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This is PR, so spinning the charge time as nothing more than a good opportunity to grab a bite to eat is smart. One assumes that the charging stations are located in places with a variety of nearby amenities for this purpose?

To me the fact that any journey would have to be planned with charging stations as waypoints is more obnoxious than the actual stopping itself.



It's obnoxious to use gasoline...it's just the norm so it doesn't seem so.


No, it's not. Every 300 or so miles you stop and pump gas for a few minutes at any number of available locations, and then you move on. You don't have to plan your trip around gas station locations. If charge stations become ubiquitous so that isn't a requirement then this is ameliorated somewhat.

I've always had this silly idea for an electric car company that sells cars but 'loans' out the batteries. When you want to recharge, you pull up to a station and a trained technician swaps out your entire battery setup for a freshly charged one in a few minutes, basically meaning you are paying to rent a set of batteries. Not sure how economically and technically viable this plan is, but it does seem convenient from a consumer perspective.


Once upon a time, I'm sure you couldn't get very far in a gasoline-powered car because there weren't many gas stations. Also, Elon is already trying the battery swap idea:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/06/22/tesla-motor...


Indeed. Many early cross country motorists had to buy small bottles of gasoline at pharmacies (where it was sold as some sort of topical treatment, I think.)


This is exactly what Shai Agassi tried doing with Better Place [1]. Sadly they're bankrupt now.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better_Place


Tesla is already testing battery swapping: http://www.teslamotors.com/batteryswap


All the supercharger points are on their website, with a list of amenities, and yes they are pretty much all next to malls, restaurants etc.




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