Tesla V4 Supercharger designed station submitted for permitting - in Arizona

[Ogre]

Probably would lose three stalls.

Of course, you could set it up so that each pull-through stall has two chargers - I think they do this in Europe - so depending upon the mix of traffic, you could have better utilization.

-Crissa

I’ve seen a station like that here in the US. The other advantage of those is it supports more vehicles that way. The down side is it does take up a lot more space. This one in Brandon Oregon has 8 spaces, but it would be hard to get 8 vehicles in here if they parked like this white car did.

People with trailers will love this charging station though. It’s on a lower traffic corridor so they can get away with lower density.

 

[Crissa]

I see this is a common problem. Maybe they need arrows on the ground?

-Crissa

(Trying very hard not to tease the spelling error...)

 

[Ogre]

I see this is a common problem. Maybe they need arrows on the ground?

-Crissa

(Trying very hard not to tease the spelling error...)

I think the SC was designed to be used with cars pointed north (top of your photo), but the entrance to the parking area is that direction. So when you pull in, you see the Supercharger and turn and pull into it facing south. If you put 8 cars in that lot facing south, 4 of them end up in the parking lot isle. It gets weirder if you have some cars in both directions.

They should have rotated it 90 degrees so the transformers (those might be rectifiers?) are adjacent to the bushes then cars coming in would naturally turn in to the spaces in the correct direction.

It’s likely they have interns lay these out.


I’m going to blame the spelling error on autocorrect.

 

[Tinker71]

I find it humorous the vast majority of guys that buy trucks to drive to their little office jobs doing mortgage or whatever. Only thing the truck ever tows is their disfunctional marriage and the high payment he has on his Laramie.

anyway, I don’t think most men tow. I use my bed everyday / every other day for work. I maybe tow 1 time a month avg.

I find the tow battery restriction humorous but valid. Even Tesla shared some stat slide about how many people DONT tow.

Yep. If you tow more than 100 miles 4-5 days per month the CT is not for you. Unless you have a lot of time on your hands.

Pull through chargers are only going to help a little bit. Then they have to design to charge the tow vehicle plus the e-trailer. Semi automated quick connect hitches will help in the interim.

 

[Tinker71]

Megapack has 3000kWh of storage but only around 1500kW of rated power at once from it's inverter. That means: 1500/350kW = 4.3 cars on a v4 SC at full rate at the same time. So it might be able to charge cars whilst isolated from the grid, but it won't be that many cars at the same time on a v4. Now at lower rates it could do more, but either way you'll get between 50-38 MY cars (depending on pack size) charged from it in off-grid mode and it has a 2 hour storage buffer at full load, so it's essentially running at 0.5C.

The two 75kW solar arrays (150kW total) will produce around 700kWh per day average in that location and will take over 4 days to charge the Megapack alone. Obviously they should have a bit more...

But the crazy one is that the site, if configured to run 350kW on all 40 stalls would require a massive 14MW of power from the network connection (minus the 4 stalls the Megapack can do). That's some 8000 households worth of power for this one charging location alone.

Shame not many people use it at night. ROI is probably not that crash hot? Anyone have some figures?

I was reading about the requirements for government funded chargers. In addition to the CCS plug they need to have a display. I think time to charge and cost were what was wanted.

I think this is a mistake. In this day and age either the car or your cell phone should linked to the charger. The display is just one more thing to get vandalized and drive up the cost.

What we need is a 3 tier system with a lgreen light (energy is plentiful and cheap) no light (neutral) and orange (conserve premium charged).

The indicator light is the only annunciation required at a super charger station so you can see it before you enter/charge.

While the rate might not be something we can/should control, the discount and premium % is something that could be standard.
50% savings to charge while the green light is on. +50% with an orange light. Society needs to pay attention to peak and off peak power.

 

[greggertruck]

Yep. If you tow more than 100 miles 4-5 days per month the CT is not for you. Unless you have a lot of time on your hands.

