Allow lower rate supercharging if site not busy and owner not in a hurry?

[thegruf]

Supercharging regularly at full rate is (now) known to stress the battery to the point where Tesla apply limits.

Most of the time owners want to charge as fast as possible and be on their way, however there could be occasions where absolute speed is not the most important factor - maybe I'll take lunch not just a Latte.

So, if a supercharger site is not busy, why not permit owners to select a slightly lower max charge rate (eg 80-90%) to help mitigate repeated fast charging effects.

Tesla know how busy a site is, so even if it got busy whist a vehicle was there, they could just override the lower setting and charge as fast as possible. The mobile app as always will announce when almost charged so the owner is still informed whenever the charge completes.

Just a thought.

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

I understand the pros, but I think that the overall cons are too great.

Tesla can't know how busy it's _going_ to be _including_ ICEing and unplugged EVholes.

Superchargers are rapid chargers, not destination chargers, so the focus should be on throughput and Tesla shouldn't do anything that encourages using it as a parking spot.

 

[thegruf]

Maybe lunch was overstating it and certainly not suggesting turning them into car parks, this was more in consideration of those regular SC users who are complaining that their max charge rate is now capped. Clearly depends on how busy the SC is, some are overloaded, others are much less used. But the point about ICEing fills it dead though as this would be an unknown.
Have to Disagree with myself then

 

[nwdiver]

That exists... it's called 'L2'....

So a better question would be should Tesla install HPWCs at SC locations....

 

[ewoodrick]

One of the issues is that not all Superchargers charge at the same rate to begin with. We should all know the A/B issue, but take a look at PlugShare and you'll see Supercharger at site A charges at one rate, while supercharger at site b charges at a much faster rate. And different cars with different batteries charge at different rates.
So the stated intent to "less stress" the batteries becomes a hard one to answer. And honestly 80% of even the slowest charge is still a pretty intensive charge rate.