If Tesla called for volunteers for a "neighborhood watch" patrol, I bet they'd have thousands of volunteers. I'd be pleased to work a shift or two at the SC closest to us. Any hours-- any time.It would add a lot of money to construction. They'd have to allow fire fighting. It's not clear to me how to achieve this inexpensively. Maybe working on better cabinet security is a better idea: hidden cameras, license plate readers, fast alarms on the cabinet doors with security guard (and police, if available) intervention, etc. (Most freeway SuperChargers are intentionally placed in such a manner that they end up being far from nearest law enforcement.) But that would be expensive, too.
Looking at it long term, how often do theft culprits get caught? It might be enough to save on the cost of constructing bunkers. Meanwhile, saving that money and spending it instead on higher density allows the system to be resilient. Just running the numbers through my head: $14,000 breaker + losses due to work and downtime. Additional cost of bunker style cabinet room with additional heavy air movement ducting and fans: around $30,000? Seems rather similar. If it pencils out to cheaper to do it the current way as long as it doesn't severely impact business, then that seems OK. Grainger always inflates everything 2x to 10x. So, let's presume that breaker is closer to $1,400: Then, suddenly the bunker is 10x the cost of the current air-cooled method.
I'm not trying to downplay how irritating it was to bypass to a Chademo, then drive slow and bypass to Gilroy S.C., but it wasn't really that bad all things considered; I'd say a loss of an hour (including the Chademo I had to use), and in the grand scheme of things OK if it is rare. Compare that in aggregate against the cost to bunkerize the SC, and it seems almost ridiculous to go the super-severe route (except in high prone areas).
The new feature that the in-car map tells you when a SuperCharger is down is extremely helpful. I've heard it is unreliable, so it still needs backups and such, but it sure saved me last night.
If the long distance charging paradigm doesn't change much soon, then I'm finding I have a need to get out and walk around and get some food and use bathroom when I'm at a SuperCharger (in short, to handle my energy needs coincident with my car's as well as exercise which is the opposite of my car), and one of the problems I'm having with that right now is that many of the SuperChargers are located where those amenities are not as available as say a Shell, Chevron or ArcoAMPM with minimarts. I was looking forward to the walk over to Love's in Gustine, and getting everything I needed there. Then, when I got to Gilroy, none of that was available (Denny's had a line and everything else was closed). So, it may come to be that future SuperChargers get located in more fuel-stop style style places such as current well equipped well lit (some even 24 hour) gas stations. If that happens, then the types of security available would be different: more traffic, more potential for mischievous people around, and more eyeballs to see what happens in case someone is bad. Suddenly, cultural norms for that area would be prominent in the equation.
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