Towing & Charging - What's the plan Tesla? Share MegaChargers with Semis? Front Charge Port?

[Sasmania]

I'm sure many of you are wondering how Tesla is going to handle Towing & Charging once a million CyberTrucks are on the road.

As it stands now, very few Superchargers offer a good solution. Lots of SCs don't have any towing slots, some only have 1 slot.

As we know, when towing you will have to charge 2X as often and unhooking each time will be a huge pain.

Possible Solutions:

1) Extra Long Cables for several (or all) of the stalls.
2) Charge Port in Front of CyberTruck??
3) Increase the number of Pull-Through sites at existing and future SC sites (But they are not even doing that now with the latest installs...)

or the Wild Card...

4) What about allowing all TOWING Teslas to share the MegaChargers that will be built for the Tesla SEMIs?? After all, it was mentioned the CT would allow charging of 250kW PLUS... which could be a hint?

Which also brings to mind another question.... What the heck is going on with the MegaChargers? I've seen ZERO news on any being built. As with the regular SC network we know this is a long and slow process with site selection, permitting, and installing the chargers. The difference with the Semis is the Network will need to be 100% done (at least for that specific route) before ANY Semis are sold. Unlike our cars, there is no home charging! They are 100% reliant on the SC network, or they are dead in the water for anything but local deliveries.

Anyone else wondering how the timeline of this is going to work for the Semi rollout to happen any time soon??

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[CyberMoose]

I'm sure many of you are wondering how Tesla is going to handle Towing & Charging once a million CyberTrucks are on the road.

As it stands now, very few Superchargers offer a good solution. Lots of SCs don't have any towing slots, some only have 1 slot.

As we know, when towing you will have to charge 2X as often and unhooking each time will be a huge pain.

Possible Solutions:

1) Extra Long Cables for several (or all) of the stalls.
2) Charge Port in Front of CyberTruck??
3) Increase the number of Pull-Through sites at existing and future SC sites (But they are not even doing that now with the latest installs...)

or the Wild Card...

4) What about allowing all TOWING Teslas to share the MegaChargers that will be built for the Tesla SEMIs?? After all, it was mentioned the CT would allow charging of 250kW PLUS... which could be a hint?

Which also brings to mind another question.... What the heck is going on with the MegaChargers? I've seen ZERO news on any being built. As with the regular SC network we know this is a long and slow process with site selection, permitting, and installing the chargers. The difference with the Semis is the Network will need to be 100% done (at least for that specific route) before ANY Semis are sold. Unlike our cars, there is no home charging! They are 100% reliant on the SC network, or they are dead in the water for anything but local deliveries.

Anyone else wondering how the timeline of this is going to work for the Semi rollout to happen any time soon??

So for Supercharging stations, I personally don't see much of an issue with parking the trailer in an empty spot before pulling up and charging my truck. I've never really seen it as a huge pain, it takes a couple of minutes. I will agree that pull through charing would be a nice addition but I'm not going to be upset if I have to disconnect once every couple hundred miles to charge if i'm hauling tons of weight. I've done the same thing when I've passed fast food at night and only the drive through was open.

As for the semi, I think there will be options for home charging, or at least business charging. The Tesla semi has an impressive range for an electric semi but it won't be immediately competeing with giant dual tank semi that has a two man crew until it charges very fast and the megacharger network is more available everywhere. I would think Tesla will sell a lot of semi for regional trucking operations and those operations are probably going to want to be able to do their job, return, and charge before the next day. I wouldn't be surprised to see these trucking businesses install them right next to where they load, or work with a business that they have a contract with for them to be installed at their locations just to speed things up faster. Time spent at a charging station is wasted money for these businesses and I think they'll spend the extra money to make sure they need to go to a charging station as little as possible.

 

[Sasmania]

So for Supercharging stations, I personally don't see much of an issue with parking the trailer in an empty spot before pulling up and charging my truck. I've never really seen it as a huge pain, it takes a couple of minutes. I will agree that pull through charing would be a nice addition but I'm not going to be upset if I have to disconnect once every couple hundred miles to charge if i'm hauling tons of weight. I've done the same thing when I've passed fast food at night and only the drive through was open.

As for the semi, I think there will be options for home charging, or at least business charging. The Tesla semi has an impressive range for an electric semi but it won't be immediately competeing with giant dual tank semi that has a two man crew until it charges very fast and the megacharger network is more available everywhere. I would think Tesla will sell a lot of semi for regional trucking operations and those operations are probably going to want to be able to do their job, return, and charge before the next day. I wouldn't be surprised to see these trucking businesses install them right next to where they load, or work with a business that they have a contract with for them to be installed at their locations just to speed things up faster. Time spent at a charging station is wasted money for these businesses and I think they'll spend the extra money to make sure they need to go to a charging station as little as possible.

I agree if you are only on a short road trip, unhooking wouldn't be a big deal....but if you are really trying to log some miles cross country...it would get old quick. I'm also thinking not just for myself as I will get a CT and never use an ICE...but if we're trying to get the ICE truck guy to switch, we need to eliminate as many of the negatives to using it as a real truck as possible.

 

[CyberMoose]

One solution would be to have accounts for other chargers as well. There are other fast chargers out there for a very similar price to Tesla and could very possibly accomodate trailers while charging. There are so many new companies coming out with chargers and even gas companies are installing them. I'm sure that soon, all vehicles with or without trailers will probably be accomodated.

 

[Crissa]

Alot of the new Superchargers have pull-through slots.
https://www.dreamstime.com/hovden-n...ions-motorway-services-service-image161648431

Hopefully that link works.

-Crissa

 

[ProfessorRon]

I'm sure many of you are wondering how Tesla is going to handle Towing & Charging once a million CyberTrucks are on the road.

As it stands now, very few Superchargers offer a good solution. Lots of SCs don't have any towing slots, some only have 1 slot.

As we know, when towing you will have to charge 2X as often and unhooking each time will be a huge pain.

Possible Solutions:

1) Extra Long Cables for several (or all) of the stalls.
2) Charge Port in Front of CyberTruck??
3) Increase the number of Pull-Through sites at existing and future SC sites (But they are not even doing that now with the latest installs...)

or the Wild Card...

4) What about allowing all TOWING Teslas to share the MegaChargers that will be built for the Tesla SEMIs?? After all, it was mentioned the CT would allow charging of 250kW PLUS... which could be a hint?

Which also brings to mind another question.... What the heck is going on with the MegaChargers? I've seen ZERO news on any being built. As with the regular SC network we know this is a long and slow process with site selection, permitting, and installing the chargers. The difference with the Semis is the Network will need to be 100% done (at least for that specific route) before ANY Semis are sold. Unlike our cars, there is no home charging! They are 100% reliant on the SC network, or they are dead in the water for anything but local deliveries.

Anyone else wondering how the timeline of this is going to work for the Semi rollout to happen any time soon??

Or a charging port in both front and back.

 

[Jhodgesatmb]

Pull-through stalls sounds like the most reasonable but who knows. As for charging ports, if what @elonmusk says is true, that they finalized the design, then whatever it is is and we will have to deal with it. No matter what, we will have to disconnect a trailer if there isn’t a pull-through stall with a long cable (maybe an overhead cable or one of those snake things?).

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