New Jersey’s first public charger now online despite months of intrigue
By Scott Morgan
For weeks, crews worked on and off on a small patch of ground behind the Barnes and Noble store at Hamilton Marketplace.
Officially, that patch now is a recharging superstation for Tesla Motors’ fleet of electric cars. But this supercharger—the first public Tesla charger in New Jersey and the company’s 100th supercharger worldwide—perhaps signifies something more than a few parking spaces with electric plugs. To some, it signals the arrival of the future.
“I used to read Popular Science as a kid,” said Hamilton resident Joe DeLorenzo, a Tesla owner. “It had stuff about helicopters on your roof, and electric cars. Here it is. It’s the future. It’s incredible.”
The supercharger opened officially April 22. The Hamilton power source is a “supercharger” because it can recharge half a Tesla battery in about 20 minutes, at no cost. A typical charge takes three to four hours.
The station—unlike other non-brand-specific charging stations that can recharge any kind of electric car—will be only for Tesla drivers and will not be solar-powered. Rather, a trench for its power supply has been dug toward U.S. 130.
The station is “substantially more powerful than any charging technology to date,” said Patrick Jones, a spokesman for the California carmaker. “Substantially” means up to 120 kilowatts of power. Tesla already has several supercharger stations around the country, typically near amenities like roadside diners, cafes, and shopping centers. Tesla cars use no gasoline, so their owners need to keep a close eye on the vehicle’s battery power.
“Road trippers can stop for a quick meal and have their Model S charged by the time they’re done,” Jones said.
The charger’s location in the Hamilton Marketplace, behind Barnes and Noble with plenty of restaurants and businesses nearby, makes Jones’ suggestion a reality.
DeLorenzo agreed with Jones’ assessment, saying the supercharger will be great for the local economy when Tesla drivers take a shopping breather at Hamilton Marketplace.
“It’s good for the commerce in the town,” DeLorenzo said. “It’s a nice thing for Hamilton.”
The station opens up longer-range travel for Tesla owners along Interstate 95. Prior to the Hamilton location, there were no public charging stations in the 175 miles between Newark, Del., and Darien, Conn.—without a detour onto Long Island, that is.
Headed west to east, there are no charging stations beyond Cranberry, Pa., 264 miles west of Hamilton. The advertised range for a fully charged Tesla is 265 miles.
For a time, the fate of the supercharger at the Hamilton Marketplace had come into question. Construction stalled for weeks, and one rumor said work had stopped at the station because of a permit issue with Hamilton municipal government. Township construction official and superintendent of inspections Ray Lumio, however, had not heard those rumors.
“I don’t know who the people are that are saying the township has stopped this project,” Lumio said. “Hamilton Township issued the permit on February 7 [and we’ve] performed ongoing field inspections.”
Lumio suggested that PSEG, which oversaw the project and provides power to the chargers, might know. But no one from PSEG responded to inquiries about the station. Jones acknowledged in early April that construction had paused, but did not say why.
Others suggested the supercharger had become symbolic of a larger issue. As it stands, with the completion of the supercharger station, it is now easier to charge a Tesla in New Jersey than it is to buy one here.
The past few months had swirled with rumors, ostensibly because of an argument between Tesla and the New Jersey Legislature. Or, if you want to simplify the argument, the fight between Tesla and Gov. Chris Christie, who on one hand is getting the blame for banning Tesla sales in the state and on the other hand lays blame for the Tesla ban entirely on state lawmakers. The way legislators have written the law, Christie told a town hall meeting in South River in March, makes Tesla’s business model illegal.
“I have no problem with Tesla selling directly to customers,” Christie said, “except it’s against the law in New Jersey.”
His not-so-subtle suggestion: If you want the company to be able to sell here, get your lawmakers to rewrite the rules.
The law in question, despite its recent ascension in the press, is a decades-old law designed to keep major automakers from undercutting dealers and selling directly to consumers. Legislators just updated the law (which bans not Tesla, but its method of selling its cars) in March, after months of intense lobbying from state car dealers. That, really, is the core of the arguing and rumor mill: Is it a matter of the law as written or a case of big-lobby favoritism, considering no one seemed to care about the old law for the two years Tesla was conducting its business (legally) under the radar?
In a March 14 letter to New Jersey Tesla owners, company CEO Elon Musk addressed the law.
“The intent was simply to prevent a fair and longstanding deal between an existing auto company and its dealers from being broken, not to prevent a new company that has no franchisees from selling directly to consumers,” he wrote. “When all auto companies sold through franchises, this didn’t really matter. However, when Tesla came along as a new company with no existing franchisees, the auto dealers, who possess vastly more resources and influence than Tesla, nonetheless sought to force us to sell through them.”
Tesla is having this fight all over the country. Arizona, Maryland, Texas and Virginia also ban direct-to-customer transactions, and the company has butted heads with officials in Ohio and New York. Each of these latter states recently came to a compromise with Tesla: in Ohio, the company can keep its existing store and add one more; in New York, it may keep its five existing stores.
The thing about Teslas is, they are not cars everyone can afford, so the market for them is far narrower than that for, say, a mid-size Honda. At $85,000, the Tesla is a higher-end vehicle. But the car is so widely hailed as perhaps the best car ever that auto magazines wanted to give it a sixth star, even though their ratings only go up to five. Ed Haemmerle, owner of NJ Renewable Energy in Princeton Junction, drove one once and said of it, “The thing’s a rocket ship.”
Tesla’s cachet, from its evocative name to its unabashed sticker price, is best embodied in the brash business model it has used since it began in 2003. In 2012, Tesla set up its first New Jersey store in Paramus. It found an early enemy in the NJ Coalition of Automotive Retailers, or NJCAR, a powerful lobby group that exerted crush-depth pressure on state lawmakers to ban direct-to-customer sales of new autos. On March 11, legislators agreed and rewrote part of the law to outlaw Tesla’s business model.
Tesla filed an appeal with the New Jersey Superior Court on March 28, in which it states that it signed a longterm lease for its Paramus store in 2012 and another for a store in Springfield in 2013, unaware that NJCAR had the company in its gunsites. By last October, it was clear that the state Motor Vehicle Commission would reverse its stance to let Tesla operate its business its way in New Jersey. Tesla has been vocal about its displeasure since December.
While that battle rages on, the one in Hamilton has come to an end seemingly. For the people who already have a Tesla, that means free power for their car, with easy access to many of New Jersey’s major highways.
And, at least to DeLorenzo, that’s a beautiful thing.
“I used to spend $400 a month in gas with my Jeep,” DeLorenzo said. “I don’t do that anymore.”
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