Hasta La Gadget!

Tesla’s West Coast Supercharger Corridor opened today, making it possible for owners of the Model S to travel free between San Diego and Vancouver, using Highway 101 and Interstate 5. This makes a Supercharger reachable within 200 miles to over 99 percent of Californians and 87 percent of those in Oregon and Washington.

A lot of attention has been paid to Tesla’s efforts to make a coast-to-coast trip in one of its vehicles a reality, via Superchargers and other charging stations, but blanketing the West Coast means that Tesla S owners can now travel from essentially the Mexican border to within the Canadian one without paying any money to fill their cars, and with a minimal amount of charging time required. Superchargers can charge a Tesla S to a capacity worth around 200 miles of driving distance in just 30 minutes, and the stations are positioned near restaurants and shopping centers to give you something to do while your car powers up.

To promote the new corridor, Tesla is having two Model S vehicles make the trip from San Diego to Vancouver, and they’ll be pushing updates to their various social media properties along the way. Spoiler alert: those cars are definitely going to make it without incident.

Supercharger rollout continues globally, with Tesla announcing plans in September to cover 100 percent of the population of Switzerland, Belgium, Austria, Denmark and Luxembourg, and 90 percent of the population in England, Wales, and Sweden with a station within 320 kms by the end of 2014. Getting past that basic excuse of “I can’t buy one, there’s nowhere to charge” is clearly a huge part of the company’s global rollout strategy, which is why each of these Supercharger network expansions is a big win for Tesla and for founder Elon Musk.

Tesla’s perpetually free Supercharger station has already enabled the driving of about a million miles, totally free, to owners of the Model S sedan. However, availability of that network has been very limited. Unless you live in very specific areas of NY or CA, you’ve been out of luck. That’s beginning to change. Following up on Elon Musk’s D11 appearance, Tesla has announced that by the end of next month it will triple the size of the Supercharger network, covering crucial routes like Vancouver to Portland (with Seattle in between) and Dallas to Austin. New connection points will open in Illinois, Colorado, New York and, yes, California.

But wait, there’s more. Within six months the network will spread further and, before the end of the year, Tesla promises you’ll be able to drive from New York to Los Angeles in your Model S — so long as you don’t mind stopping for 20-minute recharges every couple-hundred miles. Finally, by mid-2014, Tesla promises its network will “stretch across the continent” and cover “almost the entire population of US and Canada.” (Sorry, Hawaii.) PR and video featuring more details after the break.

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Source: Tesla

“It doesn’t help to have a car that’s cheap, but that sucks.” This isn’t the sort of direct language that you typically hear from a CEO these days, but this is exactly the kind of material you can expect from Tesla co-founder and CEO Elon Musk. Over the course of our conversation, Musk (who earlier co-founded PayPal and who also heads up SpaceX) went on the record calling journalists who didn’t understand the benefits of leases “dumbasses” and pledged that use of the company’s Supercharger stations will always, forever and ever, be free. Candid responses such as these are not new for Mr. Musk, having certainly caused some turmoil in the past, and they do make for quite an interesting interview. Join us as we explore why the cheapest Model S was scrapped and we ask just when we can expect the fabled, and truly affordable, third-generation Tesla.

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Getting yourself into a new Tesla is going to get a little easier in 2013. The company opened 13 stores in 2012, but this year has designs to double that. On the show floor of the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, George Blankenship, VP of sales, confirmed a plan that will see 25 new retail locations opening throughout 2013, with half of those in the US and the other half abroad. This includes the company’s first location in China, which is due to open its doors in the spring.

The company also re-committed to covering the US with Supercharger charging stations. Only eight are operational now, most on the west coast, but the company plans to cover both coasts in the coming years and then, eventually, connect the two so that you can drive from Boston to LA without burning a drop of fuel — and without spending a dime, since use of the chargers will be free for Tesla owners. No firm details on when the company’s $30k entry-level machine will be launching, but we were at least told it’s still at least a few years out

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Planning on juicing up your Chevy Volt, Mitsubishi i-MiEV or Nissan Leaf with Tesla’s Supercharger? Hold your horses, vaquero. The nighttime unveiling stressed that the quick-charge solution was Model S-friendly, but we should also note that it’s only compatible with the firm’s automobile. Vehicles from other automakers won’t be able to jack into the station thanks to a 20-kilowatt hour converter, which would zap other batteries with too much electricity, and a proprietary plug. Unless something changes, those planning cross-country trips using EVs from other manufacturers will just have to find an alternative to Musk and Co.’s white obelisk.

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Tesla’s Supercharger not compatible with competitor’s EVs, keeps electricity within the family originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 26 Sep 2012 08:36:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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