. Does not include those with permits. I find this amazing it was maybe 18 months ago there were 6. They will break 300 easily this year. I would not be surprised to see this double within next 6 months. The market only appears focused on number of cars produced and not growing infrastructure that will support increased production

The 1,000th live Supercharger station will be realised sometime in 2016.

The current capacity of the second generation Supercharger station is 135kW. This will improve over time. The next generation of Supercharger stations at 150kW?
 
Not sure I agree that other car companies could not quickly catch up. Imagine if BMW or another dealer simply installed free chargers at each of their dealerships. Not complaining mind you -all good for the advancement of the EV world.

Nissan has tried that. It's a reasonable approach for an urban runabout but unworkable for a road trippable car...
 
I think AllanH has a good point. As amazing as Tesla's infrastructure growth is, I don't see why other companies with significantly more resources available couldn't roll out a similar infrastructure for their vehicles. Especially when Tesla gave away its patents for Supercharging. I thought they did this to encourage other manufacturers to help build out the infrastructure so we all benefit.

Didn't BMW and Tesla just announce a partnership for battery and other parts sharing? What prevents BMW from adopting the Tesla protocol and thus enabling their cars to use the existing Tesla infrastructure while they build out more.

Supercharger a could have been a competitive advantage but I don't see Tesla trying to use it in that manner.
 
There was no announcement of any "partnership" between Tesla and BMW. In an interview in Germany Elon mentioned he had spoken to BMW about a few issues, including charging standards. BMW quickly distanced itself from everything Elon said. Some media stories made wildly speculative and inaccurate descriptions of what Elon said. And now some people think their is some sort of "partnership" between the two companies. There is nothing at this point.

The Tesla SC network is a significant competitive advantage at this time. But any of the major car companies could invest $500 million dollars in their own network and catch up to Tesla in a few years. However, they would also have to invest even more in building a quality 200 mile range fast DC charging EV that could compete with Tesla or there would be no point in building their own network for long distance travel. At this point I see no serious effort by any other car company to do that, they are building short range compliance cars. Some of them are talking about a long range EV, but it appears to be either just talk or an actual car is years away or they think they can compete with a plug in hybrid (as BMWs recent announcement shows), which I do not believe will be an winning strategy.
 
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My view has been that Tesla needs about 1 SC per 250 cars to be sold over the next 12 months. So 250*280 = 70,000 is right in line with deliveries targeted for 2015.

So from that perspective 40 SC in China is supportive of only 10,000 annual sales. Tesla needs to double that in very short order.
 
My view has been that Tesla needs about 1 SC per 250 cars to be sold over the next 12 months. So 250*280 = 70,000 is right in line with deliveries targeted for 2015.

So from that perspective 40 SC in China is supportive of only 10,000 annual sales. Tesla needs to double that in very short order.

It's not that simple - there are 280 locations open, but they vary from 2 stalls per location to 12, with the most typical being 6 I believe. (working with supercharger.info data.)

If you're going to be talking about installing DCFC based on number of cars built, it should presumably be in terms of stalls rather than locations - assuming the 6 stall average, it sound like you think we need about one new stall per 40 cars built.

Adding more stalls to a location is certainly as viable as adding new locations, once the network covers the area adequately - and most of the recent expansions have been about coverage rather than utilization rates I believe. Aside from a couple of locations in CA, I haven't read about anyone having issues with waiting at the current locations, so it seems likely that the network can handle a lot more cars than are on it now - for the areas that it covers.
Walter
 
It's locations that matter to prospective buyers. Existing customers will care if there is a sufficient number of stall at a particular location. But if you're just thinking about buying, you'll look at the maps and fantasize about what trips you might take. Location is what sells.
 
Tesla could be charging other car manufacturers $2000+ to allow Supercharging on the network. They could also install a payment system for non-Tesla cars which would not only offset electricity costs, but steer people to buy a Tesla instead.