How Does Tesla Build a Supercharger Charging Site? 190
cartechboy writes Tesla's Superchargers are the talk of the electric car community. These charging stations can take a Model S battery pack from nearly empty to about 150 miles of range in around 30 minutes. That's crazy fast, and it's nothing short of impressive. But what does it take to actually build a Tesla Supercharger site? Apparently a lot of digging. A massive trench is created to run high-capacity electric cables before the charging stations themselves are even installed. A diagram and photos of the Electric Conduit Construction build out have surfaced on the Internet. The conduits connect the charging stations to a power distribution center, which in turn is connected to a transformer that provides the power for charging cars. It took 11 days to install the six charging stalls in Goodland, Kansas. If you thought it was a quick process to build a Supercharger station, you were clearly wrong.
That's not quick? (Score:5, Insightful)
It took 11 days to install the six charging stalls in Goodland, Kansas. If you thought it was a quick process to build a Supercharger station, you were clearly wrong.
seems quick to me
No I though it was a quick (Score:2)
process by just plugging it into the dryer plug at the station. I was clearly wrong.
Recursive Presumptions (Score:5, Funny)
If you thought I thought it was a quick process to build a Supercharger station, you were just as wrong. If you thought I cared about how long it tool them to build such as station, you were wrong about that, too. And if you thought I liked java over c, you were still wrong. I could go on -- likely longer than even I, in the name oif pushing a point until it is completely blunt, am willing to do so, but I will refrain in the interest of keeping the peace.
Anyway, as it turns out, TFS serves as a veritable smorgasbord of potential if-then-huhs that can only be explained by somewhat bemused turtles all the way down.
At this time, I'd like to take a moment to thank my dear friend Yurtle.
Re:That's not quick? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:That's not quick? (Score:5, Insightful)
California
Permits, environmental impact statements, public hearings. And heaven help you if construction frightens a kangaroo rat. The entire project will have to be abandoned.
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So yeah, maybe we need to take a long hard look at consequenses when we build these things.
You build them to code or walk away. That doesn't take months to settle. What takes months is the extraction of favors from anyone who wants do do anything by the political machinery.
So you mean like you have to deal with humans? Good luck with that. In a polarized world, it's very easy and can be profitble to try to avoid complying with regulations because they are bad and get in the way of the free market - as the person who doesn't want to follow regulations sees it.
But in reality, it's not that simple. Because the oppressed free marketeer might just destroy the resource so that other people hwo might be able to realize profit form the land or resource might be adversely affected.
Re:That's not quick? (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed. They're looking into running natural gas through my area. It's going to be at least a 10 year process.
under two weeks for running relatively high capacity power lines to the supercharger station and getting everything hooked up?
As an AC mentioned, I'm pretty sure that building a paved level parking lot takes longer. Building any sort of structure generally takes far, far longer.
Re:That's not quick? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not to mention [bammilieu.eu] that building a gas station takes a heck of a lot longer.
It's one thing I don't get about EV opponents. Not only are EVs supposed to not have any new inconveniences relative to gasoline vehicles, and not only do inconveniences that gasoline vehicles have that EVs don't have not count toward EVs, but EVs aren't even allow to have the inconveniences that gasoline vehicles have. It's always stuff like "EVs suck because it takes 11 days to build a fast charging station, but don't bother checking into how long it takes to build a gas station!" or "EVs suck because batteries are flammable (Ed: even though most EV battery types aren't particularly flammable), but don't bother asking about the flammability of gasoline!" or "EVs suck because batteries are heavy and bulky, but don't bother asking about the weight and size of internal combustion engines vs. electric motors!" or "EVs suck because batteries are toxic (Ed: Actually, most types nowadays have little toxicity), but don't bother asking about the toxicity of the several tonnes of gasoline the average driver puts into their car every year, their filling spills and fumes, their oil leaks, etc, and the massively dirty industry that produces all this!" Etc.
I don't get these people.
Building times (Score:2)
"EVs suck because batteries are heavy and bulky, but don't bother asking about the weight and size of internal combustion engines vs. electric motors!"
