Pretty soon instead of traffic reports we’re going to need Supercharging line reports in CA. Hopefully Tesla has a real plan to eliminate the choke points soon.
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Holiday travel availability / congestion at CA Superchargers; possible solutions, complaints, comments, discussion
- Thread starter SilverSp33d3r
- Start date
AMPd
Well-Known Member
An 80 stall location in Coalinga would be great.
There’s an abandoned building that would be perfect for a kettleman like supercharger location. It’s the same exit as Harris ranch except on the other side of the freeway. Next to the chevron.
Throwback quote to when the concept of having 40 cars in line was unfathomable
I posted in the Barstow thread about how once they expanded to 16 stalls there would never be a line of cars waiting to charge. I offered a free dinner to whomever posted a picture of their car waiting in line to charge. No takers yet.
When this 40 STALL station is complete. If you post a picture of 40 occupied stalls, with your car in line, I will:
1. Buy you a Kobe steak dinner...
2. In Tokyo Japan...
3. After flying you there 1st class...
So go ahead and start posting about how the flood of Model 3's will overwhelm the Supercharger network. And have pleasant dreams of your big dinner in Tokyo.
Fact is, there will never be a line at this Supercharger. And there will be many more of these. Never gonna happen. Physically impossible. End of story. Move along now, someone else is buying you dinner...
RT
P.S. Did I mention: NEVER GONNA HAPPEN...
FalconFour
Member
uh oh, sounds like @gnguyen is getting a nice Japanese dinner! (yeah, "never gonna happen" could go both ways, but it would be some nice crow to eat, wouldn't it?)
Also, the Tesla Takeover, but that was kind of an intentional gig
2nd Annual Tesla Takeover Road Trip - My Tesla AdventureCongrats @gnguyen ! If not local I will enjoy it on your behalf with @RubberToe - I will buy him a drink regardless for his updating of the Pasadena charger which I want to check out tonight.
During the wait at Kettleman I can feel the stress level of the travelers rising. There were several rounds of back-and-forth angry car horn honks. Perhaps someone tried to cut in line? I almost pictured Tesla owner trying to choke out another with the mobile charger cord and beating another with the J1772 adapter.
IMO there needs to be more than one attendant during the major holiday weekends. There should be one or even two to do the end of the line direction to open stall and one or two to manage the line to provide updates. Corporate can push message to driver or attendant to ask people who wants to charge above 90% (slow) to the on-site destination chargers or to the next SCs.
During the wait at Kettleman I can feel the stress level of the travelers rising. There were several rounds of back-and-forth angry car horn honks. Perhaps someone tried to cut in line? I almost pictured Tesla owner trying to choke out another with the mobile charger cord and beating another with the J1772 adapter.
IMO there needs to be more than one attendant during the major holiday weekends. There should be one or even two to do the end of the line direction to open stall and one or two to manage the line to provide updates. Corporate can push message to driver or attendant to ask people who wants to charge above 90% (slow) to the on-site destination chargers or to the next SCs.
GHammer
Dark Star
Yeah, but once I start flying plane loads of Tesla owners to Japan for dinner, then the lines are DEFINITELY going to disappear!
RT
Not soon, but over time, I'm sure.
Needs more coverage, capacity, density and power which should come over time.
For example, somebody above wrote that they were at a Supercharger and needed 100% charge to get home. Nobody should be charging to 100% at a fast charger during a busy period, since that's wasted capacity. But when there are lines, people will naturally want to mininize stops and avoid the risk of an indeterminate wait at another Supercharger, even though that strategy is worse for the network as a whole. Tesla has to build with an assumption of such self-centered behavior.
Ultimately, Tesla needs to be able to reduce the charge limit at busy Superchargers, because there is always another one within range.
Tesla does respond to choke points, as seen with Corning, CA and Quartzsite, AZ recently, but they've been somewhat reactive, rather than proactive.
