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Knoxville Supercharger Not Working

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We're on our way to Orlando and have been going well until now. Knoxville station isn't working, we don't have enough miles to get us to the next station. Called Tesla and they weren't much help. We've been driving trying to find chargers. We only have ChargePoint and here they are mostly BLINK and their customer service isn't working. This is a mess. We are now at a BMW dealer and hopefully this will work. I can't believe this. This is when I regret buying a MX.
 
Dalia, very sorry to hear about your problem. Last year I arrived at the Superior MT charger to discover there was no power...in the entire tiny town of Superior. It came back on 10 minutes later. I was lucky. But cases of all the spots at an SC being down are rare. I take it that your X nav did not alert you to that SC being non-functional?

Are you now charging on a J1772 at the BMW dealer?
 
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I don't know if any Tesla owners near you have a Chademo adapter you could borrow, but there looks to be several Chademo locations in Knoxville (you should consider purchasing a Chademo adapter if you do road trips frequently in this area. It looks like they are adding a lot of new stations)

edited to add..
(You should look at Plugshare. It will show you a lot of options, sometimes there may even be Tesla HPWCs that you may be able to use which would be faster than a standard US J1772)
 
Dalia, very sorry to hear about your problem. Last year I arrived at the Superior MT charger to discover there was no power...in the entire tiny town of Superior. It came back on 10 minutes later. I was lucky. But cases of all the spots at an SC being down are rare. I take it that your X nav did not alert you to that SC being non-functional?

Are you now charging on a J1772 at the BMW dealer?

Yes. It's charging 12/hour. Tesla should have tried a little harder to help. Very disappointed with them.
 
I'm assuming you tried different stalls in the SC. I've had a couple of instances where one didn't work but moving to another one did. (Be sure you don't move from 1A to 1B, move to 2A or 2B, etc. because the stalls are paired.) It's rare for an entire SC to be down, although it can happen.
 
Sorry to hear about that. I would just suggest that if you plan to take many road trips with the Model X, consider getting a Chademo adapter, as there are plenty of stations around the Knoxville SC that use them.

EDIT: Viewing on a larger screen I can see that some of them are "Coming Soon" and others are Blink. So maybe not as helpful as it seemed. Still a good purchase, either way.
 
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@Dalia, you need to call Tesla Supercharger support and give them another chance to help you. They should at least be able to confirm the status of the Supercharger and contact you when the site is working again.

I've used the Wall Connector at Mountain Motorsports before but it is kind of far and in the opposite direction of your travel.
 
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We're on our way to Orlando and have been going well until now. Knoxville station isn't working, we don't have enough miles to get us to the next station. Called Tesla and they weren't much help. We've been driving trying to find chargers. We only have ChargePoint and here they are mostly BLINK and their customer service isn't working. This is a mess. We are now at a BMW dealer and hopefully this will work. I can't believe this. This is when I regret buying a MX.
plushare!!!
a quick look at plug share shows many places to charge, this isn't the car's fault.
 
Tesla really needs to add the status information they already have to the map display of Superchargers, up, down, and, if it's full, how long it's been so. People rely on these, having to use a J1772 or even CHAdeMO greatly increases trip time.

It's not like you can just go to the gas station on the next corner.
 
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Tesla really needs to add the status information they already have to the map display of Superchargers, up, down, and, if it's full, how long it's been so. People rely on these, having to use a J1772 or even CHAdeMO greatly increases trip time.

It's not like you can just go to the gas station on the next corner.
The firmware 7.2 discussion I saw this week suggested people are expecting that to show up in the next release, actually. We'll see.
 
It's on the east side of town, well out of their way to go south on I-75. It might be better to L2 on the west side of town and hope the supercharger comes back up.

That makes sense, I didn't check distances, or the final route of the OP. It is hard to believe that 12 miles/hr is the best that can be found. Since there isn't a service center close by, you couldn't drop by and see if they have a HPWC available, or a Chademo adapter for sale. I agree with the OP the no notice visibility on a supercharger site being down is a BIG Tesla problem that they are going to have to address, better sooner rather than later. However, I disagree with the OPs apparent defeatist tenor - it's like he didn't really try to find a solution better than 12 [miles?]/hr
 
That location is on the edge of two power company services. LCUB and KUB.

