You're right. But the increase in popularity that something like this might bring about also comes with the possibility of another interesting problem: having to wait in line for a charging station.
That's actually what they're trying to ameliorate by increasing their speed and ending the way they get shared, allowing them to churn many more cars through each spot at the supercharging stations. I think they realize that with their increased sales, simply adding locations isn't going to be enough - And while they will be adding many more locations, increasing speed is both faster and cheaper than building new ones.
It might be more technically feasible to just build a natural gas generating plant on-site, depending on where the nearest pipeline is. Or build a thorium-fueled nuclear plant there. But neither of those options are likely to be politically viable.
If you're Tesla, and you make solar panels and utility-scale storage batteries, you use both of those - And the batteries are more important, because they allow a constant load from the utility to be "peaked" to the cars. So, say you're putting 50 kWh each into 100 cars/day, you can keep the station's batteries charged with about a 210 kW constant feed, and then the cars can each get their 250 kW whenever they happened to show up.
Same speed as it does at the Corner Gas Station.
You have a gas pump in your garage?
Folks with a garage or a house would simply "gas up" at home overnight. Folks with an apartment would have to gas up at work, a grocery store, a restaurant, or some other location, or maybe their apartment complex would have chargers in the parking lot and each resident would get a keycard or something to ration their time at the charger so others could use it. Folks in the city that park on the street would have to come up with some other way to charge, especially if they only drive a couple times a month. Maybe a "mobil charging service" could bring a truck around and charge up for you?
This is where workplace charging is good - The cars are going to be there for a long time anyway.
Another thing that they already have in places like Norway that are much farther ahead of the curve than we are is chargers on all the light poles so that they can charge in on-street parking.
Highway gas stations would need a lot of chargers, like large truck stops have lots of pumps, plus some place for the humans to wait for charging to complete. I can see something like getting a text when your charge is complete, then having a certain amount of time to move your vehicle or you pay extra for every minute you tie up the charger.
That's actually exactly how the Tesla Superchargers already work.
I think one of the background themes around the whole autopilot thing is that people would be able to send the car away to charge and have it come back when they need it.
Yep... And while that would require valets today, Tesla has clearly been thinking about how to autonomously get the plug into the car:
Actually I just realized one thing I saw in Japan but didn't really register, there are a ton of tiny car rental places in the higher density areas. Don't need a car regularly so you just walk down the block and rent one when you do, saves on parking and everything.
That exists here to a limited extent, in the form of ZipCar and some other similar services. It really is a good idea, but because of how our country is constructed, it's pretty difficult to not have your own car, so most people just go ahead and deal with owning their own rather than use this sort of service, so they seem to grow a bit slowly. (Change is hard, too.)
I have absolutely no problem with anyone wanting an electric or hybrid car. If that's what you want, knock yourself out. But we are a long ways off from every car being an electric car.
Yep. I would guess 2035 for 50% penetration, and 2050 for 90%. It'll never be 100%, and really I hope it stops at 95% or something where gas stations are still somewhat viable, because it would be a shame if it wasn't possible to fuel the classic cars any more.
My question, I have a fast charger for my cell phone, but if I use the usual speed charger the charge will last longer. Is this the same for charging electric cars? Will the charge last the same time, distance if the normal charge is used compared to the speed charger?
All batteries (whether in a car or something else) taper off their charging speed as they approach fully charged. The faster you're charging, the earlier the taper starts. When charging a car at home, the taper doesn't happen until right at the end, as seen on the graph from my home charger below. When Supercharging, the taper starts around (or even before) 80%, so by the end of the charge, the "fast" charge is as slow as your home charger. So, it makes the most sense, when on a road trip, to charge to 80% (or even less, if your destination or the next fast charger you want to stop at is closer by). But, if you do charge to 100% you'll get as much range out of it as if you charged to 100% at home.
Sorry if I missed it, but what is the cost of these new Super Chargers?
For those who are grandfathered into free supercharging... Still free. And since the amount of energy being transferred is the same, I would expect the prices for everyone else will remain the same.
Presumably today you'd get a tow. I'd expect at some future point they'd add a PTO and on-board generator to tow trucks to be able to give a few miles of range. Or maybe dedicated remote power vehicles for the electrics.
I think I read where someone already had a truck that could "rescue" electric cars, but I can't remember where it was located.
Germany had a green plan, solar and wind and all, didn’t turn out too hot
Oh? Because what showed up on my news feed today is that Germany is getting ready to power down the rest of its coal plants. Of course, when Googling about it, there were plenty of articles talking about Germany's success with renewable energy, and plenty of other articles talking about their failure with renewable energy. So, there's someone to feed your confirmation bias either way!