There is a bit of a point to this one, in that the weight savings from getting away from a multiple hundred pound engine to a ~70 pound motor is outweighed by the weight gain to put in a battery powerful enough to utilize that motor over a reasonable difference.
The Model S is notably heavier than it's conventional peers, and the Roadster as well. They carry the weight well, but it's still there.
Otherwise I agree with you. The only thing holding EVs back in my mind is the cost of the battery.
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The Model S is notably heavier than it's conventional peers, and the Roadster as well. They carry the weight well, but it's still there.
The Model S is vastly heavier than the cars of a decade ago, let alone two, but it's only slightly heavier than its modern contemporaries. BMW and Mercedes have notably both enlarged their cars significantly. The E-Class is now well-appointed with more heavy kit copied from the S, the new M3 is literally based on the chassis of the old M5, and so on.
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Really? You're citing Top Gear as a source of factual information? What's next, are you going to teach me about the occupancy of pineapples at the bottom of the sea because of something you saw on Spongebob?
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It's a friggin inconvenience to park at a gas station when you're car is outta juice, and they have to have an enterntainment park next to every one of them to keep you busy while you wait the "superfast" recharce of 30 minutes.
Why? Gas stations are isolated for a very good reason - the fuel is volatile of not treated with respect. We have doing it right down to an art, but it's still an aspect.
To bring it back to Rei's point: Why are you attacking the slow charge time of an EV as though you HAVE to go to a fueling station to recharge it when you can charge at home? In some cases you can even charge at work!
Battery Swap: It hasn't gone anywhere because California changed up it's rules again, but Tesla built a system to do it.
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Dollar General is planning to build a store in my neighborhood. They got approval a few months ago. Yesterday I saw ONE bulldozer parked near an old building on the site, which they plan to tear down. I won't be surprised if the dozer sits there for 11 days doing nothing. I would be absolutely stunned if they went from ground breaking to opening in 11 days, and there's nothing hi tech about a small box dollar store/grocery.
It's the red tape that usually makes these things take so long. How long did the
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I've seen a Taco Bell go up in three days. Not completed and opened but the exterior was completed and most of the interior was well defined.
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So, maybe I shouldn't delay in taking my camera down there to get a few shots of the old hamburger stand . I've already had plenty of warning...
And how long does it take... (Score:2)
Re:And how long does it take... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Well, there's likely a pump available. It isn't generally going to be free. Tesla charging stations, however, at least for the time being...
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Yep, most likely that'll be exactly how it goes.
However, right now, it's kind of fabulous. :)
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But if you can afford a 70k car, you probably also value your time a bit more highly also. Just something to consider.
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Superchargers aren't "free" - you pay $2K for access and then it's "free" for the lifetime of the car. This guy thinks that Tesla actually makes money on the program [seekingalpha.com]
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Also, as they proliferate, they're going to have to deal with vandalism. A gas station is a neatly concentrated resource with oversight, security and even they still get vandalized.
Don't whiz on the electric fence!
Things like pricing can always be messed with. I think the maintenance issue, as the network grows, will become challenging. We'll see, though.
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We'll see, though.
I agree. I'm skeptical they can make it work at scale, but hope for the best, after all, I too enjoy the quiet of driving my hybrid in EV mode.
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Re:And how long does it take... (Score:4, Informative)
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The only places you need quick-charge station are places where people will be traveling long distances.
Which is why I said "long-distance highway". I'm quite aware that with EVs you wouldn't want to do all of your charging on public charge points (in fact, that's another big problem with EVs in urban areas without private parking, but it's besides the point subject here).
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So...
What would 100 Tesal owners talk about while they waited 30 minutes for a fill-up?
No... No... No!!!
My car is the most awesome car in the world...
Oh. Elon... He makes the best rockets too ya know... dummass NASA pork...
Did I mention My car is the better than your car?
So... What kind of gas mileage do you get?
I'm so glad we have this place to hang out and talk Tesla...
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Why would they talk at all ?
According to the register's review the Model-S has just about the most awesome sound system ever built into a car.
I can tell you, if I had one (and man I want one !) and I was in a super-charger station, I wouldn't be talking to anybody - I'd be cranking up some Twisted Sister at max volume and rocking the damn casbah !
