For reasons best known to them, the Tesla motor company agreed to let a NT Times reporter drive their $60,000+ family sedan from Washington DC to Boston and back to New York. It’s devolved into a shouting match and accusations. Tesla says the reporter didn’t follow their instructions like driving 45 mph in the right lane of I-95 in the winter with the heat off. He went through the Lincoln tunnel instead of the George Washington bridge!<\/p>\n
There are only two charging stations in operation on the route capable of doing the super fast battery charge. One is in Delaware and the other is in Milford, CT – about 10 minutes from where I used to live. <\/p>\n
I-95 used to be a toll road, and Milford has several truck stops and a bunch of restaurants and a large shopping center. It is also where the high capacity electric lines that connect the NE corridor run. If you had to recharge your Tesla at home, it would take all night or much longer. A full charge is 85 kwh of electricity. If you remember science 1khw is 1000 watts of power for an hour. At 220 volts, 1kw is about 4.5 amps. On a typical 100 amp circuit, if all you were doing was charging the car, it would take 6 hours, but that’s not realistic. 12 hours would make more sense.<\/p>\n
The Milford “on the road” charging station uses 480 volts and charges the 1000 pounds of batteries in about 60 minutes. It’s located in the rest areas which are a legacy of having been a toll road. Under perfect conditions, that might take you 250 miles. Washington DC to Boston is about 440 miles and takes about 8 hours. Of course, stopping twice for an hour to recharge turns it into a 10 hour trip. Tesla says you would have stopped at that McDonalds for an hour anyhow, so stop whining. And so what if you aren’t allowed to use the heater on a 30 degree day, not drive at night, not use cruise control, and drive only 55 mph – and only the driver in the car and don’t put weight in the trunk.<\/p>\n
He just barely made it to Milford with all the alarms warning that the car was about dead. But he did not make it to Boston. He stopped at Stonington Connecticut and it became apparent he was going to have a problem. With the car stored overnight at 10 degrees, the batteries lost most of their power. What little they had left has to be used to warm the batteries so they can release more energy. They found him a charging station that wasn’t a supercharger, and he could have spent all day in Norwich hanging out at the sewage plant – but he thought the batteries had warmed enough that he was okay, but he wasn’t. With the 10 degree wind as he drove down the road, the car didn’t make it far, went into emergency stop and died. Call the tow truck.<\/p>\n
After dragging it from Branford to Milford (16 miles) and charging for 80 minutes, the car still only showered 219 miles of range. I know from the iPhone that letting the lithium ion battery get very cold drastically reduces its capacity, in theory only temporarily. Getting it too hot destroys the battery. As long as the car never leaves your heated garage it has great range!<\/p>\n
So Tesla is accusing the reporter of doing a “fake” test. I believe Tesla is creating a fake car. If you want a car that you store in your heated garage and drive in the Spring in Virginia on level ground during the day to go buy groceries, this will work for you. If you want a car in Minnesota where it is -20 overnight and drive it 50 miles into town with the heater and headlights on, this is not the car for you.<\/p>\n
The average daily traffic count on I-95 in Milford is around 20,000. Let’s say 10% of future cars are using Smart Green electrical power from the solar panels on the roof of McDonalds. At a reasonable peak hour, my guesstimate is we need around 300 cars at a time charging. At 85 kw\/hr, that’s 25 Megawatts. That’s a lot of wind turbines and solar panels.<\/p>\n
By the way, we are on the hook for $435 million in loan guarantees.<\/p>\n
Compressed or liquified natural gas is here today and easily adapted for use by existing cars and trucks. Republicans, why are you silent?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For reasons best known to them, the Tesla motor company agreed to let a NT Times reporter drive their $60,000+ family sedan from Washington DC to Boston and back to New York. It’s devolved into a shouting match and accusations. … Continue reading