- I recently went on a trip from Los Angeles to Las Vegas
in my Tesla Model 3 and at both locations,
I used the V3 Supercharger,
the current fastest EV charger in the world
and the thing that blew my mind
was how quickly it was able to add miles back to my car
to let me go on my way
and I wanted to dive a little bit deeper into that tech,
how it works and why I think it may solve
one of the biggest problems facing
electric vehicle adoption today.
Let's dive in.
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Tesla's currently making three different cars
that have a range of 310, 325 and 370 miles of range.
This gives them an average of 335 miles of range
which is tremendous.
It's getting close to what you would expect
out of a gas car but it's not quite there.
Most gas cars will get around 400 miles of range
and some way above that, 6 to 700 miles of range,
but really it doesn't matter
because after a certain point,
you're gonna stop for, you know, the bathroom
and grab a snack and whatever,
and during that time you can fill up
and keep going on your way.
So in a gas car, maybe seven to eight minutes,
depending on how big that tank is
or if you have to wait or anything
but in an electric car,
that still today is a much longer time period
and one that really kind of
gives a lot of angst and hesitation to people
from actually going electric for their primary car.
So if you can charge faster then you can solve this problem
but how much faster and does the Tesla V3 charger
really give you enough speed
for this to become a non-issue for most people.
Well there's a problem here with charging this fast
and even going faster than this and that is heat.
Tesla batteries, like all batteries,
have three major components.
The anode, the cathode and something separating them,
typically an electrolyte
which takes on many different forms.
And this has basically been the same concept
since Alessandro Volta created the battery
or what we know of today as the modern battery.
Now, when you charge and discharge the battery,
essentially, you're sending electrons
from the anode to the cathode
and siphoning some of them of them off
for your use case, whatever it is,
a light bulb or, you know, powering a motor
to move you forward in a Tesla,
whatever the case may be.
Now this process is a chemical reaction.
That chemical reaction creates heat.
Now, the heat can cause problems with the electrolyte
depending on what it's made of.
In an electric car, typically what happens is,
is creates a sort of buildup
and the buildup there reduces the amount of space
that the energy can be stored in
in the anode and the cathode,
meaning that over time
and across the thousands and thousands of cells in a Tesla,
you're just gonna have less space for energy.
This is what we know as battery degradation
and this is exactly like what you experience
with you cell phone or your laptop
where after a couple years of charging and discharging,
it's no longer able to hold as much of a charge.
In fact, a lot of laptops use the exact same battery cells
that are found in Tesla Model S and Model X,
those 18650 lithium ion cells.
Now, somehow Tesla has been able to engineer
their batteries though to last much longer
and be just much healthier overall
than all of the other types of batteries
that we're used to using.
This is likely due to the cell chemistry
Tesla uses of nickel, cobalt and aluminum
versus other EV makers that use different formulations
of chemistry for their battery cells.
Tesla battery packs also notably have
really advanced thermal management
that keep the cells and the pack
at an ideal temperature at all times.
This is why we're not seeing much
degradation at all in Teslas,
even with earlier models that had surpassed
over 300,000 miles of driving,
with estimates looking like a battery pack
having a life upwards of 500,000 miles
before significant degradation occurs
and you need to change the battery out.
Think about that for a second.
How long have you kept your cars?
What's the longest you've ever kept a car?
What's the most miles you've ever put on it
and then compare that to those numbers I just gave you.
300,000 miles is an actual number that has been reported
on a Tesla Model S already
and the estimates, looking at the data,
are well above 500,000 miles.
That is a tremendous amount.
I have a '99 Toyota Tacoma and it just crossed 200,000 miles
and I love that thing.
It runs great still and I still use it
but 200,000 miles feels ancient on a vehicle
and we're talking well above that
before you really need to worry
about the battery in a Tesla.
That is sort of magical.
That means if you drive
around 13 1/2 thousand miles per year
like most people in the United States
that this car would last you about 37 years.
That's coincidentally how old I am.
So if you think about that,
I like to say that Tesla batteries last forever
because unless you're one of those people
that just keeps things forever,
most people are gonna get rid of their car
before this becomes an issue
and think about 30 years from now,
the battery tech and everything
is gonna be far better than it is today,
so changing them out and upgrading
really isn't something to even be concerned about.
But the challenge still remains.
Until we can either recharge in five or so minutes
or get 5 or 600 miles out of a battery from an EV,
there's gonna be a disparity
between a gas car and an electric car
and some people are just gonna use that
as a reason to not buy one, to not adopt them.
So this is where the Tesla V3 charger
really comes into play
and doesn't quite get there but gets
really, really close to solving that.
So the Tesla V3 charger has a thinner cord
than the version two
because it is actually liquid cooled.