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If everyone starts driving EVs, they wont all need to charge at a charging station. Most people will be charging at home overnight, it's only the long distance commuters (maybe 10%) that will need to charge on the go.
Seems like a workable solution.
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If everyone starts driving EVs, they wont all need to charge at a charging station.
Which is why I said "long-distance highway". I'm quite aware that with EVs you wouldn't want to do all of your charging on public charge points (in fact, that's another big problem with EVs in urban areas without private parking, but it's besides the point subject here).
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It's also irrelevant. Even if everyone was suddenly sold on the concept of EVs, it would take decades first to be able to ramp up production to match that of gasoline cars, and then to phase out all of the gasoline cars on the road. It should be obvious, yet someone seems to pass right over EV opponents, that the first adopters are going to be those for whom it best suits their situ
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building power outlets
But that's the thing, an EV charge point is not just a power outlet. You need a billing system. You need a security and safety system. For fast-charges you need a high-power AC-DC converter substation. It's not just the outlet you have in your garage.
in my experience
Your experience is different from my experience.
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>>in my experience
>Your experience is different from my experience.
And THIS ladies and gentlenerds is why anecdotes are scientifically useless - because there is ALWAYS a counter-anecdote that says the exact opposite... ALWAYS.
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Replace all the cars on the long-distance highway with EVs and you'll need a service station about an order of magnitude larger in size (i.e. your typical 12-pump gas station becomes a parking lot with over 100 chargers). Hydrocarbon fuels have their advantages and high energy density is one of them.
Assuming you know you're going on a long trip and start out with full battery you should have a 250 mile range starting out. Top it off with 150 extra and you can go 400 miles with half an hour of downtime, I don't know about you but I wouldn't drive that far in one stretch anyway, so it would be taking up a parking spot while I eat anyway. Sure, technically it's more tanking and less parking but the car takes up the same space anyway.
Also most of the time most people (who consider getting an EV anyway) wil
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>Like I said before, the fuel isn't the issue, it's the source of the fuel. Make that source zero CO2 and the need for EVs disappears.
You are aware that burning gasoline is a massive (I mean a SERIOUSLY masssive) source of CO2 in and off itself right ?
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Re:And how long does it take... (Score:5, Insightful)
Complete brain-damaged nonsense. With fossil fuels, you HAVE TO fuel-up at a station, every single time.
With electric, MOST people will fuel up, slowly, overnight, at home.
In addition, gas stations MUST be large and separate facilities you have to go out of your way to drive to/from.
EV charging stations can be (and ARE) just regular parking spaces with a small device at one corner. That means you just stop for your normal food and restroom breaks, and incidentally, your vehicle is getting fueled up with no extra time or effort from you.
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With electric, MOST people will fuel up, slowly, overnight, at home.
I was talking about long-range driving, i.e. by definition more than a pack can support. That's the designated target use of the supercharger network.
In addition, gas stations MUST be large and separate facilities you have to go out of your way to drive to/from.
No, they don't have to be large. The only reason they are large-ish is because they often double as convenience stores. Remove that, make the station just the pumps with card paying and they can be incredibly compact. Most of the time you also don't have to drive to and from them - they're placed conveniently along routes most people take frequently, so typica
and they can be incredibly compact.... (Score:2)
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This is just PR for Elon Musk and Tesla. This is not the future. The plug-in EV is not the future of transportation.
I work for a major university system in California. Our job is to get scope 3 commuter emissions to zero by 2050. We finally had the real-life conversation about the viability of plug-in EVs being the savior to our conundrum and, boy, was everyone happy to say what they had researched and observed...
The first thing you have to realize as a workplace who wants to support plug-in EVs is that, in
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Not to mention that they can be a loss leader. 250Wh/mi at a commercial power rate of $0.08/kWh is two cents per mile. So a 150 mile charge is $3. There are lots of businesses that would pay $3 to keep a potential customer there for half an hour, esp. if said potential customer will likely feel appreciate and that "he owes them". Charging can also be "free with purchase", and businesses can limit the charge rate if $3 for a half hour chage is too steep of a loss leader for them.
