TM3blu, For anyone traveling around Arkansas it is probably best to get a CHAdeMO adapter as Electrify America has five stations around the state, two are right off of I-40. Yes 50 kW isn't fast and EA chargers aren't cheap but there are not many other good options. There are multiple threads on this in other forums. I drove to Little Rock back in October so the SC is Little Rock was all I needed. Had no idea you couldn't drive across the country on I-40 in a Tesla until I saw the threads on the SC gap between Oklahoma City and Little Rock.
-
Want to remove ads? Register an account and login to see fewer ads, and become a Supporting Member to remove almost all ads.
Few new superchargers in the US?
- Thread starter cstork
- Start date
CharleyBC
Active Member
Wow. Thanks for pointing out the gap between Oklahoma City and Little Rock. That influences some plans we have next year. They could use one about on the border.
So are the locations. The Santa Cruz supercharger was supposed to open in 2017. Ten miles away, the Scotts Valley supercharger, which isn't even on the map, is about to open, and the Santa Cruz location remains a figment of Tesla's imagination.
I'm assuming the SV location will be the "Santa Cruz" location. It's close enough, really, and SV is a lot more usable than pretty much anywhere they could have put it in Santa Cruz proper, but I still find it mildly entertaining.
Despite our perceptions to the contrary, the supercharger deployment has been pretty consistent for the past few years. I've kept a chart of Supercharger build out and they've averaged 0.41 North American superchargers per day, or one North American supercharger about every 2.4 days. Worldwide, they have been even more consistent at a rate of 0.79 superchargers per day, or one supercharger every 1.3 days.
Knightshade
Well-Known Member
That was kinda exactly my point.
No increase in SC deployment rate year over year over year, despite Teslas rate of fleet expansion being MUCH higher year over year for several years in a row, is bad news.
Q2 2017 to Q2 2018 they'd almost doubled the # of cars delivered. Q2 2019 was well MORE than double the # of cars delivered the year before that.
This quarter they're likely to deliver over 100k cars.
But through all that they're not building superchargers any faster at all than when they were delivering 15-20k cars a quarter.
Yes, I agree with your point. The buildout should be increasing as the number of vehicles increases. That would be ideal. I'm responding to those folks who are saying that the buildout seems to be slowing down recently. To them I'm saying that the minor month-to-month fluctuations aren't anything new and the overall pace is pretty consistent.
On the plus side they seem to be adding superchargers faster than they are adding additional service centers.
srs5694
Active Member
Actually, Tesla's Supercharger map does show a future Supercharger station in Newport, RI. It's currently listed as opening in 2019, but I wouldn't bet on that timing at this point.
CharleyBC
Active Member
I sit corrected! Thank you. It was kind of hiding behind a destination charger marker, and I missed it.
M3BlueGeorgia
Active Member
The nearest Supercharger I use is 100 miles south of me in Macon, GA, despite having 4 in Metro Atlanta.
doghousePVD
My grandfather’s car
Wow, the whiners are out. Supercharging is supposed to be for trips, not local recharging. Excessive Supercharging is not good for your battery either. There is no reason for SCs to be as common as polluting gas stations. Stables for horses used to be very common, too.
There is a SC about every 100 miles along almost all the major routes. There are some exceptions such as North Dakota, Oklahoma, TCH between Sudbury and Calgary (should be finished in a few months), and some others. I drove 24,000 miles from Quebec to Sault St. Marie Canada, and Maine to Florida. Never had to wait for a SC, and only once (near Toronto) saw a full SC.
No, I didn't go to California.
There is a SC about every 100 miles along almost all the major routes. There are some exceptions such as North Dakota, Oklahoma, TCH between Sudbury and Calgary (should be finished in a few months), and some others. I drove 24,000 miles from Quebec to Sault St. Marie Canada, and Maine to Florida. Never had to wait for a SC, and only once (near Toronto) saw a full SC.
No, I didn't go to California.
Knightshade
Well-Known Member
FWIW I've never had to wait on a supercharger during a trip either.
That said- I wasn't travelling on a holiday (there were pictures of hour plus waits at some west coast SCs during Thanksgiving).
Also the issue isn't that they need gas-station-like-density- it's the # of cars is ballooning FAR faster than SC installs... so the "never had to wait" thing will get less and less common everywhere as they keep doubling # of cars on the road while only bumping superchargers by much smaller amounts.
Consider fleet size vs charger numbers over the last 5 years
End of 2015 total US tesla fleet- ~45,000 cars- and roughly 275 US supercharge stations
End of 2016 total US tesla fleet- ~90,000 cars- and roughly 350 US supercharge stations
End of 2017 total US tesla fleet- ~140,000 cars- and roughly 475 US supercharge stations
End of 2018 total US tesla fleet- ~330,000 cars- and roughly 650 supercharge stations
End of 2019 total US tesla fleet (projected)- ~575,000 cars- and roughly 800 supercharge stations
Now consider the ratio of cars to supercharger stations.
