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Improving Supercharger Availability $0.40 idle fee
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- Tesla Inc.
If it wasn't rash and hastily put together, then why was the language of the official Tesla post modified, via tweet I might add (and not even the Tesla account, but the CEO's account), within hours of releasing the policy? I also disagree that most of my bullet point list is very complex. Ten minute grace, simple. Three hour cap, simple. The complex parts (charge stall occupancy, which charger to choose upon arrival, etc.) are things that TMC members have been asking for for years, regardless of this new policy.
FlatSix911
Porsche 918 Hybrid
As usual on TMC, hundreds of really detailed, pointless posts about nothing, in response to something really simple.
People have huge amounts of time to waste I guess.
I agree ... it is simple really. Charge and leave when finished ... do not use as a private parking spot
Supercharger Idle Fee
Drone Flyer
Active Member
In all due respect, you aren't supposed to dine at a five star hotel while you charge.
Do that while you are destination charging or just out for the evening!
You are really meant to eat at a fast food restaurant while Supercharging!
Do that while you are destination charging or just out for the evening!
You are really meant to eat at a fast food restaurant while Supercharging!
Good for you. I see plenty of posts of Supercharging finishing earlier than expected on this forum. The stall sharing question is a very well known factor, but increasingly the different state or condition of Superchargers is also creating unpredictability. Also, with the taper, the charging time is not easily understood by a layperson. I actually find it kind of surprising if you don't agree Supercharging time is hard to predict for a layperson. I guess there is nothing to do but to agree to disagree, if so.
Moving beyond that, I agree this change means Supercharging becomes a question of following a mobile app. Basically it becomes mandatory if you care about the idle cost. You can not estimate when the charge will end or what costs you may incur, not in any exact sense anyway because 5 min grace does not allow for non-exactness, so what one must do is monitor - if you can, through the app, if you can not for whatever reason by staying in the car (and because stall occupancy affects the cost in many ways, you should remain within sight of the Supercharger to know). And, no matter how you follow it, always within the reach of the car in 5 minutes, if it suddenly reports charging stopped...
No matter how one slices and dices it, it adds an urgency to Supercharging that probably will affect how relaxing Supercharger visits are. This, I guess, is the design. Whether or not it will add more positives than negatives remains to be seen.
I am not convinced this policy allows for a reasonably diligent layperson to avoid the idle charges at a reasonable effort - and that's what mostly worries me. Not that there is an idle charge, but the fact that it hitting you is not predictable even for an expert, let alone a layperson acting normally.
...and so the narrative is already changing.
Taking relaxing breaks as a benefit of Supercharging will turn into hastened quick fast food to avoid idle charge. I guess that is the way it will be going forward. Even a fast food restaurant is not really an option unless it is very nearby, because getting there and especially getting back when the app reports nearing completion - which you can't plan for because it can vary a lot - takes time.
I find it possible a lot more people will simply stay with the car or return sooner to sit in the car, however we shall of course see how it plays out.
I think there's a learning curve, which I alluded to in my responses here in this thread. My guess is that this policy will increase the slope of the learning curve significantly. Consider if there were no idle charges - those laypeople would have a very leisurely approach to it and would remain "lay" for quite some time. I get the feeling we're going to have a fleet of experts quite rapidly.
Thankfully, Tesla doesn't murder you if you're late. You get charged a couple of dollars. Seems some in this thread might have missed that nuance.
On this, we completely agree. The policy can be tweaked or repealed. Trying the "come on guys, be bros" approach didn't seem to be working. This may not either, but based on the reaction in this thread, I sense that people are paying a lot more attention than they were before.
I agree ... it is simple really. Charge and leave when finished ... do not use as a private parking spot
Supercharger Idle Fee
I would say most agree with that.
I think the disagreement is mostly over what is a reasonable grace period for leaving after finishing - i.e. when does staying at a charger past charging turn from a normal charging event into parking in a charger. I guess many arguing against this are of the opinion that the answer is not 0 or 5 minutes after completion, but something else.
I certainly would argue staying over 5 minutes after completion of charging does not mean you are parking there. There is some reasonable time, due to the longevity and imprecise nature of EV charging, that a car can stay at a charger after charging before it is parking or abuse.
Others, like me too, also argue the idle charges should be predictable - hence maybe based on the charging estimate Tesla gives you at the start of charging forcing you to return by a predictable time (or charge by minute always, even when charging) - and not based on unpredictable actual events.
I have a 60D. My charge limit is always 100% when traveling. You're right, I sometimes forget to reset it lower when I get home, but I do it frequently so I guess I remember a little better. And if I don't, it's no big deal.
