Tesla Roadster takes 30 hours to charge from a standard wall socket
By Ryan Block 
posted Jul 7th 2008 1:21AM
posted Jul 7th 2008 1:21AM
If you've got the coin to roll deep enough to own a Tesla Roadster, we'd imagine that making sure the car gets its 8 (or fewer) hour charge from a 220v / 80A circuit (like what powers some larger home appliances) won't be a huge issue. But if not, think twice about your driving schedule with the all-electric sports car, because while you can technically power a Roadster from any standard wall outlet, the amount of draw a standard 110v / 15A plug delivers would mean a 30 hour wait to juice up your vehicle's thousand pound battery pack. Thankfully, Tesla owners have time to think over how to deal with these kinds of details, being that none of the customers who've pre-ordered a car have yet received theirs.[Via Autoblog Green]
How is that a big problem. If you can afford a Tesla, I would hope you can afford an electrician to rewire a standard outlet...
Couldn't agree more.
Or you could just alternate between the Tesla and a Bugatti chauffeured by Morgan Freeman while you're waiting for a charge.
eww Morgan Freeman
Or, you could rewire it yourself for free.
Zaaap.
I think they would end up buying a second one anyway, even if they rewire an outlet. They will however still alternate use to make sure that the car is fully charged.
Or move to Europe.
Or have a house in Europe specifically for charging your Tesla Roadster...
I must display a smug, rather condesending smile at the notion that the US could produce a sports car, yet alone one powered by electricity.
For those who don't RTFA its 8 hours on a larger circuit. You know, like the ones every house has in them for the refrigerator or wall mount air conditioner or electric dryer.
Nothing to see here, move along.. Just normal flamebait posting by Ryan. =)
Luckily only a few rich people will have these. Electricity is cheaper at current usages but if everyone had these the supply would increase and we would need to build more plants and increase the price.
Hell if you can afford a tesla you might aswell go all out and have solar roof panels and a frickin wind turbine farm in your backyard... or get a direct line to the power plant with a giant extension cord.
Now if only I could ride my washing machine to work. Then I wouldn't have to worry about getting a Tesla or another plug.
Is it weird that I just got an image of a businessman flying down the highway on a washing machine, tie flapping in the wind?
You could take care of two things at once! The morning commute, AND the day's wash! Then you just hang the wet clothes around your cubicle to dry during the day!
I got the same vision, black suit, red tie with stripes, flying down the highway
It's usually the dryer that's 220 not the washer
Now that image is going to be stuck in my head all day...
Although I do have a defunct lawnmower and washing machine in the garage... Perhaps it is time to marry the two?
All I need now is a suit and tie.
@ Ben Grimsbo
...And a marriage license.
And reality finally hits home when the laws of physics are applied. I figured this out months ago. However, it seems the teaming masses of uneducated green leftist have thrown intellect and common sense out with the bath water in a futile attempt at solving the issue of energy and transportation.
I hardly consider 8 hours to charge a car that does 0-60 in 3.9 and has a 220 mile range bad at all.
Actually it has a 110 mile range... If you drove 111 miles from home, you'd run out of juice 2 miles before you get home. Or you could plug it in to a regular outlet and come home 30 hours later...
Tesla Motors Website: "220 miles per change"
Let me clarify.. If you drive 111 miles from home, that means it will be 111 miles to get back. If my math is correct, that would be 222 miles total. So, the farthest range you can get in one direction is... 110 miles if you want to make it home without plugging in.
Thanks for stating the obvious.
"Teeming" is spelled like I just wrote.
I don't normally point out spelling errors but comments past a certain level of pomp seem (seam?) to require it.
charging it via USB is even worse
"Or you could plug it in to a regular outlet and come home 30 hours later.."
This car is not for cross-country driving. People who buy it will probably just take their private jet for that. Or stop by an RV park every 200 miles and use one of their high tension outlets.
So, I guess I better not go to the supermarket 111 miles away. Geeez. This is not the family truckster you take to your mother-in-law's. It has a 220 mile range.
Step 1: Go drive
Step 2: Look at trip odometer
Step 3: Be back home before it says 220
or maybe if you were following someone you could run an extension cord from their lighter outlet. How many solar panels would one need to charge the thing in 8 hours?
this is going to be a really dumb comment but its late so i dont care i'm basically out of it from lack of sleep. I vote the car owners find way to supercharge their standard wall sockets and hope nothing goes wrong with the car. had i been in a state of mind to think this through i would see every error imaginable in this idea which clearly would never work
Couldn't have stopped after the 9th word, could you? How much more of a hint do you want?
