A Burning Man 301
General Motors was Kris Trexler. You could only lease the
EV1 in California and Arizona, so Trexler came up with
an idea to market the EV1 to the rest of the country. He
made a 3 275 miles [5 270 km] long journey called Charge
Across America. “Thanks to the Walmart in Redlands, I
charged the batteries up to 96 percent full using their free
public charging station,” Trexler said. “I found another red
EV1 parked in an adjacent charging space. Good company.
Infrastructure is essential to the success of electric cars.
Imagine gasoline powered cars with no gas stations.” The
problem with this trip from Los Angeles to Detroit was that
it took three weeks. When Trexler arrived to Detroit, he
flew home while the car was shipped by truck back to Los
Angeles.^211
Luckily, the electric car technology has improved since
the days of the EV1. In September 2012, Tesla revealed
that SolarCity would supply solar panels to Tesla’s own
network of charging stations called Superchargers. These
stations are similar to a traditional gas station, but for
electric vehicles only. Because the stations will supply more
energy than what will be used by the electric cars, the
vision is that they will be like small power plants that
supply electricity to the area around them.
The Supercharger network became the solution to the
three problems that held back electric vehicles in favor of
gasoline vehicles.
The first problem was that the driver of an electric
vehicle should be able to drive long distances with the same
ease as if the driver had a gasoline car. Tesla optimized