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Holiday travel availability / congestion at CA Superchargers; possible solutions, complaints, comments, discussion
- Thread starter SilverSp33d3r
- Start date
I looked at utilization about 3:00pm up and down I-5 There were open stalls at all the major Supercharger sites- Tejon Ranch, Kettleman City, Harris Ranch, Stella Nella, Firebaugh. Some of the smaller sites appeared to ether be down to just a couple of stalls or full, but I think that could have been expected. North of Sacramento, there were a few sites quite close to full, and a couple of sites had a short wait. I didn't look to many other places, but I did check out Oregon and Washington too- Sites around Portland and Seattle were close to or full, The larger sites in OR had plenty of open spaces though ( Ashland and Sutherlin)
You can see the status in the app, just go to the map and scroll around
You can see the status in the app, just go to the map and scroll around
The usual bottlenecks on the 5. I saw all full at some points of the day since Wednesday with usually 5 minutes or less waits. Even two sites near each other like coalinga, KC, Santa Nella, and Tejon had short waits at various times but they managed. It’s much improved but they’re going to need to step it up with everyone and their mother using them starting next holiday season. Even the 5 in Kern County, where they’ve added a ton over the last couple of years, still needs way more to keep up with the oncoming rush of teslas and non Teslas that will be using them soon.
Tesla has been keeping up installing new and extending charging stations with sales. I've been driving Teslas for almost 10 years now. I have always driven long cross country road trips. Looking back at 500k miles on Superchargers I would say at the moment the situation is actually pretty good. I have had waits much more and longer years ago. It's rare now and if I have to wait, it's a few minutes.
I think user behavior makes things worse on those busy days. When resources get scarse, people tend to hord out of fear of not having enough. When having to wait at a station, people tend to charge more than needed. Charge speed drops as well compounding the issue. I hope the upcoming price increase when charging beyond 80% will mitigate that a bit.
But what's the alternative. Driving an EV with CCS on those busy days must be a real pain. Quartzsite is a great example. I've driven through there countless times. Always a busy site. Tesla has expanded it to over 100 stalls. There is one CCS station in the entire town with 4 plugs and 1 is broken for weeks now.
I think user behavior makes things worse on those busy days. When resources get scarse, people tend to hord out of fear of not having enough. When having to wait at a station, people tend to charge more than needed. Charge speed drops as well compounding the issue. I hope the upcoming price increase when charging beyond 80% will mitigate that a bit.
But what's the alternative. Driving an EV with CCS on those busy days must be a real pain. Quartzsite is a great example. I've driven through there countless times. Always a busy site. Tesla has expanded it to over 100 stalls. There is one CCS station in the entire town with 4 plugs and 1 is broken for weeks now.
CCS at Quartzite is a joke- Singlehandedly setting EV adoption back 10 years as fare as I'm concerned. We used it this summer with our Lighting and while we successfully charged it wasn't pleasant at all. (only 1 station worked at full rate both times we were through there, luckily we got the one that worked both times) If Electrify America and EVGO don't fix their station reliability as well as undertake expansions similar to the Supercharging network, EV adoption is dead.
I wonder if Electrify America is looking for a way to shut down. They were borne out of the VW Dieselgate scandal. With NACS and Superchargers becoming the de-facto standard in the US, I can see them saying they cannot compete, getting relief from the lawsuit, and shutting the doors.
Sounds good to me. I firmly believe their terrible operation is slowing down EV adoption. The sooner they go bankrupt, the better.
I think VW is on the hook to fund EA with at least $2B, once that money runs out I'm not sure they have to do anything else.
But my bet is more on incompetence, than malice.
But EA has said that they will add NACS to their sites...
Adding NACS connectors isn't going to fix the broken chargers, the broken credit card readers, the terrible app, the lack of service personnel, or their corporate culture.
No, but a good portion of the federal $$ to install them will flow to the EA executives. That's all they care about. Actually providing reliable charging services is not in their job description.
Or the fact that it's really really hard to make money (re)selling electricity to electric cars, of which all of those complaints are symptoms.
While there’s always going to be room for improvement in the way any company is run, there simply aren't enough EVs out there to make it easy for a single revenue stream entity like EA to successfully manage spending budget vs revenue.
I agree, have a bad experience charging your car is a major turn off and will only harm the EV adoption. This is true for Tesla equally. But they are well aware and put tremendous effort in building out the charging network. If it was up to EA and the others, EV adoption would be 8 years behind, maybe more.
I think the first non Tesla EV that comes with the NACS plug will sell well.
I think the first non Tesla EV that comes with the NACS plug will sell well.
the problem is long charging time, right now you have to wait 25-30 minutes to charge your car, if they can reduce it to 15min like kia/hyundai/porshe cars that will be a huge improvement
Mrbrock
Active Member
Wait, those manufacturers charge from 10% to 80% in 15 minutes?
It’s 21 minutes for 10-80, 29 minutes for 10-90, 19 minutes for 20-80 and 27 minutes for 20-90. less than Tesla but not close to the 15 minutes you claim. And these numbers don’t account for range replenished over that time so then they are even closer. High kw and % don’t tell the whole story. Range replenishment doesn’t either of the cars don’t get advertised range.
I wish I had known. My average charging stops on I-5 are about 12 minutes.
I was going to say the same thing. My Y adds 155 miles in 15 minutes. I was at a busy charger the other day with people waiting. I charged for 4 min, just enough to get me out of the congested area and then charged again at my destination. Be considerate when you have options.
cpa
Active Member
David,
That sentiment is regrettably missing from a large segment of the population. My small samples from the past 24 months or so:
Inexperienced drivers blindly follow the navigation.
Inexperienced drivers are very cautious about range anxiety. Accordingly, they don't unplug at 65% to arrive with 18%. They overcharge to 80% "just to be safe."
Some people traveling with family or companions use Supercharging to amble off and eat or do other things. Despite the haircut to 80%, they can manually adjust the charge bar to 100%. (Maybe the new congestion fee will obviate this behavior--gonna have to wait and see.)
Inattention to preconditioning the battery. Arriving at a Supercharger with even a low SOC will start off with quite a slow rate, perhaps as low as 40kW if the battery is sufficiently cold.
On a couple of times I have experienced a SC location with 4/12 occupied when I arrived. When I have returned from a ten-minute visit to the facilities, the location exploded and 9/12 are occupied. And since my dinosaur has crippled speeds, another two might arrive while only one departs over the next 20 minutes. I guess that most folks are oblivious to a possible large influx of users in a relatively short period of time.
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