Shortly after I became interested in battery-electric cars some 20 years ago, I was driving cross-country. Somewhere in Colorado on Interstate 70, I spotted Alan Cocconi headed the other way. Or, rather, the white Honda CRX he'd converted to an electric car pulling an aerodynamic trailer containing a generator running flat-out to keep him going. I had gotten to know Cocconi after his work on the GM Impact, a prototype of the EV1. The purpose of his trip was to show that an electric car could cross the continent -- if it had a generator behind it.

Two decades later, it's still a problem to drive an EV between even Los Angeles and San Francisco -- without Cocconi's generator, that is. Even the long-range, 85-kW-hr battery Tesla Model S with an EPA-certified 265-mile range is 100 miles short of spanning California's two biggest cities.

But come October, we'll see the beginnings of a pretty slick solution courtesy of Tesla via an initial constellation of five, high-power, direct-current chargers called Superchargers, located along several of California's most traveled routes. A Supercharger will be positioned in Lebec (or Tejon Ranch north of the notorious "Grapevine" climb above L.A. ), in Harris Ranch in Coalinga (midway between L.A. and San Francisco near Interstate 5), Gilroy (convenient for Silicon Valley types using the Pacheco Pass to dogleg over to the I-5), Folsom (between the Bay Area and Reno/Lake Tahoe), and Barstow between L.A. and Las Vegas (surprise). (Editor's note: The photo of the plugged-in Model S is NOT the Supercharger)

Why none smack in the middle of L.A. or San Francisco? Tesla figures the car's considerable range ought to take care of the vast majority of intra-city journeys. The charge stations will be located in shopping malls that include restaurants where you might want to stop and relax anyway -- I'm guessing a Starbucks, for sure.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk pointed out that stops on long drives often wind up taking 30 minutes if you use the bathroom, grab a snack, and stretch your legs. And in that time, Tesla says the Supercharger will add about 150 to 160 miles to Model S' range. At full rip, it'll dispense energy at a nominal rate of 90 kW (but it's capable of charging up to 400 volts at 250 amps, or 100 kW) -- that's a 300 mph rate -- or 4.7 times quicker than the already very aggressive Tesla home charging solution when coupled to the optional Twin Charger on-board unit (240 volts at 80 amps).

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The Supercharger is a veritable electron fire hose, delivering DC power directly into the battery and bypassing the car's on-board chargers. We recently had an opportunity to use a Supercharger prototype with a Model S and what's most unusual about it -- although it shouldn't be, I guess -- is the cable's girth. It's quite a chunk of wire. The weight of the cable is elegantly dealt with at the Supercharger station by having it vertically emerge from the bottom of what amounts to its "pump." The cable's own weight then bends it over at an angle to match the height of the car's charge port. Think of a wilting flower. From there you just plug it in. Tesla doesn't use the SAE standard J1772 charger receptacle (i.e., the male and female parts of the plug itself) but instead uses its own, elegant-looking slim-line one. Plugging in can be a close fit, but even with the chunky cable, it's easy to do. While charging, a ring around the car's charge port blinks green -- quickly at first, then slower as the battery fills. The illumination ceases when the car's locked to avoid drawing attention.

The locations of the three Superchargers serving the I-5 corridor (the Gilroy one doing so indirectly) are interestingly located, suggesting that an actual L.A. to San Francisco drive might more likely involve two shorter stops. In the next two years Tesla says it will create a Supercharger corridor cutting across the country, including a stretch between central Ontario and western Quebec.

For those left anchorless by the tech-culture loss of Steve Jobs, it's time you met Elon Musk. Although as a presenter he's as startlingly improvisational (including blank pauses to think about what to say next) as Jobs was practiced slick, the crowd surrounding him at this week's event announcing the Supercharger project was no less rapt. I mean, this was a presentation of a charger for an electric car, for heaven's sake. But when Musk said "This is as important as SpaceX's docking with the International Space Station, people leaned forward to listen, hushed. Including the attorney for the Red Hot Chili Peppers standing next to me.

But Musk backed the comparison up with some potent visual and conceptual arguments. Behind him was what indeed looked like a small rocket ship emblazoned with the Tesla T, apropos as the presentation was taking place adjacent to the building in which the Falcon 9 rocket is built. That's what will -- at some locations, at least -- contain the power electronics, as well as be one heck of a rest-stop attention-getter. (The kids will go nuts.) The stations themselves -- all five were built in secret and are operational -- look like miniaturized gas stations. But their roofs are actually a bank of solar cells provided by Musk's third company, SolarCity. And here's the trick: Over the course of a year, Tesla says they will return more electricity to the grid than the cars being charged there take from the grid. It's an argument of sorts against the glaring reality that in many states, local electrical generation can actually result in an EV being dirtier, CO2-wise, than a high-mileage gas car. Musk wants you to think of your future cross-country drives in a Model S as solar powered in an indirect sort of way, so who cares about Kentucky's coal-fired power plants? (By the way, California's comparatively clean electricity doesn't need this defense.)

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Moreover, charging will be permanently free to Model S owners with the 85 kW-hr battery, and Supercharging capability can be purchased for the 60 kW-hr version. As Musk said, as long as you bring enough sandwiches and drinks, you could drive across the country without gas money in your wallet. Tell me, is this not Jobsian showmanship? The stations will have an expandable number of stalls depending on demand, but if it's one with, say, four stalls, two cars can be charged at full speed, while two others arriving later initially get lower priority (slower charging) until the first two reach a partial charge, and then all the charging rates are renegotiated. I doubt we'll see this as a problem for quite some time, though.