Good points.
I'll rebut by saying that while Tesla may have always welcomed everyone at the Supercharger trough, their deliveries are now an order of magnitude more than when they began, and the proportion of cars produced greatly outpaces Supercharging bays installed. Business models are not static. "Variables don't; constants aren't..."
All is yet well. I live at ground zero for ownership density relative to SCs and the only time I've had to wait for a charge in the last 2 years locally has been when multiple pedestals are faulty.
This is absolutely false. Elon Musk at the 2015 annual meeting:
“There are a few people who are quite aggressively using it for local supercharging,” he said at the time. “We’ll sort of send them just a reminder note that it’s cool to do this occasionally, but it’s meant to be a long-distance thing.”
Anyway, I know Tesla is now encouraging people to use superchargers as their primary charging but it most certainly was not that way from day 1.
Fortunately, you're wrong. Day 1 was not at the 2015 annual meeting. When I purchased my first S in 2014, I was told specifically and repeatedly that a) those without home/work charging are welcome to use the SC network ad libitum, and b) that Tesla would build more to stay ahead of demand. At that time there was exactly 1 SC in LA County. Within 2 months there were 3 and now I've lost count. There have been abject misses, certainly - the OC and SD County had exactly 1 SC each for FAR too long, but in general, and I say this having been through 48 states and provinces, even today, 97% of the network is just fine - including during holiday weekends.
Years later, urban chargers were introduced in part for infill and in part due to densely populated areas having more condo/apt dwellers than homeowners. In time, all multi-family dwellings will be required to have EV charging, but that'll take a generation.
The biggest problem has not been "local charging" per se - it has been ICEing by our own, followed by livery - livery's been dealt with, and idle fees were instantiated. In my opinion, the idle fees are not high enough, but that's another matter. Fastest way to turn an 8-stall SC into a 2-stall SC is to ICE a few and to have some faulty pedestals. Not ICEing by ICEs, but ICEing by our own. ICEing is surprisingly rare already - until people respect green striping and signage as they do blue and red striping and signage, the problem will still exist, of course.
Ya, they started adding the Urban SCs in Sept. 2017 only. Clear from the wording here that the intent of the non-urban SCs is for long-distance travel, not for people who live close to it ...
Supercharging Cities
“It is extremely important for our customers to be able to easily charge their cars. The most convenient way to charge is to plug in overnight at home, and for most people, this is all that is needed. However, for customers who use their car for long distance travel, there is a growing network of Superchargers located along highways on popular driving routes. We have also installed thousands of Destination Charging connectors at hotels, resorts and restaurants that replicate the home charging experience when you’re away from home.
Now, as part of our commitment to make Tesla ownership easy for everyone, including those without immediate access to home or workplace charging, we are expanding our Supercharger network into city centers, starting with downtown Chicago and Boston.
[...] To increase efficiency and support a high volume of cars, these Superchargers have a new architecture that delivers a rapid 72 kilowatts of dedicated power to each car.“
Except you bolded the part that clearly includes those who can't charge at home or work.
My point, exactly: traveling through.
Here in Houston, I have never, once, seen a line for a gas station. It's not a paradigm I'm willing to adapt, even for occasional road-trip use. There's already a 10-15% time hit for road trips, and I wouldn't want it longer.
Get out more. There are lines at gas stations every day - see ARCO, and Costco. BT (before I owned a Tesla), I used to turn left at an intersection into a Costco after work and wait 20 minutes for my 4% discount at the pump (yeah, I know). Now, I turn right at the same intersection, plug in, and either get a salad at the host property or use wifi to return emails or otherwise make use of the time.
On the road, the ONLY significant delays I've encountered have been due to site or pedestal outages - and those are annoying, but rare. Now, part of this is because just as no sane person would get gas at a Costco on a Friday or Sunday afternoon in SoCal, I rarely put myself in a position to have to rely upon a chokepoint SC during a busy holiday season - or a solar eclipse (Corning, CA or Pocatello, ID). But again, once out of coastal California, this is a non-issue anyway.
In the end, it is up to Tesla to manage demand at the SCs. As cars achieve 400-mile range and faster charging, and as sites continue to proliferate, all will be well. Now, for other EVs, it's still a serious clusterfook - but I digress.
Check out
supercharge.info to understand how much of a competitive advantage Tesla has in their SC network. It is *the* differentiator above and beyond driver assist features - because I assure you - the competition will have decent enough Level 2 driver assist features to get people to buy their Taycans and e-trons and e-Golfs and so forth.
But those cars will go literally nowhere outside of town until there's a sustainable charging network that will scale. And 4 pedestals at a Walmart ain't gonna cut it for interstate travel.
