I80 superchargers

I was looking at the revised "coming soon" and 2015 supercharging maps at the Tesla web site. It seems they would place one in the Quad Cities (Rock Island/Moline/E Moline/Davenport/Bettendorf) area, one in Des Moines, and one in Omaha. The Omaha<->Des Moines link seems reasonable at about 139 miles. But the link between Des Moines and the QC seems a little long for a S60 at 165-175 miles - depending on where they put it.

EV Trip Planner calculates the Moline->Des Moines run at 54 kw and 193 RM. Is this reasonable for someone who is considering a S60 and needs to make this run on occasion?

ecarfan said:

I believe @wws is referring to this page Supercharger | Tesla Motors with the map slider bar set to "Coming Soon". The "revised" simply means the current (and recently updated) version of the map.

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Correct, though the slider needs to move to "2015" to show the work on I-80

An S60 could make that 193 mile trip as indicated by EVtripplanner in good conditions. However winter cold, headwinds, rain, snow would make it difficult to do that trip. An S85 could even find it challenging under severely adverse conditions.

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Thanks!

Looking at plugshare, I see there are public L2 chargers in Iowa City. So from Des Moines to the QC, one could get a boost there as needed. Unfortunately there doesn't seem much east of Des Moines to act as a supplement when going from the QC to DM.

MSEV said:

Perhaps I am foolish, but I would prefer Tesla complete I90 and I70 before doing I80. I can get to I90 and I70 from Omaha and it would be nice to get to Yellowstone (one, at least, is needed in Gilette, WY, or so) to get acrossed the West on 90, and a few are needed through Nevade to get back on 70.

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Well the Omaha<->QC and QC<->Chicago runs are of great interest to me. Between the QC and Chicago seems like it would be easy, given the supercharger in Aurora. (OK Aurora isn't on I-80, but that is ok in my case.) But between the QC and Omaha, assuming a supercharger in Des Moines, it is sounding like an S60 is marginal for the Des Moines<->QC segment..

MSEV said:

wws,
No doubt, we all would like all of them to be up so we could cover most of the US without having to plan too much, cover most all of the trips we would like...

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Agreed. Just musing over some possibilities as to how feasible an S60 would be in that area next year. For the Des Moines<->QC segment, I think that Tesla might eventually (2016?) want a supercharger in Iowa City. In the meantime, if I dial EV Trip Planner Speed Multiplier to 0.90 (so 63 mph instead of 70 mph?) it seems like it would suffice.

MSEV said:

If I read the Tesla SupC site correctly, I will have one SupC in Des Moines and that is it, with all the rest surrounding the state. (Maybe a second on the IA side of the Quad Cities.) Getting one between Omaha and KC is great for me and is on the proposed map for 2015. What is that distance between Des Moines and QC?

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Distance between Des Moines and the QC is about 165-175 miles - depending on exact location. As I mentioned upthread, this seems a bit long for a 60kw car - especially in the winter. But I guess do-able if one lowers the speed a bit.

The 2015 map shows the red dot exactly on the border, so one can not make out which side of the river their thought is. (Remember the Mississippi runs east->west at that point. So even though at first the dot might look like it is on the Iowa side of the river, it really isn't.) Having grown up in the area, I would think Northpark Mall in Davenport might be a good location as it is very near I-80. Time will tell.