All this ignoring the green c
Talk about clumsy moderation (Score:2)
If you're trying to engage in some against-the-rules sort of moderation, at least try to select a mod that makes sense. In this case, you would have wanted "overrated", which is always bullshit but much more likely to make it through metamod.
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You're proposing we turn a lot of those parking spots into pretty expensive charging stations with safety systems, billing systems and presumably security systems (to avert vandalism).
Don't make them superchargers, just make them chargers. It will still provide range extension. The billing will be contracted away, if in fact the whole system is not. There is already parking lot security.
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- public parking spots are extremely cheap to build - basically involves pouring asphalt or concrete. Adding any charging & billing infrastructure to this will severely impact the cost to build.
- paid for parking spots are a little more pricey, requiring billing infrastructure already, but people don't want to stay there for very long (because it's paid), so fast-charging is required. For example, to top off a 24kWh Leaf takes about 8 hours on a 240V/16A socket, or a
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public parking spots are extremely cheap to build - basically involves pouring asphalt or concrete
Uh no. It involves leveling and lowering the site, backfilling with a proper bed, laying asphalt or concrete (asphalt if you're smart, due to its repairability) and then typically also doing some landscaping. There's curbing, there's permitting, there's drainage which you've ignored completely and which I'm glossing over which might cost as much as laying the surface itself... Adding some conduit, wiring (which can be Aluminum since it's just going to lie there) and some meters does significantly add to the
Re:And how long does it take... (Score:4, Informative)
That actually doesn't help your argument any. The longer it takes to fill up, the more you smooth out the random demand fluctuations.
Let's say the time per pump is 5 minutes and the time per charger is 30 minutes, so we have to build 6x more chargers to service the same number of vehicles (and that you have to build the charging stations more frequently due to the range). So we'll compare a 4 pump gas station with a 24 charger EV station. So let's say that we get the following rate of people arriving (picking some numbers at random):
1:00: 1
1:05: 0
1:10: 6
1:15: 7
1:20: 3
1:25: 0
1:30: 0
1:35: 2
1:40: 1
1:45: 8
1:50: 6
1:55: 0
2:00: 1
What happens in these scenarios? First, gasoline:
1:00: 1 pump in use
1:05: 0 pumps in use
1:10: 4 pumps in use, 2 people waiting
1:15: 4 pumps in use, 5 people waiting
1:20: 4 pumps in use, 4 people waiting
1:25: 4 pumps in use, 0 people waiting
1:30: 0 pumps in use
1:35: 2 pumps in use
1:40: 1 pump in use
1:45: 4 pumps in use, 4 people waiting
1:50: 4 pumps in use, 6 people waiting
1:55: 4 pumps in use, 2 people waiting
2:00: 3 pumps in use, 0 people waiting.
What about the charging station?
1:00: 1 charger in use
1:05: 1 chargers in use
1:10: 7 chargers in use
1:15: 14 chargers in use
1:20: 17 chargers in use
1:25: 17 chargers in use
1:30: 16 chargers in use
1:35: 18 chargers in use
1:40: 13 chargers in use
1:45: 14 chargers in use
1:50: 17 chargers in use
1:55: 17 chargers in use
2:00: 18 chargers in use
With the gas station, 23 people needed to wait, some of them for a rather long time. With the charging station, nobody needed to wait. Despite the fact that the charging is 1/6th the speed, that doesn't actually imply you need 6x more chargers. In the above example, we see that the gas station should have had 8 pumps while the charging station 18 chargers, or 2.25x more.
More on the other problems with your post in just a second - I just felt that this particular aspect deserved a whole post on its own.
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With the gas station, 23 people needed to wait
Yeah, but how long on average did their stop take? Of those, 20 people took an overall 10 minutes for the stop, including 5 minutes of waiting and for only 3 it took a total of 15 minutes (10 minutes waiting). So the total time taken to service these people (and top up a lot more range, of course) took 305 minutes.
Meanwhile, on the charger, all 35 users had to stop for 30 minutes, for a total of 1050 minutes. So even with 4.5x fewer pumps the stop times were overall 3x shorter. Again, the gas station is ov
Re:And how long does it take... (Score:4, Insightful)
As for my other issues with your post.
