Supercharging experiences in Norcal this weekend. Is Tesla ready for primetime?

[m6bigdog]

Which future?

The future where we've burned up a strategic resource up our tail pipes so that our children and their children lack petrochemicals to procduce reasonably priced pharmaceuticals? Or the future where we've polluted the atmosphere so much that our children and their children suffer more disease and have to deal with runaway greenhouse gas effects?

And when our grandchildren ask us, "Granddad why didn't you do something to stop this?" our answer is going to be well it took too long to recharge an electric vehicle or we didn't know how to design the electic grid ? Come on, with renewables, battery storage and off-peak charging is that really going to be our answer?

Larry

+1,
I have my PV solar, Tesla, and electricity has never been so abundant and inexpensive.

Just incase you are a doubter that the solution is just around the corner!!

Where-there-is-a-will-there-is-a-way!!

Flow Cell technology
http://www.nanoflowcell.com/technology/

 

[Rocky_H]

+1,
I have my PV solar, Tesla, and electricity has never been so abundant and inexpensive.

Just incase you are a doubter that the solution is just around the corner!!

Where-there-is-a-will-there-is-a-way!!

Flow Cell technology
http://www.nanoflowcell.com/technology/

You were doing so well, and then you brought up that flow cell boondoggle, which goes right back to the filling station paradigm, which is a huge infrastructure build and where people can’t refuel at home overnight, one of the biggest advantages of electric vehicles.

 

[gnelson]

The availability of Superchargers on the West Coast isn't a big issue because there are a significant number of DC fast chargers available. They will become more prevalent nationwide. Electric vehicles regardless of brand will become more attractive as more Superchargers and fast DC chargers become available.

 

[Saghost]

The potential congestion at SCs as the Model 3 comes along is something I have been concerned about. Tesla is talking about production being more than 10X current levels by 2020 which means there will be millions of Teslas on the road by the early 2020s. Ultimately this is a logistical problem rather than something more difficult like battling with the laws of Physics, but it is a problem.

<snip>

I think reservations at SCs is not going to work very well because people can be delayed. Some have brought up making data about congestion available. Reading this thread I thought another good idea would be to offer a real time congestion number including the number of cars charging and waiting to charge. When SCs get common enough they are 25-50 miles apart (which will happen eventually), it will be easy to decide based on congestion which SC to use. If the closest one is backed up and you have the charge left to make the next one down the road which has nobody waiting, you can pass up the congested one and use the next one. This would go a long way towards balancing out the load on SCs, but it can only be done when there are enough cars on the road to justify having SCs that close together all over the place. It will likely happen first in CA, but it will eventually happen everywhere.

Done right, reservations aren't really for you - they're for everyone else. There certainly can be delays, but *most* of those are predictable with the combination of real time traffic and local history.

The congestion map you really need isn't a real time one, or a historical one - you need a future congestion map: what will the supercharger occupancy be when you could get there?

This is why I believe the future Tesla will make reservations on their server when you route a trip on navigation through SpC locations. The actual stalls would still be first come first serve when you got there - but the "reservations" add to the overall loading picture.

When the next car goes to plan a trip through SpCs, it'll pull the combination of assembled reservations and historical trends for the available locations and suggest the sites with the least wait time/predicted loading. Then it adds its own reservations, affecting the decisions of the next car.

All the cars can recalculate in real time if the initial assumptions prove incorrect somewhere along the line, though they'd need some way of damping the feedback loops you might get into that way (iterate the cars in a specific order? restrict each car to one calculation every 5 minutes? lots of options.)

With a little intelligent routing help like this, and an ever expanding network, I really don't think the Model 3 will be a problem for the network to handle.
Walter

 

[apacheguy]

Just adding my data point. San Mateo SpC was full when I stopped by this AM. Tried destination charging using a chargepoint but it was out of service. Then I tried using a Blink station just down the street but the lot was closed so no go either. Next closest public charging point was over 0.5 miles away - too far at the time.

So the Bay Area is "crawling" with charging points? I think not. You guys in Nor Cal need to improve your game.