Multiple CA Supercharger locations down in past 5 months: breakdowns, vandalism, or theft?

[ecarfan]

I decided to use an official source for information: the in-car nav. What I see in my S right now is that Vacaville is not operational. I also see that Gustine, Buttonwillow, and Bakersfield continue to be not operational.

All other California Superchargers show as fully operational except for Fremont (#1, the location at the factory right next to the delivery center area) which shows "Reduced service". That is likely not related to any of the non-operational locations.

IMPORTANT: Now that we have realtime Supercharger status in the car nav, use it! Before starting out on any trip where you will be using a Supercharger, check its status in the car nav.

 

[McManX]

I decided to use an official source for information: the in-car nav. What I see in my S right now is that Vacaville is not operational. I also see that Gustine, Buttonwillow, and Bakersfield continue to be not operational.

All other California Superchargers show as fully operational except for Fremont (#1, the location at the factory right next to the delivery center area) which shows "Reduced service". That is likely not related to any of the non-operational locations.

IMPORTANT: Now that we have realtime Supercharger status in the car nav, use it! Before starting out on any trip where you will be using a Supercharger, check its status in the car nav.

Hmmm not looking so good.

Is there a way we can look to see if there are scheduled inspections or permits or something at these locations to rule out the possibility of upgrading the SCs? (Disclosure - don't know how permitting stuff really works)

 

[apacheguy]

Yikes, 4 SpC down simultaneously across the state? Would appreciate if @JonMc can advise.

 

[bmah]

I decided to use an official source for information: the in-car nav. What I see in my S right now is that Vacaville is not operational. I also see that Gustine, Buttonwillow, and Bakersfield continue to be not operational.

All other California Superchargers show as fully operational except for Fremont (#1, the location at the factory right next to the delivery center area) which shows "Reduced service". That is likely not related to any of the non-operational locations.

IMPORTANT: Now that we have realtime Supercharger status in the car nav, use it! Before starting out on any trip where you will be using a Supercharger, check its status in the car nav.

Few comments:

1. Corollary to your last comment...be prepared by having the equipment and forethought needed for a backup charging plan if a Supercharger (or any other charger you plan to use for that matter) becomes inoperative.

2. I wonder if the title of this thread is a little too click-baity. Sure, theft / vandalism are causes for some of these outages, but as was hashed out upthread, Gustine was an equipment failure, and we don't know the cause (yet) of the outage at Vacaville. The thread title seems to exclude the cause of "something broke". I think that is what @ohmman was trying to say a couple posts above.

3. As someone who's going to be doing a couple trips over the next few weeks, very much appreciate the information sharing in this and related threads...even though we have the in-car status, that's not as detailed as detailed and accurate observations in the field. I'll try to contribute when I can.

Bruce.

 

[ecarfan]

Is there a way we can look to see if there are scheduled inspections or permits or something at these locations to rule out the possibility of upgrading the SCs?

I do not believe that Tesla would need a permit from a local governmental agency to do something like upgrade the charging cables or modify their equipment but not increase the number of charging pedestals, for example. But I have no professional expertise in this area, so don't take my word for it.

That said, I do not believe that any of the recent Supercharger outages have anything to do with Tesla doing upgrades or modifications to those locations.

 

[ecarfan]

I wonder if the title of this thread is a little too click-baity. Sure, theft / vandalism are causes for some of these outages, but as was hashed out upthread, Gustine was an equipment failure, and we don't know the cause (yet) of the outage at Vacaville. The thread title seems to exclude the cause of "something broke".

Fair point. I have revised the thread title to include the possibility that these recent Supercharger outages could be due to equipment failure as well as vandalism or theft.

That said, there is a pattern evident beyond all the recent outages occurring in California. The sequence of recent location failures runs from south to north: Cabazon, Indio, Buttonwillow/Bakersfield/Gustine (all possibly in the same day), and Vacaville.

It seems extremely unlikely that all the outages are due to equipment failure (and @bmah I realize you did not say that was the case). One or more certainly could be. But to me it seems most likely that the majority are due to theft and/or vandalism.

As to Gustine being equipment failure, just because one Tesla employee (or contractor?) stated that was the case does not prove conclusively that it was equipment failure. But it is the only evidence we have so far regarding that location.

 

[DOCAL]

1. Corollary to your last comment...be prepared by having the equipment and forethought needed for a backup charging plan if a Supercharger (or any other charger you plan to use for that matter) becomes inoperative.

That's certainly a good idea. However, it also makes me think that charging just enough to get to the next supercharger with around 15% battery might not be the best option. Certainly unless there are multiple nearby chademo options, then a longer charge is a better bet.

If more people start thinking the same way, then that will have the knock on effect of much longer queues as more people start charging to 90 or 100%. Making the congestion at busy places far worse.

 

[wdolson]

Just to be clear, we only have one report of stolen breakers - Barstow in November, 2016. @ecarfan accidentally misrepresented @Ulmo's comments about the recent Gustine outage in his OP.

It just looks like the thread is starting to make theft assumptions across the board when we've only seen it once. It's probably wise to avoid that broad generalization.

I misunderstood. I thought some of the other outages were known to be from stolen breakers. If the thefts in other locations were just cables or something else of obvious scrap value, I'd say those were just opportunists looking for their next fix. If something has been done to render the stations inoperable without stealing much, I'd say those could be saboteurs either out to hurt Tesla specifically, or just kids screwing around vandalizing things because they can.

I'd be careful attributing it to deliberate sabotage. California is probably the worst place to sabotage superchargers. It's true that there are more Teslas there than anywhere else, but it's a state where a large portion of the public is favorably disposed towards Tesla (though not as much in the areas where the sabotage has happened) and there is enough redundancy most people impacted by the sabotage are inconvenienced, but not stranded.

There are parts of the country where knocking out one supercharger would leave people stranded with no way to get anywhere without calling a tow truck. That would cause a lot more negative press for Tesla. If this was some nefarious plan from some corporate interests trying to hurt Tesla, I would think it would be happening just about anywhere but California.

 

[ecarfan]

Let me revise the timeline I started this thread with to make it more accurate. Note: I am not claiming that the incidents listed below are all related. Some of them may be.

On Nov 18,2016 the Barstow Supercharger was rendered inoperative, reportedly due to the theft of multiple circuit breakers from the locked enclosure.

On Feb 23, 2017 the Cabazon Supercharger was rendered inoperative and took about 2 weeks to be put back into service. One TMC member reported that a Tesla owner they knew said that "the cables were cut", whatever that means. I haven't found a reliable first hand report of what actually happened.

On Mar 11, 2017 the Indio Supercharger was rendered inoperative. A TMC user reported "cables were stolen" fron the enclosure (not the charging cables attached to the pedestals) but it is not clear to me how they knew that. It is now back online.

On Mar 18, 2017, the Gustine, Bakersfield, and Buttonwillow Superchargers were all rendered inoperative on the same day. One TMC member, @Ulmo , reported being at Gustine at 1257AM and posted, quote: "The SC was dark. A manufacturer Tesla Model S with a Tesla worker was there locking the equipment gate. I asked what was wrong and he said a circuit breaker failed, and a part went bad."

As of this post I don't have any information on what happened at Bakersfield and Buttonwillow, and my car nav shows they are now partially operational.

On Mar 20, 2017, the nav in my car shows Vacaville as "temporary closure". It's non-operational. No other information.

I find this many Superchargers going down in California over a relatively short time period suspicious. There are several possible explanations. I am not assuming that all these locations went down for the same reason.

In my opinion, the simplest explanation is theft of valuable parts, quite possibly by the same person(s). Another possible explanation is vandalism, possibly by the same person(s). Also possible is simple equipment failure (based on one report that may be what happened at Gustine) but I don't believe that is the explanation for most of the location problems.

I know of no information showing that any of those Supercharger locations were temporarily closed because Tesla was upgrading them in some manner. But it is possible.

 

[PowerSource]

security drones + better lighting would be useful. Have them fly around whenever suspicious activity is detected

 

[ecarfan]

My car nav currently shows "Temporary Closure" for the Folsom Palladio Supercharger, and "Reduced Service" for the Petaluma Supercharger.

