Extremely Disappointed about SuperCharger rollout

[AnOutsider]

Wouldn't matter. If they did that I guarantee we'd have a whole whack of people complaining it's too vague and can't Tesla be more precise, etc., etc., etc... Best to just accept that no matter what you do, you can't make everyone happy. Some simply don't want to be happy, they'd rather be disappointed. Personally, I'm all about measuring my expectations of anyone and everyone, including companies. That way I'm never disappointed.

That's you, what about the masses as described above? Saying "This summer" would have sufficed in the above situation. It would have been accurate (we assume) and would have provided a pretty narrow window (3 months), so there shouldn't have been TOO much antsy-ness.

Personally, I LOVE to be happy and impressed. I used to be with Tesla, but nowadays everything they say I take with such a large grain of salt that it's barely worth paying attention to. Not that I'm the center of the world, but I do think if there are more folks who feel that way, then it's a problem.

 

[Beavis]

All this hand wringing about what the general public might think. I don't think the general public is really paying much attention to the dates that certain Superchargers will be finished. I am just going to relax and be patient. Actually, I think I am going to have a beer on this wonderful July 4th.

 

[100thMonkey]

It probably won't make anyone feel any better, but from what I have seen with the Burlington and Centralia WA installs, they are going faster than anything anyone has done for charging EV's in this state. It's actually quite refreshing to see minor delays instead of major delays... bottom line, they may not be meeting the ambitious time line they have put forth but they are moving at a very brisk pace considering the incredible amount of coordination and red tape that such a massive electrical installation entails.

 

[Krugerrand]

That's you, what about the masses as described above?

What masses? There are all of 15k - give or take, Model S owners. Without going back through this thread to count, and taking into consideration that maybe not everyone who's *disappointed* has posted to say so, but also that not everyone had preplanned a trip for the exact day/s requiring the use of said superchargers, let's very generously say 7.5k are disappointed. Is that the masses of which you speak? :wink:

Personally, I LOVE to be happy and impressed.

Picture or it's not true. :tongue:

 

[AnOutsider]

That would simply be too inappropriate for me to post.

As for the masses, I meant more in general with how tesla should handle announcements. I personally don't care much about the SC rollout as it's not likely to do me any good in the short term. Just want tesla to go back to under promising and over delivering.

 

[eidco]

Wow, I can't believe I had to read 125 posts to find out how polarized the members here are. How about we decide to be either disappointed (without the needless "extremely") or happy (without gushing too much)? I didn't learn anything more in 125 posts than I did in the first 10.

I thought we all had a common goal and pride of ownership here. Let's celebrate the progress and marvel at the achievement we own. The rest is icing on the cake.

 

[Ven Rala]

Wow, I can't believe I had to read 125 posts to find out how polarized the members here are. How about we decide to be either disappointed (without the needless "extremely") or happy (without gushing too much)? I didn't learn anything more in 125 posts than I did in the first 10.
i thought we all had a common goal and pride of ownership here. Let's celebrate the progress and marvel at the achievement we own. The rest is icing on the cake.

Agreed

 

[Nichen]

If the Model S owners can push Tesla to work just a little harder on the Supercharger roll-out, then I'm all for it. So I think it's good people are complaining a bit

 

[dennis]

Wow, I can't believe I had to read 125 posts to find out how polarized the members here are. How about we decide to be either disappointed (without the needless "extremely") or happy (without gushing too much)? I didn't learn anything more in 125 posts than I did in the first 10.

i thought we all had a common goal and pride of ownership here. Let's celebrate the progress and marvel at the achievement we own. The rest is icing on the cake.

The next time you are doing an employee performance review and they only completed 3 difficult tasks on time vs. the 16 they promised remember to tell them that you are happy. :smile:

 

[eidco]

If the Model S owners can push Tesla to work just a little harder on the Supercharger roll-out, then I'm all for it. So I think it's good people are complaining a bit

"Complaining a bit" would make me happy!

 

[neroden]

You are not disappointed because you are not trying to plan family roadtrips based upon the information provided by Tesla.

Bingo.

I'm trying to plan a trip from upstate NY to western Michigan in December. One of those grey dots on the "Fall 2013" map (in southeastern Michigan) would make the trip a great deal easier (in fact, without it, I'm not sure the timeline for the trip works).

Now, with a company which was remotely capable of meeting stated timelines, I could trust that something which was supposed to deploy in the FALL would be available by LATE DECEMBER.