I've said for years now that they should put a supercharger on the north and east side of town as well.

Having 8 bays all on one grid location isn't as robust as having 4 or 6 there and 4 or 6 somewhere else.

Do you really think one in Knoxville is enough?

I think the first one should be at the Campbell station road exit of I-40/I-75 (its just a few miles from the southern split) there are plenty of retail businesses there and it's still on the outside edge of the city/metro area, and putting one there services the Knoxville to Nashville route and the Knoxville to Chattanooga route.

But what about Knoxville to Lexington or Knoxville to Bristol or Knoxville to Asheville

You could move the single supercharger to a more central location like the I-40/I-640 junction but then it lengthens the trip required for the west (Nashville) and south (Chattanooga) legs. It also puts the supercharger well inside the city promoting local charging. It's also not as nice a part of town, not ideal in my book for several reasons.

So if you do multiples are you concerned with all 3 major routes out of Knoxville or just 2?

Another good spot would be east at the Strawberry Plains exit or Dandridge exit on I-40, well outside of the normal Knoxville city flow but has hotels/gas/etc at that exit. This feeds the routes to Bristol, Asheville, and Pigeon Forge/Gatlinburg (major tourist trap and gateway to the Great Smokey Mountains National Park).

Again another bad compromise would be to put one near the 40/640 junction on the east side but local charging and lesser value to the I-75 route makes this an even worse choice than on the west side of town.

I-75 north has dozens of exits that would be good for a supercharger, I guess I'd do Lake City exit on I-75. Keep it north of powell/halls which is overcrowded and would see much local charging. Lake city is right at the junction for oak ridge/clinton travelers coming up 25W.


So if I had the choice to cover the east TN area with 3 superchargers I'd do

I-40 exit 373 (campbell station rd)
I-40 exit 398 (strawberry plains pike) or exit 417 (dandridge / hwy 92)
I-75 exit 128/129 (Lake City)

of course you could split that out if you want more chargers and do

I-40 near crossville (between Knoxville and Nashville)
I-75 Athens (between Knoxville and Chattanooga)
I-40 exit 398 (strawberry plains pike) or exit 417 (dandridge / hwy 92)
I-75 exit 128/129 (Lake City)

with 4 superchargers you cover all the major routes out of Knoxville leaving only the south route to the smokeys (US 441) stuck on L2 only.


Given all that if I had to limit it to 2 superchargers I'd just do

I-40 exit 373 (campbell station rd)
I-75 exit 128/129 (Lake City)

as I feel the west, south, and north routes will get more traffic than the east and I guess the tourists going to Pigeon Forge / Gatlinburg would just have to L2 charge.

I can't imagine this area with only one supercharger in the eastern third of the state.

They got it between I-40 exits 373/374 so that is covered.

They still need a small 2/4/6 stall supercharger at

I-40 exit 398 (strawberry plains pike, KUB) or exit 417 (dandridge / hwy 92, Appalachian Electric)
I-75 exit 128/129 (Lake City) (CUB electric)

so there is some flexibility / redundancy.

Knoxville just isn't a Chademo heavy city and if the only supercharger location goes down you are probably stuck going back to J1772A level 2 rates.

To add to the fun if they put a store or service center in Knoxville it is likely to be on the West side in the same power grid as the existing supercharger. Meaning adding superchargers or HPWC at another location on the same side of town isn't much for redundancy.
 
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Knoxville just isn't a Chademo heavy city and if the only supercharger location goes down you are probably stuck going back to J1772A level 2 rates.

On Plugshare, it looked to me like there were 3 or 4 CHAdeMO choices today, and several others under construction. Of course, that assume one has a CHAdeMO adapter and possibly membership in the appropriate networks...
 
I thought I read somewhere that if a supercharger was down, Tesla would tow you to the next one. Is that not the case?

I guess buying the Chademo adapter will still be critical to long distance travel.

Edit: found an example. But I guess they towed him because there wasn't any public charging within reach. Shamrock Supercharger Offline

And this note when Harris Ranch was down Tesla was flatbeding everyone to the next one. Remarkable Customer Service at Tesla Superchargers


I guess they only do that in remote locations. Good to know
 
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