Map accompanying 2013-05-31 "Tesla working on coast-to-coast road trip" by David Barker from San Francisco Chronicle" [http://www.sfchronicle.com/news/article/Tesla-working-on-coast-to-coast-road-trip-4563889.php]:
2013-05-30 "Tesla to Add Electric-Car Charging for Coast-to-Coast Travel"
by Douglas MacMillan and Alan Ohnsman from "Bloomberg News" [http://sfgate.bloomberg.com/SFChronicle/Story?docId=1376-MNMAM86TTDSF01-4HU16FJS50EF81D8ECF62OPBB6]:
May 30 (Bloomberg) -- Tesla Motors Inc.’s Elon Musk is expanding a network of fast-charging stations, letting owners of his luxury electric cars drive coast-to-coast this year.
The carmaker, which has tripled in market value this year, is also tripling the number of solar-powered supercharger stations so that owners of the Model S sedan can drive to New York from Los Angeles, said Musk, Tesla’s chief executive officer and biggest investor. The company is providing more details of the charging-network expansion later today in a conference call.
Tesla needs a broader network of charging stations to appeal to customers beyond California and the northeastern U.S., where it now has fueling spots. Without such stations, Tesla drivers are limited by the estimated 265-mile (426-kilometer) range of a battery charge.
“Traditional charging has been way too slow and it’s not effective for long-distance travel,” Musk said in an onstage interview at the D: All Things Digital conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, California. “When people buy a car they’re also acquiring a sense of freedom.”
Nine stations now provide free electricity for Model S owners, and the company has said it wants 100 along U.S. and Canadian highways by 2015.
Tesla, based in Palo Alto, California, rose 3.8 percent percent to $108.60 at 11:19 a.m. New York time. Tesla’s 209 percent rise through yesterday compares with a 16 percent increase for the Russell 1000 Index.
Changed Story -
The announcement by Musk, 41, follows a series of events this month that put Tesla on the most secure financial footing since its founding a decade ago. The carmaker’s first quarterly profit was followed by a top rating from Consumer Reports for the Model S and a share-price surge. Investor demand created an opportunity to raise $1 billion from selling equity and debt and retire its U.S. Energy Department loan nine years early.
“Tesla’s role is kind of interesting: They’ve changed the whole story line” about electric vehicles, said Tom Turrentine, director of the California Energy Commission’s Plug-in Hybrid & Electric Vehicle Research Center at the University of California, Davis. “This is a company that thrives on mythology.”
Musk said May 20 that the supercharger network expansion announcement was pushed back to this week as the company focused on completing its Energy Department loan repayment.
“We’ll both be increasing the density and the scope of the network,” Musk said.
Charging Stations -
The carmaker named for inventor Nikola Tesla began opening the charging stations last year, including six on California highways and three in Connecticut and Delaware, according to Tesla’s website. They allow a car to be repowered in a fraction of the time possible at home, providing 150 miles of driving range in about 30 minutes, with electricity flowing at about 400 volts. Fully recharging a Model S, priced from $69,900, takes as long as eight hours with a 240-volt home-charging system.
With 100 stations, Tesla could cover major cross-country highways such as Interstate 90, which runs from Seattle to Boston, and Interstate 80, which stretches from San Francisco to Teaneck, New Jersey, each with about 20 stations each if they are placed every 150 miles. Interstate 75, which runs from Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, to near Fort Lauderdale, Florida, might need about 12 stations.
At 150 miles per charge, a Tesla driver could cover the distance from Los Angeles to New York with stops at fewer than 20 charging stations, depending on the route. A driver of a traditional car with a 400-mile range, could make the drive with as few as seven tanks of gas.
Chargers Everywhere -
The ability to drive an electric car coast to coast isn’t as essential as making standard public chargers more ubiquitous, said Don Anair, research director for the Clean Vehicles Program of the Union of Concerned Scientists in Berkeley, California.
“Most people don’t go that far from home on a regular basis, but want to know they’ll have no difficulties using their vehicles under normal circumstances,” Anair said.
“To the extent it makes some people feel more comfortable with the range they can go in a Model S, it does help improve acceptance of electric vehicles,” he said.
