Tesla Sedan to have 440 volt recharging

Not so crasy voltage. I work on equipment running on 480-1360VAC 3ph every day. It is standard in heavy industry.

 

While the first purchasers probably won't have access to 440 volts for charging, giving this car the ability addresses the chicken-egg problem: Put it in the cars so that anyone who does provide a station will have a potential customer base.

Bravo for Tesla!

 

440 three phase is a common industrial voltage.

Tom

 

Will EVs be able to charge with a full range of voltage/amperage options?

For mass marketing it seems they would have to charge at 110V/30A because a lot of homes/apartments do not have 220 available. So if designed to charge 110V (over night) can the same EV also pull into a commercial recharge station and recharge quickly with 440V?

I believe overnight charging will be the norm, with charge at work for longer commutes and occasional quick charge needed for a longer trips or a long day of short trips.

My present home only has 110V/30A available in the garage, but I am designing my next house with 220V/60A in the garage. The plan is to program auto recharge for 23:00 to 5:00. I would not be doing laundry during those hours and could probable program refrig. and hot tub to not run then. Future EV recharging seems fairly low on the list of "Green Building" priorities.

New house will be all electric and will be half the size of my present house and have a 7kW PV system: Monthly "Budget"


-Hot Tub 220------150kwh (very small 2 person)
-EV----------------150kwh (4 miles/kwh = 600 m/month=7k/yr)
-Back up heat------200kwh ®600/month x 4 months-n-D-J-F-m)
-Normal load--------300kwh (12 month average)

-Total--------------800/m = 9600/yr = 6.6kw system (install 7+)

 

That's merely a design decision. Giving an EV the ability to charge on a wide variety of circuits is a trivial matter. It may add a small amount to the price.

I believe the Tesla Roadster can charge on its heavy-duty fast charger, or on a regulat 110-volt 20-amp (15 amp???) circuit. So the answer to your question is, yes.

 

Tesla is thinking AHEAD of the competition (what little there is). By doing this, they are setting up for their next generation battery to be able to charge really fast.

Since Tesla is an engineering driven organization, think of what plans they have not announced. Things like:

1) Next generation battery.....next year. (They would be very quiet about this for obvious reasons.)
2) Fastest possible recharging. (Nothing like being first to market with a real cross country vehicle)
3) Automatic recharging. (Why let the big companies set a standard?)
4) ????

 

Tesla chose to use laptop Li-Ion batteries to keep cost down, because they are manufactured in very large numbers and available from many manufacturers. A switch to a battery type capable of fast charging would probably greatly increase the cost of the vehicle. It's a balancing act between technology and cost. Also, if you are too far ahead in fast-charging technology, there will be no charging stations available. So it's not just a matter of bringing fast charging on as soon as you can. It's a cost-benefit balance and also a question of bringing the new technology on as close as possible to the time when it will actually provide a real benefit.

By allowing faster charging at home, and still permitting 110-volt charging from normal outlets away from home, Tesla has found a good balance. On the other hand, Phoenix Motorcars has genuine fast charging, but as a result, their "SUT" costs $200,000 and owners have no place to make use of that capability.

Until fast-charging stations are available on the highways in my region, if I have, say, a 125 mile range, I don't care if it takes 15 hours to charge fully. (FWIW my Xebra with LiFePO4 batteries gets about 10 miles of range for an hour's charging, which is plenty for the way I use the car.)

 

Your point is very insightful.

What I was considering is that the first rapid charging standards are going to be very much influenced by the first manufacturer that has a production vehicle capable of rapid charging. Who is that going to be? While Tesla must make the tradeoffs described, it makes great sense to set the standard for when super rapid charging becomes a sales factor. How far into the future do you think Tesla is planning? Just their next car or much farther? Honest question.

 

I am sure Tesla is planning way into the future. But planning means deciding when to introduce a new feature, not merely what features to introduce.

Note that charging presents several issues: How much voltage and current is available to the charger; but also whether the charger is on-board or off-board. Tesla provides a big off-board charger and also a small low-power on-board charger. The off-board charger must be wired into your entry box and draws a lot of power. But for charging away from home, the car has an on-board charger which is a lot slower, but can be plugged into a standard outlet.

For future fast-charging stations, are they going to provide chargers (which must be matched to the batteries they are charging, but which do not require the car to carry the weight of a charger -- and fast chargers are big and heavy) or are they just going to provide high-capacity plugs, which any car's charger can plug into, but which leaves the car with the weight of the charger itself?

These are not trivial questions. When the times comes, car makers that choose the "wrong" route will likely go bankrupt. Everyone says that Betamax was the better videotape system, but it lost the competition.

Even my little Xebra, with its 40-mile LiFePO4 battery pack, has a bulky on-board charger. It will be no trivial matter for a car to carry a charger adequate to provide, say, 300 miles of range in 15 minutes. But the charger has to know exactly what kind of batteries it's charging, and how many cells, and it must monitor the cells to maintain balance, etc. So it's also no trivial matter for a charging station to have chargers that can charge any car, regardless of battery type.

There are many issues to settle.