dgpcolorado said:
GRA said:
dgpcolorado said:
Why waste them in Durango, Cortez, Ridgway, Montrose, Estes Park, etc., when all those places are with easy Tesla range of existing Superchargers? It doesn't make any sense to me to try to blanket the country with them — presumably at great expense — when a more limited, cost-effective, and rational network will suffice for the goal of long distance travel?
Again, they're not being wasted, they are gateways to remote and/or cold, mountainous areas that are not within "easy Tesla range of existing Superchargers." Remember that in many cases you're talking about
round-trip range, not one way. Ideally, lots of ski resorts will come to the conclusion that they need to provide L2 charging and that make things a lot easier, but the numbers remains small right now. And many national parks are even more difficult to provide destination charging at, for both physical and ideological reasons. At the moment, many Tesla owners visiting natural attractions are forced to waste time in RV parks, which many of them would never desire to visit if they didn't have to, and which certainly isn't convenient or a good use of their time.
This is simply not true (and I live there/here)! There are destination charge stations at Telluride, for example. There is a public L2 at Montrose, which could be used for a bit of extra charge, if needed, to get to Grand Junction. Yes, I am assuming that the Tesla driver would be charging at the destination, even L1 at a motel would likely work but L2 stations are becoming common at such places, at least around here.
Yes, at Telluride. Now, we need to get them at all the other downhill resorts, which at least have power available. At the moment, the typical Model S owner may well be the type who always stays in motels/hotels rather than camping out, but the Model X demographic is likely to be different, and the Model 3 demographic even more so. Do you think we're going to see L1/L2 EVSEs at locations like Natural Bridges, which is off-grid and gets its power from a PV array? Or most backcountry trailheads, which lack any power at all? Or most campgrounds in National Parks? Believe me, I surveyed many of the likely or needed locations for L1 or L2 charging along Highway 120 to/through Yosemite back in 2012, and most of them either don't have electricity at all or have very limited capacity. Sitting at an L1 or L2 for hours enroute is not an option (unless you'd be there overnight in any case).
How long will you need to charge at that L2 (just one, or more than one?) in Montrose to get to Grand Junction? And what if you want to drive to Poncha Springs, or just up to Crested Butte? Moab is a great location for an SC, at the gateway to Arches and close enough to Canyonlands to make the round trip. But if you want to go from Moab to Mesa Verde, you're going to want another SC in Cortez (114 miles), because being forced to detour to Blanding (42 miles roundtrip from Monticello) is a huge waste of time unless you're going to Natural Bridges. And from Natural Bridges, maybe you instead want to go to Capitol Reef, Bryce or Zion (BTDT) instead of Mesa Verde. You'll need an SC in Hanksville for that.
The purpose of the SCs is to eliminate as much extra inconvenience as possible, to make driving a BEV on a trip as close to the convenience and flexibility of an ICE as you can. The fact is that even a Tesla 85 is a very poor choice for a road trip car beyond about 500 miles, because you have to waste so much time charging (the 60 even less, about 350-400 miles). Even if Tesla were to install enough SCs to provide one spaced no more than every 30 miles along interstates as is the case with gas stations, until they increase the range at the freeway speed limit (at least) in average conditions to at least 4 hours with a reserve, Teslas (and any other BEV with the same well under 4 hour range) will be very time inefficient on longer road trips.
dgpcolorado said:
GRA said:
dgpcolorado said:
Why put a Supercharger in Santa Fe or Taos when they are already planned for Albuquerque, Las Vegas (NM), Trinidad (CO)?
Because a majority of the traffic to Taos or Santa Fe will be coming up from Albuquerque, especially in winter, it's a mountainous area which see lots of winter ski traffic and which will be difficult to reach from Albuquerque in a loaded 60 in winter conditions, and the tourist demographic matches Tesla quite well. See EV trip planner for details, and be sure to adjust the ext. temp for winter, boost the weight, and look at the weather variations page to see the effect of even a 5 mph headwind (and make whatever allowance you feel necessary for the drag of skis carried externally). As an alternative to Santa Fe (not my first choice) or Taos, you could put one in Espanola, covering U.S. 84 as well.
Sorry, I don't buy it. I routinely make
much more difficult winter trips in my (very) short range LEAF. 130 miles with only 1700 feet of net elevation gain and passing through Santa Fe (with numerous L2 charge stations if a bit of extra charge is needed) with a 200+ mile range car? I realize that you don't drive an EV and hear all the horror stories here. But that trip is downright
easy. Even in winter.
You do, but you're hardly the typical consumer, are you? You chose to live off-grid in a rural area, and frequently drive your LEAF in winter without heat, correct? In short, you match the somewhat counter-culture demographic of my off-grid customers back when I was selling AE systems, but neither of us represents the mainstream, and Tesla is trying to sell their cars
to the mainstream, as a 'no compromises' BEV. What you, I or any other early adopter/hypermiler/member of the lunatic fringe
is capable of with one of these cars is irrelevant; the SC network has to make it possible to drive them just like any other car. For a lot of debate/discussion at TMC about SC spacing, SC philosophy etc. see: http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/showthread.php/12278-What-s-the-Ideal-Distance-Between-Superchargers" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
and http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/showthread.php/19400-Supercharger-Spacing" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
for starters. Unlike either of us, these people are Tesla owners.
dgpcolorado said:
GRA said:
dgpcolorado said:
Many of the places you suggest seem redundant to the basic goal of interstate travel.
