Enough Superchargers for Christmas? with info from Thanksgiving?

[chronopc]

40 stalls right? That's crazy.

Yeah there are 40 stalls. I stopped by on Wednesday before Thanksgiving around noon and only 10 spots were available, which is unusually low for this location. But even though I was next to other cars I was still getting over 100 kW of charging.

 

[Cgielow]

I foolishly listened to this optimistic poll and thread when making my holiday plans.

I had a two hour wait at the Quartzsite AZ supercharger on Saturday and once in only got 35-50kw charge rates. A one hour stop became four hours!

The problem is that everyone HAD to hit this charger after topping off on the ample chargers in Palm Springs. No one could make it to the next station without at least an hour charge. It was a total bottleneck going from dozens of chargers there to only six working stalls. And this is the main route into AZ from CA.

I’ve learned my lesson and will be driving back tomorrow using the slightly longer/slower southern I8 route. Fewer stalls but only San Diego bound traffic to compete with.

Too bad the maps can’t estimate waits like this when recommending a route.

 

[Cgielow]

The Quartzsite line about 14 deep on Saturday:

 

[P85_DA]

The Quartzsite line about 14 deep on Saturday:

El Centro basically empty Yesterday and today

 

[Chancellor32]

The Quartzsite line about 14 deep on Saturday:

That’s nuts!! That’s why we take our ICE to Cali haha did the drive once in the Tesla and waited 70 minutes at Qualcomm

 

[Garlan Garner]

I foolishly listened to this optimistic poll and thread when making my holiday plans.

I had a two hour wait at the Quartzsite AZ supercharger on Saturday and once in only got 35-50kw charge rates. A one hour stop became four hours!

The problem is that everyone HAD to hit this charger after topping off on the ample chargers in Palm Springs. No one could make it to the next station without at least an hour charge. It was a total bottleneck going from dozens of chargers there to only six working stalls. And this is the main route into AZ from CA.

I’ve learned my lesson and will be driving back tomorrow using the slightly longer/slower southern I8 route. Fewer stalls but only San Diego bound traffic to compete with.

Too bad the maps can’t estimate waits like this when recommending a route.

Holy Smokes.

AAA did say that this Christmas would be the most traveled EVER!!!

That's ridiculous.

 

[Garlan Garner]

The Quartzsite line about 14 deep on Saturday:

That's insane.

 

[eprosenx]

40 stalls right? That's crazy.

Man, I wonder what the local power company thinks of that site? It may be extremely peaky load on certain days or times of day.

That is like potentially 2.5 megawatts of load... (reality is probably less due to some cars not being able to take the full power or being into their taper curve)

I would love to see what graphs of consumption look like at that site.

 

[mhan00]

I make that trip on almost a monthly basis. There are so many SCs next to I-5 so you'll be fine. Kettleman City is the best SC I've been too so far. They have a lounge that is a great place to hang out while you wait for the car to charge.

A Better Route Planner is probably going to have you stop twice. But you can stop once for like 40 minutes and you'll easily get to San Jose.

The weather won't have a huge impact unless you like to use your heater. I made a round trip from SF to LA during the thanksgiving weekend with some driving in the rain and I averaged 230 Kw/mi. I was driving in the 80s whenever I could, but you will definitely hit traffic so you'll get a lot of regen.

I like the Harris Ranch charger because I like their Coffee rubbed ribeye and eggs. Fairly pricey, but good.

 

[vjason]

My first Supercharger trip.

Christmas Eve - Raleigh NC to Columbia SC and back.

At most I saw 25% of stalls full.

Hit up the Lumberton (NC), Columbia (SC), and Florence (SC) sites.

Only disappointment was a slower charge rate at Lumberton (with no one next to me).

 

[Chuq]

The Quartzsite line about 14 deep on Saturday:

What does shock me is that there isn't even another grey marker on the Tesla map for any other locations in the area (Mesa Verde, Blythe) - surely Tesla has had the data to know this bottleneck was going to be an issue sooner rather than later?

 

[Nebuchadn3zzar]

Kettleman City (along the I-5 in California), even with all 40 stalls operational, was full on Saturday 2018-12-22 afternoon. There was a queue of about 6 cars, but thanks to the high throughput, my wait time was only several minutes long.

Every other time I stopped here, there were fewer than 10 stalls occupied; I was not expecting a facility of this size to reach anywhere near its capacity this early in the game.

