The First REAL 21st Century Solar-Electric Car

Tesla Motors Launches Revolutionary Supercharger Enabling Convenient Long Distance Driving

(Tesla Motors) today unveiled its highly anticipated Supercharger network. Constructed in secret, Tesla revealed the locations of the first six Supercharger stations, which will allow the Model S to travel long distances with ultra fast charging throughout California, parts of Nevada and Arizona.

The technology at the heart of the Supercharger was developed internally and leverages the economies of scale of existing charging technology already used by the Model S, enabling Tesla to create the Supercharger device at minimal cost.

The electricity used by the Supercharger comes from a solar carport system provided by SolarCity, which results in almost zero marginal energy cost after installation. Combining these two factors, Tesla is able to provide Model S owners1 free long distance travel indefinitely.

Is it possible that this could be the real game-changer in the energy industry?

Tesla seems like the real deal. Elon Musk, co-founder of Tesla, is also the creator of SpaceX (first commercial space company to dock to the space station. He also created and ran Paypal (before it was bought by Ebay in 2002)

Here is a 6 year old post by Musk, where he outlines his plan for Tesla
Link

As noted in his wiki page, he wanted to help humanity in the areas of internet, clean energy, and space.

Talk about setting goals and achieving them




EDIT:
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Here is a link to Tesla's blog post about the event, which contains a video of the actual reveal:
www.teslamotorsclub.com...

reply to post by Monts


possibly. they are headed towards a good direction. but how long/far can it go? how fast will it take to charge? also another main point is the cost? solar cells are quite expensive especially with higher quality and better ones. Ford revolutionized the car industry by keeping it cheap so everyone could buy one. Will this company be able to do the same? or will it be something more of high end ferrari type dealership.

Don't get too excited just yet. Tesla cars suffer from a pretty major defect... let your battery get below a certain threshhold of charge and it has to be completely replaced at a cost of ~$40,000USD. They also haven't been on the road long enough to determine the real-world lifetime of the battery. I suspect it's significantly shorter than Tesla claims

jalopnik.com...

Originally posted by Svipdagr
reply to post by Monts

 

possibly. they are headed towards a good direction. but how long/far can it go? how fast will it take to charge? also another main point is the cost? solar cells are quite expensive especially with higher quality and better ones. Ford revolutionized the car industry by keeping it cheap so everyone could buy one. Will this company be able to do the same? or will it be something more of high end ferrari type dealership.

According to the article, you can drive 60mph for 3 hours on one charge (and it takes 30 minutes of plug-in-time for a full charge). Some charging stations have already been built in California, and the company have long term plans to go global eventually. It also creates more electricity than is needed for the cars, so it will actually send power back to the grid.

It is also stated that because of this output, the energy will be free.

Here is the official announcement page:
www.teslamotors.com...

The official price so far for the only standard Tesla car is $57 000

So it is definitely more of a luxury car at this point- but with free charging, it definitely makes the car a worthy long-term investment.

reply to post by Monts



Maybe. you're convincing me now. but even if the energy is free. maintenance cost must be insane cause i know right now hybrids cost more to maintain

reply to post by LordGoofus


Every case presented in that article seems to be rooted in negligent-ownership- It seems simply reading the instruction manual could have prevented the 5 total problems that have been reported out of 2 200 cars running. Even if you were to rule those incidents as defects, it would still be impressive.

If I were to read that a "0% battery discharge can cause permanent battery damage" in the manual for my $60K vehicle, I'm pretty sure I would get the point.

The only valid argument is as to how long a well-cared-for battery will last. In this case, only time can tell. If they end up lasting as long as phone-batteries, then all hope is lost.

reply to post by Monts


ThinkingCap abides.

Great thread, when it comes to tech like this... I figure hey, better (100 years) late than never - right?

RIP Tesla

Hopefully more comes from this, and we see these cars becoming more affordable in the future.

reply to post by Svipdagr


I haven't found anything relevant to maintenance costs, but I'd bet along side you that it won't be cheap (maybe even with free-fueling added into the equation).

Either way, it seems to me that this is the first real sustainable, effective, and feasible free-energy vehicle. The first gas-powered cars were luxurious vehicles for the wealthy for years before they were owned by the masses, so I would guess that this new breed of vehicle would follow the same path.

reply to post by ThinkingCap


I'm sure this is one of the early steps of the future, assuming we can make it there in one piece.

Tesla would be proud.

Originally posted by Monts

According to the article, you can drive 60mph for 3 hours on one charge (and it takes 30 minutes of plug-in-time for a full charge). Some charging stations have already been built in California, and the company have long term plans to go global eventually. It also creates more electricity than is needed for the cars, so it will actually send power back to the grid.

It is also stated that because of this output, the energy will be free.

Here is the official announcement page:
www.teslamotors.com...

The official price so far for the only standard Tesla car is $57 000

So it is definitely more of a luxury car at this point- but with free charging, it definitely makes the car a worthy long-term investment.

I'll stick with my Electric Bike for now. Cost about 1200 bucks, does 30 miles per hour with no peddling, can go 20 miles round trip cost pennies to charge - battery is a 48 volt 20 AH Lithium Iron Phosphate battery that's only produced in China, cost 600 bucks, last about 3 years - Tesla is using inferior lithium technology. Tesla has to move a lot of weight. if Tesla Motors used the better LiFePo 4 type battery and made say 2 seaters that were smaller, they could design a 20.000 dollar car that would be fast, more efficient than what they have now and the public would eat it up. Sadly, they don't want to be that guy - they want to be the Luxury high end of electric cars.

reply to post by Monts


But what about the pollution and crap created to make a Tesla vehicle. I wish "Green" Companies would release more information about their products.

This is an exciting development, while the tech may still be years away in terms of making it feasible for the common man (and affordable), it's the sort of direction we should be looking at. What we really need is a moonshot type effort to go "all in" and develop the next generation of sustainable travel based on a renewable resource. I like to think of Elon Musk as a 'futurist', like other futurists he doesn't just dream up sci-fi like utopian visions, he rolls up his sleeves and works at making them into a reality. SpaceX is one example of that, and this vision for Tesla and it's solar-powered charging stations I hope one day will be the next.


ETA: video of Tesla's presentation: