High-usage supercharger station

[cpa]

Tesla is using the one-size fits all mentality for this recurring problem. Someone really ought to parse all the data from all the Superchargers and determine how and when to apply this 80% limitation. Then make it so the charging bar cannot be increased to a level >80% at times.

It seems to me that frequency of usage boils down to geography and time of day. Superchargers in urban areas should be capped at the 80% limit for all comers except for the wee hours of the morning when it is odds-on that there is or will be no congestion. Those traveling (not living within) through these urban areas will have many opportunities to recharge elsewhere 60-100 miles away. It may be a bit of a hassle or an inconvenience for them, but we must think of the greater good afforded by this limitation. It only hurts for a little while!

Superchargers that are in remote areas generally should not have this restriction, or the slider should be enabled to charge >80% if it does appear. Bad weather, side trips, smaller batteries, towing, and other drains on the battery necessitate a higher charge at times. And there will be those isolated incidents when a number of stalls are down or during popular heavy travel times. Tesla has enough of these data to be able to program these limitations during the appropriate conditions.

It just seems to me from these anecdotes, that someone ginned up a facile software solution without drilling down into the detail and determining how distance and usage affects the ultimate charging levels that people feel they need to continue their journey.

I can hear the catcalls and other complaints when inexperienced drivers stop the charge at 80% and continue on their trek only to see suddenly the nag on the screen to keep your speed below 65 (or 55) to reach your destination.

Finally, I offer a real-life example from smack-dab here in the Valley: Along SR99 between Sacramento and Bakersfield, Superchargers are at Manteca and Fresno. Manteca to Fresno is about 110 miles. No problem. To continue east from Bakersfield to Barstow (after charging in Fresno) and either Interstate 40 or Interstate 15 requires a stop in Mojave, about 180 miles from the Fresno Supercharger and 220 rated miles per EVTripplanner. If one were to rely upon the 80% rule, and if one were to utilize the in-car charging routine, one would be routed to Kettleman City or the Bakersfield - I5 Supercharger before being able to head east across Tehachapi Pass on SR58 to Mojave. Yet, a 90+% charge at Fresno will reach Mojave satisfactorily with about a 10% reserve in an 85. The additional driving, charging, and rerouting to Interstate 5 adds an hour or so, yet charging to 93% adds maybe 20 minutes of charging.

 

[whitex]

I
Tesla makes a Chademo adapter. I've seen it in the wild. It won't work with my car, but that's a different post.

Tesla also makes CSS adapter, which won't work in your car either (will only work on latest S/X cars, and currently only available for European cars).

 

[gnuarm]

Bottom line is this "limitation" is not a limitation at all. I have confirmed myself that it is trivial to bypass. So there's no point in getting into a lot of issues of when and where to apply the "limitation". Personally I think it was a mistake to do it the way they've done it which does make it sound like a "limitation". Instead they should have simply explained what they wanted to accomplish and tell people it is a default and that they can change it as soon as charging starts.

 

[dgatwood]

It seems to me that frequency of usage boils down to geography and time of day. Superchargers in urban areas should be capped at the 80% limit for all comers except for the wee hours of the morning when it is odds-on that there is or will be no congestion. Those traveling (not living within) through these urban areas will have many opportunities to recharge elsewhere 60-100 miles away. It may be a bit of a hassle or an inconvenience for them, but we must think of the greater good afforded by this limitation. It only hurts for a little while!

Only if there's a supercharger in the right direction. Otherwise, that would just screw people over. Badly.

The right fix is to monitor usage, and for any supercharger that has 100% utilization for more than one hour per day, put it on the list to upgrade to V3 superchargers, ordered by the percentage of time that it is at 100% utilization. Start by adding two V3 stalls, then upgrade the old ones, one stall at a time. Zero downtime, and you fix the real problem, which is that the capacity just can't keep up with demand.

The 80% capping thing doesn't really work. It just punts the problem down the road. If you're only saving 10 minutes on a 1 hour, 10 minute charge, that's only a 14% increase in capacity, and that's the best case, because it assumes that it doesn't cause somebody to use a supercharger that he/she wouldn't otherwise have used before reaching home or a destination charger or whatever. In many cases, it could be almost exactly a no-op, and if they fully charge at that extra supercharging stop, it could even make things worse.

But even if we assume that best-case improvement, a 14% improvement at some of the worst superchargers, such as Mountain View or Sunnyvale, would only mean 1–3 cars in line instead of 3–5 cars in line. Right now. And within a couple of months, enough new cars will have been added to make those improvements evaporate.

