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Crowd Funding an HPWC in Sheridan, WY — Casper and Gillette to Possibly Follow
- Thread starter Cottonwood
- Start date
Thanks for the update! This looks like a great outcome: 80 Amp HPWC's at a hotel in Sheridan are a great start. Hampton Inn in Sheridan, WY
The same owner has a hotel in Gillette. Wingate by Wyndham Gillette, WY. If Tesla paid for Destination Charging there as well, then it would allow for great HPWC bridging between Billings and Rapid City, as well as HPWC bridging between Billings and Lusk. Without Sheridan or Gillette Superhargers, one could do a top up at Gillette or Sheridan and an overnight at the other to bridge the gap pretty easily. When the Sheridan Supercharger is complete, an HPWC top up in Gillette will be perfect. going either way.
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bonnie
I play a nice person on twitter.
I'm pretty sure they're reading this thread now
, but I'll pass this info on just in case. Thanks for getting the conversation started. If you pm me your email, I'll make sure they know how to contact you.I'm not questioning the usefulness of superchargers at those locations. My only point was that when it was important to complete all the dots along a meandering route chosen solely for its sentimental value to Musk, Tesla had no problems installing Superchargers in remote locations. This is something of a recurring issue I think Tesla has, in that the new features/software improvements seem to place an undue emphasis on useless or at least things of marginal practical value that Musk wants in his car, often just to satisfy some inner James Bond fantasy. (The car meeting you at the curb? Really?) When the car was first released, Tesla made a big deal about being able to call out the name of a song and have the car look it up on the Internet and play it. Pure gadgetry. I can't imagine driving on my 75 mile per day commute to work, thinking of, and reciting songs every five minutes. And while concentrating on this silliness, they released the Model S without any way to play your own music collection in your own 100k car. That was a pretty big oversight, and when Tesla did rewrite the software for the USB ports to add this feature they only paid it passing attention which resulted in an interface that was characterized (accurately I'd say) in a Teslarati review as being "functionally useless." It took years just to get a shuffle function thrown in there.
Anyway, that venting aside, I'm glad there will be an HPWC in Sheridan soon since I may be driving through in June.
No, because there are no large concentrations of Teslas in the area or anywhere within hundreds of miles, and from a business perspective you should first be serving the largest # of customers at the lowest cost per customer. If anyone was looking for a section of I-90 to complete at an early date, that between Cleveland and Boston serves far more customers than that between Minneapolis/Albert Lea and Rapid City. It's a simple question of value per dollar; get the low hanging fruit first, then gradually pick the rest. See my reply to KurtR below.
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We agree that Tesla (or probably more accurately, Elon) has a tendency to focus on minimally useful gadgets that virtually no one but he wants; the Falcon Wing Doors for the Model X are undoubtedly the most expensive and potentially most costly (to the company) of these. Self-parking cars that come to pick you up at least has some utility, and will become increasingly common as cars develop more autonomy. I think that capability, combined with wireless charging, will be essential as autonomous taxi and ride-share cars replace taxis, as well as for urban owners living in multi-family housing with no way to charge at home. Centrally-located parking/charging facilities strike me as far cheaper than trying to wire EVSEs at every apartment building and on street space.
As for Elon's route, I do have a problem with it, as it diverted SC construction resources from areas with much greater numbers and densities of Teslas to parts of the U.S. among the lowest for both population and population density, with some of the coldest winter temps.
Just to be clear, it's my belief that there was no business case for an early completion of ANY transcontinental route, although I recognize one might be justified by the PR value. However, if you're going to do a route for that reason, you should at least make it a reasonably efficient transcontinental route that serves a large population of both people and Teslas, and that means you start with either I-80 or I-70.
I contend that it was far more important for Tesla to put superchargers along routes radiating out from large concentrations of Teslas to frequent day or weekend destinations, out to a radius of say 350 miles or so, before worrying about transcontinental driving which very few people ever do, and even fewer _need_ to do other than moving. Connecting the S.F. Bay Area up with frequent weekend destinations such as Lake Tahoe, or L.A. - Vegas, was going to serve far more Tesla owners far more frequently than building them along I-90 through rural South Dakota. Joining up city pairs such as Kansas City with St. Louis, a distance of 250 miles, should have had a much higher priority as well, and yet people are still waiting for that.
Having done the above, connecting up transcontinental routes would only require a few more SCs to fill in the gaps between the urban conurbations and their spokes. An example is the recent opening of Effingham, IL, between St. Louis and Indianapolis, even if St. Louis and its spokes remain unfinished (and long overdue).
Tesla is finally getting around to filling in the more traveled routes more than a year after completing Elon's nostalgia trip, but even there gaps remain on such critical routes as I-85 between Atlanta and Charlotte (not solely Tesla's fault), the aforementioned I-70 (Columbia or Kingdom City, MO, plus St. Charles), Syracuse, Buffalo and Erie, I-10 between Lake City, New Orleans and Houston, etc. The philosophy behind SC deployment timing continues to amaze me, especially when I see crews working through the depths of a northern winter while southern routes go uncompleted. And does anyone believe that it should be an equal priority (in 2016 per Tesla's maps) to complete I-94 through North Dakota with a _state_ population under 750k (i.e. less than that of say San Jose, Ca. let alone its metro area), as it is to provide access to National Parks in Montana and Wyoming that see millions of visitors a year? I'm not suggesting that Tesla shouldn't put SCs along I-94 eventually, but it should be at the very end of the line as far as primary interstates go and well behind major U.S. or state highways, unless Tesla has traffic studies that can justify moving it up. Much the same considerations applied to I-90, although they've gone so far with that they might as well finish it.