You meant to say (as the article does) "like what powers your household electric dryer" Not washing machine. All washing machines run off 110, as do gas dryers. Electric dryers run off 220.
Funny to discover that the appliances are not on the same voltage.
In Europe we got pretty much everything on 240v (and some professional tools on 380v) for the AC.
Looks like this car will be best used on this side of the pond ;)) Keep them going to Europe !!
Funny that the car started there but had to come to here in order for you to want it
In the US our standard is 120v & we get 220v when you combine two 120v circuits.
I was wondering the same thing.. but 80A doesnt seem what you could usually draw from a socket without blowing fuses
But UK has a slower frequency than US (50Hz vs 60Hz). I think that's why Vista runs so slowly here.
You mean you actually *double* the voltage to 220V?
US: 120V, 208V between phases (that's x sqrt(3))
Europe: 230V, 400V between phases
rblock with the zing!
... can someone please tell me what this equates to in terms of tonnes of C02 produced by a standard coal burning power station.
This is great and all ... and it is early days ... but have we just replaced a fuel guzzling V8 engine with a coal burning (at least here in Australia it is) power station ?? What's the net gain in all of this?
I hate this arguement. That power plant will still be making power, regardless of a few extra Teslas. Also, if you go to the Tesla site there is a DR. who's entire house is solar powered. For the extreme side, the Tesla is the last piece from going completely off-grid.
In many places, you can choose to have your power come from green-only places. Here, it costs like 7 cents extra per kilawatt.
If nothing else is gained, centralization of a pollution source is. Instead of all the cars individually polluting, you have a few energy stations doing the pollution. Then, they can be replaced one by one with better power sources, or other pollution-reducing methods can be applied.
Well it's up to the government to change that end of the system. The average person can only do so much, and the rich average person gets Tesla.
It's a California company with mostly California buyers. California doesn't burn coal, it mostly uses a combination of Natural Gas, Nuclear, and Hoover Dam.
Well you should have just gone to their website! CA electrical energy generation chart for 2005...
Natural gas 37.7%
Coal 20%
Large Hydro 17%
Nuclear 14.5%
Geothermal 5%
Biomass 2.1%
Small Hydro 1.9%
Wind 1.5%
Solar 0.2%
So all in all you are getting 60% by burning stuff instead of 100% and it is much more affordable than gasoline.
Why does that matter.
Arent we going to slowly shift to wind and solar powered energy.
So why do idiots like you still keep bringing this argument up.
We havent shifted to green energy yet.
So let atleast the cars be green.
We can then eliminate coal power.
Also there already exists hydro electricity and nuclear power plants. So everything is not coal.
I dont what do with people like this.
I think either they want to have bath in the morning with clean water or else these people just rub shit all over themselves.
Will there be a USB version?
My USB port has a hard time powering my phone, let alone a vehicle...
It would only take 368 hours!
This headline is not news, and the text in this post is wrong.
It will take about 8 hours to charge from 220V, 30 Amps.
The Tesla home charger is 220V, 70 Amps and takes less than 4 hours. The math for calculating the charging time to first order is not difficult, try using some.
Finally, someone who knows about power.
If it really is pulling 80 amps of 220, it would use the same power during its 8 hour charge as my air conditioner would running non-stop for 20 hours straight.
I still think the big joke is that using this much power if you live in a part of the country that is powered by a coal or oil burning power plant, would pollute more than if the car ran on gas. However, if your power comes from a nuclear plant, you're helping the environment.
In response to the post above about the power plant not polluting more when someone uses more power, your nuts. Do you think rolling blackouts are done for fun? Or do you realize that when everyone has their AC running (which in an average house uses less power than this car) power plants have to increase their output.
Do some research before you rant.
holy crap, if this is right, then we're talking about 50KWh per day to charge the thing. in northern california, this is going to cost you about $16.50 a day to charge. that's a fortune.
you better have a PV solar system on your roof if you own one of these things. and even mid-sized PV systems only do about 40KWh on the best summer days... ouch.
16 dollars a day to go 220 miles.. that's better than my current car and with no added pollution.. Plus when the natural gas and coal run out you can still use this car.. and 16 dollars a day assumes that you fully drain it everyday as well and here's a tip.. (charge it at work)
@ Rob
that would be assuming you drive 220 miles a day...
now lets say you drove a honda fit...32 mpg (from experience) 220/32=6.875
6.875*4.09 (local gas price)=28.12 which is much more than 16.50 and the roadster is obviously much sportier.
