More complaints about Supercharger overcrowding (moved from California Superchargers forum)

[JeffnReno]

Not sure why thumbs down, but I was just only helping others to gauge when it's best to go charge to avoid the crowd. Kind of wish tesla publish these type of data, i.e. when superchargers are more likely busy as oppose to making people like me poll their map all the time.

As for people who work and charge there, I am not sure why people even question this. This is qualcomm campus. We know there are rich qualcomm employees charging there all the time as well as those tesloop scammers. I think it's best to accept the current situation and hope tesla opens more stations in the future. No point in fretting about it at this point. It's not going to change those guys behaviors.

Maybe Tesla should increase the rule on idle parking fees for repeat offenders. Let them jump exponentially until they are paying hundreds of dollars per minute if not thousands. That should get most of their attention. There really needs to be a price to pay for rude and inconsiderate behavior no matter who or where you are.

 

[Cosmacelf]

There are so many things Tesla could have been doing and still could be doing to alleviate Supercharger crowding, but they choose not to. It is either a harder problem to solve than we think, or they don’t have the brightest bulbs working on the problem or they aren’t devoting resources to the problem. Regardless, it’s kinda of like wondering why the Tesla browser still sucks after 5 years when any decent programmer could have fixed it in 60 man days or less.

 

[JeffnReno]

There are so many things Tesla could have been doing and still could be doing to alleviate Supercharger crowding, but they choose not to. It is either a harder problem to solve than we think, or they don’t have the brightest bulbs working on the problem or they aren’t devoting resources to the problem. Regardless, it’s kinda of like wondering why the Tesla browser still sucks after 5 years when any decent programmer could have fixed it in 60 man days or less.

It's only going to get worse as more Teslas are on the road so they really need to up their game. Doubt building more SCs will completely solve the problem as long as they allow abuse to go on.

 

[TaoJones]

Maybe Tesla should increase the rule on idle parking fees for repeat offenders. Let them jump exponentially until they are paying hundreds of dollars per minute if not thousands. That should get most of their attention. There really needs to be a price to pay for rude and inconsiderate behavior no matter who or where you are.

I consider ICEing by our own to be the #1 problem at SCs. Have advocated for a graduated fee structure from the $0.40/min now to $1/min after 60min lifetime to $5/min after say 240min lifetime.

Make it hurt if people can’t be educated otherwise into more efficient behavior.

A little education in the Nav via pop-ups at busier SCs to NOT PAIR when there’s a choice wouldn’t hurt either.

 

[srvan1]

Maybe Tesla should increase the rule on idle parking fees for repeat offenders. Let them jump exponentially until they are paying hundreds of dollars per minute if not thousands. That should get most of their attention. There really needs to be a price to pay for rude and inconsiderate behavior no matter who or where you are.

I would love it for Tesla to program it in such a way that repeated and intentional offenders get a notice on the 17 in screen, with the verbage, then after 3 repeated offense in a span of a week or so, plugging in at that location won't get charged. That will show them!

Hopefully. LOL

 

[smilepak]

I would love it for Tesla to program it in such a way that repeated and intentional offenders get a notice on the 17 in screen, with the verbage, then after 3 repeated offense in a span of a week or so, plugging in at that location won't get charged. That will show them!

Hopefully. LOL

Was there a situation where someone over abused the Super Charger, Tesla end up throttle their battery capacity?

 

[jeffro01]

Was there a situation where someone over abused the Super Charger, Tesla end up throttle their battery capacity?

Yes and no... There was a user who found out that there is a counter in the system to protect the battery after some ungodly number of DC fast charges as the guy was using a supercharger daily to get around home charging... Granted Tesla did this to protect battery longevity as doing so punitively seems to be counterproductive as you'd just be stuck that much longer at a crowded SC...

Jeff

 

[Pluto]

I'm not from the area, but I just realized there's only 1 supercharger location in San Diego. That sounds like the real problem, and given that they're opening 70 new supercharging stalls in an area where there were only 12 before, it sounds like it's not really going to be an issue anymore.

Tesla seems to really be dramatically increasing the number of superchargers around. I've heard of people having issues in Manteca (local to me) but I've never experienced it. And sure enough just recently Tesla more than doubled the number to 20 stalls. Now I haven't even seen the location half utilized yet.

Given that free supercharging is no longer going to be given out after Jan 31 and many owners have to pay for supercharging, I think there's going to be way less abuse and keeping up with demand will be much easier.

 

[ACA Man]

Easy fix.

Start charging those guys at $10 per min once their cars are done charging then they’d think twice about leaving their cars unattended.

I’ve been watching the supercharger at Victoria Gardens at most of the cars there are from people leaving their cars to go shopping.
Right now is too inexpensive just to leave the cars there without consideration for others.

