@Pretzel: Very interesting post. Thanks for sharing. I also would be interested in more details about your trip.

In the middle of Wyoming it can be a long way between gas stations let alone electric car charging stations. Even Wyoming has some, impressive.

I have a 2013 Model S with the 85 battery. When we bought the car we had a 220v outlet put on the side of our house facing the driveway (dryer outlet). On days where I am not taking a road trip I just unplug it in the morning, drive it as much as I want, and plug it in at night. It is the easiest thing ever.

Charging basics
Level 1 - regular 110v outlet. Gives 3-4 miles of range per hour of charging
Level 2 - 220v outlet or typical charger at grocery store/parking garage - gives 25-30 miles of range per hour of charging
Level 3 - Supercharger - gives 100-350 miles of range per hour of charging, depending on a lot of factors. Biggest factor is how full the battery is. When it is empty it charges super fast. When it is near full it charges very slowly.

The car says "255 miles" when it is full but that is assuming an average speed around 45. Driving 75 mph on the highway you probably can get about 200 actual miles from a full charge.

For a road trip I usually spend 10 minutes ahead of time using a website called evtripplanner.com to see how many miles of range I need between each charger I plan to use. This is because miles of range can be different that the actual miles due to elevation, wind, cold, etc.

We took off from Portland and drove about 1.5 hours then stopped at the first charger. We needed about 25 minutes of charging to have enough miles to get to the next stop. Then we got back in and drove another 2 hours. We stopped again and had to charge about 15 minutes to have enough miles for the next charger. Drove about another 1.5 hours and stopped, this time it was about 20 minutes of charging. Each charger is usually near a hotel, restaurant and/or fast food. Each is pretty much right off the highway.
During some of the stops we would eat and go to the bathroom and the car was done before we were. Some of the stops there was a grass field nearby and I kicked the soccer ball around with the kids. After driving another 1.5 hours we were in Boise, ID, where we were staying with friends for the night. We charged about 25 min at the Boise supercharger before going to our friend's house. Total was about 7 hours of driving and 1.5 hours of charging. These were all Tesla superchargers. (times might not add up exactly due to rounding and bad memory). I would say that for 1 hour of the 1.5 hours of charging time we were either eating, going to the bathroom, or getting snacks so there really was not much down time where we were actually waiting for the car to charge.

Next day was the same. Drive 1.5 - 2 hours, then stop for 15-25 min of charging. Ended up in Jackson Wy where we charged up at the superchargetr there and headed to our AirBnB in teton village. Total was about 5.5 hours of driving and 1.25 hours of charging

stayed 2 nights in teton village where we charged on a regular 110v outlet in the parking lot of our condo. This kept the car full even with our local driving. Then drove through yellowstone and stayed at 3 different hotels. Each on had a Level 2 charger. Charging at hotels is always the most stressful part of an EV trip. Although several hotels have chargers, you never know if it will be working, and you never know if it will be blocked by other cars or be in use. I figured as long as we were able to charge for 1 or 2 out of the 4 nights we would be fine. As luck had it we were able to charge 4/4 nights so we had plenty of juice to do as much driving in the park as we wanted. Charging was never an issue at all except at one hotel it was about an 8 minute walk from the charger to the actual hotel so that was a minor inconvenience.

Exited the park at west yellowstone and the drive home was the same as the way there, no problems. None of the tesla superchargers were ever close to full. Often we would be the only car with 6 or 8 stalls available. The busiest was 4/8 stalls used once.

To be honest on the days of long driving I actually liked being forced to stop every 2 hours. It made the drive much more pleasant. Obviously when you are in a hurry to get somewhere then it is a lot less pleasant, but we did not have any time pressure so it was nice to get out, eat, switch drivers, and let the kids run around a little.

to answer your question: Ford, BMW, Daimler and VW have teamed up and are just now building out their charging station network across europe. IONITY chargers are more than twice as fast as tesla superchargers.
expect something similar to happen in the US.

I hope we do see a comprehensive charging network for other cars in the US soon. It will be interesting to see if they actually do it, and how quickly they can get it going. It took tesla 5 years to build what they have now.

One thing that I discovered in my experience supercharging is that increasing the max speed of the charger does not change charging time very much at all. This is because once the battery gets to more than 50 or 60% full the charging has to slow down to avoid overheating or overcharging the battery (which damages it permanently)

For example, often I would arrive at a charger with 40 miles of charge remaining and need 200 miles of charge to get to the next charger. The tesla charger would charge at max power (about 115kW) until it would get to about 130 miles. This would take less than 10 minutes. Then it would slow down and the miles from 130 - 200 would come in much more slowly, taking 15 minutes. Doubling the charger speed would only decrease the time it took to get to 130, maybe from 10 minutes to 5 minutes. After that the limiting factor is the ability to cool the battery and how good the software is to charge the battery fast without overcharging. So doubling the charging speed in this example would only reduce the charging time from 25 minutes to 20 minutes. And higher speeds than that would only decrease the charging time another minute or two.

It is far more important to have the chargers in the right places (convenient to highway and spaced properly), have them be available (not full), and have them be reliable. Currently tesla is doing well on all 3 of these things.

if you believe porsches numbers, they can charge the mission e with electricity for about 250miles in 15minutes.

