Bay area supercharger availability

[Altes]

WTF...there is already a shortage of SC's in the bay area due to the volume of Teslas and now THREE SC's (Mt View, Hillsdale,milpitas) are unavailable and the a fourth (Fremont factory) is nearly always blocked off from use.

This is a rather disturbing trend in peak travel months of summer, many of the original superchargers are showing wear and tear (cracked towers, missing plugs, coned off spots) as well. I am wondering if this is just an aberration/coincidence or if the Tesla charging infrastructure is beginning to crumble due to lack of resources or (worse) intentional depletion.

 

[DWdrum]

Although not as fast, PlugShare - Find Electric Vehicle Charging Locations Near You has some other options. I also read that Tesla updated their SC map and have more being installed to support the growth. Hope this helps.

 

[ewoodrick]

It's a ramification of free charging and not installing home chargers

 

[stopparde01]

do we know why those SC are “reduced service” or closed ?

 

[dgatwood]

The Mountain View location is one of the oldest SCs in the Bay Area, and is under such heavy use that it is breaking down constantly. They've had signs there for the past several weeks telling people that they're ramping up new ones in several locations, including Palo Alto, presumably because they knew they were going to have to do some major work.

I hope they're upgrading the hardware to V3 while they're at it.

 

[Bet TSLA]

WTF...there is already a shortage of SC's in the bay area due to the volume of Teslas and now THREE SC's (Mt View, Hillsdale,milpitas) are unavailable and the a fourth (Fremont factory) is nearly always blocked off from use.

This is a rather disturbing trend in peak travel months of summer, many of the original superchargers are showing wear and tear (cracked towers, missing plugs, coned off spots) as well. I am wondering if this is just an aberration/coincidence or if the Tesla charging infrastructure is beginning to crumble due to lack of resources or (worse) intentional depletion.

So if you live in the Bay Area, why would you need a supercharger in the Bay Area? Get home charging, or charge at work. Or is that not possible?

As a local, I occasionally stop at Bay Area superchargers, but it's easy enough to pick times when they aren't crowded. And there are so many that if some aren't working, go to different ones. What's the angst about?

 

[dgatwood]

So if you live in the Bay Area, why would you need a supercharger in the Bay Area? Get home charging, or charge at work. Or is that not possible?

Unfortunately, for a lot of folks, neither of those is possible, depending on where they live. With half of Bay Area residents renting, not owning, spending thousands of dollars to install charging equipment (or even an outlet) in an apartment where they might not live in two years doesn't make a lot of sense. And even if you do own, a lot of folks have limited electrical service that can't handle the extra amperage, which would often necessitate spending many thousands of dollars on top of that. (And my entire neighborhood has limited available current, so it would be many tens of thousands of dollars, and would involve digging up the street for about a mile.)

Workplace charging historically worked back when only a few people owned electric cars. Now, with electric car ownership in the double-digit percentage range (13% electric cars in San Jose, and even higher percentages if you consider only tech workers), there's no way for most businesses to feasibly meet the needs of all their employees right now, much less install enough charging to meet the rapidly growing needs of employees in the future.

So a fairly high volume of local users at the superchargers is pretty much inevitable and unavoidable.

As a local, I occasionally stop at Bay Area superchargers, but it's easy enough to pick times when they aren't crowded. And there are so many that if some aren't working, go to different ones. What's the angst about?

Mainly because there aren't enough superchargers to accommodate outages without creating large backups at other superchargers. Heck, Sunnyvale is usually backed up five cars deep waiting to charge for the entire weekend even without taking on extra load from MTV being down. I can't even imagine how bad that will get if MTV is ever down on a weekend.

 

[Altes]

do we know why those SC are “reduced service” or closed ?

they are showing as red slash which to me means closed

 

[Altes]

So if you live in the Bay Area, why would you need a supercharger in the Bay Area? Get home charging, or charge at work. Or is that not possible?

As a local, I occasionally stop at Bay Area superchargers, but it's easy enough to pick times when they aren't crowded. And there are so many that if some aren't working, go to different ones. What's the angst about?

Some of us actually commute large distances for work here in the bay area and taking advantage of superchargers is part of what we paid for when buying a Tesla, otherwise you might get a Leaf and save some $$$. The "angst" (more of a question/thought really) is about the potential infrastructure issues with Tesla. Already, this is visible in the complete lack of bodywork replacement parts (3-4 month accident repair times) and weeklong wait for simple wear and replacement items on cars.

 

[Bet TSLA]

Some of us actually commute large distances for work here in the bay area

If you commute a large distance then you're commuting out of the Bay Area and can use a supercharger close to whoever you commute to. But regardless, commuting a long distance around here means you pass several superchargers and can take your pick.

 

[Bet TSLA]

they are showing as red slash which to me means closed

Yeah, I thought so too. Then I went by the Brockway Rd. supercharger in Truckee and discovered it wasn't closed at all. I couldn't even figure out in what way it was "reduced service".

 

[Altes]

I wiill drop by and report on Mt View and Milpitas

 

[dgatwood]

Confirmed MTV is alive, but I'm getting weird charging rate problems. It keeps slowing down its charging to 25-ish kW from 60 for no obvious reason. Two stalls are coned off. The rest are empty, which is creepy as heck.

And ten seconds later, now there's one other car.

Other than a sign talking about new superchargers coming soon in Menlo Park, Palo Alto, and Watsonville (which has been up for a couple of weeks now), there are no signs of any construction or other work. If they're doing anything to it, the changes are entirely inside the cage, but my guess is that it is marked as reduced service because of too many simultaneously unhealthy charging stacks. They really are going to have to gut this thing like a fish pretty soon.

Until then, I'll keep using it until it catches fire.