No, these supercharging stations need to have more stalls, and be fully upgraded to V3. Anything short of that is just adding a new coat of paint while the barn is on fire.

BTW, I suspect that 90% of the non-weekend load on Mountain View comes from people who work at Google, which is to say that adding more supercharging stations in some other location won't do much of anything to alleviate the problem at many of those locations, which is why adding the Sunnyvale and Cupertino chargers didn't even fully alleviate the wait queues in Mountain View, much less make it possible to shut it down for upgrades.

 

[gnuarm]

I think many don't understand the lack of value in the V3 chargers. Yes they will charge the cars faster, but not really so much faster. It will always be a better choice to add chargers to congested locations than to replace V2 chargers with V3 chargers. The cost is nearly the same with the added V2 charger providing much more benefit.

 

[Mike Robinson]

I think many don't understand the lack of value in the V3 chargers. Yes they will charge the cars faster, but not really so much faster. It will always be a better choice to add chargers to congested locations than to replace V2 chargers with V3 chargers. The cost is nearly the same with the added V2 charger providing much more benefit.

I agree

 

[cpa]

Excuse my stupid question: Just how will these version 3 Superchargers help out? I understand that I cannot charge my Model S with version 3, so I will be taking just as long with version 2 or version 3. I cannot charge my model S at any speed higher than 117kW, so the 150kW speeds now showing on the touchscreen are superfluous.

I must be ignorant on something. The last time we Supercharged our Model 3 (about three months ago) we received all of 63kW at a deserted Supercharger with 20-25% remaining in the battery and the air temperature was hovering at 65 degrees.

 

[dgatwood]

I think many don't understand the lack of value in the V3 chargers. Yes they will charge the cars faster, but not really so much faster.

Only if you're talking about a station with low utilization. For a highly congested location, where you have a 50/50 shot of having to pick a stall that starts out at 30 kW while the car next to you gets 120 kW, the difference between that and a guaranteed 150 kW (minimum, depending on vehicle) is not an insignificant difference. In fact it can double the charging time of the second vehicle.

And this assumes that the V2 superchargers are still in good shape. Many of the high-usage V2 superchargers are old and have frequent problems. I've often been quoted a 130 minute charge time to 80% at Mountain View (capped at ~30 kW), then moved to another stall and charged to that level 30 minutes. That's a 4x difference. Basically, if the two charges are sharing significantly less than 150 kW, charge time get really bad. Having 250 kW per station gives you decent performance even if half the chargers in the stack are dead.

 

[Merle]

Driving last night to South Lake Tahoe, here is an example of the absurdity in calling this a “high usage” station and setting the default max to 80%

That is one out of 14 stations in use.

Another thing I noticed was that Tesla was initially routing me to Rocklin CA (by the Roseville Galleria) instead of one of the two 2-3 minutes off the road (Iron Point and the Palladio in Folsom CA), adding about 10-20 minutes to the trip.

 

[Cheburashka]

All Bay Area chargers are high usage.

I went to Los Gatos charger late at night (to go to Safeway). Was one other person there. Was still labeled as high usage.

 

[dgatwood]

Yes, that is true. So maybe V3 chargers will help to relieve congestion by replacing V2 chargers. Still, I'm pretty sure a V3 charger can't just be swapped in for a V2. The entire facility would need to be upgraded as the connection to the utility is sized to the V2 chargers. So it is pretty much as expensive as adding that many chargers. Also, the station would be down for some time to get this done and the utility company can be very slow on their end with an upgrade.

Yeah, it's a huge undertaking. But in principle, there's no reason they can't add additional transformers to handle the extra capacity required, then convert it a piece at a time.

For example, if they have a supercharger on 3-phase 480V service at 150 kW per pair, at 312.5-ish amps per pair, they need roughly 1875A, so it probably has at least 2000A service (6 pairs * 300 amps).

For a V3 supercharger, they would need 250 kW per station, which turns out to be about 520 amps per station. So they could use the existing service to feed at least three V3 supercharger stations (and maybe four, depending on how accurate that 2000A guess is). If they wire up additional transformers, they could convert most of the stations a few at a time and add them to the new service, then wire up the last few stations to the old service.

 

[aaron0k]

Instead they should have simply explained what they wanted to accomplish and tell people it is a default and that they can change it as soon as charging starts.

Agreed. Sometimes I think owning a Tesla requires a degree in psychology.