Getting 16 of the Kettleman chargers switched over to V3 was hugely important, for the relief it provided, but also from a data acquisition standpoint. The question that needs to be answered here, and at other soon to be realized choke points, is what is the optimum solution taking everything into account. You can model what you think is going to happen when V3s are in place versus V2s, but that only goes so far, you need real people traveling during the peak period to see how they behave. Tesla now has V3 vs. V2 utilization data for the biggest Holiday choke point in their system. This will let then know precisely what benefit upgrading the remaining V2 chargers to V3 will accomplish. I'm assuming that they also have visibility into the number of line waiters via the in car data connection.
The solution space includes such things as: 1) Upgrading V2 to V3 chargers, 2) Only allowing charging to 80% based on users anticipated route and other charger availability down the road, 3) Raising idle fees to get people motivated to unplug as soon as they are done (only during Holiday rush), 4) Altering the in car navigation routing to send people to less used Superchargers depending on their usage and the drivers intended route. Thats just a start, but most of the list is nothing more than smart software upgrades. The last resort is building another large Supercharger across the street unless it is absolutely necessary. Of course, given Model 3 sales rates, it is going to be necessary at some point, just when is the question.
Having said all that, I don't believe the "goal" for Tesla is to never have a line at any Supercharger during busy Holiday periods. Not much consolation for people having to wait in line for 30 minutes yesterday. EV drivers already know that charging takes longer than using a gas car. Adding another 20 minutes for a line wait once a year isn't going to result in the death of the company or any amount of people selling their cars. The worlds finest Tesla lounge is right there, plenty of beverages on tap, clean restrooms, etc. People are adaptable and many will rethink their travel timing if it bothers them enough. Exhibit A for first world problems. BTW, listening to the radio, they were telling passengers to arrive 3 hours in advance for domestic flights and 4 hours in advance for International flights. It seems the airports also have an issue during Holiday periods
The bottom line here is that Tesla the company is uniquely (currently) in the position of having to solve this problem, and the methodology they use to solve it will be used over and over down the road as other site also need to solve the Holiday travel issue. The big difference with the EV competition is that nobody else has this problem yet, but it is coming. And because the other EV drivers are going to be using a different set of DCFCs that aren't part of a single ecosystem, they are going to end up having an ever worse problem than Tesla has during the Holiday periods. And the other players will not have the ability to alleviate it like Tesla does. This is yet another area that Tesla has a huge advantage versus other companies, but one that the other companies won't be able to "catch up" due to the fact that so many different players are involved.
RT
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2 things
- I think lost in the discussion of the lines is the fact that ‘regular’ folks are now owning EVs and taking serious road trips (400 miles+). This is a great sign for EVs.
- Tesla could have the attendants bring hot chocolate and holiday treats to the folks in line. Just own it, and make it a Tesla festive holiday atmosphere (Tesfivius?)
- I think lost in the discussion of the lines is the fact that ‘regular’ folks are now owning EVs and taking serious road trips (400 miles+). This is a great sign for EVs.
- Tesla could have the attendants bring hot chocolate and holiday treats to the folks in line. Just own it, and make it a Tesla festive holiday atmosphere (Tesfivius?)
JRP3
Hyperactive Member
So long as they avoid the airing of grievances.
K-MTG
Sunshade Captain of TMC
I said I had to charge to a 100% to get home but I didn’t actually charge to a 100%. I stopped again at Santa Clarita which was fairly empty.
goldengate
Member
Tesla is already doing this... attendant offered us bottled water and candy bars Friday at Madonna Inn / SLO Supercharger.
JRP3
Hyperactive Member
That's a daily event here on the forums.
This is a great point - it also should be fairly easy to calculate this as well. A 40 car line with 40 fully functioning stalls should only be a 20 minute wait at Kettleman City assuming everyone needs a 30 minute charge.