Difference is you're 100% is really more like 85% of the battery
I don't think you understood my point. Since Tesla messages me about 3 charging statuses; 1) when charging has started 2) when it's almost complete, and 3) when it's complete, how about the app being updated so that an owner can specify a particular audible alert to signify when any of these three messages have been received.. This would allow me to get an audible when charging is almost complete, and I could start making tracks back to my car if I were dining, for example.
Using the app, to keep updating, per your suggestion, causes an increase in bandwidth usage trying to monitor the app, as well as duplicate or complicate the situation when the app already sends out these status messages.
I also would like better time stampingof the events, if we're going to be dinged on charging time lins.
Or you will have people that will want nothing to do with it. In reality, of course, you will have a mix of different opinions. What kind of mix, remains to be seen.
I guess there is a principle at play here too. I dislike the idea of penalties that are not reasonably avoidable and I would guess I am not alone in that. The fact that they get collected en masse at service center visits annually or bi-annually or whenever you go there, also makes it an unpleasant idea. It is not a couple of dollars then, it can be the entire collected amount of months. Personally, I would prefer charging for all Supercharging (idle or not) by the minute on a credit card, compared to this. That would be preferable to punishments that are hard to avoid and that are collected in a lump sum annually...
So yes, I do worry what the games with Supercharging rules will do to customer satisfaction - mine and that of others. Maybe I'm an outlier or it won't matter one bit. Like I said, maybe it will all work. But I do worry - and I definitely dislike some aspects of the implementation. The positive sentiment generated by a Supercharger sighting is slightly less positive going forward, because it no longer is at all that simple as it used to be. There is the psychology that Tesla is charging for the smallest infraction that is not completely within your reasonable control.
Frankly, I can see why some might stress about it so much that they won't use a Supercharger at all. That's not me, but I can see the scenario amongst the more timid people, those who already have a hard time dealing with EV issues.
Definitely this change will alter behaviour. Whether or not in a good or bad way, expected or unexpected, for Tesla and Tesla owners, that remains to be seen. Already we can see 100% charging pledges increasing, what that will do to the Supercharging times, warranty costs and endurance of the Tesla fleet is interesting to see.
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I don't think it matters what you do as long as you aren't in the stall for very long after your charging completes.
A lot of us, I suppose, would (as I) never again want to do a road trip in an ICE car, ever since we have had our Tesla's (and Tesla has its Superchargers).
Let's say a ski vacation to the Alps (around 900km from Belgium). That's 3 to 4 Supercharger stops (around two hours more travel time than with an ICE). That today involves one long stretch - 320 km from Beaune to Metz (there's a charger at Nancy but it is a bit of a detour). So you're better off charging 100% at Beaune.
Beaune happens to be a town with a beautiful medieval center just a ten minute walk from the Supercharger (I only know that because TMC members alerted me to the fact). So a one-hour lunch in Beaune makes sense to charge from zero to max (by hypothesis, you arrived there with close to 0 km range; otherwise you will have spent too much time on breakfasting at the first Supercharger).
I am certainly not going to lunch for two straight hours, nor visit the rest of the town of Beaune, while Supercharging. But I could very well be 8 minutes late in getting back to my car (and if being a few minutes late is problematic at the Beaune Supercharger because there is a line of cars waiting - it is not, by the way, as I have never seen it fully occupied - then the problem would frankly be with the Supercharger, and not with people a few minutes late).
If going on a road trip with a Tesla tomorrow involves telling wife and kids that the 3 or 4 stops we need on road trips are now to be spent sitting either in the car or very near to it, because we only have a five-minute grace period before we get fined by Tesla, there is a probability that the democratic vote would favour taking that trip with an ICE-car, which is two hours quicker anyway!
For the record: of course I despise any Tesla owner using a Supercharger as a parking space. I just think this five-minute rule creates more problems than it solves. Tesla knows who is abusing, based on Supercharging history, so perhaps there are more intelligent solutions.
Let's say a ski vacation to the Alps (around 900km from Belgium). That's 3 to 4 Supercharger stops (around two hours more travel time than with an ICE). That today involves one long stretch - 320 km from Beaune to Metz (there's a charger at Nancy but it is a bit of a detour). So you're better off charging 100% at Beaune.
Beaune happens to be a town with a beautiful medieval center just a ten minute walk from the Supercharger (I only know that because TMC members alerted me to the fact). So a one-hour lunch in Beaune makes sense to charge from zero to max (by hypothesis, you arrived there with close to 0 km range; otherwise you will have spent too much time on breakfasting at the first Supercharger).
I am certainly not going to lunch for two straight hours, nor visit the rest of the town of Beaune, while Supercharging. But I could very well be 8 minutes late in getting back to my car (and if being a few minutes late is problematic at the Beaune Supercharger because there is a line of cars waiting - it is not, by the way, as I have never seen it fully occupied - then the problem would frankly be with the Supercharger, and not with people a few minutes late).
If going on a road trip with a Tesla tomorrow involves telling wife and kids that the 3 or 4 stops we need on road trips are now to be spent sitting either in the car or very near to it, because we only have a five-minute grace period before we get fined by Tesla, there is a probability that the democratic vote would favour taking that trip with an ICE-car, which is two hours quicker anyway!
For the record: of course I despise any Tesla owner using a Supercharger as a parking space. I just think this five-minute rule creates more problems than it solves. Tesla knows who is abusing, based on Supercharging history, so perhaps there are more intelligent solutions.
Camera-Cruiser
Fully Charged
@ohmman You are being far to reasonable and stating the obvious. Which is why I always enjoy your posts.
It's obvious that the biggest issue is California, and it must seem incomprehensible to some that live near seemingly vacant superchargers that we really have this big of a problem here, but we do. You can also wait 20 minutes in a 10 car deep lane times 8 lanes across at Costco in Southern California waiting to fill your ice car.
On this forum, there also appears to be two types of whiners here:
Type one, is a reasonable person who looks at the plan and thinks there are infinitely better ways of solving this problem, and they throw out some ideas. Some good, fair, to bad. But at least they are trying and realize that it is wrong to inconvenience others who need a charge.
Type two is more worrisome, because it seems that life is always unfair to them. It's always. 'Gee, I just want to run in to Starbucks, grab a latte, maybe doctor it up with some raw sugar and some cream too. Oopsie! too cold now, can you make me another?" Then wondering why they're getting a ticket because they didn't feed the meter to begin with. "But officer it was only...like, like two, ok maybe five minutes! Well, ok there was a line, and maybe 15 minutes tops. I couldn't be rude and cut in front of everyone at My Starbucks! I only do that when they screw up my order, which they do every day. Do you know if there is a Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf with free parking nearby? Officer? Officer?
Daily occurrence in Los Angeles, except most don't use the word officer, and there is no such thing as free parking.
The Tesla community is losing both free charging and individual self governance because of type two thinking. Sure, Tesla created the problem by creating "free for life", (and yes, I know it's built into the price) as an early mantra, and who here has not repeatedly told their friends about it too. But, reasonably-minded rocket scientist nerds created the policy, and being reasonably-minded, thought other reasonably-minded people would not want to spend hours at a Supercharger. Reasonably-minded people would charge at home, and when they couldn't, would just charge to the optimum level needed to move on to attend to important rocket scientist activities.
Unfortunately, we're not all rocket scientists.
The window to edit this is still open, so:
Type 3 whiners: Those who argue for their limitations.
Type 4 whiners: Can't drop off friends and family at destination, then park/charge, then fetch car and pickup after meal.
Type 5 whiners; Don't know that Elon has already tweeted that they will be reasonable.
Type 6 whiners: The sky has fallen, I'm selling my space ship so I can wait 20 minutes at Costco for gas.
Type 7 whiners: Like me, wondering WTF people? Be nice, be reasonable to others, charge and go. If you get the odd $5 to $10 bucks a year charge per year or so, you're not the problem. Something happened. Suck it up. Pay, move on with life, you own a Tesla, smile daily, repeat. If you get hundreds of dollars or more per year of charges, guess what? You're the problem. Fix yourself, try to smile, daily, you can change.
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Trust me, we do realize that and believe you. It may come as a surprise to someone in California, but the rest of the EVing world is already very used to living in the shadow of California.
We likely know much more about your conditions than those in California know about the outside conditions simply because California gets discussed so much in the English speaking EV world. That is understandable on both sides, I think.We get the results of California's doings in good and bad: we get the Teslas and other EVs that are great and born because of California (maybe not always so great in winter), but we also get the Supercharging idle charges months, maybe years before we have even seen a full Supercharger ever...
So, we know.I am not sure the reliance on the mobile app is quite as reasonable as you think, though, with a California mindset. In Europe roaming charges may mean data is not available all the time. Not all people have or are as used to using smartphones etc. So certainly there are things that can seem difficult to layperson, things that Supercharging tried to make simpler by being very simple... and thus no longer will be as simple.