 

[MIT_S60]

Idle fees should get significantly more expensive if all the stalls are in use at a given Supercharger.

 

[markb1]

Yes and no... There was a user who found out that there is a counter in the system to protect the battery after some ungodly number of DC fast charges as the guy was using a supercharger daily to get around home charging... Granted Tesla did this to protect battery longevity as doing so punitively seems to be counterproductive as you'd just be stuck that much longer at a crowded SC...

Jeff

If it’s the same person I’m thinking of, he was using CHAdeMO.

 

[MountainHigh]

As someone who makes frequent trips between LA and San Diego, I can definitely say San Diego desperately needs another supercharger location. I'm typing this waiting 4th in line at 9pm on Saturday night to go home. A bit cold for SD and just looking to charge to safely make it to San Clemente (which is a great add). I'd say it's gotten worse in SD over the past 6 months and I expect it only to get much worse as I don't have too much faith in any listed "permit" locations.

 

[AnxietyRanger]

Start charging those guys at $10 per min once their cars are done charging then they’d think twice about leaving their cars unattended.

Going shopping while charging is OK, though, isn't it?

Not to rehash old points on the idle charges, but one less talked about:

How certain are we that idlers are the definitive problem at overcrowded Superchargers? It would seem from anecdotal evidence that idle charges have not fixed the overcrowding, even though they have now been in force for over a year.

1) How big a problem are ICErs? Or people who park without connecting? What could be done about them? AFAIK, nothing is currently done about them? Perhaps in some locations it is impossible due to the landowner?

2) Is the Supercharger capacity sufficient for legitimate users at these overcrowding Superchargers? Tesla is obviously addressing this through larger and larger Supercharger setups, which is commendable. Could this fix the entire issue? Is this the entire issue? If so, perhaps all we need to do is wait...

If idlers are not the problem, increasing idle charges solves nothing, and attempting to stiffen up that road will just risk alienating the wrong crowd. The idle policy is already strict as it is. If anything, if people have moved to charging to 100%, idle charges may have even occasionally increased wait times at some locations...

To my layman eyes, solving the ICErs and parkers through some arrangement would seem potentially lucrative, assuming landowner agrees. But overall it is simply possible not enough Superchargers exist. Nothing but building more (or alternative charging networks sprining up) will help there.

 

[MIT_S60]

Going shopping while charging is OK, though, isn't it?

Not to rehash old points on the idle charges, but one less talked about:

How certain are we that idlers are the definitive problem at overcrowded Superchargers? It would seem from anecdotal evidence that idle charges have not fixed the overcrowding, even though they have now been in force for over a year.

1) How big a problem are ICErs? Or people who park without connecting? What could be done about them? AFAIK, nothing is currently done about them? Perhaps in some locations it is impossible due to the landowner?

2) Is the Supercharger capacity sufficient for legitimate users at these overcrowding Superchargers? Tesla is obviously addressing this through larger and larger Supercharger setups, which is commendable. Could this fix the entire issue? Is this the entire issue? If so, perhaps all we need to do is wait...

If idlers are not the problem, increasing idle charges solves nothing, and attempting to stiffen up that road will just risk alienating the wrong crowd. The idle policy is already strict as it is. If anything, if people have moved to charging to 100%, idle charges may have even occasionally increased wait times at some locations...

To my layman eyes, solving the ICErs and parkers through some arrangement would seem potentially lucrative, assuming landowner agrees. But overall it is simply possible not enough Superchargers exist. Nothing but building more (or alternative charging networks sprining up) will help there.

Idle fees have definitely helped, even if the impact seems minimum nowadays. For instance, Tesloop no longer leaves their cars plugged in unnecessarily thanks to the idle fees.

 

[ACA Man]

Going shopping while charging is perfectly fine UNLESS the car is was fully charged and you're not back for several minutes.

Let's say you didn't come back, once your car was fully charged, for 1 hour then the idle fee came out to be $0.04/min x 60min = $2.40.
I don't think people doing their shopping would really care about an extra $2.40.
Now, if Tesla increased it to $1/min then people would think twice.

 

[RichardL]

I just did a 10 minute top up at the new Bridgepointe SC in San Mateo,CA. When I arrived there were 3/10 stalls free, so I was paired, but to my surprise I was getting 110kW! So my pair partner was obviously fully charged. After me it filled up and there were briefly people waiting. So hogging the charger even when done is still an issue unfortunately. Since I was only there for 10 minutes I didn't bother to figure out who that was.

 

[Upgrade00]

Another ice parked in a charging spot. You automatically drive by the first two spots and don’t notice that the car Parked in the supercharging spot isn’t a tesla because it’s dark and it’s parked back-in.