{"id":28372,"date":"2013-05-30T16:13:29","date_gmt":"2013-05-30T21:13:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/?p=28372"},"modified":"2013-05-30T17:43:55","modified_gmt":"2013-05-30T22:43:55","slug":"tesla-plans-super-charging-stations-for-texas-but-still-cant-sell-direct","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2013\/05\/30\/tesla-plans-super-charging-stations-for-texas-but-still-cant-sell-direct\/","title":{"rendered":"Tesla Plans Super-Charging Stations for Texas (But Still Can’t Sell Direct)"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Map courtesy of Tesla Motors<\/p>

Tesla plans to have six super-charging stations in Texas within the next six months, with more to come.<\/p><\/div>\n

The luxury electric car company Tesla announced plans today<\/a> to\u00a0rapidly\u00a0expand its network of “super-charging stations” across the country, including a number of spots in Texas. But the company still can’t sell to consumers in Texas directly, despite a strong effort to lobby state lawmakers to change the rules.<\/p>\n

The charging stations are meant to allow drivers to go from city to city, and the company is planning to put them outside of Austin, Dallas, San Antonio and Houston<\/a>. In fact, the company plans to add so many charging stations that within six months, they say it will be possible to travel from Los Angeles to New York in a Tesla. The stations charge a car for 20 to 30 minutes, allowing a Tesla S to run for around three hours of driving, and are free for Tesla owners. (Other electric cars, however, cannot charge at the stations.) That’s significantly faster<\/a> than existing public charging stations in Texas, but\u00a0Tesla’s East Coast network of charging stations was negatively reviewed in the New York Times earlier this year<\/a>. And that review was subsequently criticized<\/a> by the paper’s public editor. Regardless, the controversy doesn’t appear to have slowed Tesla down: the company posted its first profitable quarter<\/a> recently, earned a near-perfect score from Consumer Reports<\/a> for the Model S, and paid off its federal loans nine years early<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But if you want to go to a Tesla dealership in Texas and take a test drive or buy a car, you’ll be disappointed. Because of state franchise laws, car makers aren’t allowed to own their own dealerships in Texas (as well as many other states<\/a>). While Tesla lobbied hard this legislative session for an exception<\/a>, they weren’t\u00a0successful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The luxury electric car company Tesla announced plans today to\u00a0rapidly\u00a0expand its network of “super-charging stations” across the country, including a number of spots in Texas. But the company still can’t sell to consumers in Texas directly, despite a strong effort to lobby state lawmakers to change the rules. The charging stations are meant to allow […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":28373,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[57],"tags":[18,204],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28372"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28372"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28372\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28379,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28372\/revisions\/28379"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}