1. Actually time yourself going down the highway when you're on a long trip, from the moment you begin to decelerate to begin to get gas, to the moment you're back on the road up to highway speeds, and don't leave out the things people often due during stops long trips (why long trips? more in a second), including bathroom breaks, buying something at the convenience store, cleaning the windshield, heading over to a nearby restaurant to grab a bite to eat, whatever. Time a number of different stops on a long trip and average them out. You'll find they're a lot more than 5 minutes. EVs have all of that extra stuff too, mind you, but a lot of them can be done while charging, and even for the other stuff, you're adding a constant overhead, which reduces the ratio of the non-constant aspect (the actual filling itself).
2. Why constrained to long trips? Simple - because people don't stop at charging stations when they're not on long trips. It's pointless. You charge at home, and maybe when parked at other places like work or a mall if there happens to be a plug near you. It's a great inconvenience of gasoline cars which EVs don't have that one must regularly waste time at gas stations in their daily lives regardless of how long trips are. Overall gasoline car drivers waste a lot more time "filling up" than EV drivers. (and if you disagree and think the mere act of plugging and unplugging gives the edge to gasoline drivers somehow, then that still doesn't help with the wireless EV charging that's getting a lot of focus now, where you merely have to park and you start getting charge)
3. The page you linked for dimethyl ether said nothing (that I noticed) about generation from just electricity and, say, air/water. It did say that in the lab it can be made from cellulosic biomass (although it should be noted that no cellulosic fuel techs have thusfar worked out at a commercial scale). Let's just say you can do that, and that you get the 1000 gallons per acre-year reported for switchgrass.That's 0,93 liters per square meter-year. It's reported at 19,3 MJ per liter, so we have 18MJ per square meter per year. Let's say we lose 5% of this to distribution, and then burn it in a car running at a typical 20% average efficiency (peak is significantly higher, but peak isn't what matters). We have 3,4 MJ per square meter per year.
Now what if we ran EVs on solar panels on the same land? Let's say the solar farm is 50% covered with solar panels and gets a capacity factor (clouds, night, etc) of 20% and a cell efficiency of 20%. 1000W/m, so 20W/m electricity is produced on average. That's 20 joules per square meter per second, so 631 MJ per square meter per year. We reduce it by the average US grid efficiency of 92% and an average wall-to-wheels EV efficiency of 80% and we get 465 MJ per square meter per year. 136 times as land-efficient as the biofuel alternative
Now let's say we leave out all of these lossy bioprocesses behind and generate some sort of biofuel straight from electricity at a very unrealistic 80% efficiency (most processes for realistic fuels are way lower), plus the same generous 5% distribution losses, and that it's afforable. And let's say that they all burn their fuel at an impressive 40% efficiency (even fuel cells, while higher in peak efficiency, generally can't do that tank-to-wheels in real-world vehicle usage). Thus we get 192 MJ per square meter per year, 41% that of the EV. Are you really comfortable with plastering 2.4 times as much of the earth's surface with solar panels? Or 2.4 times more wind turbines, 2.4 times more dammed rivers, 2.4 times more nuclear power plants and uranium mining, etc? Is that, in your view, an ideal solution, even in this comparison highly biased in favor of fuels versus electricity?
Electricity is the universal energy currency, and we shouldn't be wasting it converting it between different forms needlessly. Not only does it mean a dramatically worse impact on the planet, it also
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If we made hydrocarbon fuels (e.g. dimethyl ether [wikipedia.org]) from electricity in a carbon-neutral way
Insert Scottish voice:
We can directly convert energy to mass, Captain!!
(Yes, I knew what you meant.) ;)
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There a seven Buc cees flag ship stores, where everyone in Texas stops for at least a half an hour to get gas and a Dr. Pepper Icee. That is three months to wire one of the most popular tourist traps. The other locations may not be big enough to hold a char
Re:That's not quick? (Score:5, Interesting)
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I'm assuming that's not a 30 minute Tesla fast charge station, since that's only 50kW.
