I'm not questioning the usefulness of superchargers at those locations. My only point was that when it was important to complete all the dots along a meandering route chosen solely for its sentimental value to Musk, Tesla had no problems installing Superchargers in remote locations. This is something of a recurring issue I think Tesla has, in that the new features/software improvements seem to place an undue emphasis on useless or at least things of marginal practical value that Musk wants in his car, often just to satisfy some inner James Bond fantasy. (The car meeting you at the curb? Really?) When the car was first released, Tesla made a big deal about being able to call out the name of a song and have the car look it up on the Internet and play it. Pure gadgetry. I can't imagine driving on my 75 mile per day commute to work, thinking of, and reciting songs every five minutes. And while concentrating on this silliness, they released the Model S without any way to play your own music collection in your own 100k car. That was a pretty big oversight, and when Tesla did rewrite the software for the USB ports to add this feature they only paid it passing attention which resulted in an interface that was characterized (accurately I'd say) in a Teslarati review as being "functionally useless." It took years just to get a shuffle function thrown in there.
Anyway, that venting aside, I'm glad there will be an HPWC in Sheridan soon since I may be driving through in June.
We agree that Tesla (or probably more accurately, Elon) has a tendency to focus on minimally useful gadgets that virtually no one but he wants; the Falcon Wing Doors for the Model X are undoubtedly the most expensive and potentially most costly (to the company) of these. Self-parking cars that come to pick you up at least has some utility, and will become increasingly common as cars develop more autonomy. I think that capability, combined with wireless charging, will be essential as autonomous taxi and ride-share cars replace taxis, as well as for urban owners living in multi-family housing with no way to charge at home. Centrally-located parking/charging facilities strike me as far cheaper than trying to wire EVSEs at every apartment building and on street space.
As for Elon's route, I do have a problem with it, as it diverted SC construction resources from areas with much greater numbers and densities of Teslas to parts of the U.S. among the lowest for both population and population density, with some of the coldest winter temps.
Just to be clear, it's my belief that there was no business case for an early completion of ANY transcontinental route, although I recognize one might be justified by the PR value. However, if you're going to do a route for that reason, you should at least make it a reasonably efficient transcontinental route that serves a large population of both people and Teslas, and that means you start with either I-80 or I-70.
I contend that it was far more important for Tesla to put superchargers along routes radiating out from large concentrations of Teslas to frequent day or weekend destinations, out to a radius of say 350 miles or so, before worrying about transcontinental driving which very few people ever do, and even fewer _need_ to do other than moving. Connecting the S.F. Bay Area up with frequent weekend destinations such as Lake Tahoe, or L.A. - Vegas, was going to serve far more Tesla owners far more frequently than building them along I-90 through rural South Dakota. Joining up city pairs such as Kansas City with St. Louis, a distance of 250 miles, should have had a much higher priority as well, and yet people are still waiting for that.
Having done the above, connecting up transcontinental routes would only require a few more SCs to fill in the gaps between the urban conurbations and their spokes. An example is the recent opening of Effingham, IL, between St. Louis and Indianapolis, even if St. Louis and its spokes remain unfinished (and long overdue).
Tesla is finally getting around to filling in the more traveled routes more than a year after completing Elon's nostalgia trip, but even there gaps remain on such critical routes as I-85 between Atlanta and Charlotte (not solely Tesla's fault), the aforementioned I-70 (Columbia or Kingdom City, MO, plus St. Charles), Syracuse, Buffalo and Erie, I-10 between Lake City, New Orleans and Houston, etc. The philosophy behind SC deployment timing continues to amaze me, especially when I see crews working through the depths of a northern winter while southern routes go uncompleted. And does anyone believe that it should be an equal priority (in 2016 per Tesla's maps) to complete I-94 through North Dakota with a _state_ population under 750k (i.e. less than that of say San Jose, Ca. let alone its metro area), as it is to provide access to National Parks in Montana and Wyoming that see millions of visitors a year? I'm not suggesting that Tesla shouldn't put SCs along I-94 eventually, but it should be at the very end of the line as far as primary interstates go and well behind major U.S. or state highways, unless Tesla has traffic studies that can justify moving it up. Much the same considerations applied to I-90, although they've gone so far with that they might as well finish it.