Also, where are you getting your price/kwh? for me it would only cost 5 dollars to charge the roadster which is a hell of a lot cheaper than 28.12
@Alex
What I said was a COUPLE of Teslas were not going to have that much of an impact. Of couse I understand that that consumption causes blackouts. And where in my comment did you see a rant??? I believe yours to be more of a rant than mine...
Maybe these wont make an impact but they are coming out a new model this year and one under 30,000 within 5 years and they are building their own factory which should help... Maybe 3 wont make much difference but you've gotta start somewhere! They sold 100 at 109,000 a piece in the first month so.
If you were to use 1000 kWh (50kWh*5days*4weeks) in a month you would be in the highest tier of PG&E's usage calculator (Tier 5, >300% of baseline, $0.358/kWh) Although I'm sure better rates can be had with E-7 billing (time of day-based usage)
I know "math is hard" for a lot of people, but it's been publicly stated that the Tesla has a ~55kWh pack.
thats true, it does compare favorably to a regular car, even in N california.
i have 2 priuses and i guess it costs about the same to run 220 miles. i didnt do that math, it was late.
as others have pointed out the top PG&E tiers around here range from 0.30 to 0.38 $/kwh depending on the time of year. electricity is very expensive in N. california. i guess i have this very outdated bias of thinking that electricity is essentially free, and so the tesla numbers came as kind of a shock (ha ha) to me.
@ Alex
I like the name but...
If you were to charge at night, since you'll be mainly driving during the day and sleeping at night (unless you're an environmentally conscientious vampire), then you're not putting much extra load on the grid. This is because the power stations will be producing electricity, much more than it takes to charge a Tesla, even when its not all being used
Alex: Chances are you're going to be charging your car at night. There won't be any rolling blackouts because of the Tesla.
What I want to know is, what would be the added cost to your electric bill to pay for this puppy?
I don't know if anyone has worked the math on this yet, but if the telsa needs a 220 volt socket and uses the full 80 amps, for an 8 hour charge this means for your overnight charge you are sucking down 140.8 KWH of electricty. Don't know how much everyone else pays but I pay around 16 cents / KWH. This computes to paying $22.58 each night to charge your car. Assuming you drive it each day x 30 days a month =$675/moth just for the charging the telsa. Of course if you can afford a luxury electriic sports car its not that bad. But for the upcoming Chevy Volt, you have the same problem. The car only gets 50 MPG at best when running off the gas engine, and then if you charge it at home you are getting the equivalent of $3 / gallon gasoline. Plus the Volt will cost $40K to buy. I get the feeling that the what killed the electric car was the cost of energy, considering at the time a gallon of gas cost only $1.50 or so. Most of electricty comes from coal meaning there is really nothing green about electric cars. Unless of course you had solar panels installed on your home, but that alone to power your home and charge your telsa, would cost an additional $200K. I think I will stick to my honda
are you driving that far every day?
or completely draining the charge every time you go out?
I drive maybe 35 miles round trip to work, and add another 30 miles if I go out for dinner.
Sticking with Honda is what most people have been doing anyways, I don't think these will be the same people in line for a Chevy Volt.
And stop comparing a roadster to your honda, unless it's a S2000.
Dude I don't know about you but I don't drive 110 miles to work every day....
After installing extra circuits for our render farm, paying only a few hundred bucks for the ordeal, i don't see how people who can afford the Tesla wouldn't go all the way with an extra plug in the house. I would.
M
I would put it in the garage. Saves on extension cords.
holy crap: 220v and 80 amps?? Thats more than 17000 watts. Thats really a lot of power on one circuit. I mean, I live in a house with 3 floors, and thats more than a quarter of our total capacity of 300 amps. Does the charger come with its own split system cooling system?, cause its gonna make some heat if it uses that much.
Imagine asking an electrician:
" Sir, I need you to install some 4 gauge wires in my house"
" What are you doing down there? Growing a pot farm?"
