Supercharger congestion - a modest proposal

[Wshowell]

I had an idea as well about the Model 3 arriving and then Model S and X owners getting shut out from what they have grown accustomed to. Let's say Tesla takes an 8 SC location and turns that into 16 to help with the Model 3 surge. The legacy models S and X could charge at all 16 but the model 3s could only charge at the 8 new ones (software would limit access to the model 3 owners during peak periods or always) During times of congestion the legacy owners would have access to the legacy and the new chargers and wouldn't be delayed/resentful of the model 3 owners. The model 3 owners would be stuck waiting but that's kinda how it goes when one flies "coach" and knew that going into the purchase itself. As a future owner of both S and 3 I would feel this was a reasonable accommodation for what has been promised to buyers of each model.

 

[mikeash]

At any time. If you are 20 miles from home and you have more than 40 miles of charge in the battery, you can't charge for free.

That would be ridiculous. What if I've done a bunch of driving, got home, then decided to drive to Richmond? As it stands now, I can hit the Woodbridge Supercharger and be on my way with no sweat. With your proposal, Woodbridge would limit me to 50 miles of range, insufficient to get to Richmond, so I'd be forced to pay, or slow charge at home. I've never done this, but I'm definitely glad that I could. This is totally legitimate usage which shouldn't get caught up in the quest to deter abuse.

 

[Canuck]

When I get my Model 3, I'd like to know that there will be a free slot at a supercharger when I need one for a long journey.

Here's a modest proposal to make sure superchargers are free for those doing long distance travel.

You can't charge up to more than 2x the distance between the supercharger and your home.

You can pay to charge more than that, but it's no cheaper than charging at home.

This is a fine proposal if you posted in the Model 3 forum to apply to the Model 3. Since my car came with free Supercharging for travel for the life of the car, I'd consider it a breach of contract. We sometime go down to the States to shop before going to our cabin in southern BC; so our travels take us to a supercharger in Burlington, WA, then back past our home to the supercharger in Hope, BC. According to this proposal, I couldn't make it to Hope. So all hope is lost!

 

[David99]

After paying 121K for my car, which included a 2K fee for supercharging, I would be pissed if the M3 had the same access to SCs as I do.

Supercharger access was $2000. If it costs $2000 to get Supercharger access on a Model 3 then both have equal right to access Superchargers. How much the rest of the car costs doesn't matter.

 

[sorka]

Sure - they *could* collect data on where the car is regularly and try to make a good educated guess. But it will be just that, an educated guess, and using that for the basis of a rule wouldn't be proper.

There's not guessing about it. My Tesla knows exactly where I live. The Nav has my "home" and it know the GPS coordinates of my homelink.

Tesla could simply determine after the fact if the charge you needed near your house was acutally needed or not. If you charge locally and then take off on a long trip, it doesn't count as local charging.

Heck, you could even charge at the SC and then go home and pack your bag and take off. If you left before you could have charge with your HPWC high enough for the trip, then even the SC charge doesn't count. If however, you supercharge and then head home and stay home and don't leave within a few hours, then that counts as abuse of the system and then you should be charged.

I would be fine with that rule being applied retroactively even to me. Now if I'm planning a trip and then something comes up and I can't leave and I just go home and stay home, then I'd be willing to pay the extra $5 or whatever it was since it's unlikely to happen more than once a year or so.

 

[FlasherZ]

II would be pissed if the M3 had the same access to SCs as I do.

I think it is a dangerous statement: Yeah, I'm angry too that my Mustang has to share time at the same gas stations as those damn Chevettes.

I do understand your point of view, but I think early SuperCharging gave us that... I look at it differently.

I look at it as just refueling. It's important they manage the capacity model - even with a higher density. Good news is that the rest of the country should be ok for a while, but California will be a-hurtin'.

And perhaps the fact Model S and X will be free supercharging vs. paid for Model 3 will be the differentiator.

 

[FlasherZ]

I was with you in this thread until this post. I know you respect the efficacy of models, based on reading your posts around here. Surely you think they could develop a solid model and use that as their basis. I mean, they know where you live. Where do you charge your vehicles overnight most regularly? There are exceptions, and no models are right, but surely this one would be pretty accurate.

Something like this would be ripe for a challenge, so if they want to place terms & conditions on something they'd better make sure they get it right. You're right, with creative wording they could probably do something, but it would not be called "home" but would be called "the place where your car spends most of its time idle" or some-such language. If you have two homes you drive between, it'd be interesting to see how that might be handled.

 

[FlasherZ]

There's not guessing about it. My Tesla knows exactly where I live. The Nav has my "home" and it know the GPS coordinates of my homelink.

Yes, and all I need to do is program the "home" link in the nav to be northern Montana, and program my first homelink while on a roadtrip using an old garage door opener.