This continues the south-to-north pattern of the Superchargers being targeted over the past four weeks.

 

[EVie'sDad]

This is becoming increasing disconcerting and worrisome. I wonder if this spat of outages has gotten Elon's attention yet. More and more the pattern seems to indicate something more sinister than just a simple string of failed superchargers. Has law enforcement begun to investigate?

 

[McManX]

Still holding out that there could be (some/few/all) upgrades but this widespread isn't looking good

 

[ecarfan]

I am sure Tesla, and Elon, are aware of this issue and are working hard to address it. Tesla has the data in real time and would have noticed it before TMC members did.

I doubt that this issue is related to Tesla upgrading Superchargers, though it is of course possible that may be the case at one or more locations.

 

[ohmman]

Curious - aside from @Ulmo's hands-on experience at Gustine, has anyone else confirmed that the nav system reports are valid on these outages? I mean, are the Superchargers actually down or just reported down? These are active Superchargers, and typically any kind of issue shows up in TMC posts in their respective threads. It's odd that we're not being flooded with posts about these problems.

 

[ecarfan]

Good point. Reviewing the various Supercharger threads, here is what I see:

We know that member @Ulmo reported on Sunday that Gustine was down. He was there, he said it was "dark". No reports since.

Cabazon was reported down on Feb 22 on Plugshare. And on Mar 5 member @skitch23 was told by Tesla that only 6 out of 10 stalls were working, so it wasn't fully repaired yet.

On Mar 11 member @beths11 reported that Indio was down. My impression from his post is that he was at the Supercharger, but I can't be sure.

It is odd that for busy locations like Buttonwillow there are no posts by members saying that went to the location and it wasn't working.

 

[Ulmo]

That said, there is a pattern evident beyond all the recent outages occurring in California. The sequence of recent location failures runs from south to north: Cabazon, Indio, Buttonwillow/Bakersfield/Gustine (all possibly in the same day), and Vacaville.

To bolster your theory, I've heard of many electricians who are thieves who live in Vacaville, but generally, that whole quadrant of SF Bay all the way into Sac is suspect. To bolster my non-theivery theories, what if a hi volt line runs right up that alley and a spike traveled up it somehow? Also, the big users of air conditioning, the big solar panel farms, and the travel path for heavy water and heavy water electrical production and use all travel along that area, and that bolsters many of my theories about equipment failure. I still wouldn't rule either out.

My car nav currently shows "Temporary Closure" for the Folsom Palladio Supercharger, and "Reduced Service" for the Petaluma Supercharger.

This continues the south-to-north pattern of the Superchargers being targeted over the past four weeks.

Folson is also near hot country and near excess hydro electric. Continuing some of my theories too

Petaluma doesn't directly fit my excess electricity theory unless there's excess hydro around there too.

So, maybe a grid-level electrician could rule out my very unlikely excess electricity theory. It just doesn't make sense the more I think about it.

It is odd that for busy locations like Buttonwillow there are no posts by members saying that went to the location and it wasn't working.

I think I am the only person driving a Tesla up and down I-5 anymore, @ecarfan. No need to build out an SC network just for one person. People have moved on from Tesla driving.

 

[BerTX]

My theory is that some rogue Tesla owner is building their own Frankenstein Supercharger with one different part from each of the area Superchargers. Look for a MX with a trailer full of electrical bits running the gauntlet.

 

[cpa]

I just returned from my car to check on these outages:

First, the bad news: The touchscreen display indicates that Manteca is down.

The good news is that Bakersfield-West and Buttonwillow are active, and the map showed chargers in use.

Gustine indicated that there was temporarily reduced service. All but two of the spots on the little displayed battery were red.

To quote Alice, "This is getting curiouser and curiouser."

 

[PLUS EV]

I'll be travelling through CA and into Vegas and/or PHX in the next week or two. Will be an "adventure" just keeping my damn Model S charged, but fortunately I'm solo and not in too much of a hurry so it's not too big a deal. Will do my best to check out on various locations and report what I can here. I'm not an electrician so may not be of much use. We'll see.