So 2015 there were ~164 teslas per existing station...
2016 there's ~257 cars per station...
2017 there's ~295 cars per station.
But by 2018 there's ~508 cars per station.
End of this year it'll be about 719 cars per station.
The US fleet is likely to hit a million by end of 2020 with the Y launching earlier than expected, and if we see the same rate of station increase in 2020 as average of the previous 5 years we'll be well over 1000 cars per supercharger station by end of 2020.
And just getting worse and worse from there at current supercharger build rates.
And yes- as suggested, the situation is even worse for service centers.
That said- I wasn't travelling on a holiday (there were pictures of hour plus waits at some west coast SCs during Thanksgiving).
Also the issue isn't that they need gas-station-like-density- it's the # of cars is ballooning FAR faster than SC installs... so the "never had to wait" thing will get less and less common everywhere as they keep doubling # of cars on the road while only bumping superchargers by much smaller amounts.
Consider fleet size vs charger numbers over the last 5 years
End of 2015 total US tesla fleet- ~45,000 cars- and roughly 275 US supercharge stations
End of 2016 total US tesla fleet- ~90,000 cars- and roughly 350 US supercharge stations
End of 2017 total US tesla fleet- ~140,000 cars- and roughly 475 US supercharge stations
End of 2018 total US tesla fleet- ~330,000 cars- and roughly 650 supercharge stations
End of 2019 total US tesla fleet (projected)- ~575,000 cars- and roughly 800 supercharge stations
Now consider the ratio of cars to supercharger stations.
So 2015 there were ~164 teslas per existing station...
2016 there's ~257 cars per station...
2017 there's ~295 cars per station.
But by 2018 there's ~508 cars per station.
End of this year it'll be about 719 cars per station.
The US fleet is likely to hit a million by end of 2020 with the Y launching earlier than expected, and if we see the same rate of station increase in 2020 as average of the previous 5 years we'll be well over 1000 cars per supercharger station by end of 2020.
And just getting worse and worse from there at current supercharger build rates.
And yes- as suggested, the situation is even worse for service centers.
Worse and worse? I've never waited for a Supercharger either. Many times I was the only one. I'm sure Tesla, who has all the metrics, knows when a SC is full and could pretty easily figure out when there is a line and how many cars there are in line. So they have the info on actual SC congestion. Each ?SC that does not do enough business to pay for itself (on average) causes SC rates to rise.
Knightshade
Well-Known Member
And yet lots of people have.
It's almost like your personal circumstances don't represent the hundreds of thousands of tesla owners across 50 US states or something!
There's hour plus waits for SCs on the west coast.
On the east coast it's not as bad, but it's approaching folks pulling into full/nearly full ones fairly often... and the fleet is roughly doubling in size each year while SC locations are increasing FAR more slowly.
You mean the same Tesla to whom it didn't occur that they'd need a massively larger # of transport vehicles once they began producing massively more cars... thus putting themselves into "delivery hell"
Or the same Tesla to whom it didn't occur that they'd need massively more service centers to service a vastly larger fleet...thus putting themselves into "service hell"?
Or the same Tesla who announced they were closing nearly all their stores- then a few days later said Eh nevermind guess we won't...
I think you give Tesla tremendously more credit than their own proven history deserves for logistics and planning... two things at which they repeatedly demonstrate utter incompetence.
Not to mention their reluctance to spend the $ needed to plan ahead for this stuff.
Because seriously they HAD to know they had totally inadequate delivery pipelines as they ramped the Model 3... they just didn't want to invest the $ in advance to prepare properly for it and suffered for it.
Ditto the inadequate # of service centers that they didn't want to spend $ to build.
And the increasingly inadequate # of superchargers that they've refused to increase investment in.
To the point that in 5 years of under-investment the ratio of cars to chargers is going from ~164 to 1 to ~1000 to 1.
So are you saying you know what the ratio of cars to chargers is? No. And it will of course vary depending on sales volume and location.
Us humans are notorious for not thinking things out. Chevy thought it could sell the Nova in Mexico. Without changing the name. Do you buy the first to market thing or first thing of its kind to market? Would you buy a Rivian the first year?
Finally, every company has a safety manual. Why? Usually because people were injured or died doing things that are now covered in the manual. ie People have to be injured or killed to have a safety manual.
Hey we sat in the parking lot at the local Chick Fila due to congestion in the drive thru. We went inside and there we were the first in line. Should we criticize them for not knowing how many customers they would have today and preparing?
So I don't expect it to be a totally smooth ride.
