I'm planning a road trip and have rarely used a supercharger. When I have it's sometimes been time consuming and frustrating finding the exact location of the chargers. In Palm Springs I drove around a parking garage for a while before I found them. This would not be fun on a cross-country trip. What is the best way (app) to find the EXACT location of the chargers?
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Finding the exact charger location
- Thread starter bwilliams
- Start date
shahryaran
Member
You can look at the pictures if you tab on the red map pointer for each charger location on the car screen. But i don't know if you need premium connectivity to show the pictures or not.
Practice, practice, practice. After the first 10 or 12 you will get pretty good at finding where the locations are.
Plugshare.com will often have notes and pictures of the location if you want to spend the time looking it up, but really not necessary.
EVRider-FL
Active Member
Superchargers in a parking garage can be hard to find, but most are outside and can be located from the map display. It’s less of an issue than you think.
The pin on the map in the car shows the exact location of the charger. Just drive to the pin. If it is in a garage, the information dialog box (tap on the pin) will provide information as to which level of the garage the superchargers can be found and will also indicate whether there is a fee for the garage.
The pins on supercharge.info map are also placed exactly where charger is located. If you tap/click on a location and then select details, you can find the exact GPS location, which you can then use to search Google if you want.
Plugshare.com will often have a description on how to access a supercharger location if it is tricky in some way.
But I agree with others; it becomes pretty intuitive after a while.
The pins on supercharge.info map are also placed exactly where charger is located. If you tap/click on a location and then select details, you can find the exact GPS location, which you can then use to search Google if you want.
Plugshare.com will often have a description on how to access a supercharger location if it is tricky in some way.
But I agree with others; it becomes pretty intuitive after a while.
RTPEV
Active Member
I'll chime in with the recommendation of Plugshare as well, although sometimes when you call an audible and stop at an unexpected charging station without time to research it, it can get a bit tense! And if you find that Plugshare doesn't have adequate instructions (which would be rare), make sure you help out your fellow travelers and add your own comments to help others.
I would not say that finding the charging stations is always intuitive though. There are two stations in particular that I've found very challenging. One is in Rockville, MD where there are two garages that for all intents and purposes look the same, so you have to first locate the right one. Fortunately the right one has a sign on it that notes that Tesla Superchargers are within, but unless you pass by that garage first, you won't know that! The other one, which hopefully by now is fixed, is the mall in Syracuse, NY. At the time the nav took us around the mall in the wrong direction, and by the time we got sick of looking around and checking Plugshare, we had turned around and gone around the other direction. Sometimes it's not intuition, but just a 50/50 coin flip.
I would not say that finding the charging stations is always intuitive though. There are two stations in particular that I've found very challenging. One is in Rockville, MD where there are two garages that for all intents and purposes look the same, so you have to first locate the right one. Fortunately the right one has a sign on it that notes that Tesla Superchargers are within, but unless you pass by that garage first, you won't know that! The other one, which hopefully by now is fixed, is the mall in Syracuse, NY. At the time the nav took us around the mall in the wrong direction, and by the time we got sick of looking around and checking Plugshare, we had turned around and gone around the other direction. Sometimes it's not intuition, but just a 50/50 coin flip.
Some are indeed really tricky. The garage in downtown Chicago takes the cake for me. Boston's downtown superchargers are quite difficult as well. I gave up on New York City after bagging two of the four there. There are others, but these come immediately to mind.
But these are the exceptions. Mostly, you can drive to the pin on your navigation display.
BTW, to keep the screen from zooming out again if you have a route enabled, tap the supercharger button to show all superchargers. Once you do so, you can pinch, zoom, and move the map and it'll stay put. As soon as you deselect the supercharger view, it'll recenter on your route.
Anything not in a parking garage should be very easy to find. In a garage, the in-car nav should tell you the specific FLOOR it's on removing any guessig.
Are you driving from CA to NH? I can tell you that on I-80, for example, I found every charger I stopped at very easy, at least from CA to UT.
Most Interstate Superchargers I found were at shopping centers or restaurants, sometimes at the far side of a large parking lot
I just went through this a bit on my first road trip. Mostly the car went right to the charger locations, but parking garages and alleyways are harder. I had one issue, the 150kw charges in El Centro near the mall, where the car was very very confused trying to get to the chargers, and it seemed to have an incorrect location a couple of hundred feet from the actual location. At least they were very visible across a parking lot. I do think you train your eye to see the stalls, and it gets easier with practice. Plus the first time you find the location you are done searching for them the next time through.
Yes, CA to NH. And back. I have done it many, many times via ICE car. I bought this car hoping for easier drive but that's not the case at all ... I refused to drive it from NH to CA in October and shipped the car instead; I find phantom braking far too stressful. Forget autosteer after I was nearly driven into land between my freeway lane and offramp. Subjects of many other threads here. I'll check out I-80; I'm done with I-40 for sure, a discussion for another forum altogether. I'm guessing finding freeway charging is easier than in cities. I will certainly take pics to help the cause - I find pics that include a business in them helpful but I'm also practicing locally with the tesla map and plugshare.
I’ve been to 1,500+ different Superchargers. Rest assured, you probably won’t be charging at too many parking garages on a cross-country trip. Surface lot Superchargers are generally pretty easy to find.
When possible, seek out 250 kW chargers instead of 150 and 72; there is a pop up window when you click on a Supercharger pin on the map. The navigation routing will suggest longer, less frequent stops.
You can cover more ground in a day if you manually choose Superchargers that are 90-110 miles apart, arriving at <15% and charging to 60%.
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