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I actually think that the promotional value of having a coast-to-coast trip would make more sense at start-up than the weekend destination plan. The coast-to-coast route immediately shows potential buyers that the car will be able to go anywhere as soon as the network is built, plus destination charging for weekends is not what the Supercharger network is primarily for. I agree completely that, having decided to do a coast-to-coast route, picking one that added many hundreds of miles to the journey was silly. They could have just done I-80.
As far as national parks, I think that the HPWC program might be more useful in many cases. I'd love to see several at Paradise Lodge up on the south side of Rainier, for example. You park, spend a few hours hiking, and are ready to go again. Jackson Lake Lodge in the Tetons, a few in the parking lot by Old Faithful Inn, etc. I also was looking at the drive along the Icefields Parkway in Canada between Banff and Jasper and figured that there's a perfect spot by a motel that could bridge the 275 mile or so drive between hotel chargers at Valemount and Banff.
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Disagree on that one. It was either (1) I-90 or (2) I-84 to Ogden then I-80 through Wyoming, Nebraska, and Iowa. Tesla has too many purchasers in Portland and Seattle to strand them from the rest of the country for years. (Driving straight south to San Fransisco, up through Nevada, down through Colorado, etc. isn't a practical option). Had Tesla gone the I-80 route for the first cross-country route, then it would have made I-84 a simple add-on, but once they did the meandering Musk path, I-90 made more sense.
I'm pretty sure they're reading this thread now
Bonnie, thanks for helping in all of this.
I had a gut feel that HPWC's in Sheridan and Gillette would help until Tesla gets the Superchargers in place, and also knew that these would be good for long distance travelers on a long term basis after the Superchargers are built. On a multi-day trip, it is nice to do an overnight charge where you sleep with no extra charging errands involved.
It is also interesting that while the trip from Denver to the Northwest is quicker through Casper, it is not that much extra to go through Gillette. Casper is needed long term, but the Lusk, Gillette, Sheridan route will do for a while. Of course, an HPWC at a hotel in Casper would be icing on the cake!
I decided to calculate how much extra time it would take to drive the Billings to Rapid City route with Superchargers in Sheridan and Gillette, and the Billings to Lusk route with the same conditions. I calculated both directions, with both single and dual chargers, driving straight through, doing a top up at the first site and overnight at the second, and an overnight charge at the first HPWC and a top up at the second. I required a minimum buffer from EVTripPlanner calcs of 15% or 35 miles, whichever was greater, and assumed 208 Volts at the HPWCs. I also made the simple assumption that Supercharge times were 30 minutes normally, and 1 hour to get to charge to 98% before a long run (250 RM).
Here is a table of the extra time needed over using Superchargers.
For straight through driving, it's 3-4 hours extra for dual chargers and 6-8 hours extra for a single charger Tesla. What I found amazing is that if you can arrange your schedule to do an overnight, 100% charge at the first stop and then a top up at the second, then the extra time is only 20-40 minutes for dual chargers and 1 to 2 hours for single charger cars.
You can see all the gory detail of these calcs at Billings to Rapid CIty - Google Sheets, but let's go through one case as an example.
Take Billings to Rapid City with an overnight stop in Sheridan and a top up in Gillette (1st Over/2nd Top):
- Leaving Rapid city there is no extra time needed at the Supercharger to make it to Sheridan; it's an overnight there.
- In Sheridan, the charge time is free because it happens while we eat and sleep; the beauty of overnight, "destination" charging.
- In Gillette, we only need a top up becase we had an overnight, 100% charge in Sheridan. The charge in Gillette only takes 1:07 with dual chargers to add the extra 56 rated miles to make it to Rapid City with 35 to spare. Because it would have taken 30 minutes with a Supercharger, that is only 37 minutes of extra time in the trip!
Obviously, Superchargers always win in time and flexibility, but it is amazing how little extra time is needed if you can plan overnights in the correct locations and optimize well.
Going through this exercise proved to me how much Tesla and owners should be out there, encouraging the installation of "Destination Charging" to supplement Supercharging, especially in problematic Supercharger gaps like this one, Greenville, SC, and Columbia, MO.
I've lost a couple of longer replies to this, so third time's hopefully the charm.
As for the PNW, I've never suggested stranding them, and I-84 to SLC was the obvious choice whether I-80 or I-70 was the initial X-C route. I-90 as far east as Bozeman (I would have opted for Belgrade instead) could be justified at a fairly early date to allow trips from the PNW to Glacier/Yellowstone/Tetons, but not, I think, east of there. It's over 1,000 miles from the next fair-sized collection of Teslas in the Twin Cities area to Old Faithful, and Seattle is more than 200 miles closer. Even that's too far for a weekend destination, but is likely to generate more week-long vacation trips due to both by proximity and # of Teslas.