Us humans are notorious for not thinking things out. Chevy thought it could sell the Nova in Mexico. Without changing the name. Do you buy the first to market thing or first thing of its kind to market? Would you buy a Rivian the first year?
Finally, every company has a safety manual. Why? Usually because people were injured or died doing things that are now covered in the manual. ie People have to be injured or killed to have a safety manual.
Hey we sat in the parking lot at the local Chick Fila due to congestion in the drive thru. We went inside and there we were the first in line. Should we criticize them for not knowing how many customers they would have today and preparing?
So I don't expect it to be a totally smooth ride.
Uncle Paul
Well-Known Member
It is more important for Tesla to cover completely more routes with additional locations, than to simply concentrate on more chargers.
On the West Coast there mostly are only lines at highly congested Urban locations, where local people use them for charging instead of at homes. There are also some lines on the heaviest times of the heaviest holiday travel days, Otherwise...lots of chargers.
With Tesla rolling out faster Superchargers and overall faster charging cars, the need for so many stations is reduced.
On the West Coast there mostly are only lines at highly congested Urban locations, where local people use them for charging instead of at homes. There are also some lines on the heaviest times of the heaviest holiday travel days, Otherwise...lots of chargers.
With Tesla rolling out faster Superchargers and overall faster charging cars, the need for so many stations is reduced.
Looking only at the number of new stations opened over this period misses a few points.
- Tesla has also expanded the stall counts at lots of existing locations. This is usually a quicker and better way to improve capacity than adding new locations and it isn't seen in the numbers of new stations. Though, this approach has the downside of not improving routing efficiencies because it's still in the same places as the existing ones.
- While it hasn't yet had much effect because there are so few of the stations operational, the switch to V3 Superchargers was also completed in this same time period. There are still some oddball V2 locations that have been in development for a long time and Tesla isn't going to start over with V3, but the vast majority of new, non-urban locations are going to be V3. And that swap is going to be quite significant going forward and will help with the fact that they are always going to be selling cars faster than they can build superchargers.
- They've instituted a number of operational changes that increase throughput at existing superchargers. On Route Warm-up, 80% charging limits at congested stations, increased idle fees, etc.
- Tesla increased the max charge rates on the superchargers and cars (~120 kW ---> ~150 kW). Since this change was a cumulative effect of increasing the max rate on each of the internal chargers that make up the supercharger, the increased speeds are also there, though to a lesser degree, even when not getting the max rate.
- In most places outside of California, the supercharger network remains massively over built for the level of use it normally gets. So comparing just on the # of cars (existing or sold) vs # of superchargers (existing or built) isn't that helpful, except to see that outside of CA Tesla isn't going to stay ahead of the wave forever. In CA, it's already crashed on their heads in a few areas. Really this comparison needs to be analyzed on a smaller region by region basis instead of by country or continent. The Tesla sales per capita are not at all even across the US/Canada.
srs5694
Active Member
I don't know about "supposed to be," but there are people who buy EVs who can't charge at home because they live in apartments, apartment-style condos, or what have you. Such people must rely on public charging of one sort or another, and given the time it takes to charge on Level 2 equipment, DC fast charging, and hence Superchargers specifically for Tesla owners, may be the best choice, at least for certain people on certain days.
That said, much of the griping is about people who are (presumed to be) abusing free local Supercharging but who can charge at home. I understand that frustration, but I haven't seen any solid metrics on how much the overcrowding at certain Supercharger sites is actually caused by such abuse. Ultimately, this type of abuse, if it really is an issue, comes back to Tesla -- they know how many S and X owners do a lot of local Supercharging, they've built it into their price models for those cars, and they're having problems providing enough Superchargers in some areas.
In the long run, the solution is to provide better public charging infrastructure -- both Level 2 and DC fast charging. The road from here to that ideal future is bound to be bumpy, though. If you (the generic "you," not doghousePVD specifically) are concerned enough about it to gripe on a forum, consider forwarding that gripe to your local, state, and Federal lawmakers. They're in a position to enact legislation to help encourage a faster rollout of good public charging infrastructure.
Maybe. But maybe, because Tesla knew how many pre-orders they had for the Model 3 built up the number of Superchargers at a higher rate in the 1-2 years before the Model 3 starting shipping in volume and have now leveled it off based on actual occupancy of the existing chargers. They have this kind of data...we don't.
Additionally, do we know how the average number of pedestals per station has changed in the last few years?
And what about the effects of the V3 Superchargers that can handle, maybe twice the number of cars per day.
They also increased the V2 from 120 - 150 kw.
When using route planning your Model 3 can pre-condition in advance to allow faster charging.
All things considered...should we be considering all of these and be looking at how many kwh can be delivered per day rather than just number of stations?
Similar threads
