For all the crap we give Tesla, they rightfully deserve to be lauded for the Supercharger network of fast-charging stations. You want to drive across the country in your electric car? Easy peasy, thanks to the ability to quick charge up to about an 80% tank of electron juice in about 20 minutes. Unless you and some of the hundreds of thousands of other Tesla owners want to use the exact same Supercharger station at the exact same time.
I’ve written whole rants on the topic, but I really do love the Supercharger system. While companies like GM twiddle their thumbs and pen useless op-eds for CNN wondering who, WHO, could possibly build the infrastructure their cars require for them, Tesla just went out and did it. The freedom the literally thousands of Superchargers enables is why, for all of Elon’s inanity, if I was in the market for an expensive electric car at the moment, I’d probably get a Tesla over anything else.
But “literally thousands” of Superchargers isn’t enough. It’s not enough for the millions of cars Tesla itself wants to build, and other automakers are still playing catchup, let alone coming close to the number of Superchargers that exist.
Basically, it’s going to take some brave corporations millions, if not billions, of dollars, to go ahead and start building quick-charging stations on the scale that we have gas stations now.
Until then, we’ll get scenes like this in high-Tesla-ownership areas, shot by a reader named Steve at the San Luis Obispo, California, Supercharger station on Thanksgiving Day:
Build a big restaurant and a Quick-E Mart and an arcade and whatever the hell it is people use to kill 20 minutes, and you’ll make a killing yourself.
Oh hell, I’ll do it. Anyone got a couple billion?
H/t to Steve!