As was posted in a Texas thread, the Corsicana, TX supercharger is down because nearby construction accidentally cut the power line. In the supercharger listing in the nav. system (Places, Charging) the entry for Corsicana says "temporarily closed". This is great, I think it's the first time the car has indicated that a supercharger isn't available. However, with the new trip planner feature most people would no longer be navigating to that supercharger, they would be navigating to their destination beyond that supercharger. In that case the navigation system still routes you through a charging stop at Corsicana. The trip planner software needs to pull the info that now exists elsewhere in the navigation system that a supercharger is down, so it doesn't direct you to stop there. I've sent this to the supercharger team and will post if I get a response.
Yes, saw that this morning -- the closure notice only appears if you tap the pushpin for the SuperCharger.
Doh! Yeah, this is what I was wondering about. Trip planner really ought to be polling SpC status continuously and factoring that in.
1. Its cool that it somehow at least knows that the supercharger is closed in some of the software. 2. The trip planner is still technically in Beta, and has a lot of improvements that it needs as many folks have reported.
Wow! Getting closer to real-time status of how many stalls are available... or at least I can dream...
Or that window will also come up if you tap the supercharger name in the list of charging stops. But it's unlikely anyone would do either, they would just follow the route to the supercharger with the green check mark in the list and be very disappointed when they got there. - - - Updated - - - Not sure what the point of that is, if you're far enough away that it would make a difference in your route, some of the occupied stalls would likely be vacated by the time you got there.
Every other major charging network displays real time usage status. There must be some reason for it.
The reason is every other major charging network charges very slowly and the car occupying the spot is likely to be there for a long time, and another car looking for a charging spot can look for others nearby. With superchargers the next one is usually >100 miles away (except perhaps where you are in California).
Let's say I'm planning a trip and I want to know when the busiest, most congested times are for the SpCs I will be visiting. I think it's entirely reasonable to expect the car to provide some guidance as to when the most efficient trip time would be. The easiest way to accomplish that is by providing usage stats to the end user so they can make the call.