Use of Tesla’s supercharger is standard with high-end versions of the Model S, which feature an 85-kilowatt-hour battery pack and are priced from $79,900. One with a 60- kilowatt-hour battery can use the chargers as a $2,000 option.
Owners repower their cars for free at the stations, using electricity produced by solar panels installed and maintained by SolarCity Corp., where Musk is also the chairman and largest investor.
“Like most things Tesla has done, it’s very good marketing and a very good early-adopter thing to do,” said Brett Smith, an alternative-vehicle analyst at the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Michigan. “Given who’s buying Teslas, it won’t mean much for the mass market.”
2013-05-30 "Tesla promises to add charging stations"
[http://www.sfgate.com/news/science/article/Tesla-promises-to-add-charging-stations-4562187.php]:
DETROIT (AP) — Electric car maker Tesla Motors Inc. promises to boost the number of fast-charging stations in the U.S. and Canada to make cross-country travel by electric car possible in the next year.
The company said Thursday that by the end of next month, it will triple the number of charging stations it runs from the current eight, and the number will go to around 100 in the coming year, putting stations within reach of almost the entire populations of both countries.
The pace of construction is about twice as fast as the company had previously announced.
The expanded "supercharger" network will allow owners of Tesla's $70,000 Model S sedans to travel from Los Angeles to New York, probably by the coming winter, as well as make other long-distance trips. The Model S can travel about 200 miles, or for about three hours, when fully charged. With the network, it can be recharged to 50 percent of its battery capacity in 20 to 30 minutes, allowing drivers to make quick stops before driving on.
The supercharging stations are about 10 times as faster than most public charging stations, Tesla said on its website.
Currently Tesla has eight supercharger stations in California and on the East Coast. It has plans to add four stations in California this summer. Stations also will be added during the summer so drivers can go from Vancouver, British Columbia, to Seattle and Portland; and from Austin, Texas, to Dallas. They also will come on-line quickly in Illinois and Colorado.
In addition, the company intends to add four stations this summer in the densely populated Eastern Seaboard, where it currently has two.
Elon Musk, who leads the company, said Thursday that the stations will always be free for owners of the large-battery version of the Model S. Owners of the brand's smaller-battery version will have to pay for the option of using the stations.
Musk said most of Tesla's customers don't know about the supercharger stations, and they won't have much of an impact on the company's current sales rate of around 20,000 per year. But they are necessary to appeal to a wider group of more mainstream customers who want to travel between states.
"They want to know that they have that ability to do so, and on a moment's notice, to go wherever they want," Musk said. "I think it's really important for accessing a broader audience."
Tesla said by fall, it should have charging stations in most metro areas, with coast-to-coast travel available during the winter along Interstate 80. By 2014, the company expects to have charging stations within reach of 80 percent of people in the U.S. and Canada, and 98 percent by 2015, it said in the statement.
Tesla said new technology is being tested now that will allow its cars to be fully recharged in about 20 minutes. The technology will be available at stations this summer, the company said.
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A Tesla Motors Inc. S sedan charges during the grand opening of the Tesla Supercharger station in Lebec, California, U.S., on Friday, Oct. 19, 2012. Tesla Motors Inc., the electric-car company led by Elon Musk, built a network of solar-powered rapid-charge stations on major U.S. highways to expand the driving range for owners of its cars at no cost to them.
Photo: Patrick T. Fallon, Bloomberg
2013-05-30 "Tesla Adding Chargers for U.S. Coast-to-Coast Battery-Car Range"
by Alan Ohnsman from "Bloomberg News" [http://www.sfgate.com/business/bloomberg/article/Tesla-Adding-Chargers-for-U-S-Coast-to-Coast-4564043.php]:
May 31 (Bloomberg) -- Tesla Motors Inc. is expanding a network of fast-charging stations, letting owners of its luxury electric cars drive coast-to-coast this year with devices able to repower them in 20 to 30 minutes.
The carmaker, which has tripled in market value this year, is also tripling the number of solar-powered supercharger stations by the end of next month so that Model S sedan owners can drive cross-country, Tesla said in a statement yesterday. The goal is to boost the size and usefulness of the network, Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk said in a conference call yesterday.
“We’re not just adding geography, we’re adding density on well-traveled routes,” Musk said. “You’ll be able to drive all the way from Los Angeles to New York just using the supercharger network.”
