Yep. Silverthorn, Colorado and Erie, Pennsylvania. With Quartzsite, Arizona getting an honorable mention.
For Silverthorn, no indication of trouble on the Nav despite power having been out town-wide for almost 4 hours, nor did Owner Support mention it a couple of hours prior when I passed through Cheyenne (and could have charged more at Fort Collins or even Denver).
But no. There I was at the Silverthorn SC, at 9000’ elevation in late May during a 37F drizzle, with not enough juice to get to a L2 Costco charger. Tesla had a flatbed there in 25 minutes and just before the car was about to be winched thereon, I tested the SC one more time and there was not full power, but sketchy power enough to get me on my way to Glenwood Springs.
Erie, PA was infuriating. 11pm during a speed run (that’s velocity, not meth, tyvm) from California to Maine, and according to PlugShare that SC in Erie had had problems for over a week. No indication in the Nav. And maybe a trickle charge at best trending toward zero. I had to illegally park at an ICEd L2 at a Marriott miles away for hours to get enough juice to get to my hotel (reservation) for all of 2 hours’ sleep and 10 miles of 110V charging via an extension cord in the rain before the breaker tripped which then got me to the Buffalo SC with exactly 1 mile of range left. Tesla updated the Erie SC icon the next day, perhaps due to the spirited feedback I delivered while inconvenienced because they couldn’t be bothered.
Quartzsite wouldn’t have been a problem had the Nav notified me at the Scottsdale SC, in which case I could have topped off at Buckeye. But no yet again. Instead, the normally deserted Quartzsite Arizona SC, at which I have witnessed tumbleweeds blowing through, was full and stacked 5 deep with waiting cars. Sitewide zero-to-reduced power.
And here we are, at collectively well over 100,000 miles later in my case, and the Nav *still* doesn’t give *timely* indications of completely inoperative SCs, nor details with regard to what “Reduced Power” means, nor, with regard in the case of otherwise operational sites, which pedestals are down or impacted more than others (which could be easily shown with red/yellow/green status bars for relative health instead of red for occupied). Hit a few of those during an 800-mile day and you’ll add hours to an already long day.
Now, I wait until I hit the first bad pedestal and then call Owner Support for a readout of the next however many SCs for the rest of the trip. Knowing which pedestals not to use has a direct impact upon how much sleep I get at the end of the day/week.
Drive around long enough and you’ll end up having conversations with some of the traveling SC techs. I appreciate their efforts. There just need to be more of them. One fellow I talked with had been flown in from the Benelux region of Europe to help out in the (U.S.) Southwest and West - because the number of faults in his home region were quite low. That weekend, he had flown into Texas and was working his way through Arizona, Nevada, and Utah in a series of 12-14-hour days.
And so it goes. I’d like to think that the North American SC network is better now, although with markedly increased traffic, well, we’ll see.