I would be fine with that rule being applied retroactively even to me. Now if I'm planning a trip and then something comes up and I can't leave and I just go home and stay home, then I'd be willing to pay the extra $5 or whatever it was since it's unlikely to happen more than once a year or so.

I don't have a dog in the fight, my nearest SC is 65 miles to my west, 100 miles to the north, and 80 miles to the east. I just see a lot of risk in trying to establish a customer policy around "home", given what we've already seen. I know people are tired of locals clogging SC's, but in each case there are some people who have a need (condos, apartments, etc.)

 

[ViperDoc]

I have a Model S with supercharging. I don't mind that Model 3 will get SC as part of the base sticker price. I don't feel if Model S "paid" for it as an option, then Model 3 should have to pay for it as an option. It has simply been rolled into the base price, and everyone is paying for it now. If I paid for the option and can still use the SC free, then I am getting what I paid for. If Model 3 buys the car with that feature standard, they get what they pay for. Complaining that I paid for something and then a few years later someone gets a "better deal" because it is included is like complaining that when I bought my computer I had to pay extra for the SSD drive that now comes as a standard feature for a new buyer.

 

[LetsGoFast]

That would be ridiculous. What if I've done a bunch of driving, got home, then decided to drive to Richmond? As it stands now, I can hit the Woodbridge Supercharger and be on my way with no sweat. With your proposal, Woodbridge would limit me to 50 miles of range, insufficient to get to Richmond, so I'd be forced to pay, or slow charge at home. I've never done this, but I'm definitely glad that I could. This is totally legitimate usage which shouldn't get caught up in the quest to deter abuse.

LOL. I was going to post more or less the same use case in reverse.

Another one sort of all depends on meal times. If I leave home at 90% or even 100%, I can't safely make it straight through to Newark, but if I stop at Richmond (25 miles from my house) and top off while I grab a sandwich at Q, I can. The problem is that for almost every single rule you can imagine, there is some non-abusive use case that could be proposed.

 

[sorka]

Yes, and all I need to do is program the "home" link in the nav to be northern Montana, and program my first homelink while on a roadtrip using an old garage door opener.

Home is where ever you park your MS overnight at a residential address most of the the time. Tesla can easily figure this out. I never programmed my home location. Did my MS figure it out from frequency or is it because I gave Tesla my home address when I purchased the car?

 

[FlasherZ]

Home is where ever you park your MS overnight at a residential address most of the the time. Tesla can easily figure this out. I never programmed my home location. Did my MS figure it out from frequency or is it because I gave Tesla my home address when I purchased the car?

When I received Model X, neither "home" nor "work" were populated. After a few days, Tesla suggested that I accept a home address - it looks for a place you are at more frequently. But I can erase that and re-enter an address. (Note that I've had a loaner suggest to me a different address -- a place I had driven to three times in two days.)

 

[sorka]

After paying 121K for my car, which included a 2K fee for supercharging, I would be pissed if the M3 had the same access to SCs as I do.

I agree but I'd change the way you look at this. I'd be pissed if Tesla doesn't scale supercharger access proportionally to the number of vehicles they produces * (a charging constant for the the rate of vehicle charging / mile).

If tesla wants to produce a lot of cars that take longer to charge per mile, they'll need to scale up the SCs to compensate. So I'd say I'd be pissed if they don't scale this and we have waits in the future when we don't now (for the most part).

They'll need to figure out how to charge the smaller batteries faster because if they don't, the incremental cost of each slower charging / mile car will add a disproportionate burden to their infrastructure costs which they can't take on because the 3 will already have way lower margins per vehicle vs the MSs 25% margin. If they don't address this one way or another, we'll start seeing more and more congestion.

Tesla is going to need to take a different approach to picking SC sites. They're going to need to take a "if we build it they will come" approach by buying up mall sized lots and developing much larger supercharger access and then leasing out the mall spaces to companies that deal with developing shopping malls or rest areas or whatever. Tesla will need to get into the landlord business because the easy spots have mostly been taken already unless they're willing to scale up and go big.

 

[mikeash]

I don't have a dog in the fight, my nearest SC is 65 miles to my west, 100 miles to the north, and 80 miles to the east. I just see a lot of risk in trying to establish a customer policy around "home", given what we've already seen. I know people are tired of locals clogging SC's, but in each case there are some people who have a need (condos, apartments, etc.)

It's hard to write rules for vague notions like "abuse." That's why I think the wisest course of action would be to just charge money, if the goal is to get people to limit their usage. None of this "if within X miles of home" or anything like that, just make it consistent. My guess is that the 3 will come with some sort of charge-for-use access with a nominal fee similar to the actual cost of electricity, just to deter abuse. Possibly some sort of all-you-can-eat option for $$$, like the Model S 60 had. I imagine the S and X will continue to have unlimited access included with purchase, as suits their "premium" pricing. And who knows, maybe the 3 will include unlimited access and Tesla will just build out the network like crazy to make it work.

