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Hawaii Charging Stations/Parking

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Ala Moana gets my vote- but anywhere as long as it can accommodate several vehicles simultaneously, since you know I'll be abusing it by not doing long distance travel
Nanimac and I have been writing the supercharger team at least once a year for a long time. Sometimes more often. We've been explaining that many of our owners live in buildings that can't support EV charging. Its not a question of won't, its an issue of can't. They wrote back at least once and told us that they understood and that we were a situation similar to Hong Kong. And Tesla had already installed superchargers in Hong Kong. So, I think they understand we won't have a lot of people passing through our state accessing the superchargers. It will be just us - here - owners here, just us, here. :) Maybe they won't be hard on us for using their juice. :)
 
Now that new cars won't have unlimited free energy and there will be idle fees for remaining connected after charging is complete, City Superchargers are a lot more practical. Well, maybe I should say less problematic for Tesla and owner-users.
 
Sounds like a good idea.
1. Costco/Home Depot area. (Shopping)
2. Kaka'ako area.
3. Ala Moana Center (Lots of places to eat and shop)
4. Papafox's house on Windward side.

Don't be silly, I already have two superchargers in the driveway. You folks are going to have to get out to Kailua more often, that's all there is to it.

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Text from an editorial in the Star-Advertiser about charging stations need to work..." EV drivers in Hawaii frequently experience frustration when we pull up to a charging station and it is out of order. A North Shore resort boasts four EV charging stations that don’t work." Assuming he means Turtle Bay Resort..
 
I pulled into the one behind Menchies yesterday and we ICED by a truck.:eek: I was low on electrons so I pulled in front of her to charge.:p (at least I thought I was charging). she showed up a short time later and of course apologized repeatedly:rolleyes:. as soon as she pulled out I pulled in and plugged in. the only problem was that red ring around the charge port and the message in my dash that said "Cable Fault".:mad: Did it go bad before I plugged in the first time or only after I unplugged and moved into the spot:oops:.:(. I then went to the chargers by the theater. a volt and a leaf. all the lights on the leaf were lit so I figured the owner would come along soon and unplug so someone else can use it. I was wrong. I waited about 2 hours (I said before that I was low on e) neither owner showed up. (how long can a volt charge anyway....:confused:) When you are done charging unplug and let someone else charge. if you drive a volt use a regular parking space so a real EV can charge.o_O Next time I'm going to papafoxes house to use his supercharger.:D
 
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Honolulu Zoo has EV spaces, one charger and a sign that says 2.5 hour charging, but propark says parking is allowed for free for 2.5 hours and the documents at the state lot says 4 hours free

What should I believe?

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My vote goes for Ala Moana as well. High traffic easy and tons of things you can do while charging that's centrally located. Don't think Ala Moana will want to give up anymore valuable parking space there though.
 
My vote goes for Ala Moana as well. High traffic easy and tons of things you can do while charging that's centrally located. Don't think Ala Moana will want to give up anymore valuable parking space there though.

Dunno - there's a lot of poorly utilized hidden parking areas now in Ala Moana like that half level by Bloomingdales or the unused old Nordstrom parking structure - might be worth it to management to have Tesla owners use less commonly used stalls for SCing to free up space in more high traffic areas.
 
Well, I know that I have no say so in where the superchargers actually go. But in light of some of the supercharger recent policies and issues, i.e., sitting idle at superchargers after charging is complete, maybe Ala Moana is not the best site. There's too many distractions at Ala Moana. Let's see Supercharging a near empty 60 or 85 will take 30-40 minutes. How many times have you gone to Ala Moana and only spent 35 minutes there before you are back at your car? Not regularly. The temptation to run in to one or two stores or to the food court for only 20 minutes without staying twice or three times that time is too great. What this comes down to is, owners will incur non-charging idle penalties if using superchargers at Ala Moana. I think we will be better off if the superchargers are some place like a coffee shop or fast food place or maybe where there's only one store to visit while charging. But what do I know?
 
Well, I know that I have no say so in where the superchargers actually go. But in light of some of the supercharger recent policies and issues, i.e., sitting idle at superchargers after charging is complete, maybe Ala Moana is not the best site. There's too many distractions at Ala Moana. Let's see Supercharging a near empty 60 or 85 will take 30-40 minutes. How many times have you gone to Ala Moana and only spent 35 minutes there before you are back at your car? Not regularly. The temptation to run in to one or two stores or to the food court for only 20 minutes without staying twice or three times that time is too great. What this comes down to is, owners will incur non-charging idle penalties if using superchargers at Ala Moana. I think we will be better off if the superchargers are some place like a coffee shop or fast food place or maybe where there's only one store to visit while charging. But what do I know?

this is a good point as well.
 
Akikiki is spot on with this.

I think one of the biggest challenges to the world's transition to an EV/Solar energy economy is going to be properly matching charging speeds with the actual need of the drivers, depending on where they are parked. Putting Superchargers at malls, movie theaters, hotels, etc. is a complete waste of the infrastructure. If people are going to be there for more than an hour, the supercharger is a far faster charging rate than needed, and will only lead to frustration when people leave a fully charged car hours past when it should be unplugged and moved. But this is a consequence of the location where it's placed.
Those types of locations should have L2 charging and no higher, but we need more of them. And they should be centrally located so that each charger can service 4 adjacent stalls. A lot of the chargers we see on island here can only service the car directly in front, or maybe the adjacent spot.

Don't even get me started about the terrible location of the charger in the Target Salt Lake parking lot. They put a 2 plug charger in between 2 handicap spaces, 1 EV space, and 1 unmarked space. This system would easily allow for 4 cars to use it if properly located and marked...but they put it where only 1 car can ever make use at a time, unless you get super lucky and the unmarked spot is open!

Superchargers (and other L3 systems) should be located where people wouldn't want to spend more than 40 or so minutes at a time. Rest stops and fast food type restaurants are the best type of location for these. Tesla has clearly thought this out for their inter-city locations.

Places where you'll be parked for 8+ hours at a time (workplaces, airports, hotels, etc.) could/should have just L1 charging available, but it needs to be everywhere...meaning pretty much every parking spot. This would be far cheaper, and more useful to more people, than installing a couple of L3 chargers in the lot, or even a dozen or so L2 chargers.

But here's the big Catch-22...
Unfortunately, all of this local (L2) infrastructure is going to need to be in place before the main stream market starts to shift over to acceptance of EVs. The un-initiated still can't accept the fact that range anxiety doesn't exist when your car can go 200+ miles every time you leave the house.

But once the market finally shifts, we won't actually need all of that L2 charging because all new EVs have ranges of 250-350+ miles, and will be able to plug in to 350kW+ chargers and top up in 5-15 minutes.

Elon knows this, and has been developing the destination charging program as the stop gap on his way to the Supercharger V3 solution.

The other car makers are just now starting come around with the CCS standard that can do up to 350kW, but none of them have committed to building out the infrastructure. It's going to be an interesting couple of years while this all shakes out, but once again, it appears that Tesla is at the tip of the spear.
 
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The new Service Center behind OfficeMax on Ala Moana has four Tesla Destination chargers (50 amp circuits) in front of the building. I was told by SC staff today that owners can use those spaces to charge during hours that the SC is open (8-5 pm).

Also swung by, learned there's a slight possibility they will change to a combo lock as long as we promise to lock up

Slight possibility supercharger will be placed in north shore
 
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Looks like the ChargePoint charger at the Blaisdell is back up. it has been down for over a month. I haven't checked since last week, but two weeks ago and then again last week the charger behind Menchies at ward has been giving me a cable fault. I reported it to Volta but they had not fixed it .(as of last week)