Steve Sasman recently went on an epic 48 state road trip, visiting 107 Tesla stores, meeting over 500 Tesla employees, and finding some helpful Tesla road trip hacks. Here, Steve reflects on the road trip capabilities of a Tesla after breaking the 200,000-mile mark.
Guest contributor: Steve Sasman*. Note: Steve recently went on an epic 48 state road trip visiting 107 Tesla stores, meeting over 500 Tesla employees, and discovering some helpful Tesla road trip hacks. Here, Steve looks back at the cost of owning his Tesla after breaking the 200,000-mile mark.
Tesla Adds Charging Cap To Optimize Supercharger Network Availability
The most popular CleanTechnica articles of the past week included an original analysis of used Tesla Model 3s versus some of the used gasmobiles it competes against, a 380 mile used Nissan LEAF upgrade, a showering of love for Tesla’s motors from a top auto industry expert, and much more.
Tesla reached out to CleanTechnica with news that it will be boosting the speeds of existing Supercharging V2 stations from the current 120kW max rate to 150kW instead of the 145kW the company had previously communicated, with little more than a few software updates. These speed improvements were announced alongside the rollout of Tesla’s next-generation V3 Supercharging stations last month.
We do love Tesla Electric Road Trip stories, especially when they’re spiced with practical charging tips. A recent addition to the genre, from Brad Templeton, posted on Forbes goes beyond the usual travel log of sights seen and charging difficulties overcome. Templeton’s account of a weeklong trip from San Francisco to the southern California desert to enjoy the spectacular springtime poppy bloom includes some interesting insights about how driving electric changes the overall traveling experience.
Superchargers are Tesla’s solution to electric vehicle fast charging. 15–30 minutes at a Supercharger station is all that’s necessary to get the battery recharged to get back on the road. Plus, Tesla has invested heavily in building out a network of Superchargers so that Tesla drivers can go anywhere.
Tesla took a few minutes while it had the world’s attention at the unveiling of its Model Y to flesh out its plans for its Supercharger network. Version 3 of the network will see 250 kilowatt (kW) chargers rolled out as the new standard around the world.
Tesla and the City of Pasadena have entered into an agreement to build a new fast charging facility. Tesla will install 24 Superchargers on the top level of the Marengo parking garage and pay for the installation of the wiring needed to install another 20 Level 3 fast chargers. When complete, it will be the largest EV fast charging facility in the western US.
The goal of this series is to examine current topics being written about Tesla [TSLA] that appear to be stirring up “Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt” (or FUD). The plan is to try to provide reasonable analysis about the validity of the claims. I generally do not link to the articles that “inspire” me to write this, as I do not wish to reward analysis I feel is poor with increased traffic. However, I will freely admit that my analysis may contain incorrect assumptions, and will do my best to acknowledge them in future articles.
