Tesla Completes L.A.-to-New York Electric Model S Drive Chargers

January 29, 2014 Leave a comment

Tesla Completes L.A.-to-New York Electric Model S Drive Chargers

Tesla Motors Inc. (TSLA)’s Elon Musk said the electric-car maker has expanded its U.S. network of rapid chargers to let owners of battery-powered Model S sedans drive their cars from coast to coast for the first time.

Musk, Tesla’s chief executive officer and co-founder, said last year the company would set up “Superchargers” in most major U.S. and Canadian cities to permit long-distance trips solely on electricity provided at no charge. The carmaker has more than 70 stations in North America, according to Tesla’s website.

“Tesla Supercharger network now energized from New York to LA, both coast + Texas!” Musk said in a Twitter post today. “Approx 80% of US population covered.”

Tesla, seeking to be the world’s leading maker of all-electric autos, needs the broader network of charging stations to address the limited driving range and long charge times of battery cars. Without the stations, Tesla drivers are limited by the estimated 265-mile (426-kilometer) range of a Model S battery, which can take as long as 9 hours to repower.

Musk has said the chargers, which the company says are the fastest available, are installed near major highway interchanges on properties close to restaurants, cafés or shopping to allow drivers to take breaks while their vehicle are repowered.

The Superchargers, currently compatible only with the Model S, provide 170 miles of range in a 30-minute charge, according to the company. The cheapest version of the Fremont, California-built car enabled to work with the Superchargers costs $73,070, according to Tesla’s website.

Two teams of Tesla drivers will try to set U.S. cross-country electric vehicle speed records using the chargers, departing Jan. 31 from Los Angeles and arriving in New York by Feb. 2, said Musk, 42. He also plans a “LA-NY family road trip over Spring Break,” using the system, he said on Twitter.

The company named for inventor Nikola Tesla more than quadrupled in value in 2013. Tesla fell 3.8 percent to $174.60 at the close Jan. 24 in New York.

To contact the reporter on this story: Alan Ohnsman in Los Angeles at aohnsman@bloomberg.net

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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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