Tesla Supercharger network

[W.Petefish]

I just was thinking on this. If you take locations of Test Drives into account, there are already superchargers installed and the drive locals would correspond to the supercharger locations. As seen at Fremont, they need to use the superchargers to charge the cars after a bunch of drives. (How else could they manage +5K drives w/ 12 stops at 3 days each?)

[TEG]

Unless they brought some kind of portable Supercharger.
Nissan did that with a big diesel generator on a truck connected to a CHAdeMO charger.

[rolosrevenge]

It should be worth mentioning, that they will have a plug adapter for the J1772 DC charger and that the Tesla solution supports the communication protocol. I've also read that several independent companies that are installing 50KW quick chargers are doing so with both CHAdeMO and J1772 plugs because the different plugs and protocols add very little overall cost compared with the rest of the system. If that's the case, there could be some nice 50KW chargers out there which won't be bad at all for quick charging.

[vfx]

Heard Supercharger comes late summer. E source.

[AnOutsider]

Heard Supercharger comes late summer. E source.

Actual chargers or announcement?

[ChadS]

Heard Supercharger comes late summer. E source.

Supercharger singular? I had hoped they would install more than one.

[smoothoperator]

From what I heard, Solar City will be involved somehow with these Superchargers

[agileone]

More comments from June 15th blog entry at EVTV - Jack Rickard :

In our last episode we talked about what it might take to put a fast charge station every 40 miles on all 47,300 miles of U.S. interstate and came up with a figure of $59 million at $50K per station. I found this an epiphany for me personally.

Now here is Musk, smugly alluding to the Supercharge Network he doesn't want to talk about, but is dying to talk about because he is so excited he's almost jumping up and down.

One of Musks other companies is Solar City. They basically have broken the mold on solar installations by financing the installation and tacking it onto your home mortgage. Your mortgage payment goes up, your utility payment goes down, and you put nothing into it at all. Really ever. The next buyer then pays off the mortgage at the sale.

This little financial innovation has caused Solar City to grow about as fast as they can hire people and buy trucks. They will be doing an IPO I'm told later this summer if the markets are favorable. I really thought Feed In Tarriffs were the way to go to get the solar thing off the ground. Solar City kind of made up their own and are doing well anyway.

Legacy legislation continues to confound and amaze new technologies. In California, it is actually illegal to sell electricity. This is part of the monopoly afforded the utility companies. So you can't take your electricity, mark it up, and sell it to your neighbor. This all kind of made sense in 1918. But doing charge stations for profit becomes a little problematical. The charge station manufacturers have invoked a theory that you are simply charging for access to the station - not the electric grid. That's a little bit thin if not outright dubious. I can see a battle in the future that could be really ugly.

But if you make your OWN electricity and sell it from your own grid, I'm not sure how that all reads. If you made electricity from solar, and stored it in batteries, and sold that to cars, I guess I'm not seeing a problem here. Who can object to what?

California has 8600 miles of "primary" highway out of their 16,800 miles of roads. If you put one every 100 miles, and sprinkled a handful in San Francisco, San Jose, Los Angeles, and San Diego, you could probably come up with about 100 charge stations. They would be a little more expensive with solar and batteries. But at a half a million apiece, that would be $50 million and at $1 million apiece that would be $100 million. And that's not necessarily money down a hole like free public charging stations. Let's say it was $20 to "fillup." I'd pay it. Say the average fillup was 60kWh. In California that's about $18 worth of electricity anyway from the grid. So paying a flat fee of $20 isn't' even an inconvenience.

Good work if you can get it. You're selling sunshine for 30 cents a kilowatt-hour. If 20,000 cars fill up twice a week, we are looking at $38.5 million a year income from an initial investment of $100 million. Each station has to charge 57 cars per day at that 60 kWh. That's 3420 kWh from 4.5 hours of sunshine or a 760 kW array. That's pretty big frankly. I don't know you can do that with batteries for $1 million. But with 38.5 million per year and a more realistic 10 year cap rate, we probably can for $3.85 million per station.

This can scale anywhere you want it to. If Musk just did it in California, and with Solar City's ability to purchase large amounts of solar panels, their costs have to be down around 85 cents per kWh, would this business model catch on nationally? I wouldn't' actually mind some of that action.

This ignores COMPLETELY that gasoline stations don't make squat on gasoline at all. ALL their income comes from Twinkies and cokes. We ARE talking about people charging for an hour. What do you have for them to do? Drink coffee and soda. Go to the rest room. Eat. Get online.

Suddenly, the necessary infrastructure looks like a business opportunity instead of a charity event or a place for our government to spend more money.

The end of the blog is even better, go read it here ...

[smorgasbord]

One of Musks other companies is Solar City. They basically have broken the mold on solar installations by financing the installation and tacking it onto your home mortgage.

I don't believe this is true. Solar City leases you the system for 20 years. Solar City keeps the rebates and gets to depreciate the system because it's a business capital expense for them. That's why the lease payment can be less than your electric bill. They don't "tack" onto your mortgage, they don't give you a second mortgage. Solar City was one of the pioneers, but all solar companies do leases these days.

...you could probably come up with about 100 charge stations. They would be a little more expensive with solar and batteries. But at a half a million apiece,

Huh? Nissan has a $10K Chademo station. Could be added to many businesses along the highways for a less than 20% of half a million bucks I would think. The bigger issue is the demand charge from the utility, which might be $1500 or so per month.

Each station has to charge 57 cars per day at that 60 kWh.

With 24 hours in a day and minimum 30 minutes per quick charge (for only 1/2 a fillup), you'd top out at 48 charges in a day.

[mklcolvin]

That sounds like: I5 in the West, I95 in the East, I80 in the North, and I10 in the South (hopefully). If you take away I10, then it looks like an H from the interstate map in this forum...