I've said that I understand the PR value of an early X-C route, but no one in their right mind would chose that one:smile: As to SCs, I'm not recommending them as weekend destination chargers, I'm saying they're needed enroute to destinations.
I could go either way on I-80 or I-70. I-80 has the best connections to the west coast (I-15 to SoCal, I-80 to Nor Cal, and I-84 and/or 82/90 to the PNW) at SLC, but I-70 transits larger urban areas west of the Mississippi (STL/KCM/DEN) and had and most likely will always have a larger existing Tesla population. Plus, I-70 has lots of vacation/weekend destinations along/near it in Colorado and Utah, and is the shortest way (west of Denver) to connect the 1st, 3rd and 2nd largest metro areas in the U.S. (NYC/CGO/LA) plus connects So Cal to Vegas via I-15. Take your pick. As to national parks, putting HPWCs/J1772s/14-50s in the more developed locations of national parks is the way to go, but for those people who, like me, tend to park our cars at trailheads/campgrounds lacking any electricity and then go recreate for hours or days, L2 doesn't make it, which is why SCs are needed in gateway towns (I'm assuming that the NPS wouldn't be in any hurry to allow installing SCs inside the parks, even if the electrical infrastructure would support them. At least in California, for the past few decades they've been trying to limit or if possible remove development, not add to it).
As for the PNW, I've never suggested stranding them, and I-84 to SLC was the obvious choice whether I-80 or I-70 was the initial X-C route. I-90 as far east as Bozeman (I would have opted for Belgrade instead) could be justified at a fairly early date to allow trips from the PNW to Glacier/Yellowstone/Tetons, but not, I think, east of there. It's over 1,000 miles from the next fair-sized collection of Teslas in the Twin Cities area to Old Faithful, and Seattle is more than 200 miles closer. Even that's too far for a weekend destination, but is likely to generate more week-long vacation trips due to both by proximity and # of Teslas.
Edgewood Dome
Member
Just heard that Tesla supplied 2 HPWC to the Hampton Inn in Sheridan, WY and they are being installed TODAY! Score another one for the Destination Charging team @ Tesla, thank you.
Do you know if Tesla also supplied a Clipper Creek or some other J1772 charger? The last few Destination Charging sites I've seen included a level 2 charger, and I'm wondering if that's still Tesla's SOP.
I do not know if a pair of HPWC's and a Clipper Creek J1772 is SOP for the Destination Charging program these days, but it often happens. I am pretty sure that is the set of equipment, that is going into Sheridan now.
I heard of at least one location where they had one HPWC at 80 Amps, one HPWC at 40 Amps, and a 40 Amp J1772. That seems to be an efficient install using up all the capacity of a 200 Amp sub-panel with the 80%/125% rule (160 Amps continuous from a 200 Amp main breaker).
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ferdboyce
Member
That's terrific news for our cross-country plan . . . BTW can anyone say how/if a reservation may be made? That is, if I reserve a room at the hotel, can they confirm/hold a space at a 40A so I can range charge overnight? I don't know if one follows the other . . .
Call the hotel and ask, but with three choices in Sheridan, I doubt that you will be blocked.
Have a great trip!
Many of us, myself included, have groused about the initial transcontinental connection but viewed from a Twin Cities perspective it definitely has a rational basis: Colorado <=> Twin Cities <=> Chicagoland. Moreso than the mileage-efficient Nebraska crossing. After using it a half dozen times I've become a fan and supporter.
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DrGuest
Member
I just got this text at 9:19 am 4-19-15 , from a Kalispel, MT couple goingThru Bozeman=> Billings to Rapid City SC to PA.
" The Hampton Inns In Sheridan and Gillette do not know anything about an EV charger as of today. So we will go with our Plan A and charge at the Buffalo, Wy rodeo/fairgrounds there and then at the Tower Communications company in Gillette."
" The Hampton Inns In Sheridan and Gillette do not know anything about an EV charger as of today. So we will go with our Plan A and charge at the Buffalo, Wy rodeo/fairgrounds there and then at the Tower Communications company in Gillette."
This is no surprise. When dealing with a hotel/motel chain, the (mostly low paid) employees only know that they need to show up when there shift starts and how to perform certain functions. They have no interest in anything else.
The "Destination Charging" at Hampton Inn in Sheridan, WY is being installed now. I have no info that it is complete yet. The chargers in Gillette and Casper are still in the discussion stage. I will post here when I have any updates.
Great News: There is a strong rumor floating around that Tesla is close on selecting a Sheridan Supercharger Site. Even when the Sheridan Supercharger Site is open, Hampton Inn in Sheridan, WY will still be a nice, charge-while-you-sleep, overnight stop for the multi-day EV traveler.
Bighorn
Top Supercharger
The HPWC is installed at the Hampton Inn. They await breakers so juice isn't yet flowing, but they spent two full days trenching and installing. Supercharger team has found a site, but the permit is in process.
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