First Look: Tesla Just Unveiled Their Supercharger Stations Made for Cities

CLEAN CITY DRIVING

Tesla is making moves to bring more electric cars into cities by launching a network of new, slimmer Superchargers in urban centers. An announcement from Tesla reveals: “…as part of our commitment to make Tesla ownership easy for everyone, including those without immediate access to home or workplace charging, we are expanding our Supercharger network into city centers, starting with downtown Chicago and Boston.”
The Superchargers are set to be placed in convenient locations in urban areas, to allow drivers to multitask and charge their cars while shopping or running other errands. The smaller Superchargers will deliver up to 72kW of power to an attached vehicle, which is admittedly just over half of what’s capable with current 120kW Superchargers. 
So while the charge time will increase to about 45-50 minutes, the space between charging stations will, in turn, dramatically decrease.


SUPERSTATION LOCATION

Ideally, electric vehicles (EVs), like those made by Tesla, would be a fantastic option for city drivers. Many city drivers would not be hindered by worrisome range anxiety, as their trips would be well below the maximum ranges of today’s available vehicles.
Unfortunately, we have yet to arrive in such a utopia, and city-dwelling EV early adopters have to be sustained by a patchwork of available charging stations. 
The absence of privately owned parking spaces or garages makes owning home-charging setups impossible, so city dwellers must rely on what is publicly available. The resources many currently have are not enough to conveniently support drivers, let alone encourage expansion.
As such, Tesla’s new stations are excellent news for electric vehicles in general, as increasing infrastructure will encourage the growth of the technology, allowing charging capabilities to expand beyond brand specific stations. Electric vehicles have a much smaller imprint on the environment, and as the world’s grids are increasingly relying on renewable resources to meet power needs, that benefit is growing.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

DirectX 12 vs DirectX 11

Image
DirectX 12 vs DirectX 11 – How DX12 will transform PC  gaming on Windows 10 DIRECTX 12 VS DIRECTX 11 – WHY DOES IT MATTER? Windows 10  has arrived and, along with integrated Cortana, Xbox One game streaming and a fancy new web browser, one of its key features is DirectX 12, the latest version of the operating system’s gaming API. A software layer that sits between the hardware that powers our computers and the software that runs on them,  DirectX is at the heart of the vast majority of games that run on Windows.  The other major gaming API is OpenGL, which as its name suggests is an open source API. Both offer very similar key functions, but it’s DirectX that tends to be at the heart of most bigger games. Microsoft talks up the amazing new capabilities for every new release of DirectX, but with DirectX 12 it really does have some key new features, at least when it comes to improving performance. It also has some new effects tools and functions for making games look bett
Read more

Android N's "Freeform Windows"

Last week, we wrote about the " freeform window " mode in the Android N Developer Preview. Brief mentions in the developer documents and hints in the code pointed to Android someday displaying apps in resizable floating windows, just like in a desktop OS. Freeform window mode isn't normally accessible in the current dev preview, but shortly after the post, we were contacted by reader  Zhuowei Zhang  with instructions on how to make it work. We'll get to the instructions, but first let's talk about what's actually here. Freeform window mode is just what we imagined. It's a dead ringer for  Remix OS —multiple Android apps floating around inside windows—and it might be the beginnings of a desktop operating system . It works on Android N phones and tablets, and once the mode is enabled, you'll see an extra button on thumbnails in the Recent Apps screen. To the left of the "X" button that pops up after a second or two, there will be a s
Read more

The Chord Mojo turns good headphones into great ones

Image
The best gadget you never knew you wanted Audio processing isn’t sexy. Better sound doesn’t lend itself to easy marketing through numbers or pretty posters, and so many companies treat it as an afterthought when designing their products. The  blissful ignorance  of "good enough" audio pervades the world of consumer technology, leaving only a niche of audio enthusiasts supporting a few boutique hi-fi manufacturers. Things have been like this for quite some time, but recently a new gadget was introduced that bridges the gap between the many and the few, and its name is the  Chord Mojo . The Mojo is an audio processor and amplifier that’s smaller than a pack of cards yet delivers the awesome performance of much larger rivals. Honestly, I think its size works to its disadvantage because it looks like, and is, a portable unit you can plug into your phone and use off its 10-hour battery. By audiophile standards, it’s almost  too  practical. But those same aud
Read more