In addition, it doesn't share the power
with any of the other stations
which is good because then it can have, again,
it's own separate cooling mechanisms
and you don't have to worry about
of extremely variable rate of energy being consumed
because you have it all contained
in kind of a single unit here
instead of spread across multiple.
Now, depending on your state of charge
when you arrive at a V3 charger,
it will greatly change
the amount of energy that it gives you.
And using TezLab, I was able to find that
if you arrive at a V3 charger
with 30% of your battery or less,
you'll end up getting almost 20% more range in 20 minutes
versus if you battery was at or above 35% state of charge.
Now, if you compare a V3 to a V2 charger,
you'll see that in 20 minutes time,
you'll get about 45% more range.
In the data here, I'm seeing 115 miles for V2
to 181 miles for V3
when your state of charge is 30% or less.
And this lines up with what Tesla stated
when they first announced the V3 charger,
basically saying that,
you'll be able to get as much range as you need
to continue your trip within about 50% of the time,
so about twice as fast.
This data comes from 1,300 charging sessions
we've seen from Tesla users at the V3 charger in Las Vegas
which shows a median range of 147 miles added
in a 20 minute charge.
So if you think about it,
that's around two hours of driving
with a 20 minute stop to get back on the road
and to get all that range back
that you just used to get there.
To me, that sounds pretty reasonable
and it's not exactly on par with the gas car
but it's pretty close.
Now, I know there are exceptions.
Of course, there are some of you
that can go 87 hours straight
without losing focus or attention while driving
at 80 miles per hour and you don't have to pee
or eat or anything like that
and you are just an absolute machine out there
and, you know, kudos to you
but I would venture a guess that most people,
every two or three hours are gonna wanna stop,
stretch their legs, use the bathroom,
maybe grab a snack and then get back on the road
in about 15 minutes.
So I don't think it's, you know, fair to say
it's on par with a gas car
but you're getting really, really close here
to the point where the inconvenience
or that fear should just be kind of eroding away,
that you can get an EV as your everything car,
not just a city car.
Currently, only the Tesla Model 3
can take advantage of these V3 chargers but reportedly,
what's gonna happen very soon
is there's gonna be a massive roll out of this,
starting in 2020
and it's gonna focus first on these long distance routes.
So if you go on these longer road trips
on these longer stretches between Superchargers,
that is gonna be where they put them in first
and while we don't have confirmation of yet,
it would be hard for me to imagine
that the Model S and the Model X
do not get V3 charging at some point in the near future
because that is essentially what's the big difference
between the Model 3 and the other cars right now
and a lot of people like
the Model S and Model X but without that,
you really feel like you're missing a big component here.
So I'm guessing a lot of people are holding off
on buying or upgrading the Model S and Model X
until they get the V3 charging
and one of the challenges there is that they may have to,
in fact, I think they will have to,
upgrade the battery cells inside of the car
to the 2170s from the 18650s.
Now, this means a form factor change.
It means the actual size of the cell is different
which might mean there are a lot of other components
that need to change inside of the vehicle
in order to fit them in there.
It's not that big of a difference.
It's only a few millimeters here and there
but it is enough where they would have to change
probably a dozen or more components
just to accommodate the different size battery cells.
And an upgraded battery for the S and X
could also mean a tremendous amount more range
and possibly more performance,
something that myself and I'm sure many others
would love to see.
Maybe, you know, at the truck unveiling in a couple months.
Maybe, you know, that'd be a good time.
You know, thinking about it?
Okay.
So V3 charging is pretty magical
and it takes us a long way to eroding any fear
that you may have had about going electric
because 15, 20 minutes tops on a road trip to stop
is really not that big a deal,
versus current estimates of 30 to 40 minutes,
depending on where you're going
and that is just gonna be kind of common.
I really think this is gonna solve
one of the biggest challenges and biggest fears
that a lot of people have when it comes to going electric.
So I'm curious to know what you think.
Do you have one of these models?
Have you actually been to one of these chargers and seen it?
I'm very curious to know what your experience was
'cause to me, it was pretty profound.
And if you have someone in your life
that is afraid of electric cars or going electric,
please send them this video
because hopefully that will help them understand
that this isn't something to be worried about.
Really, you charge 90 plus percent of the time
at home anyways and when you do go on a road trip,
the Tesla Supercharger network
is pretty bountiful in terms of charging stops
and how good they are.
So it really isn't something
that you should be worried about right now
and next year, going into two, three years from now,
it's really just gonna be a complete non-issue.
So let me know what you guys think again
in the comments down below and don't forget,
when you free the data, your mind will follow.
I'll see you guys back here in the next one.
Hey, thanks for watching the video.
I hope you got something out of it.
If you wanna see an actual vlog from my trip
from L.A. to Vegas and back where I used the V3 charger,
consider joining us at patreon.com/teslanomics
where you can chat with people like me daily
and also get behind the scenes footage like this
that I just mentioned.
So that's it for now, and thanks again for watching.