The issue is that to minimize the probability of queues, you're better off with 40 stalls in one location than 40 stalls in two locations. Pretty soon in California, at least, I expect 20-stall Superchargers to become the norm, more 40-stall Superchargers and perhaps some even larger Superchargers soon, too.
V3 Superchargers will only buy so much capacity even here at Kettleman City with 40 stalls unless Tesla can figure out how to drastically reduce charging times by getting charging rates over 200 kW for longer. As it is, probably the best thing Tesla could do to increase capacity without increasing the number of stalls is to upgrade busy locations to V3 and then also make sure that each stall is capable of 150 kW without throttling for whatever reason.
Tesla has sold 60k Model 3s in California so far this year - how many of those do you think drove across the state? Anticipate another 60k next year. Tesla probably easily has 2x the number of cars on the road in California than it did - Kettleman City really needs another 15-20 stalls before the next busy travel day - or at least a full upgrade to V3. On that note - probably all the Superchargers in California need similar increases in capacity, especially in the populated areas and popular travel routes.
Allowing the in car navigation to route you to the most efficient set of Superchargers on your trip gets you a nice perk. You get priority at each Supercharger you charge at, a "reserved" spot so to speak. Those arriving "cold" do not get this benefit. It incentivises people to use the in car planner, and then allows Tesla to more efficiently allocate charging resources.
Cars with lower SOC are sent to the V3 chargers, and those with higher SOC or older batteries that can't use V3 power levels are routed to the slower chargers.
A new site across the street could be for Model 3s only and using this protocol. Frees up the legacy site for slower charging cars. When you pull in, the in car navigation tells you which stall to pull into. Larger LED numbering above each charger makes this easier. The Mothership supercomputer doesn't need to assign the stall until moments before arrival, so as to be able to account for conditions at that moment.
Smart software making most efficient use of valuable physical and electrical resources. Work smarter not harder. Some smart coders with access to all of Tesla's data could put this together in a few weeks. Look for this all to be in place by next Thanksgiving
RT
Cars with lower SOC are sent to the V3 chargers, and those with higher SOC or older batteries that can't use V3 power levels are routed to the slower chargers.
A new site across the street could be for Model 3s only and using this protocol. Frees up the legacy site for slower charging cars. When you pull in, the in car navigation tells you which stall to pull into. Larger LED numbering above each charger makes this easier. The Mothership supercomputer doesn't need to assign the stall until moments before arrival, so as to be able to account for conditions at that moment.
Smart software making most efficient use of valuable physical and electrical resources. Work smarter not harder. Some smart coders with access to all of Tesla's data could put this together in a few weeks. Look for this all to be in place by next Thanksgiving
RT
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before we get to any of that new fangled stuff, it would be really nice if the Tesla planner showed which SC's were out of service so one doesn't back in and fuss with the cable for 5 minutes only to have to move the car. Happened once at Harris Ranch last Saturday and once at Thousand Oaks on Friday. While moving was no big deal at HR, once I backed out of my spot at Thousand Oaks, the other two vacant spots (when I arrived) had filled up so I had to wait.
Mmm Kobe beef steak!
I wasn’t upset at the lines, it’s a great sign for EVs, but I really hope it means we’ll improve the charging infrastructure even more. The smaller stations were still heavily impacted (Gustine, Buttonwillow, etc.) and would have benefitted from more concierge contractors directing the wait lines.
There are several more spots along the way along the 5 that Tesla could build more frequent smaller stations. I think that would help a ton. Faster chargers too, but those of us with legacy cars will be dragging everyone down.
I wasn’t upset at the lines, it’s a great sign for EVs, but I really hope it means we’ll improve the charging infrastructure even more. The smaller stations were still heavily impacted (Gustine, Buttonwillow, etc.) and would have benefitted from more concierge contractors directing the wait lines.
There are several more spots along the way along the 5 that Tesla could build more frequent smaller stations. I think that would help a ton. Faster chargers too, but those of us with legacy cars will be dragging everyone down.
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