Our Volts have an indicator light that changes when the car is fully charged. Does the Model S do the same?
Only with a Tesla connector. Push the button on the head of the plug to wake up the charge port light and see if it's flashing or solid green.
Beware that that temporarily interrupts charging. If you do that on a car that is supercharging, the other car will get priority. D-bags have done this to steal supercharging priority.
Now I know why my charging session was interrupted recently at Gilroy while I was shopping! :cursing: I recommend that that this be corrected!!
Also the slower the flashing the more full the battery. A nearly empty battery flashes very rapidly, and an almost full battery flashes very sloooooowly.....
Wow I just tested that and yes anyone pressing the button on the handle can interrupt the charging. That's not good. It will start again once you release, but at some public charging stations that could be a problem as they don't restart automatically. If you have set the car for scheduled charging it will not restart to charge if the button is pressed in some situations. I really think Tesla should change that! Maybe there is some safety law that requires a method to stop charging even when a car is locked.
The button is part of the charger and it's the charger that stops the current. The charger doesn't know whether a key is present or not.
We have laminated card(s) we made up for our Volts that says if the light on the dash is blinking green feel free to unplug and use the charger. Since it sounds like there is no equivalent indicator, that wouldnt involve someone potentially stopping our charge, we shouldnt make one for our Tesla.