Tesla's First 6 Superchargers Open to Public Today

[ck2]

I'm really looking forward to buying my first electric car secondhand in a decade.

Should be lots of hobbyists rebuilding their own battery packs - pick up a dead car with no range left and make it like new.

Many thanks to early adopters!

[sliverstorm]

Should be lots of hobbyists rebuilding their own battery packs - pick up a dead car with no range left and make it like new.

Except, aren't the battery packs a very significant portion of the value of the car? I don't see how you will be able to replace them cheaply enough to come out on top, unless you use inferior battery technology and settle for two-digit range.

[ovi256]

In that case, hope that a charger standard would emerge fast. It would be useless to buy a car that uses an obsolete charger system, that you can't charge at whatever the future standard would be. Still, maybe there will be adapters to charge cars from a different charger standard.

Tesla open-sourced their connector design and specification. Let's hope it's good enough to be reused by other manufacturers so we won't have a connector/charger war.

[w1ntermute]

Yep, this is exactly what I'm planning to do. The early adopters will dump their cars to upgrade a lot sooner than they really need to, and it'll be easy to grab one for a really low price at that time.

[ben1040]

I love the design of the stations, and how it calls back to that '50s and '60s gas station design that celebrated the promise of the future. Seems really appropriate.

[rheide]

Hm, waiting 30 minutes for half a charge. This doesn't scale at all. If there's a queue of only one car you'll be there for an hour.

[MikeCapone]

Indeed, but I'm pretty sure that they're aware of the problem and will scale these up so that queues are very rare.

Besides, most people probably won't need a 150 miles charge most of the time. If you're going back home and need just an extra 30 miles to be safe, that won't take long.

[klinquist]

People don't think about the fact that you'll start off every morning with a "full tank." The 80kW ModelS has a range of 250 miles, what % of your trips are more than that?

[cryptoz]

I'm sure it will scale with the number of cars on the road. Right now, there are very, very few Teslas driving around and I bet nobody will encounter such a wait (or if they do, it will be rare). As the build more cars, they will presumably build more stations as well as expanding the existing ones.

[crazcarl]

This assumes that the person inside the diner/cafe is nice enough to come out and move their car at exactly 30 min. If he is getting food, he could end up just leaving the car in the charging spot for an extra 15-30 minutes while he finishes up.

[mbell]

What a confusing name. Did they really need to reuse a term that is already very well defined in the automotive world?

[error54]

I fully agree. From the title I had assumed that Tesla had added a new model with a supercharger option.

[lelf]

http://www.teslamotors.com/supercharger

[revelation]

This is a terrible blogspam site citing yet another blogspam site. The new information in here is "open today".

I would like to actually see pictures of these stations, or mind you, a video! Not the old rendering.

[ujeezy]

The images embedded in that article aren't zoomable right now. Until they are, here are direct links to the fullsize images:

Current supercharger locations: http://media.treehugger.com/assets/images/2012/10/Tesla-supe...

Supercharger mockup: http://media.treehugger.com/assets/images/2012/09/Tesla-Supe...

Long-term plan: http://media.treehugger.com/assets/images/2012/09/Tesla-Supe...

Supercharger close-ups: http://media.treehugger.com/assets/images/2012/09/Tesla-Supe...

Charging dashboard: http://media.treehugger.com/assets/images/2012/09/Tesla-Supe...

[andrewcooke]

thanks. is the radius the full range or half the range? i mean - if you want to drive to tahoe, can you get back again? i guess the idea is that you have a charger at your cabin by the lake (or maybe they are villas, i am a little out of my social class here) so you can charge up before you come home?

[protomyth]

I do wonder how many of these will be put up before a state imposes an electric tax equivalent to the gas tax. That is going to be some fun math with politicians.

[daimyoyo]

30 minutes for a half charge, or less than 5 for a full tank(with 4X the range)? The time is going to need to be cut drastically(though I'm not sure how without violating the laws of physics) before this business model will be able to gain any significant traction.

[sejje]

Even their future expansion plans won't allow for cross-country trips.

[w1ntermute]

Why not? Musk specifically stated during the revelation of the Superchargers that it would be possible to travel from LA to NY in a Tesla car for free in 2 years.

[brianbreslin]

I'd bet a super small subset of their customers will ever take a 4 day drive. They will fly, it would be cheaper.

[danielweber]

It's not appropriate for people who want to do cross-country trips, just like a pickup truck isn't appropriate for a single college student with nothing to haul.

[reustle]

I know they are still a very expensive part of the car, but I look forward to when you can pull up and simply swap out an empty battery for a full one (easily automated).

[turbahn]

Better Place (http://www.betterplace.com/) does this with their electric cars. They set up around ~10 "swapping stations" around Israel, and additionally installed charging stations in most malls.

[sixothree]

Does anyone have any real pictures of these stations?

[missing_cipher]

Here's one: http://green.autoblog.com/2012/09/24/tesla-supercharger-netw...

[ainsleyb]

I'm super surprised that the plans for 2013 don't include a charging station in the Bay Area, seeing as they're headquartered here.

[WatchDog]

So telsa vehicles can drive on water now. Neat.