But the whole point of the Supercharger is that it's using clean technology to recharge the "zero-emission" car. An electric vehicle isn't zero-emission if you recharge it with electricity generated by a coal plant.

People's Front of Penguinia.

It is. The press release states that these charging stations would be a (slight) net contributor to the grid over the course of the year.

What GPP was suggesting was to create a parking lot full of these things in order to avoid the long lines (it takes 30 minutes to get an 80% charge). Space-wise, I don't think that works, as the square footage required to generate the required energy is probably much larger than that of a parking spot. Of course, given time, the efficiency of the cells will increase so the idea may eventually have merit.

This is true (proportional to the efficiency of the transmission grid over distances).

My original point was to the G...GP who said:

If we take Tesla's statement that the supercharger is a net contributor to the grid as a constraint, I don't see that happening without vast improvements in solar cell technology - cells slightly larger than the footprint of the car would need to generate enough energy to recharge the car. My guess is that such an arrangement would probably need several hours of sunlight to do it.

So, to have a parking lot recharge station we'd either need more efficient cells, or we'd need to accept the fact that the charger would be a net drain on the grid. This is fine of course, but then we're back to the original complaint that EVs aren't zero emission if they are drawing from a grid that generates most of it's energy from coal. (Of course, as you point out, we could set up solar power stations and hook them to the grid, but if it were economically efficient to do so we'd be doing it more already.)

But it does matter what the average output of the solar cells are over time, versus the average amount of charging of cars they are doing. TFA says that the station will provide slightly more energy in a year than would be required to charge cars, but they don't specify how many, or how often, and I didn't see where they talked about how big the charging station was.

What if it takes 10 m^2 or panels to run it, and can only support one car of average usage? Then it doesn't scale up as easily. You'd need a football field sized Supercharger to maintain ~50 cars.

In 2009, there were 254m passenger vehicles in the US. In 2007 there were 164k gas stations in the US. That's an average of 1548 passenger vehicles per gas station. This doesn't count commercial vehicles and semi trucks. My assumptions about the charging station up above are surely conservative, but it's clear that on-site solar generation is not going to scale up the same way as conventional gasoline stations.

Now, distributed power generation certainly is the way to go, and so it would make sense to proceed with this strategy, but I don't think it will continue to a net contributor to the grid as volume ramps up.

But it was his money that broad the cars to market.

I don't disagree with your politics, but let's face it, without the current quasi-capitalist system and resultant extreme inequality, Musk would (likely) not have had the money to start Tesla in the first place.

Would it? What square footage of solar cells is required? How well do the cells perform in cloudy climes? Apparently well enough, as they mention a chain of stations from Vancouver to San Diego. Still, you'd need a fairly large parking lot completely covered with cells to make it work on a reasonable scale.

Still, I'm very excited about this, and could see myself buying a Model S in 5 years or so. By the time the larger recharge stations are in play (i.e. 5-10 years), the solar generation technology will have been improved, as well as the charging speed. Batteries and range will have improved as well.

As long as incremental steps like this keep coming, the goal of electrical personal transportation will get closer and closer.

"And that's why it looks so small."

It's nice to know that the slang from the original card from Alpha/Beta/Revised ("Magical Hack") survives.

What I want to know is if you could actually get this combo off in a game. Even with all four players colluding, I think it would be difficult. Manipulating the Chancellor of Spires to the top of the Library would be one of the more difficult aspects. I wonder if you'd need any other cards they didn't include to make it a "playable combo" (e.g. Library of Leng to increase hand size).

My kingdom for a mod point.

Man, I feel like an idiot. This isn't a case of, "It's obvious once you hear it." It's just plain obvious.

Well, thanks for the non-condescending answer. Also, ++ on the land-centric point.

Perhaps. If there is evidence that this company was not hiring anybody who goes through the process, I'll decry them right alongside you. But I doubt that's the case, as it seems to me that spending using 52 different programmers for a week each is going to net you less functional code than 1 programmer for 52 weeks, even if you aren't paying the 52.

OK, so it's a trade of labor for lodging AND a chance for a job. The 2nd of which is probably worth something of value to the applicant, otherwise they wouldn't do it.

How is this case illegal, or more to the point (since it's not), why do you think it should be illegal?