I've had my Model S for 17 months. I've driven from Orlando to Washington DC 4 times, to South Florida 6+ times and to San Antonio, TX. Today was the first time I had to wait for a Supercharger. It was at the Turkey Lake Supercharger at 3:15 this afternoon. Only had to wait about 10 minutes. Then another Tesla showed up as I started to charge, so they had to wait as well.
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For the First Time, I found all Superchargers Occupied
- Thread starter BBryson
- Start date
suwaneedad
Member
Safe to assume your rate of charge was ~half the norm one you plugged in?
This is an area where I believe Tesla could be doing better...directing drivers via the map UI as they approach a SC, which stall to utilize in order to ensure the most efficient use of the stalls relative to the status of each vehicle that is already at the stalls. The information is known or could be known at The Mothership, so it's a matter of bothering to program for it and push it out OTA. Doing this sort of thing, which not only improves customer sat but also increases the effective number of SC stalls with zero incremental capex (or continuing opex) dollars, feels like a no brainer to me.
This is an area where I believe Tesla could be doing better...directing drivers via the map UI as they approach a SC, which stall to utilize in order to ensure the most efficient use of the stalls relative to the status of each vehicle that is already at the stalls. The information is known or could be known at The Mothership, so it's a matter of bothering to program for it and push it out OTA. Doing this sort of thing, which not only improves customer sat but also increases the effective number of SC stalls with zero incremental capex (or continuing opex) dollars, feels like a no brainer to me.
I agree in theory. Right now they can’t accurately display number of available stalls
dreamwave6
Member
As someone who used to live in San Diego (where I originally purchased my Model X) but now, ironically, lives in the Orlando area, this is hardly a big deal. The San Diego Supercharger, one of the busiest in the country, would routinely have waits of 30 mins. I love that my new “home” Supercharger, Port Orange, FL, is usually empty when I arrive there.
Andrew
suwaneedad
Member
It's just a big deal in that Tesla is now going mainstream and skeptics who come upon having to wait for a SC stall is going to fall on the side of hater rather than lover. I'm already going through this stuff with my wife, who is a techno-phobe but working to embrace our 3 because our 23yr old son loves it and is encouraging her to step into the future. When we pull into the Macon GA SC and it errors out during our walk to the coffee shop, though, and then errors out again after I move it to a different circuit, the odds of her becoming a Tesla fan drop precipitously. If her son wasn't a FanBoy she'd have railed on social media about the lack of reliability of the SC network, reaching her 1000 'friends' and so on. Made worse, our son had had trouble at that same SC two weeks prior, called it in, and it had not been addressed when we used it. So I too called it in, told the phone rep it'd been called in two weeks prior, etc. But you can bet that on our trip last week I route-planned away from the Macon SC purely because my wife was in the car with me and my momma raised no fools.
Uncle Paul
Well-Known Member
Some Urban areas with heavy Tesla ownership have congested superchargers as the travelers need to share the stalls with locals doing regular charging. Some areas, such as San Diego are often being used for commercial shuttle livery services. Their vehicles need to be charged several times a day and often need to be topped off for longer expected trips.
Tesla is aware of this and has designed and is rolling out slightly smaller (for urban spaces) Superchargers to take some of the load off those locals.
A year or so ago Tesla updated their displays with a gauge showing every Supercharger and how many stalls were free. This allowed users to look ahead to see where the lines may be and choose the ones with the most openings. Could also help users to decide when to charge to get the fastest fill.
Tesla is aware of this and has designed and is rolling out slightly smaller (for urban spaces) Superchargers to take some of the load off those locals.
A year or so ago Tesla updated their displays with a gauge showing every Supercharger and how many stalls were free. This allowed users to look ahead to see where the lines may be and choose the ones with the most openings. Could also help users to decide when to charge to get the fastest fill.
No, only if you happen to be at a Urban Style Supercharger terminal is the capacity of the Supercharger evenly divided between two Teslas. So the latest Superchargers cabinets have a capacity of 145 kW and for Urban Supercharger terminals each gets up to 72.5 kW.
It is not so simple for the original style Superchargers. There is a dynamic algorithm that considers which car is charging first, and then starts allocating capacity (I believe in roughly 30 kW increments) between the two Teslas based on their relative states of charge. So if a Tesla with a low state of charge pulls into a terminal not being shared with another Tesla, then the capacity could be as high as 120 kW of the available 145 kW. If another Tesla pulls into a terminal that is being shared by the original Tesla, depending on the state of charge of the original Tesla then, it might lose about 30 kW of capacity. Over time, depending on the relative states of charge between the two Teslas, another 30 kW of capacity might be allocated to the second Tesla from the total available 145 kW.