Tesla needs a broader network of charging stations to appeal to customers beyond California and the northeastern U.S., where it now has fueling spots. Without such stations, Tesla drivers are limited by the estimated 265-mile (426-kilometer) range of a battery charge.
The initial batch of new stations is being added in California; between Vancouver, Seattle and Portland, Oregon; Austin, Texas, to Dallas; Illinois; and Colorado, the company said. They cost about $300,000 each, including solar panels, Musk said.
“Within six months the Tesla supercharger network will connect most of the major metro areas in the U.S. and Canada,” Tesla said in yesterday’s statement.
‘Alleviate Concerns’ -
Tesla, based in Palo Alto, California, rose 0.3 percent to $104.95 at the close yesterday in New York. Tesla has gained 210 percent this year, compared with a 16 percent increase for the Russell 1000 Index.
Nine stations now provide free electricity for Model S owners, and the company plans to have stations covering “almost the entire population of the U.S. and Canada by next year,” Tesla said in the statement. The electric-car maker’s previous goal of 100 stations by 2015, is now happening “twice as fast as originally planned,” Musk said on the call.
“I think more superchargers will help alleviate concerns about range anxiety, so it is probably a wise use of cash,” said Ben Schuman, an analyst with Pacific Crest Securities in Portland, who rates Tesla sector perform. “It is hard to argue that more charging infrastructure does not benefit Tesla owners.”
The announcement by Musk, who is also Tesla’s biggest shareholder, follows a series of events this month that put Tesla on the most secure financial footing since its founding a decade ago.
First Profit -
The carmaker’s first quarterly profit was followed by a top rating from Consumer Reports for the Model S and a share-price surge. Investor demand created an opportunity to raise $1 billion from selling equity and debt and retire its U.S. Energy Department loan nine years early.
While Tesla operates in the premium auto segment, there is some “spillover” impact for all plug-in and electric vehicles as the company’s fortunes improve, said Tom Turrentine, director of the California Energy Commission’s Plug-in Hybrid & Electric Vehicle Research Center at the University of California, Davis.
“This makes electric fuel and electric cars cool, gives them some cachet,” Turrentine said. “The charge network is probably a relatively minor expense for Tesla, but it contributes to a big, positive story.”
Charging Stations -
The carmaker named for inventor Nikola Tesla began opening the charging stations last year, including six on California highways and three in Connecticut and Delaware, according to Tesla’s website.
Currently, they allow a car to be repowered in a fraction of the time possible at home, providing 150 miles of driving range in about 30 minutes, with electricity flowing at about 400 volts. Fully recharging a Model S, priced from $69,900, takes as long as eight hours with a 240-volt home-charging system.
With 100 stations, Tesla could cover major cross-country highways such as Interstate 90, which runs from Seattle to Boston, and Interstate 80, which stretches from San Francisco to Teaneck, New Jersey, each with about 20 stations each if they are placed every 150 miles. Interstate 75, which runs from Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, to near Fort Lauderdale, Florida, might need about 12 stations.
At 150 miles per charge, a Tesla driver could cover the distance from Los Angeles to New York with stops at fewer than 20 charging stations, depending on the route. A driver of a traditional car with a 400-mile range, could make the drive with as few as seven tanks of gas.
Chargers Everywhere -
“Tesla continues to make headway in eliminating the fear of range anxiety for consumers who are hesitant to purchase an electric vehicle,” said Alec Gutierrez, an Irvine, California- based senior analyst at Kelley Blue Book. “Until a network is built nationwide that doesn’t require consumers to wait several hours for their vehicle to recharge, there will still be consumers who will stay on the sidelines and purchase more mainstream vehicles.”
The ability to drive an electric car coast to coast isn’t as essential as making standard public chargers more ubiquitous, said Don Anair, research director for the Clean Vehicles Program of the Union of Concerned Scientists in Berkeley, California.
‘Zombie Apocalypse’ -
“Most people don’t go that far from home on a regular basis, but want to know they’ll have no difficulties using their vehicles under normal circumstances,” Anair said.
Use of Tesla’s supercharger is standard with high-end versions of the Model S, which feature an 85-kilowatt-hour battery pack and are priced from $79,900. One with a 60- kilowatt-hour battery can use the chargers as a $2,000 option.