While it's clear, Tesla has poor capacity planning... I think we all have to appreciate and give credit to Tesla for pioneering the Supercharger network.

 

[u00mem9]

I think if they had actually sold a few cars to buyers without free supercharging incentives, they would be building MORE Superchargers to serve paying customers, instead of this rather weak effort to trick people into using them less.

 

[MD500_Pilot]

also got in San Mateo charger.

Curious to the definition of “high-usage”
1) currently certain percentage of slots charging?
2) popular charger based on fleet usage?
3) designated based on geography?
4) based on personal usage of the supercharger?

I see where you are going with this....I ran over to my local supercharger which is never full and rarely even busy and was shocked (no pun intended) to see that I was now at a "High-usage supercharger station"

I guess my questions would be has anyone gone to a station that did not get that message?

 

[AMPd]

Excuse my stupid question: Just how will these version 3 Superchargers help out? I understand that I cannot charge my Model S with version 3, so I will be taking just as long with version 2 or version 3. I cannot charge my model S at any speed higher than 117kW, so the 150kW speeds now showing on the touchscreen are superfluous.

I must be ignorant on something. The last time we Supercharged our Model 3 (about three months ago) we received all of 63kW at a deserted Supercharger with 20-25% remaining in the battery and the air temperature was hovering at 65 degrees.

Model 3’s will be able to charge at 250kW max speeds
Since there’s going to be more of them on the road they’ll charge and free up the spot quicker for the next person.

 

[cpa]

Model 3’s will be able to charge at 250kW max speeds
Since there’s going to be more of them on the road they’ll charge and free up the spot quicker for the next person.

Thank you for this explanation. This certainly is a wonderful technical achievement and a theoretically valid assumption.

Yet it ignores the human element. People do not always act the way that we assume they will. People will still use their Supercharging stops to eat, use the bathroom, shop, or get some exercise. It will make no difference if they can leave after 12 minutes with these faster rates if they decide to stick around a while and do other things.

Tesla said the SC network was to enable long distance driving, but they failed to consider that locals would grab free electricity.

Tesla said to move your car after it has finished charging, so they had to implement idle fees to discourage this behavior.

Tesla improved its navigation software to tell you when your charge is ample to unplug and continue your journey, but several people I met on my recent road trip insisted on charging to 85% instead of 65%.

Tesla now has this 80% rule at congested SC which has shown to be able to be subverted.

Tesla tries, but we owners have a way of thwarting Tesla's best intentions!

 

[MP3Mike]

Yet it ignores the human element. People do not always act the way that we assume they will. People will still use their Supercharging stops to eat, use the bathroom, shop, or get some exercise. It will make no difference if they can leave after 12 minutes with these faster rates if they decide to stick around a while and do other things.

And that is fine. If they want to pay $1 per minute to park in a Supercharger stall instead of moving their car they can.

 

[AMPd]

Thank you for this explanation. This certainly is a wonderful technical achievement and a theoretically valid assumption.

Yet it ignores the human element. People do not always act the way that we assume they will. People will still use their Supercharging stops to eat, use the bathroom, shop, or get some exercise. It will make no difference if they can leave after 12 minutes with these faster rates if they decide to stick around a while and do other things.

Tesla said the SC network was to enable long distance driving, but they failed to consider that locals would grab free electricity.

Tesla said to move your car after it has finished charging, so they had to implement idle fees to discourage this behavior.

Tesla improved its navigation software to tell you when your charge is ample to unplug and continue your journey, but several people I met on my recent road trip insisted on charging to 85% instead of 65%.

Tesla now has this 80% rule at congested SC which has shown to be able to be subverted.

Tesla tries, but we owners have a way of thwarting Tesla's best intentions!

If someone is on a 5 supercharger stop road trip, they won’t be stopping to eat at every single one of them.

 

[Rogue Synapse]

Charged at the Asheville, NC supercharger today, and did not get the High Usage Supercharger warning for the first time (have had it every time I’ve checked for the last few weeks). It didn’t set my slider to 80% like it usually does. I wonder if they’re backtracking or revising which Superchargers they consider “high usage”. I would say almost every time I check on the app (just by virtue of opening up my Charging tab), Asheville has 4/8 stalls occupied, and I’ve never seen all 8, once, so maybe we fell out of the ranks of “high usage”.

 

[David99]

Indio yesterday gave me the high usage message. There were only two cars (including me). I have seen the same at a site that was completely empty (except me). I believe Tesla just marks some as 'high usage' but not based on realtime data.