Even if Tesla knows the instantaneous best stall for a newly arriving Tesla, it can't predict whether that stall will remain the optimum as other Tesla's arrive and leave the Supercharging Station. Ideally the objective should be to maximize the throughput of the station. So as cars pull in and out the situation radically changes such that the value of knowing the best stall when arriving may have little to do with minimizing your charge time during your stay at the station.
In the future, if Supercharger Stations become habitually congested, the best solution would probably be to tie all the Supercharger cabinets to one electrical bus and each terminal to that combined bus, instead of pairs of terminals to one Supercharger cabinet. Then with the appropriate new software on the station, it could automatically and instantaneously allocate capacity among all the cars at the station considering relative states of charge, and other parameters, to maximize the overall throughput of the station and the drivers would not have to do anything or consult a display to be assured of the best charging experience.
The above is my layman's simplified description of a method for Tesla to distribute power to multiple terminals at a Supercharger Station. After a Google search I found this Tesla patent application that appears to do essentially what I have described.
MULTIPORT VEHICLE DC CHARGING SYSTEM WITH VARIABLE POWER DISTRIBUTION
Larry
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dhrivnak
Active Member
At you sure? With the 3 I can select the SuperCharger pun and it tells me how many stalls are in use.
This situation is greatly confusing to me. Tesla has a modest size and modern supercharger IT infrastructure. Other than an occasional node going offline I don't get the inability to report usage to the app.
Can you please elaborate on the source of your statement? Is this something that you've directly observed, or have you received this information from an authoritative source?
Thanks.
Larry
I've observed this several times while using Superchargers around the country - generally stalls shown as being in use when they are all empty. I've rarely been at congested Superchargers except in California a few times, so it's not been an issue for me (and I often don't even bother to check), but does seem to indicate that Tesla is not able to correctly display the information.
Thanks for the information. Obviously, it would be generally helpful to know with some accuracy the number of available Supercharger terminals. However, even with an accurate display of available terminals when making your decision whether or not to travel to a particular Supercharger Station, the situation can change by the time you actually arrive and therefore isn't a perfect solution to congestion.
As I describe in posting #8 as cars pull in and out of a Supercharger Station the situation radically changes such that the value of knowing the best stall when arriving may have little to do with minimizing your charge time during your stay at the station. In my opinion, a better long-term solution in the future, if stations are habitually congested, is to have a system that allocates, in real time, the total available station capacity to all terminals simultaneously so as to maximize the station throughput. It appears that Tesla already has a patent to do just that if needed at certain stations.
Larry
Racerx22b
@unplggdd on Instagram
All stalls being in use is a daily occurrence at the West Palm Beach charger as the service and delivery team always keep them full with cars in for service or new car deliveries. So much for sticking to the "to facilitate long distance travel" philosophy. I am not sure what capacity this store will be in once the new one opens but it would be so much more logical for them to have installed an entire row of about 20-30 HPWCs in the delivery/service cars ready for pickup area and just let those cars "trickle charge" in order to keep the superchargers open.
Larry:
I think you can easily verify that there's an issue by checking the Supercharger terminal occupation status display while you are actually at a Supercharger. I think you will find it is not accurate - that's been my observation anyway.
Lasttoy
Active Member
I switched to the new charger at the WaWa. Its never full.
I go to DC every month, charge 5 times on the way. Never have had to wait.
The chargers in Potomac mills are always full of locals.
I was in Calf last year, omg, every charger was full.
With 3s flooding areas, i think we will see more full chargers.
I think the idea that super chargers are for travelers never caught on. I see locals in the chargers here. One guy drops his off, wife picks him up, and they leave for a couple of hours. We had to teach him to park on empty slot number. Asked how far he had been. "To Tampa".
Oh well.
I go to DC every month, charge 5 times on the way. Never have had to wait.
The chargers in Potomac mills are always full of locals.
I was in Calf last year, omg, every charger was full.
With 3s flooding areas, i think we will see more full chargers.
I think the idea that super chargers are for travelers never caught on. I see locals in the chargers here. One guy drops his off, wife picks him up, and they leave for a couple of hours. We had to teach him to park on empty slot number. Asked how far he had been. "To Tampa".
Oh well.
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