Owners repower their cars for free at the stations, using electricity produced by solar panels installed and maintained by SolarCity Corp., where Musk is also the chairman and largest investor.
While not all the superchargers initially will get power from solar panels, that feature will be added over the long term, Musk said yesterday. They’ll also have battery packs to store electricity and be fully off the electrical transmission grid, he said.
Drivers will be able to use the stations even in the event of a “zombie apocalypse,” he said.
For now, the charging network may be more of a novelty for some wealthy Model S owners, Turrentine said.
“In reality many of the people who’ll use them are guys who would normally fly in their personal jets,” Turrentine said. “They can now drive between Palo Alto and L.A. or Las Vegas, and then tweet about it.”
2012-09-24 "Tesla’s new charging stations — coming to a freeway near you"
by David R. Baker from "San Francisco Chronicle" [http://blog.sfgate.com/energy/2012/09/24/teslas-new-charging-stations-coming-to-a-freeway-near-you/]:
Owners of the Tesla Motors Model S sedan are already an exclusive bunch. The all-electric luxury car can cost up to $105,400 fully loaded, and only 132 have been delivered since production began in June.
Now, Model S drivers have — in essence — their own gas stations.
On Monday night, Tesla CEO Elon Musk unveiled the company’s “supercharger,” a device that can fully recharge a Model S battery pack in roughly an hour. He also revealed that the company has built six supercharger stations along California freeways, mostly on the busy corridor that connects the Bay Area and Sacramento to Los Angeles. Musk said the company plans to install hundreds more, spanning the United States and parts of Canada.
The superchargers won’t work with any other electric car. That includes Tesla’s own Roadster, the sleek sports car that built the company’s reputation. Even the cheapest version of the Model S can’t use the supercharger. It doesn’t have the right battery pack.
For those who can use the superchargers, the service will be free. The company expects that drivers will spend perhaps half an hour at a station, recharging while grabbing a burger or taking an extended rest stop. Thirty minutes with a supercharger will give the car enough electricity to drive about 150 miles.
The charging stations will have one other, environmentally-minded twist. Their canopies will carry solar arrays provided by one of Musk’s other companies, SolarCity of San Mateo. The arrays will place more electricity onto the state’s grid, over time, than the cars use, Musk said. So the common criticism that electric cars pollute at the power plant rather than the tailpipe won’t apply.
“You’ll be able to travel for free, forever, on pure sunlight,” Musk said, speaking Monday to a crowd at the company’s design studio in Hawthorne, near Los Angeles. “I think it’s pretty hard to beat that.”
The supercharger stations are Tesla’s latest effort to combat “range anxiety,” the fear of running out of electricity on the open road.
The Model S already has the longest range of any commercially available electric car. Depending on how much they want to spend, buyers can chose from three different battery packs with different ranges — 160 miles per charge, 230 miles, and more than 300 miles. For comparison, the Nissan Leaf gets about 73 miles.
Even with the priciest battery pack, however, Model S drivers can’t take extended car trips without recharging. So Tesla has installed superchargers at Gilroy, Folsom, Harris Ranch, Tejon Ranch, Hawthorne and Barstow.
“This is not some figment of the imagination, like maybe it will happen at some point in the future,” Musk said. “These are installed. We built them up in secret.”
Within two years, Musk said, the company plans to install enough roadside superchargers to cover most of the United States. Within four to five years, the company will have the whole country covered, plus southern Canada.
Blanketing the U.S. with its very own charging stations seems to be a typically ambitious project for Tesla.
Tesla has a lot on its plate right now. The company is still trying to rev up production at its Fremont factory. But is it necessary?
In a document filed with the federal government on Tuesday,Tesla acknowledged that it won’t hit its original target of delivering 5,000 Model S sedans this year. Instead, the company expects to ship 2,700 to 3,225.
Plus, other companies are already building networks of charging stations that can be used by many electric vehicles — not just one. The competition is fierce enough that one such company, Ecotality in San Francisco, filed a suit this spring complaining that California officials had given an unfair advantage to a competitor.
By the federal government’s estimate, there are already 2,000 EV charging stations in California and 8,000 in the United States. Those other charging stations, however, aren’t nearly as fast as the supercharger Musk introduced Monday night.