Pull through chargers are only going to help a little bit. Then they have to design to charge the tow vehicle plus the e-trailer. Semi automated quick connect hitches will help in the interim.

It's just funny to me HOW MANY PEOPLE ARGUE ABOUT IT... Like, no one is telling you a flat head is better than a phillips, for your phillips head screw. No one.

Maybe a bad analogy, but you get it.

 

[Ogre]

Just had another charging “Adventure” this weekend.

The Supercharger which was my back-up plan turned out to be closed which is uncommon enough, but extremely irritating when you are out of cell service, finally get into cell range and discover that instead of having 10% reserve when you get to the Supercharger you are likely to have -1% charge when you get to the next closest one.

When chargers are as far apart as they are, off-line chargers are extremely infuriating… potentially dangerous. We really seriously need more chargers on smaller highways. Having a 100 mile long corridor with no chargers does not work.

This is all trebly true if people start towing things, range is going to take a huge hit.

 

[JBee]

Just had another charging “Adventure” this weekend.

The Supercharger which was my back-up plan turned out to be closed which is uncommon enough, but extremely irritating when you are out of cell service, finally get into cell range and discover that instead of having 10% reserve when you get to the Supercharger you are likely to have -1% charge when you get to the next closest one.

When chargers are as far apart as they are, off-line chargers are extremely infuriating… potentially dangerous. We really seriously need more chargers on smaller highways. Having a 100 mile long corridor with no chargers does not work.

This is all trebly true if people start towing things, range is going to take a huge hit.

Lol 100miles between chargers. Thats really good! My nearest one is 300miles.
Here in WA we have 3 supercharger locations and our state is 4x the size of Texas.

 

[charliemagpie]

Yep. If you tow more than 100 miles 4-5 days per month the CT is not for you. Unless you have a lot of time on your hands.

I said a similar thing recently, but on reflection, what are we going to do in say 5-10 years when EV trucks are our ONLY choice ?

Scarcity will begin well before the last ICE truck is made. States are starting to ban them. whichever way we look at it. The writing is on the wall.

 

[Tinker71]

In 10 years hopefully the battery tech will be way better or robot will move things in order to charge or maybe we won't feel the need to haul copious quantities of stuff around as much. Or all the above.

 

[Sirfun]

In 10 years hopefully the battery tech will be way better or robot will move things in order to charge or maybe we won't feel the need to haul copious quantities of stuff around as much. Or all the above.

Copious amounts of stuff is a reality for some families. My family, consists of my wife, her mom, the 3 kids (one of which is in a wheelchair), and me, AND ALL OUR STUFF! These photos were from our trip to Canada, were taken near Crissa's hood.

 

[Crissa]

The displays are very useful for those without compatible cell phones - or what if your cell phone isn't working? You can't charge your phone until the charger works.

Like a gas pump, it needs to be universal, work without tools, and be transparent to what it's doing. It needs to accept payment from your buddy without your account working.

It's great when things 'just work'. But there needs to be backup for when things don't.

-Crissa

 

[CompMaster]

Most chargers now even with a screen can only accept payment through there app. Phone is the screen. If you don't have a cell phone, your most likely not going to drive an EV. As the newer generation grow, everyone has at least one phone. Just like Europe and Africa. No food on the table but have a cell phone. Just being realistic here, and yes I have done plenty of traveling over the pond. And yes, there cell speeds are much fast then ours at a tenth the cost in some places..

 

[Crissa]

Yes, but the car should still work if the cell phone doesn't. Cell phone as charger screen is a single point of failure: Bad.

-Crissa

 

[JBee]

Cost of screen is negligible in comparison to the network connection cost. It also already has comms to authorise charging and send billing information to the user account. So not having a screen is just annoying and silly. Nearly any $1 microcontroler can run a screen via I2C/SPI. A 5" screen would do and costs $25.

Otherwise a flat phone battery then means you are also stranded. Or just not having reception in that location because the carrier your on, on an incompatible app. Customer number and pwd/pin should suffice. I wouldn't do one without it.