" No actually its for my car charger, I have a pretty peppy electric car"
" Huh, youre gonna get pretty peppy when your electric bill comes in too"
there are 746watts in 1hp
thus a car drawing 100hp is using 74,600 watts of power
however the thermal efficiency of a gas engine will be at best 40%
so the car is actually consuming 1,865,000 watts of energy
17,000watts over 4 hours begins to not look so bad
its true many charging systems are inefficiency (80-90% range) but usually this is done for cost reasons because who cares if you waste half a watt charging your AA's? there have been high-efficiency convertors operating above the 97% range for many applications for quite a while, and with decent engineering theres no reason this one would have to be any worse. that would be ~500watt thermal loss, which while not ideal isnt too shabby.
Permit me to "drive the point all the way home":
According to wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoline#Energy_content ) a gallon of permium gas contains 39MJ/liter of energy. Factor that by (.2777 kWh/MJ) (.284 liters/gallon) and gas is 2.86 MWhr's per gallon. If you were to burn that over four hours (.25) it would put out a continuous 716kW, meaning a single gallon of gas contains *42.1 times more energy* than this car takes to completely charge.
17kW * 4hr is miniscule compared to what a gasoline car consumes.
Permit me to "drive the point all the way home":
According to wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoline#Energy_content ) a gallon of permium gas contains 39MJ/liter of energy. Factor that by (.2777 kWh/MJ) (.284 liters/gallon) and gas is 2.86 MWhr's per gallon. If you were to burn that over four hours (.25) it would put out a continuous 716kW, meaning a single gallon of gas contains *42.1 times more energy* than this car takes to completely charge.
17kW * 4hr is miniscule compared to what a gasoline car consumes.
Wow do I ever hate the insane latency and lack of feedback of Engadgets comment system. I dont see any feedback then all of a sudden theres three posts.
I also did my conversions wrong, in two ways. I solved for kWh yet counted MWh and my litergallon conversion was inverted.
It should have been:
39MJ/l (.27777 kWhr/MJ) (1 l/.264gallons) = ~41 kWh/gallon
Charging the car takes
17kW * 4hr = 70kWh.
So it takes the energy content of 1.718 gallons worth of gas to fully charge this car. Please forgive the math slips, it should have occured to me those numbers were outrageous.
The obvious solution is to buy two.
80 amp circuit? So you're saying my dryer (I assume) is connected to something delivering 17,600 watts of power? Wow.
Its not to hassle of getting the 220 80 amp service installed. That would only run a couple hundred bucks to get an electrician to setup.
What happens when you drive somewhere other than your house and have to wait 30 hours to get home because they don't have the special power setup for you?
I guess this is not the car to take to your mother-in-law's house!
And why the hell, exactly, would you want to go THERE?
Geez dude, you make it sound like a bad thing. I've been trying to think of a good excuse as to why I can't go visit the mother-in-law for years now.
Couldn't you bring an extension cord and just use someone's dryer outlet? Almost everybody has got one of those.
Besides, do you HAVE to let the car charge up completely? Seems like the full 30 hours would only be needed if you need max range, so it would appear to depend on the situation.
you can't use an extension cord with a dryer outlet. I had a hard enough time finding a 6 ft long dryer cable, they don't seem to allow dryer cables to be any longer.
If I could afford one of these I could afford 10 grand in solar panels to charge it.
Actually Alex, rolling blackouts were due to a mix of speculation by companies like Enron and Reliant and price caps set by California and because of that fact there was no financial incentive to expand production or build new facilities. I really thing the megawatt laundering scandal also played a part in that.
So, what your saying is that there is not enough power because they can't afford to expand or operate at times of extremely high demand? Like during a 117 degree day in the valley?
"Enron traders were revealed as intentionally encouraging the removal of power from the market during California's energy crisis by encouraging suppliers to shut down plants to perform unnecessary maintenance, as documented in recordings made at the time."
If you think that the rolling blackouts were caused by people just using a bit more power, think again.
yes, California is poorly run
Restoring electic power as you drive seems easier and more efficient, I thought of Leonardo Da Vinci's design called the wind screw; but turn it sideways, adapting on a capasitator? or devise to regulate and hold the charge coming in off the screws end? Got these ideas and need to tell about it. No need to plug it in if the car was used frequently.
Except for that pesky law...damn Carnot engine!
This car does use the motor to brake and recharge the battery while at the same time saving the actual brakes.
This thing draws 70A? That's pretty much more than any appliance you'll have in your house. Something drawing up to 15KW will have a major effect on most household circuits, not only could it cause a fire for any plug outlets not directly wired to the main circuit with thick cabling, I'd imagine most fuses and circuit breakers will have a problem with a sudden draw that size. I wouldn't trust leaving this on overnight, especially in a house with old electrics...