The two issues I have the most interest in are 1) whether they use some sort of battery buffer to balance loads on the grid connects (otherwise I think the utility company won't be very happy with the unpredictable megawatt drains ;) But maybe the utility company is handling balancing on their side), and 2) how cooling on the charger is handled. Just simple resistance calcs show that once you get to really high power char
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I was thinking the same thing - I'm CERTAIN that building a traditional gas station (including those giant underground storage tanks) takes longer than that !
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It took 11 days to install the six charging stalls in Goodland, Kansas. If you thought it was a quick process to build a Supercharger station, you were clearly wrong.
seems quick to me
I was thinking the same. It takes a whole lot longer, and some really huge holes in the ground to build a petrofuel station.
And considering the environmental damage that can do, that supercharger station looks like a pretty good thing.
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Gas station (Score:5, Insightful)
And for comparison, just how long does it take to build a gas station?
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Who cares. I'm still interested why someone thinks anything taking 11 days is a "long" process.
Then there's the whole scope of what they are looking it. Yeah 11 days to build it. How long to design it? Last time we proposed a new 200kW load on our electrical grid the grid owner wanted 6 months notice so they could conduct a feasibility study. It took us more than 11 days of organizing just to agree on a date for commissioning that suits all parties.
11 days is a blink of an eye for most projects involving co
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I've seen a gas station go up in a week - its pretty much all modular.
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And for comparison, just how long does it take to build a gas station?
A great question; I suspect it's a while.
Certainly to get rid of a gas station - at least in Australia - is a big deal. There have been a few removed from my area in the last couple of years; I was amazed that the sites sat empty for so long (premium real estate!) but then discovered that there are regulations from our EPA about how they need to be cleaned.
I think it's a minimum of one year before they can be "reclaimed" for other use. I suspect an electric charging station doesn't require that kind of ove
11 days is pretty fast ... (Score:2)
... I think the record for a large project is 6.
Meanwhile in petrol land (Score:2)
Goodland, KS, is not in the NE of Kansas (Score:3)
Goodland, KS, is not in the NE of Kansas (Score:2)
Thirty minutes is ridiculous. Swap out the packs. (Score:3, Interesting)
Thirty minutes is ridiculous. That is not "rapid" ANYTHING.
The only real solution is to streamline the process of swapping out battery packs, or, ideally, hydrogen fuel cells.
This is where hydrogen fuel cells really make sense. They are the ultimate battery pack. They are interchangeable modules. You stop at a filling station and replace your depleted fuel cell with a full one in fewer than five minutes.
I know Tesla has a battery pack replacement service, but it really needs to be affordable and streamlined and not require expensive robotics.
NOBODY wants to wait thirty minutes for "rapid recharge." The money spent on this infrastructure should, instead, be spent on optimizing the use of hydrogen fuel cells. They are the ultimate battery and they don't wear out.
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Thirty minutes is ridiculous. That is not "rapid" ANYTHING.
To be fair, the electric model is that most of the time you'll top up overnight (OK, that raises its own issues), and the only time you'll need a charging station is if you're on a road trip, in which case a 30 minute refreshment and potty break every couple of hundred miles isn't such a bad thing.
If, however, there is widespread uptake of electric cars, then it will start to become apparent that, even with demand reduced by home charging, you need one hell of a lot of 6-bay superchargers to match the thr
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...and do what in the meantime? Hydrogen isn't piped around the city or country *at all*, at least electricity is - so right now, today, you can use it. You could be waiting 5 years, 10 years or longer for the hydrogen economy to be properly viable. Besides, it's not like doing any of this slows down any of the work on getting fuel cells to work sensibly.
I agree the tech has a while to go before it fully replaces petrol/diesel, but it's a good enough option for a lot of use cases. Therefore, for people who
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If these hydrogen fuel cells are so wonderful and practical, where are they? The first production fuel cell vehicle is still on the horizon. Also, please explain where this hydrogen is coming from, since our present production is typically very dirty.
No big deal (Score:3)
This is a straightforward industrial electrical installation. There's a pad-mounted distribution transformer and meter provided by the power company, a weatherproof load center provided by the customer's electrical contractor, and the Tesla supercharger control unit and outlet stations. No big deal to install. There's a comparable installation at every large standalone store.
