On November 20th, Tesla completed the Supercharger route between Melbourne and Sydney by opening a location in Gundagai. The company now operates 7 Supercharger locations in Australia and they are all located between Victoria’s coastal capital and the capital of New South Wales.
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Since Tesla is taking its sweet time to starts delivering the Model X in volume, we thought you might want to get your eye-candy fix of the all-electric crossover. Tesla delivered the very first Model X, a ‘Founder series’ P90D, to its CEO Elon Musk and a Tesla Motors Club member recently spotted the vehicle at the Hawthorne Supercharger.
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During a press conference today in Germany, Tesla CEO Elon Musk confirmed that Tesla is in talks with “some [auto] manufacturers” to share the Supercharger Network.
In the past, Tesla confirmed being opened to the idea of sharing its extensive network of fast charging stations, which now operates over 2,900 chargers at over 500 locations around the world, but until now, we couldn’t confirm that any automaker showed interest in the offer.
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At Electrek we have been gathering registration data on the top-selling electric vehicles for a while now and although we are still sorting through all the information (and you can expect more posts about the data going forward), one thing that caught our attention is Tesla’s recent growth in Sweden.
Tesla has a presence in Sweden since late 2013, but sales in the country have been lagging until the last two quarters. From January to August 2014, Tesla delivered only 141 cars in the country, but during the same period this year, it delivered 635 Model S’s according to registration data – a 350% year over year increase to date.
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Earlier this year we wrote about the impressive growth of Tesla’s Superchargers, a network of DC fast charging stations for the company’s electric vehicles, now Tesla says its network has seen a 5 times increase in used for road trips over last summer.
Electric vehicles have long been thought to be impractical for long distance driving due to their generally short-range capacity, but Tesla installs its stations at strategic intervals along popular routes and combined with the Model S’ 200+ miles range, Tesla owners can have interesting road-trip experiences.
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Last week Tesla activated 5 more Supercharger stations to bring the total to 453 stations and 2,519 Superchargers. Since introducing its network of fast-charging stations in 2012, Tesla has been expanding the network at an impressive pace, making it the largest and fastest manufacturer-owned network in the world.
Here’s a look into the growth of the Supercharger network:
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Head over to Tesla’s IR Website to follow along the livestream of the yearly shareholder meeting. We’ll be jotting down notes here of information of interest.
1. Shareholder doesn’t like leather. Doesn’t think the non-leather option is enough.
2. Full autopilot will hit some customers by end of the month. Elon says he has been testing the latest builds of Autopilot on his own vehicle.
Tesla updated the Supercharger map again this morning and it now appears that all of the major gaps on the east coast (Savannah,Georgia) and the biggest cross country (Macedonia, OH, Wyoming) have been filled and it is now theoretically possible to drive a Tesla from Vancouver BC to San Diego California to Boston Massachusetts down to Miami Florida. Theoretically…if you are very easy on the accelerator.
Tesla hasn’t officially announced the milestone yet because that 302 mile Wyoming-Colorado jump is probably too big to drive without some range extending mode happening. The imminent Cheyenne, WY station should cut this to 164 miles. Also the altitude climb here is significant.
The Newark, Delaware to Somerset PA is 224 miles and Somerset PA to Macedonia Ohio length is 171 miles so driving to Wyoming from Boston is now pretty doable with a 85kWh Model S.
Tesla’s Q4 financial results, where they are also expected to announce the battery giga-factory would be a good time to mention the transcontinental super(charger)highway. Tesla CEO Elon Musk is going to ride across the country with his 5 kids in March so there’s still lots of time to fill those gaps.
Maps of the 3 biggest cross country and two biggest East Coast gaps, below (or if you want to map out future stations which close these gaps, check out the TeslaWiki):
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What you are looking at above is the state of the Tesla Supercharger network on The last day of 2013/first day of 2014. Tesla counts 50 Superchargers in the US (1 per state!) and another 14 in Europe. While Elon Musk originally planned to take his family on a Christmas holiday across the country, there are still some rather big holes to fill.
We’re excited to announce our Murdo, SD #Supercharger is now open, making a total of 50 in North America! http://t.co/QzdX2pBX7X
— Tesla (@Tesla) December 31, 2013
Those holes all fall in the “coming soon” category and if you take a look at this helpful 3rd party map, you can see a lot of the country is still being built.
Tesla rejiggered its Supercharger map today moving Fall and Winter 2013 into a “Coming Soon” category. Fall is a few weeks from being over and it was clear Tesla wouldn’t be able to make the deadline on many of its stations, especially in the east coast where things have all but stalled in the Supercharger front.
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Great find from @mgillet onTwitter. This appears to be a Tesla dashboard at the headquarters showing significant growth in charging over the past few months. More importantly, we some highly anticipated charging stations ‘coming soon’. Probably most exciting for Tesla is the Oregon and northern California stations that will close the I5 corridor meaning the West Coast will be covered. Also two stations on the California/Arizona border will allow trips to/from Phoenix and LA/San Diego.
You’ll notice that two stations, one in Colorado and one in Texas, are lit up even though Tesla hasn’t pushed to the Supercharger Station website Map, below.
Texans will get two more Supercharger stations in Eastern Texas linking them to Arkansas and Louisiana. East coasters will get a couple in Northern New Jersey as well as Virginia and North Carolina allowing folks in Vermont/New Hampshire to travel to the Carolinas and vice versa.
Some fun facts:
Compare with the current map as of today, 10/21/2013:
In an interview with MIT Technology Review, Tesla CTO JB Straubel says that battery charging technology is going to get even quicker than it is now.
“It’s not going to happen in a year from now. It’s going to be hard. But I think we can get down to five to 10 minutes,” Straubel said in an interview with MIT Technology Review. He noted that the current superchargers, which deliver 120 kilowatts of electricity, “seemed pretty crazy even 10 years ago.” Conventional public charging stations deliver well under 10 kilowatts.
Tesla has already reduced its Supercharger times in half going from 40 minutes to 20 minutes for a half charge. A few more ‘half times over the next few years and we’ll be there. One of the barriers of this type of charging is heat so this might involve external or internal cooling for battery charging.
One challenge of fast charging is that delivering power to a battery very rapidly can cause it to overheat. To avoid damaging the battery, the outside charger needs to communicate with the electronics that monitor the state of the batteries, including their voltage and temperature, and quickly adjust charging rates accordingly. “To do that kind of charging, everything has to be designed and working in perfect synchrony,” Straubel says.
Achieving five-minute charges will require not only further improving the charging system, but also improving the interface with the electrical grid. As it is, only some places on the grid can handle 120-kilowatt charging. Drawing large amounts of power from the grid also incurs demand charges from the utility, increasing the cost of the system.
But Straubel says that Tesla plans to get around these problems by equipping supercharging stations with solar panels and batteries.
The rest of the interview is here and worth a read.
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The next step in lighting up the east cost is complete with the east and west side of Florida getting getting superchargers. The new addresses:
2 Supercharger stations in 2 days for Florida! Fort Myers opened today. Travel free between Miami, Tampa & Orlando! pic.twitter.com/Vm9VaSIEz1
— Tesla (@Tesla) July 25, 2013
Oh, and Norway just got put on the map.
One of the first Tesla Supercharger stations in Europe is being built in Cinderella, Norway #KatieWoodencloak
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 28, 2013
