Tesla going open source?

[MacAttak]

Seriously though, could anyone explain the differences between Tesla's fast charging standard and the others out there?  The article I posted was light on details.

The author's comments on power grid strain is interesting.  If the Level 3 chargers (100KW) put a strain on the grid, dictate line upgrades and charge more for energy due to additional high power draw (vs energy usage) charges... wouldn't we need a massive infrastructure .  Also interesting are the comments about how crucial an "Open" standard is.  It's almost like Elon was reading this on the crapper and had an epiphany.

The solar thing got me thinking about peak demand.  Do Tesla charging stations have large battery banks to offset peak power usage?  I have seen 'kinetic batteries' (flywheels) successfully used for electric trains in Germany.  They get charged while slowing the train down and then tapped to accelerate the train.  Maybe they would have an application here to offset peak power usage in these chargers?

The showroom employees (I've no idea what their real titles are) are trained to say something along the lines of "the supercharger is able to charge quickly because it bypasses the normal charger electronics and goes directly to the batteries". I'm sure that's an oversimplification of the tech, but to me that means there is no conversion or power conditioning going on within the vehicle - all of that is taken over by the electronics systems at the station itself. So perhaps because the power control (current/voltage limiting) takes place within the station it can use a much more efficient design with less losses? With charging hardware in the car there are quite a few limitations you need to worry about (mainly size and safety), but if the supercharger really does bypass everything except for the charge-leveling tech then that probably plays a large part.

When you plug into anything other than a supercharger station (including the "HPWC" 80A home connector), it does not use that system. For all of those situations it uses the standard charging system, which I get the impression is much more like any other EV charging system - although with much higher total capacity.

I recall reading somewhere that they do have limited storage capacity at supercharger installations, but it isn't much. Just enough to keep from overloading the infrastructure when eight cars plug in at the same time and start charging together.

Remember that superchargers are *not* the primary power source for these. You only use them if making a long road trip (or you happen to be lucky and have one next to your work/home). The vast majority of power comes from home-based charging, and the car has built-in features that allow you to establish a charging schedule - for example you can make sure that it only charges between certain hours at night while utility rates are low.