Not to mention the problem of how many existing gas stations are anywhere near a supply that can provide 125kW ?
That is why the superchargers are installed in huge shopping complexes where they can tap into the 400 volts lines from streetlighting.
And when i'm saying supercharger i mean not just one stall. The gilroy charger has 10 stalls . And can charge simultaneously. If 10 tesla's are 'drinking' that is over 1.2 megawatt beeing pulled ...
And ive been there numerous times when all bays are occupied.
Niw, the goal with superchargers is NOT to have these every 5 miles.
The idea is still that you charge at home. When taking a long trip you follow the charge points just like you follow fuel stations on huge highway corridors. Spacing the chargers 150 miles apart covers the entire US with roughly 600 chargers. You are always within range of at least two chargers. It works like a cell phone grid.
You will always pay for energy. Just not for the one fro. The superchargers. Tesla sees the supercharger as a necessity to make the electric vehicle work today.
There currently is no battery that can be filled at the speed of filling a gas tank. So this holds people back. The superchargers solve this problem. Charge at home at slow rate will cover day to day use for 80 to 90 of the driving cases. Longer trips are equally covered with superchargers. Tesla takes the installation and operation cost of those on them as they see it as an integral part of the EV revolution.
Maybe in the future we will have faster charging batteries with much more capacity. But that is future music. Today it is a problem, solved by deploying a network of superchargers.
Tesla thinks completely different. Other carmakers see the EV as a gimmick for eco-nuts. They make more money from half a week of selling ICE based cars, than all the EV's sold in a year combined... It's barely 1 percent of the market. Divide that one percent across car makers and it is a rounding error... For Tesla it is 100% ! It's sell or bust !
Elon is a very smart businessman as wel as a technogeek as well as a environmental protectionist. He wants to do the right thing and make a killing off of it.
Of course this is a big PR stunt, but at the same time he sprung a big trap on the other car makers.
By opening his technology the owners of other EV will go to their brand maker and ask : well ? We can we plug in for free ? All theses tesla owners can. Tesla allows you to make the car compatible and won't charge you for the patents... What are you waiting for.
Essentially he turned up the thumbscrews by telling the world: come get it. Everyone will want it (it's free) so the car makers are facing a problem now.. They will get pressure from buyers to adapt...
Adapting means, in the buyers eyes, compatible with teslas stations, fast charge, long range and free power.
The only problem is none of the car makers has anything even remotely compatible !
Different connectors, different chemistry, no. Liquid cooled, small packs.. Oops....
So tesla plays the buyers to force the manufacturers to kick in gear and follow tesla as opposed to doing a half arsed job with their own proprietary stuff.
Tesla will profit from this. How ? The gigafactory ! In order to be compatible you will need to build battery packs with the right cell chemistry and cooling technology. Guess who will have those ... Exactly.
Today, the limiting factor for tesla is how fast they can get a hold of the cells. There simply is not enough production capacity in the world , for that particular form factor and chemistry. They can only build 800 cars a week because they can only get 6 million cells a week (there's 6700 cells per car)
The giga factory will solve that. This factory is insane. It will have its own lithium refinery, be located close to lithium mines, have its own train tracks, powerplant (solar and wind farms) and it will recycle spent packs into new ones. Tesla wants the factory to be be self powering. In essence the packs will be built purely on solar and wind energy.
In order to refine gas, you need to burn gas...
It is very hard to figure out the 'why' he does the things the way he does em. The fact is the guy is incredibly clever and five moves ahead of everyone else in the chess game. You can bet top dollar he will only benefit from this move.