Yeah, I think that they are using a higher voltage battery. I really hope they can do that, but I'll be more impressed when the car is actually out and there is a full charging network built. Sounds like they plan to put the chargers at dealerships, which would not necessarily be good locations for highway chargers.

Are you paying money at any of these chargers, or are they universally free?

The tesla superchargers are free if you have a Model S or Model X. For the Model 3 you get billed on your tesla account for each charge. The rate varies from state to state. My guess is that a Model 3 owner would have been paying $5-8 for each supercharge that I did.

Hotel chargers have always been free in my experience.

It's time to officially dispense with the notion that Tesla have some magic car making sauce.

Another review in for the Jaguar iPace (a full long range electric off road a lot cheaper than the Model X with the same/superior features) from a well heeled mainstream car writer:



The Model X is now second best in its class. First competitor whips their ass and does it at a lower price while making a profit. Tesla have no answer for the iPace.

As I've always said:

- Performance electric cars are incredible, wonderful, superb
- The bottom is a commodity
- Everything above it, the other car makers kick the **** out of Tesla and both price and quality and desired features.
- Everything that's wonderful about Tesla is because it's a performance electric car. As a package it sucks balls apart from this aspect.
- Tesla is drawing stone dead because of the above four facts

We'll see this play out over 2019 as a number of Tesla killers arrive, at much lower prices and with superior features and build quality. While Musk plays around with hand building cars in tents to make imaginary numbers.

I'm a little confused here.

http://www.plugincars.com/ultimate-g...ks-126530.html

Seems these other networks are further along than you claim.

Tesla might have the best network now, but that is sure to be short lived especially if the majors are teaming up and all these other networks are being developed.

All of those other networks are mostly level 2 chargers (30 miles of range per hour). Those are worthless doing long distance travel. You would drive for 2 hours and then charge for 4-6 hours.

The level 3 chargers they have are randomly scattered around and not necessarily close to major highways. They often have only 1 stall, and the reliability is bad. Plus there are so many different networks it is a total headache to have access to all of them.

All of those networks essentially add up to nothing as far as long distance travel other than a few specific routes, mostly in California as far as I can tell. The tesla network covers pretty much every major highway route in the country other than through North Dakota.

I'll admit I haven't tried to use those networks so maybe they are better than I think? But I doubt it.

How many times can musk pump china factory news? This is the third time by my count.


Also its an MOU, lol

https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/thre...116065/page-23

Is anyone following these numbers? Looks like they could be hoping to pull all the high margin M3 demand into Q3, add some accounting changes etc. and positive earnings seem quite possible.

Not that this changes anything fundamentally, nor would earnings be enough cash to keep them going unless capex goes way down. It could still pump later this year on something like this thoug? Setting up an entry for a longer term short play?

i don't follow that thread (or anything on that forum), but it's possible they will use some accounting magic to manufacture a green quarter in either q3 or q4, because we all know they need to raise more money. they have also saved a bunch of their ZEV credits from previous quarters.

Its definitely their plan, but im not sure the market is going to fall for it

The pumps are getting less pumpy and more transparent

Ditching reservations, probably because the manufacturing is going so well!

https://twitter.com/ProphetTesla/sta...03844711235584

Hilarious. New Tesla owner's bumper falls off 10min after picking up car. Other commenter expresses doubt at such an absurd scenario. He is promptly corrected by photographic evidence.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-...-emerges-tesla

Owners have also complained about insane flaws - like their Model 3 seatbelts not even being bolted into the bottom of the seat. So much for safety.

what are they building these things in tents or something?

Question asked:
Question answered:
I guess this isn't the most reliable method of state-of-the-art car production:

It's beyond me that Model 3 customers aren't cancelling their orders in droves.

The potential early adopter penalties seem huge for such a major investment. Where's the upside?

Do you think the average Tesla customer has any idea what's actually going on in Tesla? They have lives. Forget not having time to read articles. These people probably don't even have time to read headlines. The information in this thread doesn't exist to them. Tesla is just a cool sounding name for a cool looking car made by a company headed by a seemingly cool billionaire who must know what he's doing and is revolutionizing autos. Sign me up, I love how it's rly quiet, fast af, and drives itself...

Musk has owned the media narrative for years. He's been given constant fawning coverage on all major publications which he's carefully cultivated. The average person think he's some modern day Tony Stark also making cool cars you can pick up for $27,000 after rebates with full self driving coming in a few months.

If I didn't follow stocks I'd probably have that view as well. It's been wall to wall promotion of this fraud. Latest fraudulent headlines just today in mainstream publications are that he's opening a $9 billion factory in China, the largest foreign factory ever in Shanghai. The Chinese factory deal has been announced four times over the last four years, same fawning press coverage as imminent.

Yeah, if you aren't taking company analysis and investment analysis to autistic levels, most likely you would think TSLA is profitable and on the verge of taking over the world.

I've had idiotic arguments with otherwise brilliant people, including company founders, VC partners, and C-level execs, regarding why TSLA is not going to be the first trillion dollar marketcap company given its balance sheet situation. If those kinds of people don't know any better, why would the average TSLA buyer know anything?