But this policy is not about solving just the guy who parks there for hours. This policy is about moving every car from a "mostly" full Supercharger within five minutes of completion of charging. That results both in questions of what is reasonable as well as in questions if this kind of "abuse" really is the cause of congestion, or whether or not Tesla has simply not been building enough Superchargers.
I would say the 5 minute rule is universally the most disliked part of this plan. Even though I don't think 15 minutes would be sufficient to remove the unpredictability as Supercharging time is inherently imprecise due to stall sharing etc., it would already be a much better grace period from a reasonability point of view. As is, these rules mean people will already increase charging to 100%, which will have a similar end-result time wise (and other perhaps unpredictable results)...
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A very fair post, Carl. And I guess this is the European me speaking, because I can totally relate to this. Maybe the Californians have different expectations.
And I can totally see that conversation with the family about not taking that charge-fining EV thing. Why would we want to sit in our car or be fined for being late to our car when we could be at the destination... Supercharging is already a hassle and an inconvenience, this will add to that (offset somewhat in areas of congestion by lessening congestion in e.g. California, but that of course does not help you with your family in Beaune at all...).I wonder how much it is about curbing abuse for Tesla anyway. Are the abusers really the main problem anyway, or is it simply too many cars in relation to too few stalls. Maybe they know their Superchargers are too few in some key areas but are reluctant/unable to build more? Maybe forcing people to move faster is simply the main goal, to keep the circulation going so to speak. In that sense it might even be a positive for them if some people stop using Superchargers or use them less than they would want/need to because of this urgency...
This could explain both the 5 minute rule and the deserted SpC amendment. For California Tesla needs cars to mover super-quick, reasonable be damned. In much of the world, they fully realize there is no issue, people can park at SpC's for all they care.
This may also be reflected in the different way people from California vs. elsewhere partake in this conversation.
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Camera-Cruiser
Fully Charged
Again, lack of self governance is what led to this. If people did, Tesla would not have to mind the 3 year olds in the room with a cake.
I wonder if that is the complete truth, though. How much of California's congestion really is due to abuse and how much is because there are too few Superchargers and too many Teslas? The five minute rule does not sound like something designed to curb abuse, it is too short for that. But is does sound like an attempt to keep cars and people moving as fast as possible.
The superchargers are a shared resource that every user depends upon. For all those who already have their cars as on end 2016, it's 'free' or the price is built into the cost of the car. Shared free resources require the compliance of every user to make it work.
Everyone has their reasons as to why they could take more than 5 minutes. I could come up with several too. BUT, it doesn't matter what the excuses are. It's still a free shared resource we all depend upon. It's not about our reasons or excuses. They only matter to the person making them, not to anyone else.
My own convenience is not more important than the inconvenience of all the others who I'll be compelling to wait at a full SC, every single minute I'm taking too long to get back to the car.
Right now, the app is fairly useful to tell me how soon the charging is complete. I've used it to keep track of charging status to get the car out of the way when I have enough. It can be further augmented to generate even more notices with this new idle charge feature.
Fundamentally EVs are a different use case paradigm. You wake up every morning with a full tank. On the flip side, it takes longer to top off, and you may not have the opportunity to wait in the car until it's sufficiently charged. In that case it's your responsibility to your fellow drivers to track the status of your car by whatever means available - even as you request more features - and move it out of the way as soon as you're done.
Everyone has their reasons as to why they could take more than 5 minutes. I could come up with several too. BUT, it doesn't matter what the excuses are. It's still a free shared resource we all depend upon. It's not about our reasons or excuses. They only matter to the person making them, not to anyone else.
My own convenience is not more important than the inconvenience of all the others who I'll be compelling to wait at a full SC, every single minute I'm taking too long to get back to the car.
Right now, the app is fairly useful to tell me how soon the charging is complete. I've used it to keep track of charging status to get the car out of the way when I have enough. It can be further augmented to generate even more notices with this new idle charge feature.
Fundamentally EVs are a different use case paradigm. You wake up every morning with a full tank. On the flip side, it takes longer to top off, and you may not have the opportunity to wait in the car until it's sufficiently charged. In that case it's your responsibility to your fellow drivers to track the status of your car by whatever means available - even as you request more features - and move it out of the way as soon as you're done.
It's both the lack of SpC's at certain strategic locations and abuse. If I had to guess I'd say 70% of the problem is the former and 30% abuse. I have no data just speculating. It seems to me Tesla is trying to address the problem short term and based on the quickness in posting the new policy followed by Elon's tweets there may not have been as much thought about this as say a more mature company would have done but at least he's trying to head off a problem before it reaches critical mass.
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