Keele Services supercharger - Southbound

[Dr Bob]

Hi all. I'm confused....we no, I'm actually Dr Bob....but still confused.

I got my Model 3 AWD long range a few weeks back and need to do my first long trip from Falkirk down to Droitwitch next week. At Droitwitch I wanted to leave the car for a while with a decent charge (it will be idle for a month). The in-car planner shows to use the supercharger at Tebay (no problem) but I was looking to top up at Keele (going southwards) as well. Problem is the in-car planner only shows a charger on the northbound side.

I did a search and although there are numerous posts here on the northbound superchargers, I could only find one reference to them also being on the southbound side -a post from late 2019 so I assume they are there. I checked the tesla.com site for their supercharger map and that too only has chargers on the northbound side. I did find zap-map was showing 4 chargers on the southbound.

Not being that used to this new Tesla, I was thinking that the route planner in the car needs to know I am heading for the southbound Keele charger to do the battery conditioning – but how can it do that if it doesnt recognise the charger and decides to route me all around the Stoke by-pass if I put the northbound charger in. I assume it will just take longer to charge if the battery is not preconditioned. It sounds like the weather on our trip down will be circa 20°C so is that the temp the batteries are preconditioned to?

I guess the alternative is to head for the charger at Hopwood park but that is a 10 mile diversion.

Any thoughts?

 

[NewbieT]

These are Superchargers at Keele Southbound but there’s only 4 of them.

Coming soon new Superchargers at Hilton Park Services but perhaps not for next week...maybe if your lucky.

 

[Dr Bob]

These are Superchargers at Keele Southbound but there’s only 4 of them.

Coming soon new Superchargers at Hilton Park Services but perhaps not for next week...maybe if your lucky.

OK, that's great.
My experience to date is that the superchargers seem empty. With only 4 chargers, do they get busy there?
Any input on how to get the car to precondition the batteries if I am heading that way?

 

[Pagemakers]

I use Keele all the time.
South does tend to get very busy. North generally OK.

if you set your car to 100% it normally knocks it back to 80% and says it’s due to being busy. You can of course overrride this if necessary.

 

[94jdh]

OK, that's great.
My experience to date is that the superchargers seem empty. With only 4 chargers, do they get busy there?
Any input on how to get the car to precondition the batteries if I am heading that way?

If the superchargers are nearby for the northbound then set the navigation to these but drive to the southbound ones - this should trick them to precondition.

 

[Dr Bob]

If the superchargers are nearby for the northbound then set the navigation to these but drive to the southbound ones - this should trick them to precondition.

Ok, I will do that.

Is there a reason the southbound chargers are not on the in-car planner? Are there others missing like this?

I use Keele all the time.
South does tend to get very busy. North generally OK.

if you set your car to 100% it normally knocks it back to 80% and says it’s due to being busy. You can of course overrride this if necessary.

Ok, good to know.

 

[NewbieT]

Looks like you’re in luck with Hilton Park!

 

[bhanorthy]

The loop round to the Northbound side isnt super long if the 4 stalls on Southbound are full.
Likely to be faster than queuing.

 

[Mr H]

I’m currently at Hilton Park Northbound. Looks like 10 stalls active with 2 covered up. Can’t check because they don’t work with a Scania....

 

[davyjohns]

Currently looking at the app. (I live near Junction 15 M6)

Click on the charger it sends the route to your screen. Don't know how close you need to be to the charge point, I'm only 3 miles away.

Look on Google maps shows as you exit M6. Zoom in for picture

 

[Mr H]

Hilton Park northbound

 

[MrBadger]

Currently looking at the app. (I live near Junction 15 M6)

Click on the charger it sends the route to your screen. D

I'm interested to know if that pre conditions the battery for you. The one and only time that I used the app to select a supercharger, the destination was far enough away from the correct location that it failed to pre condition the battery. Quite possibly the same reason why sending a nav destination from the app doesn't always work.

 

[cezdoc]

Is there a reason the southbound chargers are not on the in-car planner? Are there others missing like this?

There was a time when some Superchargers weren't showing up on the Model 3 Nav due to them not having CCS plugs, and then there was a lag when the Model 3 Nav showed less stalls available which was a hangover from when not all stalls were converted to dual Type 2/CCS plugs. But I think every stall in the UK has been converted now, and I do know that Keele/Stoke-on-Trent Southbound has CCS on all 4.

I suspect the reason you can't see the southbound Supercharger is because the M6 bends around to run more or less W-E and the southbound supercharger pin is almost exactly due north of, and thus obscured by, the northbound one. Try zooming right in and hopefully you'll see the Southbound pin.

I've done trips down south from Aberdeen many times and usually a stop at Keele is recommended by the planner. In my experience it is usually quite busy and sometimes full so you should either plan extra time for queuing/reduced charge rate due to sharing, or as others have suggested take short detour to the new Hilton Park Northbound or Hopwood Park. I'd use a tool like abetterrouteplanner to see what the relative time differences are (you can specify a target arrival charge% at Droitwich) and make a judgement about whether the likelihood of a delay at Keele outweighs the time to detour to another Supercharger. Also if you top up closer to Droitwich (e.g. at Hopwood) you'll be in the faster part of the charge curve so mathematically it's an interesting problem. There is even an ethical dimension: it could help avoid delaying others if you don't "fill up" at a busy, 4-bay Supercharger.

For the return leg I'd recommend stopping off at Tebay and missing out Gretna. There are no restrictions for using the service road to cross over from northbound to southbound (where the Superchargers are) but I don't think the Nav knows about them so it might not route you through Tebay. There is a service road at Keele but it's guarded by a barrier and even if you can find out the code it's not meant to be used by Joe Public.

 

[cezdoc]

Not being that used to this new Tesla, I was thinking that the route planner in the car needs to know I am heading for the southbound Keele charger to do the battery conditioning – but how can it do that if it doesnt recognise the charger and decides to route me all around the Stoke by-pass if I put the northbound charger in. I assume it will just take longer to charge if the battery is not preconditioned. It sounds like the weather on our trip down will be circa 20°C so is that the temp the batteries are preconditioned to?

Some good ideas above for encouraging the car to precondition the battery.

However in 20°C weather and on a trip with long stretches of motorway driving I don't think it will be needed/will make a noticeable difference. Even in the depths of winter in my experience an hour at 60-70 mph is enough to get the battery warm enough to accept full power (on a MS70). If, on the other hand, you needed a charge within 30 minutes on the first leg of a journey, battery pre-heating would certainly help to speed things up.

 

[exlatccatsa]

I was down the M74 M6 last week Abington, Charnock Richards, Warwick. Charnock Richards is Northbound only, but you can use the service road to access the Northbound side to charge. There was a barrier, one built into the road on both sides of the motorway, but it was disabled. I presume this was because the press button access which connected to the (closed) hotel on the North side wasn't manned.
I was trying to do Tebay (279miles /250miles ) as a single stop but the rain put paid to that. I hadn't appreciated just how much rain will affect performance.
The secondary plan was Abington, Keele, direct H. Wycombe but I watched the trip destination percentage go from 28% to less than 8% after a few miles I decided that Charnock Richards, Warwick was the better bet.
All the superchargers I used, with the exception of West Drayton were very quiet.
Incidentally, if anyone is planning to use my local chargers in Oldmeldrum, Aberdeenshire, as I was a couple of nights ago. None of the 9 including 2 Tesla destination chargers are working.
I arrived there with 3% and spent 2% looking for a working charger, discovered there were none, then decided to go the 5 miles to Inverurie on 1% luckily its mostly down hill!!