But because of Tesla's track record of overpromising and under-delivering -- three month delay on the online configuration tool, nearly a year delay on the car itself, several-month delay on the availability of service contracts, etc. etc. etc. -- well, one just can't expect it. I just emailed them asking whether this particular planned location was for real, meaning contracts and permits -- or if it was just a wishlist with no work started.

This sort of thing is a real reputational problem and people *do* remember it. Angie Schmitt was excellent at being positive without overpromising, but much of Tesla seems to have caught the excess optimism bug.

Rule of thumb: for stuff like this where there's a lot of outside schedule risk, add three months from your internal target date to your publicly announced dates, every time. Then you look like wizards when you finish almost everything three months "early".

 

[bonnie]

How many of you that are unhappy purchased your Model S PRIOR to the Supercharger map being published?

 

[dsm363]

'Fall' is a very broad target and indicates by its vary nature that it may shift. If they said 'Will definitely be in place in New York by September 15th 2013' and you were planning a trip for early October then I understand the disappointment. They haven't been great with their estimates for rollout but each state likely represents new regulatory issues they must address leading to problems with the rollout.

 

[neroden]

'Fall' is a very broad target and indicates by its vary nature that it may shift.

It is a broad target... but "Fall 2013" ends, according to the most generous definitions, on the Winter Solstice circa December 22, 2013, which is right when I'm hoping to travel.

The fact that I don't really believe that Tesla is going to make that target is... well, it says something about how well they've been doing at hitting target dates. If they had been hitting target dates, then I would *hope for* Fall to mean "September", but I would *not be surprised or disappointed* if it turned out to mean "December". That would be fine, that would be normal. Instead, the record of missing dates is such that I don't really trust that they're going to manage "Fall"!

I hope this trend reverses and everything starts opening within the season it is supposed to.

 

[Seven7]

I didn't read through 14 pages of previous posts so please forgive me if this has already been discussed. There are two super charging stations in south Fl. that I'm sure will be online by the end of the month, one on each coast.

 

[neroden]

How many of you that are unhappy purchased your Model S PRIOR to the Supercharger map being published?

Totally irrelevant.

The problem is that we keep getting bad information from Tesla. If I was told outright "We expect to have a charger in that state in December 2014", then I would shrug my shoulders, and plan my trip for 2014 instead of 2013. If I was told "We will never have a charger there", then I'd start the involved process of replanning the entire trip (big pain). And if the chargers were installed early, well that would be lovely, and if I'm travelling a year later, whatever. Instead, we're told "Yeah, there'll be chargers there in June 2013", *but we can't trust it because it doesn't happen*.

This is just bad communications. And there is a *pattern* of it. I'm used to it by now, but it's just stupid that I have to email them to ask "Is your press release for real, because that would be useful, or is it just puffery which I should ignore?" And it's true that a lot of software companies do this, but there's a reason nobody believes any press releases from those companies. Software companies did *not* generally behave like this until the mid-1980s -- the change in behavior was quite noticeable at the time, and led to a great deal of bad press in the industry mags (along with the coining of the word "vaporware").

 

[bonnie]

How many of you that are unhappy purchased your Model S PRIOR to the Supercharger map being published?

Totally irrelevant.

So now just asking a question is 'irrelevant'?

 

[neroden]

So now just asking a question is 'irrelevant'?

Questions are frequently irrelevant, actually. What's your annual income and how much Tesla stock do you own?

 

[dsm363]

Have they missed targets in the rollout? Sure but comparing the Supercharger rollout to vaporware is hardly fair. If they said Fall 2013 and in the Spring they said 'Summer 2014' and then in the Summer that said 'Fall 2014'.....etc and not a single additional Supercharger had been built then fine, call it vaporware. It's pretty obvious getting the land, red tape...etc done is taking longer than they planned. Would people be happier with 'we will get to it when we get to it' or are broad goals better even if they are missed from time to time?

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Questions are frequently irrelevant, actually. What's your annual income and how much Tesla stock do you own?

How does that have anything to do with anything here? Now that you have your car, what are you doing about the open source issue?

 

[bonnie]

Questions are frequently irrelevant, actually. What's your annual income and how much Tesla stock do you own?

My question had to do with the topic of this thread. As to your question ... that's off-topic.

See the difference? Or do you just want to be argumentative for the sake of being argumentative?