You can't even get cabling safe for 70A draws in most DIY places around here.
Depending on the length of the run from your panel to your garage, you may only need 2 gauge cable, which is fairly common. Larger size cable isn't hard to find, considering most new homes in the US are built with 300+ amps of mains feed. Please don't spout FUD, you're not going to cause fires by plugging a tesla in.
Permit me to "drive the point all the way home":
According to wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoline#Energy_content ) a gallon of permium gas contains 39MJ/liter of energy. Factor that by (.2777 kWh/MJ) (.284 liters/gallon) and gas is 2.86 MWhr's per gallon. If you were to burn that over four hours (.25) it would put out a continuous 716kW, meaning a single gallon of gas contains *42.1 times more energy* than this car takes to completely charge.
17kW * 4hr is miniscule compared to what a gasoline car consumes.
The obvious solution when you are out will be charging stations. As EV's become more common you will see the local gas station installing high voltage charging stations.
The goal of these car companies is to have a 60KW battery/storage device that can be charged in around 15 minutes. This would require a charging station that would not be economical (or safe) to have installed in one's home. You would need to have a charging station that ran around 4000V at 60 amp to get a full charge in around 15 minutes. (Thinking 4 AWG cable here)
I am not sure about you, but I don't think I would want to hold that cable while it was energized. If you increaed the AWG you could lower the voltage and up the amperage.
I think that this is why GM and the others used inductive paddles to charge the vehicles. It was safer for people to handle without electrocuting themselves. The system was lossy thought compared to standard direct connections. I personally like the video of them charging the batteries under water with a person standing in the water.
OK, gentlemen, let's clarify some things here:
1. Electric car is NOT your common electrical appliance. It draws a LOT of power, therefore it warrants it's own electric supply. Appropriate plugs, and other materials alongside electricians who will offer their services to install everything you need to charge your car will come. (including pop-up high capacity outlets on your driveway for charging the cars of your visitors)
2. Considering that most owners will charge their cars at night, this won't be a huge undesired load on the grid. Remember why electricity is cheaper at night? Because electrical companies have excess capacity!
3. Even if your electricity comes from a dirty coal-burning plant - pre used KW that power is still cleaner and can be made cleaner still. Because it is produced centrally it is easier to made clean through sulphur and fine particles scrubbers, and even by using algae-growing plant that uses all the CO2 that coal plant produces (pilot plants are already in operation)
4. There is already technology that can charge Li-Ion batteries within 10-15 minutes. Dutch company http://www.epyon.nl/ is already delivering this technology for forklifts. It is easy to adopt it for electric car, and tesla 2.0 might be designed with that in mind. After all gas-stations would still like to be able to sell you "the juice" whatever that juice might be - and charging cars quickly will demand some industrial level power (alongside with ultracapacitors for load-balancing)
To conclude: Tesla is just a first step - charging facilities will come just as quickly as hotspots came once laptops were on the market with WiFi built in. I for once can't wait as electric cars will also eliminate CO2 alongside all other junk that comes out of the tail-pipe as well as NOISE!
The limitation to charging this vehicle is not the batteries, its the power supply to feed them. If Tesla thought your average consumer would safely be able to provide 200a of power at 220v or 480v they would almost certainly have built a much faster charger, but as 220v @80a is the maximum safe power most houses will be able to provide, they built a charger that works to that specification. The batteries in this vehicle are almost certainly able to be charged faster, its just that your house cannot provide enough power to do so.
Most homes are rated at 200-400 amps at 220v. We could hypothetically get near that, but thats a pretty hard limit for the maximum charge speed, and utilizing that would require running extremely large and very high powered cables from your site connection to your garage.
I agree I can't wait.. just think in 20 years the air will be cleaner than I have ever known! No more global warming (hopefully, the mid west is getting unbearable with the humidity) just wish it was in time to save the polar ice caps as NASA has predicted them to completely melt this year :(
@Macro The United States is not the only industrialized nation.
"OK, gentlemen, let's clarify some things here..."
...and ladies.
"Thankfully, Tesla owners have time to think over how to deal with these kinds of details, being that none of the customers who've pre-ordered a car have yet received theirs."
Oh no you didn't!
220 miles per charge? That's like a week and a half of use for me! I could find 30 hours of spare time to charge the damn thing in that time easy.
Wait a minute!! Jason Calacanis already has his! He was showing it off on his Qik site...