That's a small charging station. Here's the build-out of a bigger one. [youtube.com] Black and Veach, which does infrastructure construction for the energy and communications industry (substations, cell sites, etc.) is doing the job. They see it as a lot like building out cell towers. (If you watch that video, you may wonder why the transformers and switchgear are on raised platforms. Probably because there's a flood risk at that location.)
Installing a gas station's underground tanks, which today are dual tanks with leak detection, is a much bigger job. There's a big excavation, lots of plumbing and wiring, and several different trades involved.
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A foundation is a legal categorization of nonprofit organizations that will typically either donate funds and support to other organizations, or provide the source of funding for its own charitable purposes. This type of non-profit organization differs from a private foundation which is typically endowed by an individual or family.
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Takes longer to do a full charge on a Leaf at a L3 charger.
You could get 80 miles on 67% charge, but only if you
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And my fossil fuel car gives me 400 miles range in less than two minutes of fueling.
Electric cars are good for many things, but long range driving is not one of them. Not only do you have to plan your driving based on where you can find a suitable outlet, but waiting for half an hour every two hours isn't very competitive compared to gasoline and diesel engines.
What could work in the future is standardized batteries you can exchange at any station for any car (no proprietary solutions), and a sealed meter
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Give them a little bit of time to develop, and they'll be everywhere. They'll get the infrastructure developed even faster, since it just requires existing power lines, and little no-maintenance boxes at the corner of regular parking spaces.
I'd say that's about half-way there... Maybe a bit closer. You're already likely to stop every 4 hours or so, for fo
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One of the biggest advantages of EVs and plug-in hybrids is that you can fuel-up AT HOME, overnight, drastically reducing the number of times you have to suffer through stopping at a gas station.
In quite a lot of Europe you simply cannot do that without substantial changes to a lot of things, which is why EV's and hybrids have quite some way to go yet.
Why can't we do that? Lets take the house I just sold - end of terrace, on street unallocated parking, a 1.5 meter pavement between the house and the road, and regularly far too many cars trying to park on the road so you are lucky if you aren't on the next road over.
Without the government coming along and allocating parking on that road, and install
You *NEED* to do breaks. (Score:2)
but waiting for half an hour every two hours isn't very competitive compared to gasoline and diesel engines.
Do you realise that you actually *NEED* to to half an hour break after each two hours of driving ? You need to take breaks anyway, in order not to be too much tired and avoiding increasing your risks of accident due to tiredness and loss of concentration.
So, while you're relaxing, drinking a coffee, etc. why not charge the car, instead of just having it sit idle on the parking lot in front of the cafe/restaurant/park/rest-zone ?
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You do not "need" to take a break every two hours, it all depends on your long distance driving experience. I regularly drive 4 hours without a break, with no ill effects or loss of attention during that period.
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As I said in my post - "it all depends on your long distance driving experience."
Learn to read the entire post.
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Meh, Starting fully refreshed, four hours is nothing, depending on the road (interstates, light traffic). A couple of times I have even done 7 hours and been plenty refreshed at the end of it (You're sitting in a nice comfy chair, holding a wheel). It wasn't that I didn't want to stop, just that I felt no need to. Though I generally prefer to break things up a little. And if you're traveling with another driver, it takes seconds to pull over and swap.
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And in 1900 the same arguments applied against gasoline cars and you could get food for your horse, have a stable to keep it in, find a blacksmith to put new shoes on your horse, etc. just about anywhere.
The technology for EVs is still pretty early and just starting to improve. Give it another 10 years and it will probably address most of your concerns.
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and a sealed meter in your car measures how much juice you actually pulled out of the battery
Nah. Figure out the pricing so that the customer pays a flat fee for a swap, always give them a charged battery meeting some basic specification standards. That eliminates the need for any crap like that, which you can never trust.
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When you say "wheeled bomb" I assume you've gone back to talking about gasoline (and diesel) fuelled cars. They're the only one you fill with an explosive substance.
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If you are not insane you are going to take a break after every few hours of driving anyway.
Remember, this is only for long stretches. Most commutes go perfectly with overnight charging.