The goal isn't interstate travel, it's to get from where people are to where they want to go as conveniently as possible, which often involves a mix of interstate and non-interstate travel. If people never got off the interstates, putting SCs just along them would be fine, but most people traveling along them for recreation (business is a different matter) to natural destinations are going to travel well off the interstates; for man-made destinations like amusement parks they can stay on the four-lane. Who, with a Tesla income, is going to drive for business for more than a few hours, when their time is so valuable? They'll fly instead; they can afford it, and it makes no sense not to.
Wait a minute! So current Tesla owners are rich and always fly for distances more than, say, 400 miles
so all future Tesla owners will be rich and always fly everywhere? I thought the goal was to make Teslas "affordable" and make inter-state (long distance) travel possible in a BEV.
1. For all practical purposes, yes for business. 2. You don't have to be rich to know that beyond a certain distance, and with limited vacation time as most people have, it's usually cheaper and almost always faster to fly than drive. When my distinctly lower middle-class friend decided to take his wife and daughter to Disney World from the Bay Area, he didn't decide to spend 3 plus days driving each way out of his 9 days off, they flew and rented a car in Orlando. ISTR that you've said you were retired or semi-retired, and if so, time constraints are less of an issue for you than they would be for most.
dgpcolorado said:
For me, someone of modest means by the way, the thing that caught my attention when the Supercharger network was announced was that it was a paradigm shift in BEV utility. At long last someone with a BEV could do inter-state travel, even across the country, as opposed to the local/regional travel of BEVs without the Supercharger network. That's why the plethora of 200 mile BEVs being announced of late don't much interest me: they still can't get anywhere beyond a few hundred miles (leading to snide comments from ICE aficionados about how they can drive five hundred miles in their monstrous pick-up trucks, fill up in five minutes and keep going).
Using Superchargers so as to get everywhere without ever using L2 (save at home) seems like overkill to me. Someday in the future? Sure.
Not what I'm suggesting. Ideally, you have L1 or L2 at destinations, but that's going to take years if not decades. Someday in the future? Sure.
dgpcolorado said:
But now, just enabling very long distance travel seems like an admirable goal to me. I guess we just plain disagree as to the intended purpose of the Supercharger network. I do agree that gateway towns/cities to National Parks need L2 destination type charging. Some already have it but more would help.
We disagree about the gateway towns needing L2, they need QCs for everyone who isn't staying at a hotel/motel, PLUS L1/L2 for those who are. Much as I perceive you to be, I decided that my life philosophy wasn't going to be structured around making lots of money, but spending more time enjoying the natural world. I've taken week-long road trips from the Bay Area to many of the areas we've discussed, including hiking/backpacking in most of the national parks/monuments in Utah, Rocky Mountain, Grand Teton (and the Wind Rivers), Great Basin, Yellowstone, and Grand Canyon, plus Rainier and multiple weekend/week-long trips (many X-C skiing) to Lassen, Yosemite, Sequoia/Kings Canyon, the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest and/or Death Valley - haven't made it to Glacier yet, and I need to before they've all melted. I've also designed and installed a PV system in Yosemite and I know what kind of hassle that entails, as well as the near total lack of electric infrastructure in most of the places where destination charging would be needed by people who like the same kinds of activities I do (which I believe includes you, to some degree). Given their current deployment, the SCs just don't cut it for these kinds of trips, and the L1s/L2s at destinations still mostly don't exist.
L1s/L2s alone in gateway towns won't do it. Coming out from a weekend or week-long trip on a Sunday afternoon to the trailhead where my car's parked (and where there's typically no electricity), the last thing I or my passengers want to do is have to spend eight hours cooling our heels getting an L2 charge in some place like Lee Vining (where no L2s exist at the moment except at the RV park, and where I was told in 2012 that they are fully booked in summer, so that charging an EV barring a months-ahead reservation wouldn't be possible in any case, and I'd have to pay full overnight rate for a space) so I can get to the (hopefully soon to open, and should have been built a year ago) SC in Manteca, when I've still got a 4 hour drive to make from Lee Vining to get home so that I can be at work the next day.
I figure that a 200 mile range BEV like the Model 3 or the Bolt is good for a practical radius of 250 (flattish) miles in typical conditions to a maximum of 300 miles in ideal conditions for a weekend trip by an average consumer, including one enroute SC, without charging being a huge time suck compared to an ICE. 85s boost that out to 500 to maybe 600 miles radius, if you're willing to accept
two enroute SC stops, i.e. one 40-45 minute stop that you wouldn't ordinarily make. Of course, long range BEVs won't be competing purely against themselves or other ICEs, they'll also be competing against PHEVs and potentially FCHVs, all of which share the fast refueling capability that offers time efficiency and flexibility on longer road trips.
I think we've exhausted this particular topic on our philosophies of SC deployment and location, so will just have to agree to disagree.