ajdelange
Well-Known Member
- First Name
- A. J.
- Joined
- Aug 1, 2019
- Threads
- 9
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- 2,883
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- Location
- Virginia/Quebec
- Vehicles
- Tesla XLR+2019, Lexus, Landcruiser, R1T
- Occupation
- EE Retired
Yes, that's pretty much what Musk described.Sounds like they're really working around some limitations:
We are thinking about a real simple thin where you just download the Tesla app, you go to the Supercharger, you just indicate which stall you are in, you plug in your car, even if it’s not a Tesla, and you just access the app to tell “turn on the stall that I’m in for how much electricity”, and this should work for almost any manufacturer’s electric car.
Nothing was said about pre-payment. With the current Tesla system you have a credit card on file. Presumably before charging is authorized the validity of that card is verified. It would probably be the same here. There are systems where you have to have $ in your "wallet" before charging is authorized. But that's just antiquated software, IMO.So... Basically you're prepaying for an amount of electricity, and have to guess as to what amount you want is. Sounds like EA, but with the pain if prepayment. Hopefully it all works 90% as well as it does with Tesla's.
An interesting possibility but one that was not mentioned is that the adapter will be able to get the VIN number of the car being plugged in and relay it to Tesla. This suggests that current Tesla owners could register their non Tesla vehicles with Tesla and have their sessions billed to their Tesla accounts and, perhaps, be treated as preferred customers.
Described thus it is clear that the car itself would have to have DCFC disabled (can't request service from any DCFC) in which case the adapter doesn't matter. There may be other reasons for Tesla to refuse connection to third party adapters but this wouldn't be one of them.Since Tesla locks out DCFC (not just Supercharger access) from salvage title cars "for safety reasons", I can't see them allowing third party adapters on the SC network.
Nevertheless the adapter has some interesting questions attached to it. Is there one chained to each staill? Do I have to buy one? Is there a "vending machine" on site to which I give my credit card and which takes a large deposit until I return the adapter?
The more interesting question is given that the cable feeding the wand has to be liquid cooled to dissipate the losses associated with the 626A required to deliver 250 kW, presumably the adapter has to be cooled too. I'm guessing that this can't be practically done and that, therefore, the adapter will be limited to around 100 kW as the other DCFC adapters on the market today are limited to numbers of about that order of magnitude. This leads me to further conclude that therefore there will, in the final stages of evolution (new SC installlations, retrofit to existing stations)of the system, no adapters but rather two hoses one with CCS and one with Tesla wands.
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