Cybercab will be "roadtrip capable" over long distances due to wireless charging

[Old Spice]

Via Teslarati

Tesla sheds details on the Cybercab's long-distance capabilities

Tesla has shed new details on the Cybercab, specifically its long-distance capabilities relating to things like road trips and cross-country traveling.

The narrative surrounding the Cybercab has been that it will be centrally focused on short distances and ride-sharing within cities, at least at first. Tesla said it would launch Cybercab rides in certain jurisdictions as a precaution initially, starting in Austin, Texas, and then moving to other cities.

For this reason, most of the consensus surrounding the Cybercab and its capabilities has been to get people from point A to point B within the same city.

However, in the long term, Tesla's aim is to enable completely autonomous driving, and some will want to take road trips and other long-range travel opportunities, which brought into question the vehicle's ability to travel across state lines.

Vice President of Vehicle Engineering Lars Moravy appeared on the Ride the Lightning podcast with Ryan McCaffrey this weekend and clarified Tesla's focus on the Cybercab and its charging to make long-distance trips possible.
He said:

"Yeah. You saw it, we have wireless charging, right? It's coming for the Cybercab and I think that's ultimately, if you're going to put a bunch of design effort into something, why put this really complex, moving device to move a cable, when you can have no moving parts."

McCaffrey then asked if wireless charging would be installed in parking lots of Superchargers. Moravy said they won't be needed at every parking spot, but a handful would be ideal.
The Cybercab's capability mostly comes from
Tesla's current focus on developing wireless charging
. The vehicle will be able to charge autonomously across the country as Tesla rolls out this new tech, enabling a streamlined process with no work for the riders and fully autonomous rides across the United States and beyond as the network builds out.

Moravy confirmed during the podcast that the Cybercab would be "road trip capable" when it is released.

The full podcast is available here.

 

[CyberGus]

I was under the impression that wireless charging was limited to about L2 speeds. Still cool, but not nearly as fast as 250kW SuperCharging.

Of course, the specs are not yet out...

 

[ABILISK]

I was under the impression that wireless charging was limited to about L2 speeds. Still cool, but not nearly as fast as 250kW SuperCharging.

Of course, the specs are not yet out...

I was too. Their video showed 19kW on the induction charger I believe. Quite the decent L2 charging speed, but not road trip-able whatsoever. Like you said, specs aren’t out yet, but it’d be hard to imagine wireless charging getting anywhere in the same neighborhood as a supercharger.

Of course, if there are enough Cybercabs rolling around, you could always hail a fresh one to the charging station and switch cars. The haters would make a killing on YouTube filming people having to move their stuff to a new car every 200 miles.

 

[DJAlan2000]

I was too. Their video showed 19kW on the induction charger I believe. Quite the decent L2 charging speed, but not road trip-able whatsoever. Like you said, specs aren’t out yet, but it’d be hard to imagine wireless charging getting anywhere in the same neighborhood as a supercharger.

Of course, if there are enough Cybercabs rolling around, you could always hail a fresh one to the charging station and switch cars. The haters would make a killing on YouTube filming people having to move their stuff to a new car every 200 miles.

Yeah, I can see the haters now... Complaining it takes 5 minutes to switch to a new Cybercab every 250 miles or so... "It's not worth it until it can go 500 miles without stopping" (I have already heard) but hey, they will have to put in a bathroom and give me food too if I am going to go 7-9 HOURS without stopping!!

As to the chargers being L2 speeds, yeah, that only gets you about, what, 20 miles per hour of charge time? But hey, if the Cybercab is low powered and can get a range of 250 miles, that would be about 4 hours of 'drive time'... and during that 5 hours it could 'put back' another 100 miles?? Well, that would be great!! Just gotta put the 'wires' into the roads... and of course by that time, the battery will likely get 350 miles of range and with the solar 'paintjob' on it (newer model a few years from now) and faster inductive charging (say 40 kW charging load) you could pretty much drive it constantly without having to ever stop... Well, except for food, drink, stretching and bathrooms... Oh yeah, already have to do that!

 

[CyberGus]

The haters would make a killing on YouTube filming people having to move their stuff to a new car every 200 miles.

Still better than flying Southwest

 

[REM]

Don't forget that the long term plan is to have boring tunnels connecting each city, so hops between them will be easily made with both the robocab and ro-bovan.

 

[CyberTrk]

I suspect than Supercharging would also be available when at a specific CyberCab cleaning location, otherwise when used from a major airport to an hotel in a downtown city, a very typical use case, a CyberCab could only make two (50 miles) round trips before needing to be recharged wirelessly at a rate of maybe 20% or at least 4 hours while supercharging would take maybe 20 minutes?

Note: I am surprised that there is no mention of any CyberCab charging and cleaning location(s) for the coming start of the CyberCab next June in Austin, TX ? See below a Waymo depot:

 

[ABILISK]

I suspect than Supercharging would also be available when at a specific CyberCab cleaning location, otherwise when used from a major airport to an hotel in a downtown city, a very typical use case, a CyberCab could only make two (50 miles) round trips before needing to be recharged wirelessly at a rate of maybe 20% or at least 4 hours while supercharging would take maybe 20 minutes?

Note: I am surprised that there is no mention of any CyberCab charging and cleaning location(s) for the coming start of the CyberCab next June in Austin, TX ? See below a Waymo depot:

I’m guessing they’ll just charge and clean them at Giga Texas at first. They’ll have some sort of geo fenced area. No one will be able to get one and take it to California.

 

[CyberTrk]

I’m guessing they’ll just charge and clean them at Giga Texas at first. They’ll have some sort of geo fenced area. No one will be able to get one and take it to California.

I guess for the initial phase of testing, it is possible that the ground floor, with privacy walls, of the multi level garage parking at Giga Texas could be used for testing the CyberCab cleaning robots, but I imagine that there will be some TaxiCab hub downtown Austin for cleaning and charging.