 

[David_Cary]

Supercharger capacity growth has been great but it has not been as good as Tesla sales.
Things should settle a bit next year as the growth in sales slows a bit with the TC declining. Tesla sales are up like 200% YOY and they didn't build enough. It was all expected by those watching. They can't permit and build fast enough in CA (and apparently AZ).

The East coast is generally fine. We love all the options and we have significant excess capacity. We had a full one on Black Friday but no waiting. I believe it was full because the next one was in a mall and no one wanted to deal with that.

 

[eloder]

Supercharger capacity growth has been great but it has not been as good as Tesla sales.
Things should settle a bit next year as the growth in sales slows a bit with the TC declining. Tesla sales are up like 200% YOY and they didn't build enough. It was all expected by those watching. They can't permit and build fast enough in CA (and apparently AZ).

The East coast is generally fine. We love all the options and we have significant excess capacity. We had a full one on Black Friday but no waiting. I believe it was full because the next one was in a mall and no one wanted to deal with that.

I imagine that the US will be caught up on charging/service in the next few months. A majority of Model 3 deliveries after the new year will be going international, and I imagine that will be the case until the 35k base model comes out. At that time they'll have a ton of revenue coming in to help speed things up as US deliveries slow substantially.

 

[follow.johnny]

Late update but just drove up from LA to San Jose on Christmas Eve.

Went up the 5 freeway and here were the following Superchargers and charge time:

• Buttonwillow - Spent 15 minutes charging, only 1 other Model S was charging (10 stalls). We grabbed a quick bite at McDonalds down the street.
• Kettleman - Spent 30 minutes charging to check out the lounge and all of the (40 stalls). There was 20 open stalls available when I arrived around 2pm.

Will be driving up to San Francisco today for a day trip and driving back home Friday morning. I plan on taking the 5 freeway for a scenic route for the drive home.

 

[Garlan Garner]

Late update but just drove up from LA to San Jose on Christmas Eve.

Went up the 5 freeway and here were the following Superchargers and charge time:

• Buttonwillow - Spent 15 minutes charging, only 1 other Model S was charging (10 stalls). We grabbed a quick bite at McDonalds down the street.
• Kettleman - Spent 30 minutes charging to check out the lounge and all of the (40 stalls). There was 20 open stalls available when I arrived around 2pm.

Will be driving up to San Francisco today for a day trip and driving back home Friday morning. I plan on taking the 5 freeway for a scenic route for the drive home.

Nice. Safe travels.

 

[ReddyLeaf]

Man, I wonder what the local power company thinks of that site? It may be extremely peaky load on certain days or times of day.

That is like potentially 2.5 megawatts of load... (reality is probably less due to some cars not being able to take the full power or being into their taper curve)

I would love to see what graphs of consumption look like at that site.

If you check CAISO for 12/22, you will see that the lowest net demand was 10am-3pm, even lower than 2-3am. Also, notice that the use profile is much lower than non-holiday, or even normal weekends. I’m guessing that the power companies are really happy to have everyone driving and charging electric vehicles, especially when we’re all not consuming electricity by other means.

 

[ReddyLeaf]

The Quartzsite line about 14 deep on Saturday:

Looking at the empty lot next door, I will predict that Tesla expands this site by next Thanksgiving, or something else nearby to 20+ additional stalls, maybe even another 40-stall solar lounge.

 

[Az_Rael]

The Quartzsite line about 14 deep on Saturday:

I just wish the charger was across the freeway at the big Loves instead of that ratty Carl's Jr. I stopped there once on a Phoenix run and vowed never again. I make the jump from Indio to Buckeye instead.

 

[Eno Deb]

Man, I wonder what the local power company thinks of that site? It may be extremely peaky load on certain days or times of day.

My guess is that it's not an issue for them, since the demand is easily predictable and (since it's mostly on holidays) coincides with reduced demand from commercial sites.

That is like potentially 2.5 megawatts of load... (reality is probably less due to some cars not being able to take the full power or being into their taper curve)

I know from my job that manufacturing facilities can have a peak demand in the range of tens or even hundreds of MW, so a supercharger site is a rather small fish.

I hope that Tesla will make a CCS adapter for the US market, so we can use the expanding Electrify America network as a fallback solution in high-demand areas. I was recently supercharging in Livermore, CA during a high volume shopping day (the chargers are in a mall parking lot). All the superchargers were occupied, while literally across the aisle on the parking lot there was a row of ~10 CCS chargers sitting idle ...