I think some people here look at this with a mindset that's far too punitive. Stopping abuse is merely a means to an end, which is to sell more cars by keeping owners happy and allowing them to make long trips. Anything which stops abuse but even might get in the way or annoy non-abusive owners is going to be counterproductive.

 

[Lloyd]

I can see the time soon when every town will WANT to and REQUEST to have a supercharger to attract the shopping, restaurant and tax dollars. Five hundred thousand model 3's per year will make a difference to press for more places to charge!

 

[MSullivan]

At any time. If you are 20 miles from home and you have more than 40 miles of charge in the battery, you can't charge for free.

What if you have no intention of going straight home and indeed it is out of your way to go home before you continue the rest of your errands?

 

[ToddRLockwood]

Tesla has stated for some time that Superchargers are intended for long-distance travel, not for daily local charging. While Tesla does not use a specific formula to identify drivers who overuse the Superchargers, they will notify owners who use a Supercharger on a daily basis who could just as easily charge at home. Superchargers are not intended to be a replacement for home charging for those living in apartments. While Tesla has not offered any specifics, daily charging at a Supercharger could accelerate degradation of the battery.

 

[sorka]

Tesla has stated for some time that Superchargers are intended for long-distance travel, not for daily local charging. While Tesla does not use a specific formula to identify drivers who overuse the Superchargers, they will notify owners who use a Supercharger on a daily basis who could just as easily charge at home. Superchargers are not intended to be a replacement for home charging for those living in apartments. While Tesla has not offered any specifics, daily charging at a Supercharger could accelerate degradation of the battery.

Agree 100%. But the problem is way too many prospective buyers who ended up buying were told by their sales reps that using the SCs to charge when you live in an apartment was fine. Additionally, Tesla's language used to be "when charging at home was not convenient" or some such. They later changed it to long distance travel.

But with most of the SC usage in SoCal being locals who either can't charge at home or won't in order to save money, something has to change because the system is being abused.

Tesla has many ways they can figure out who's abusing the system. If an MS is parked every night in at a residential address that isn't an a multi unit dwelling and they're only charging at SCs and then going home to that address and parking there night after night, then they are abusing the system and Tesla should eventually charge them for charging or cut them for local charging only.

Yes there will be exceptions like the times you head out of town on a trip and wouldn't have had enough time to charge at home. If Tesla charges money to charge only after you charge and then head home and stay there all night, then folks will think twice about using the SC just to save money.

 

[sorka]

Yes, and all I need to do is program the "home" link in the nav to be northern Montana, and program my first homelink while on a roadtrip using an old garage door opener.


I don't have a dog in the fight, my nearest SC is 65 miles to my west, 100 miles to the north, and 80 miles to the east. I just see a lot of risk in trying to establish a customer policy around "home", given what we've already seen. I know people are tired of locals clogging SC's, but in each case there are some people who have a need (condos, apartments, etc.)

Risk from a customer relations standpoint, I agree. Risk from incorrectly determining where home is, no. If you park night after night at the same residential location that isn't a multi unit dwelling, that is your home. Tesla can wait a good while before their systems determine this. Like maybe once you've parked at the same house for more than a month at least 5 days a week. And BTW, when I visit someone for days at their house, like on a trip, you can bet that each and every time at the very least I have a regular 15 amp extension cord plugged in. I always offer to pay whomever it is for kWh used and I always get the laugh off like a few days is going to make a difference on their bill.

 

[FlasherZ]

Risk from a customer relations standpoint, I agree. Risk from incorrectly determining where home is, no. If you park night after night at the same residential location that isn't a multi unit dwelling, that is your home. Tesla can wait a good while before their systems determine this. Like maybe once you've parked at the same house for more than a month at least 5 days a week. And BTW, when I visit someone for days at their house, like on a trip, you can bet that each and every time at the very least I have a regular 15 amp extension cord plugged in. I always offer to pay whomever it is for kWh used and I always get the laugh off like a few days is going to make a difference on their bill.

We're talking about this in a programmatic fashion. You made some assumptions in that paragraph -- "residential location" and "that isn't a multi unit dwelling". How does the car know whether it's residential, commercial, or industrial? and how does the car know whether it is at a multi-unit dwelling?

My point was that it's not easy to program for these things. You can make assumptions that same location frequently during night hours == residence, but then it amplifies the customer relationship standpoint and then you need to anticipate all sorts of exception processes, policies, etc.

What if I live in a loft apartment that shares the top floors of a building that is also an office building? What if I work the night shift and my location looks reversed? How will the systems automatically determine this without it being a customer relationship liability to Tesla and an additional cost factor in maintaining a team that goes to verify this stuff?