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the distance between the Superchargers so the drive-break
cycle will be the same as if it was a gasoline car. Sooner or
later, any driver has to take a break for 30 minutes. While
taking this break, the driver can charge the electric vehicle.
“We looked at the major population centers and said ‘Well,
people don’t just drive at random across the whole area
- they follow the main routes and corridors,’” JB Straubel
said. “You can look at how many stations [Superchargers]
you need and that’s a very small number. It’s not tens of
thousands; it’s actually a few hundred stations if they are
exactly in the right places between cities.”^426
The second problem was that the electric vehicle should
be charged with clean energy. Charging with energy from a
coal power plant is cleaner compared with using a gasoline
car, but charging with clean energy is the best option.
The third problem was that an owner of an electric
vehicle should be able to charge the batteries cheaper com-
pared with filling the tank in a gasoline car. Tesla promised
it would be free to charge Tesla cars at these stations. “We
always want it to be the case that the Supercharger is free
once you’ve bought the car,” Elon said. “So we don’t want
to have this kind of pay every time you arrive thing. I think
it’s just so much easier for you to just build it into the
cost and you arrive and you just never have to deal with
anything.”^250
In the history of Tesla, the Supercharger network be-
came an important milestone. Elon thought it was a similar
milestone as when SpaceX for the first time docked with the
International Space Station. “Tesla’s Supercharger network