Drivers wait in line to charge Teslas

[micky]

Drivers waiting "hours" to charge their Teslas. Interesting that they all have their headlights on, and probably their radios too.

[Ed Pawlowski]

Plan ahead! Still a long way to go to integrate a reliable system.

[Ralph Mowery]

Looks like it may take about an hour or so to fully charge one off those things. So if there are 6 cars ahead of you, you might as well start walking.

[invalid unparseable]

Electric cars are not for long trips. Totally stupid and only good for local use and only driving a few thousand miles every year and then Tesla's cost over $50,000.

[trader_4]

Maybe an hour with one of the newer superchargers that delivers 200KWs The next question is where the power is going to come from to charge any significant number of cars all at once. Solar could be a big help during clear skies and daytime. But you'd need the infrastructure to support whatever number need to be charged fast at night or cloudy days too. There is only one supercharger anywhere near here, that I know about. It's at an outlet mall.

[trader_4]

Why only a few thousand miles a year? If you commute 100 miles every day, that's 25K miles a year. Or you could commute 50 miles every day and do another 12K in other driving. If you look at driving profiles, I'm sure you'd find that most cars have most of their miles put on with trips that are well within the range of an electric car.

[Ted]

Yah, the Tesla is a nice toy but you could buy a real car for $50k and take it on a 600 mile day trip.

That said, I really do like Tesla's use of flat-panel display dashboards instead of a cluster-fluck of old-fashioned steam-powered gauges.

[invalid unparseable]

My brother in law bought an older used Volt cheap just for those type toys.

Years ago when electronic type dashes were coming out a woman in marketing in our company had a Buick with one and there was an electrical problem. The car ran fine except she did not know how fast she was going as the speedometer was part of the display.

[gfretwell]

I suppose she was a woman and didn't care if she had low oil pressure, a failed charging system, overheating, running out of gas or any of the other information available on the most rudimentary dash displays.

[Cindy Hamilton]

Do you even know any women? I'm continually frustrated by cars that have idiot lights that tell you when you're already in trouble rather than gauges that tell you before the trouble gets that bad.

It might have been able to tell me my alternator was going south, rather than finding out by having it fail catastrophically in a left-turn lane during morning rush hour. "Catastrophically" means: it bricked the entire electrical system and I couldn't even run the hazard flashers.

Cindy Hamilton

[Mark Lloyd]

There are multiple chargers, so the line would be moving faster than that. However, it's still a reason not to use an electric car for a long trip.

[gfretwell]

I guess I don't know many women like you and neither do most people. I do appreciate a woman who knows about stuff tho. I am married to one. She complains about the others more than me.

[trader_4]

BMW does the same thing. The computer monitors everything, including the system voltage, yet no warning of a failing battery. You'd think that the computer knowing the car was driven for a number of hours, then parked overnight and having a battery voltage lower than normal would be reported so you could avoid a tow. But nope, first sign is the battery is dead.

[Ed Pawlowski]

I'm not sure until I actually use one. I've heard, but not verified, that some simple things require multiple touches of the screen to change wiper speed and such. It is possible to simplify things so much that they are difficult to use.

[Ed Pawlowski]

Fine for the daily commute or modest trip but I do a couple of long trips a year, maybe 1500 miles or so. Can be done but you need more time and there is some risk.

[Ted]

Yah, critical stuff like wipers, headlights, turn signals etc should probably have dedicated switches...but the steam-powered gauges got to go.

Or how about "Alexa, wipers on slow."

[Ted]

A flat panel display could flash a meaningful message like "Charging system voltage low! or "Oil pressure low" or "Gas cap loose" instead of a cryptic ODBII code.

[gfretwell]

What is wrong with a gauge that has a needle pointing to the voltage present or the actual oil pressure? I certainly trust mechanical gauges more than a digital representation of an analog sensor. Folks act like just because a digital display has a number precise to 2 decimal places that it is that accurate.

[Barb]

As long as the driver checks them frequently, gauges are fine. Personally I'd rather have a computer do the boring stuff for me and audible alert me with a meaningful error message.

[micky]

I had a digital dash in my '84 or 88 LeBaron. Little squares lit up so there was no distinguishing 1/4 tank until it got to 1/8th of a tank, or something like that.

But the worst part is that when I turned it on, every time for weeks it said I was low on windshield washer fluid. I know that already!!! Then it said "All monitored systems are functioning normally" and in place of the radio, that I wanted to listen to. I'd bought it used and after a year or two I learned there was a switch on the box under the dash to turn off all the talking.