@chris1, I can understand having a charging station at your home, but where do you recharge your car when on a trip? I have looked at Tesla and it looks like a great car, but are there charging stations around the US, plus how long does it take to charge?
A map of charging stations. the car knows its location and how much charge is left, so it will tell you which station you need to hit.
There are other free charging stations out there from other utilities, but are slow compared to the dedicated Tesla stations.
Iām a little surprised that there isnāt an E-Jerry Can for āfilling the tankā if you need to go somewhere without charging stations*. I just got back from a 6-day camping trip, avoiding main thoroughfares, and I only saw one Tesla charging station the whole time. Granted, there may have been several more in the general vicinity that I didnāt see. Not knowing exactley where I would be going, I was always secure in the knowledge that I had an extra quarter tank of fuel strapped to the roof.
*unless there is such a product!
That my friend is a good idea.
Helps alleviate the range anxiety. It could top off its charge while plugged in, and always be there like your cans on the roof.
I didnāt realize that there were charging stations all over the place. Does the charging require overnight charges?
I currently drive a Nissan Leaf, which has a range of around 80 miles on a charge, so I get this question a lot. Itās actually a rather complicated question to answer.
First off, itās necessary to point out that despite the 80 mile range, in 3 years and 24,000 miles we have never charged our car anywhere but our garage. And of course, weāve never run out of juice or gotten stranded. There are a few reasons for that: the obvious one is that we donāt go that far. Every morning, my partner drives me to the train station, about 2.5 miles away, and then goes to her office, about 10 miles. Then she picks me up on the way home. So being generous, call it a 30 mile round trip. That leaves plenty to spare for going to lunch or running an occasional errand.
The furthest supermarket from our house that we care about is, depending on the route, 3-6 miles away. The closest is 1.3 miles. Target is 2 miles away. IKEA is 2 miles away. JFK airport is 22 miles away. We live in the suburbs, land of convenience. And weāre on an island. Go 27 miles and youāre in Times Square. The point Iām making with all these figures is that it would actually take a concerted effort for us to drive 80 miles in a day.
A less obvious thing, for those who have never owned an electric vehicle, is that charging at home means you start every trip with a full tank. We are so used to the model of gasoline cars where you drive them until they get low on fuel and then you have to go to a place to refill them. These cars are more like a cell phone. You plug them in every night. As long as the battery is big enough to get through the day, you stop thinking about how big it is. We have a 240V 32 amp charger. On a typical day, it takes around 3 hours to top it off. Itās always ready to go in the morning. This really is one of the biggest paradigm changes of driving an EV and itās hard to grasp.
But what about long trips, I hear you ask. Of course, occasionally we go out of town. I have family a few hundred miles away. And thatās why the Leaf is our second car. I still have my old Prius in the driveway, and it gets used maybe once a month, for those longer trips, or when the two of us need to go our own way. But 99% of our driving is in the Leaf. Even if we didnāt have another car, we use it so rarely that renting one as needed or using Zipcar would probably save us money over the insurance and maintenance weāre paying now to have that thing sit in the driveway.
So I didnāt answer the question about chargers because I couldnāt care less about them. But itās worth pointing out that public charging stations do exist. There are apps and services like Chargepoint to find (and if necessary, pay) for them, and the cars tend to have some facility built in. For example, our Leafās navigation system is connected to the Internet and can look up charging stations or plan a route around them, like the Tesla but not as fancy. Tesla has a huge advantage because they have a network of special Tesla-only supercharger stations. Only Tesla owners can use them, and they charge much faster, so when you take a road trip you can stop for lunch and refill your car.
I hope that makes some sense. Since weāre pretty happy with 80 miles, upgrading to a car with a 310 mile range means weāre probably never going to think about it. Though if we get one I plan to do a supercharger-assisted road trip just because we can.
You can take a look at Teslaās map here: Find Us | Tesla and their trip planner here: Go Anywhere | Tesla
That facility is built in to the car, so you just type in where you want to go and itāll plan a route that includes stops along the way to ensure you donāt run out of juice. I think typically the charging stops are around 30-40 minutes. They put most of the supercharger stations at places that have amenities, so you can grab some food or do a bit of shopping while you wait. The phone app tells you when itās ready.
Thank you for taking the time to answer my question. I didnāt consider the fact that the average daily driving range would normally not exceed the carās range, nor did I consider that the Tesla could charge during lunch.
I believe the stat is that something like 95% of the driving done by autos in this country is under 75 miles. But Americans have range anxiety because they focus on the 5% where they could have another gas powered car or a Zip or rental for that trip.
I gone done it. Getting a blue one. AWD. 2-4 months, it says.
Cool!
You will be driving around in a computer soon, the price of gas will be a memory and if the 0-60 times are correct, it will be a good bit quicker than my '66 HP Mustang. Iāll probably miss the exhaust note, at least for a while.
We have a Model X and love it. Best buying decision my wife ever forced me to make
We did a 10 Day (4 country) European road trip with our Tesla in August and had no issues at all. Free supercharging too meant that it was really cost effective.
update: Delivery is delayed,we should hear from them in the next week or soā¦
@dolcediva, did you experience any delays?
We got lucky and had our car get there early by one week.
Congrats! but you canāt have mine, it is blue as well.
Yeah, it appears Tesla raised the price on the AWD option again. It was originally $5k, then briefly went down to $4k, then back up to $5k, and up again to $6k. :-/
Model 3 just received a perfect 5 star safety rating in all categories.