Finally, buyers of the base model of Model S may feel a bit slighted. After all, they’re paying $57,400 for a luxury car (before state and federal incentives that can knock $10,000 off the price). Don’t they deserve a road trip too?
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(Erik Verduzco / Special to The Chronicle) A Tesla Model S car is showcased at the factory in Fremont, Calif., during an event to celebrate the release of the new car Friday, June 22, 2012. It is only the second car ever produced by Tesla, and first to be built at Tesla's own factory.
2009-12-15 "Tesla hopes long car trip ends 'range anxiety'"
by David R. Baker from "San Francisco Chronicle" [http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Tesla-hopes-long-car-trip-ends-range-anxiety-3206206.php]:
Battery range is the Achilles' heel of electric cars.
They can only go so far before their drivers need to plug them in for hours of recharging. As a result, people tend to think of them as commuter cars, best for short hops around town.
Tesla Motors wants to change that. Come Thursday, the San Carlos company will send one of its electric sports cars on a 3,100-mile road trip from Los Angeles to the North American International Auto Show in Detroit.
The trip will give Tesla a chance to show off its all-electric Roadster in places where the car has seldom - if ever - been seen. Tesla also hopes to strike a blow against "range anxiety" among consumers, proving that electric cars are capable of the classic cross-country trip. Or as the company's Web page devoted to the trip puts it, "range anxiety is for the weak."
"You can take it on a road trip just like you would with an everyday car," said Tesla spokeswoman Khobi Brooklyn.
Well, not quite. The trip, which an everyday car would make in about six days, will take 19 in the Tesla.
The trip's itinerary is built around the Tesla Roadster Sport's 244-mile range. On most days, the car will only travel 100 to 200 miles before stopping for the night. On others the car will go a little farther than the car's range, meaning the driver will have to stop in the middle of the day and spend several hours recharging the battery pack. The drivers, a rotating group of Tesla employees, will recharge at hotels and RV parks.
"There is a realistic way to do this," said Rik Avalos, a Tesla sales recruiter who will drive two legs of the trip. "Going across the country is something people can do. This is not a situation where it's an undue burden."
The trip could also subject the California-born car to some vicious winter weather, as the drivers wind their way through the Upper Midwest, with stops in Chicago and Grand Rapids, Mich.
"When it gets to the show, it will be filthy and road-streaked," said Jason Mendez, who is manager of power train manufacturing engineering and will be another of the drivers. "That's going to be great."
Range anxiety isn't a groundless fear. The few electric cars that have been available to date have had different ranges, but they tend to be lower than the mileage a typical car gets from a full tank of gas. And drivers low on juice can't make a five-minute stop at the gas station to refuel.
Mark Duvall, with the Electric Power Research Institute, drove an earlier generation of electric car - the EV1 from General Motors - for less than a year. Twice he needed to call a tow truck after running down the batteries.
"Having been a driver of a battery electric vehicle, I can tell you what range anxiety is," said Duvall, director of the institute's electric transportation program.
Fear of limited range is also one of the reasons automakers are designing plug-in hybrid cars, which use gas-powered motors for backup when the batteries run too low.
"The people who don't want to have range anxiety and want more flexibility, they can buy plug-in hybrids," Duvall said. "We don't try to make everyone drive the same four-door sedan."
Roland Hwang, with the Natural Resources Defense Council, agreed. He also said that range anxiety may be less of a factor in the future if gasoline prices resume their upward march.
"As the economy recovers, it's not going to be too long before we see $4 gasoline again," said Hwang, vehicle policy director for the environmental group. "So I think when more of these cars hit the showroom, range anxiety is going to be balanced by pump anxiety."
Tesla's drivers will update their progress on Facebook and Twitter. For more information about the trip, go to www.teslamotors.com/roadtrip.
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Rick Avalos (left) and Emily Ritter (right) testing a Tesla on Monday, December 14, in Menlo Park, CA. This car will be driven cross country to the Detroit Auto Show. Photo: Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle
Johnny Aragon doing detailing on a Tesla on Monday, December 14, in Menlo Park, CA. This car will be driven cross country to the Detroit Auto Show. Photo: Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle
