More Details on VW Fast Charging Stations in the U.S.

Ride the Lightning: Electric Car Charging Technology Is About to Surge Past Tesla's Superchargers

By the end of 2019, new systems could leave Elon Musk's high-speed car charging network in the dust. Tesla Tesla's Supercharger network has long been the gold standard for electric vehicle charging systems. The company's hefty investment into charging support for its own customers-the company's proprietary plugs mean no other EVs can charge there-has been planned out to ensure Tesla owners can use their vehicles as they please without worrying about whether they're going to run dry on a road trip.

 From article, (Tesla’s Supercharger network has long been the gold standard for electric vehicle charging systems. The company’s hefty investment into charging support for its own customers—the company's proprietary plugs mean no other EVs can charge there—has been planned out to ensure Tesla owners can use their vehicles as they please without worrying about whether they’re going to run dry on a road trip. So far, it’s been the envy of EV owners everywhere, who haven’t had the same breadth of access or the same charging speed. (Tesla Superchargers deliver between 120–140 kilowatts of power, enough to fully charge a Model S with a 90-kWh battery in just over an hour, or provide 170 miles of range in 30 minutes.) 

The Supercharger stands aren't just convenient, though. The company’s roughly 400 stations in North America—1,200 globally—are clean, bright, and kinda cool. The most fabulous: A station midway between Los Angeles and San Francisco, in Kettleman City, that opened in last fall with 40 stalls, solar roofs, and a waiting area with a coffee bar and play area for the kids. It feels more like the Virgin Atlantic business class lounge at Heathrow than a roadside rest stop.

Tesla's golden-boy status in the EV charging community, however, is about to change. By the end of 2019, there could be another 1,000 charging stations around the country that offer far faster charging than Elon Musk's vaunted Supercharger network. Both Porsche and Electrify America—a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Volkswagen Group, which, of course, owns Porsche as well—have announced in recent days plans to construct roughly 500 DC fast-charge stations each. The systems will provide up to 350 kW of power for cars capable of charging that fast, which translate to about 20 miles of range for every minute of charge. That comes out to 300 miles of range in just 15 minutes. At those speeds, who’s going to need a lounge?

Porsche also hasn’t disclosed its per-station costs, but Electrify America told The Drive that its own “Cycle 1” infrastructure investment for 484 DC fast charge sites on highways and metro areas totals $370 million. (The Electrify America effort is just part of a 10-year, $2 billion investment to be made by Volkswagen Group of America in EV infrastructure, education, and access, and reflects a relationship with the EPA and the California Air Resources Board.) That number also includes 600 workplace and apartment/condo sites with slower Level 2 charging—DC fast charging is generally considered Level 3—but even with that generously factored in, each fast-charge station could cost in the neighborhood of $500,000 or more.

In terms of speeding up the adoption of electric cars, however, the payoff could be huge, as the system could provide the easy access and low wait times consumers demand. The stations will provide between 200 and 920 volts at 350 amps of current, an Electrify America spokesman said, which translates to between 50 kW and 350 kW of capability. This will cover a wide range of EVs, including current lower-range models that use AC hookups. The real technological breakthrough on the high-speed end rests in the charge cable, which is lighter and thinner than existing equivalents thanks to a liquid-cooling system that reduces the heat load passing through the cables in high-amperage use. Reducing these temperatures allows them to provide higher electrical current—that 350-amp maximum—through cables that are much thinner and easier to manage than the thick cables found on Superchargers. The stations will also be easy to use, standing up to eight feet high for better cable reach and with a 15-inch color touchscreens to operate the station and provide payment or account info.)

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Puerto Rico can't catch a break, Suffers from Another Island Wide Power Blackout. However, For Hundreds, Tesla Energy Projects Kept The Power On

Tesla Powerwalls and Powerpacks keep the lights on at 662 locations in Puerto Rico during island-wide blackout, says Elon Musk

Almost 1 million ratepayers of the Puerto Rican Electric Power Authority on the island of Puerto Rico were reportedly without power today during an island-wide blackout. But a few hundred locations with Tesla Energy storage systems were able to keep the lights on, according to CEO Elon Musk.

From article, (Almost 1 million ratepayers of the Puerto Rican Electric Power Authority on the island of Puerto Rico were reportedly without power today during an island-wide blackout.

But a few hundred locations with Tesla Energy storage systems were able to keep the lights on, according to CEO Elon Musk.

After Puerto Rico was ravaged by hurricanes last year, most of the island’s population lost power for an extended period of time as the grid was badly damaged.

While power slowly came back online over the last few months, they still have been having issues and today, the entire power grid went down again for virtually everyone on the Puerto Rican Electric Power grid.

The cause is still unclear and being investigated.

 Only people with energy storage systems were able to keep the lights on, including Tesla Energy customers.

Tesla ramped up its effort to help Puerto Rico get a more robust grid after it was destroyed by hurricanes. They quickly started shipping Powerwalls, their home energy storage solution, and we reported that they started shipping Powerpacks, their bigger commercial and utility-scale battery packs.

Now Tesla CEO Elon Musk says that it added up to 662 locations that were able to keep power during the blackout and that they are trying to add hundreds more.

As we previously reported, some of those locations include very critical services.

For example, Tesla deployed a series of Powerpack systems on the Puerto Rican islands of Vieques and Culebra for a sanitary sewer treatment plant, the Arcadia water pumping station, the Ciudad Dorada elderly community, the Susan Centeno hospital, and the Boys and Girls Club of Vieques.

Furthermore, the automaker’s energy division also deployed a solar+battery system at a hospital in Puerto Rico.

Tesla shipped a few hundred more Powerwalls to Puerto Rico and sent technicians from all over the US to install them.

According to Musk, the effort resulted in 662 projects and there are more underway.)

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Long Island To Get New Artificial Reefs To Help The Fishing Industry.

Recycled TZB Materials To Become Artificial Reefs

TARRYTOWN, NY - So the Tappan Zee Bridge is being torn down now that the Gov. Mario M. Cuomo Bridge is open for traffic. Were you wondering what was going to happen to all of that de-construction material? Well, Gov.

 From article, (Long Island will soon be the home of the largest expansion of artificial reefs in New York history, Cuomo said, the reefs will be comprised of cleaned and recycled materials from the TZB, as well as old tug boats, barges and scows.

The material will be used to build six artificial reefs off the Long Island coast.

"The sustainability and health of New York's marine resources is critical to communities along our shores, and by constructing these reef habitats, we are investing in a stronger more diverse marine ecosystem," Cuomo said. "As the largest artificial reef construction program in state history, these efforts will increase New York's marine biodiversity, provide new habitats for a variety of coral and fish, and support a growing tourism industry that brings thousands of anglers and travelers to Long Island's pristine waters every year."

Recycled materials from the Department of Transportation, Canal Corporation and the Thruway Authority will be used to develop the artificial reef sites and increase the biodiversity of these habitats for a variety of fish and lobsters. Construction of New York's first artificial reef dates back to 1949, and this latest initiative marks the state's first coordinated effort to stimulate the full environmental and economic benefits of artificial reefs.)

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Self-Driving Cars Like, Teslas, and Waymos, Generate a Lot of Driving Data, That is Used to Make Their Self-Driving Safer. But, What Will Make People Accept Them As Safe?

How Tesla and Waymo are tackling a major problem for self-driving cars: data

There's a race happening right now that stretches from Silicon Valley to Detroit and back: who can make a self-driving car that behaves better than a human driver? It's a far harder task than it sounded even a few years ago because human drivers know a lot - not just about their cars but about how people behave on the road when they're behind the wheel.

From article, (There’s a race happening right now that stretches from Silicon Valley to Detroit and back: who can make a self-driving car that behaves better than a human driver? It’s a far harder task than it sounded even a few years ago because human drivers know a lot — not just about their cars but about how people behave on the road when they’re behind the wheel. To reach that same kind of understanding, computerized cars need lots of data. And the two companies with the most data right now are Tesla and Waymo.

Both Tesla and Waymo are attempting to collect and process enough data to create a car that can drive itself. And they’re approaching those problems in very different ways. Tesla is taking advantage of the hundreds of thousands of cars it has on the road by collecting real-world data about how those vehicles perform (and how they might perform) with Autopilot, its current semi-autonomous system. Waymo, which started as Google’s self-driving car project, uses powerful computer simulations and feeds what it learns from those into a smaller real-world fleet.

It’s possible — and proponents certainly claim — that self-driving technology would lower the number of yearly deaths in the US that result from car crashes, a staggering 40,000 people. But there’s also a huge financial incentive to apply all this data-driven tech to the road as quickly as possible. Intel believes autonomous vehicles could generate $800 billion per year in revenue in 2030 and $7 trillion per year by 2050. Last summer, Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas said in a note that data might be more valuable to Tesla than something like the Model 3. “There’s only one market big enough to propel the stock’s value to the levels of Elon Musk’s aspirations: that of miles, data and content,” he wrote in June.

 Tesla is developing towards autonomy by using customer-owned cars to gather that all-important data. The company has hundreds of thousands of customers, many of whom use Autopilot on streets around the world every day, and Tesla — according to its privacy policy— collects information about how well the feature performs. It’s a familiar strategy for anyone who’s followed another of Elon Musk’s companies: SpaceX. Musk has quietly tested equipment on real rocket launches and even sold some of the company’s test launches.

It’s hard to pin down exactly how many miles of data Tesla’s gotten from Autopilot because the company doesn’t make many public statements about it. In 2016, the then-head of Autopilot told a conference crowd at MIT that Tesla had logged 780 million miles of data, with 100 million of those miles coming while Autopilot was “in at least partial control” according to IEEE Spectrum. Later that summer, Musk said that Tesla was collecting “just over 3 million miles [of data] per day.” As of last July, though, the total number of fleet miles driven had jumped to 5 billion. As Tesla sells more cars, the amount of data that can be collected increases exponentially.

Waymo is constrained by the fact that it is only gathering real-world data via a fleet of about 500 to 600 self-driving Pacifica minivans. Tesla has over 300,000 vehicles on the road around the world, and those cars are navigating far more diverse settings than Waymo — which is currently only in Texas, California, Michigan, Arizona, and Georgia. But Tesla is only learning from those real-world miles because even when Autopilot is engaged, the current version is only semi-autonomous.

This balance will also change. Waymo plans to add “thousands” more Chrysler minivans are to its fleet starting at the end of this year. And it recently announced a partnership with Jaguar Land Rover to develop a fully self-driving version of the all-electric I-Pace SUV from the ground up. Waymo says it will add up to 20,000 of these to its fleet in the coming years, and it will be able to handle a volume of 1 million trips per day once all those cars are on the road.

Not only are these two companies collecting data at different scales, they’re also collecting different data. Waymo’s self-driving minivans use three different types of LIDAR sensors, five radar sensors, and eight cameras. Tesla’s cars are also heavily kitted out: eight cameras, 12 ultrasonic sensors, and one forward-facing radar.

But Tesla doesn’t use LIDAR. LIDAR is a lot like radar, but instead of radio waves, it sends out millions of laser light signals per second and measures how long it takes for them to bounce back. This makes it possible to create a very high-resolution picture of a car’s surroundings, and in all directions, if it’s placed in the right spot (like the top of a car). It maintains this precision even in the dark since the sensors are their own light source. That’s important because cameras are worse in the dark, and radar and ultrasound aren’t as precise.

LIDAR can be expensive and bulky, and it also involves moving mechanical parts (for now, at least). Musk recently called the technology a “crutch,” and argued that while it makes things easier in the short term, companies will have to master camera-based systems to keep costs down.

If Tesla can develop autonomous cars without that tech, Keeney says that would be a huge advantage. “It’s a riskier strategy but it could pay off for them in the end,” she explains. “If Tesla solves [self-driving cars without LIDAR], everyone else is going to be kicking themselves.”

Kalra has co-authored a number of studies for RAND about self-driving technology, including one in 2016 that tried to determine how many real-world miles would need to be driven to prove that autonomous cars are safer than humans. 

Kalra and co-author Susan M. Paddock came to the conclusion that self-driving cars will need to be driven “hundreds of millions of miles and sometimes hundreds of billions of miles” to make any statistically reliable claims about safety. Because of this, they wrote, companies need to find other ways to demonstrate safety and reliability.

When it comes time for these companies to prove to regulators or customers that they’ve developed fully self-driving tech, the most likely metric that will be used to judge whether a company has developed a full-stop fully self-driving car is whether or not they’re as safe or safer than human driving. How to define that — the rate of crashes per X miles, injuries per X miles, or even deaths per X miles — is another question.

As Kalra and Paddock point out in their study, this will be hard to prove in real-world terms. But Kalra thinks it can’t be proven by simulation alone — at least not without a more thorough and open understanding of the quality and rate of data being collected. “We’re probably going to see this technology deployed before we have conclusive evidence about how safe it is,” she says. “This is the rub. We can’t prove how safe self-driving cars are until we all decide to use them.”

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