Nightmare! (Supercharger queues)

[exlatccatsa]

I've taken to night stopping, in the winter, at Abington £32 or Gretna £43 Days Inn on my long runs. Charging first thing in the morning and having a warm battery to start off with and no queues. Charnock was busy but there were spaces, but Hopwood took nearly 10 mins to get to the Superchargers there were so many ICE cars queuing for spaces and another 10 to get out of the car park.. we got there and initially thought they'd evacuated due to a fire, there were so many people outside the building.

 

[DeejUK]

can't pull 750kw per 3 stools

Stalls Three stools would be a very interesting unit of measurement!

 

[Sean.]

Worth noting that the V3s still have *some* power sharing and a battery, they certainly can't pull 750kw per 3 stools for an extended period.

Good point. Reckon they’d be some way short of the rated grid cap. Not just 250 kW x peds.

 

[Simonsquiff]

What is frustrating is the battery heating taking up a significant chunk of kw to ‘speed up charging’ at a busy v2 station that will never max out your charge. I was at Telford the other day that was completely full, and only getting 55kw at my shared stall in my low SOC MY, losing about 20kw I think to battery heating. But it was pointless to lose that - I’d never get a high charge there as it was too busy with queues, and I only wanted a splash and dash. Would have preferred to put more of that 20kw into the battery rather than a potential speed up for the fraction of time the shared stall became empty.

The car also preconditioned on the drive there, presumably losing a decent amount of KWH, again despite knowing the site was queuing and hence going to deliver poor charge speeds at shared stalls. It feels like this could all be optimised a bit better to lose less battery and less charge speed when v2 sites are maxed.

 

[Simavon]

Teslas are efficient though...

 

[WannabeOwner]

The car also preconditioned on the drive there, presumably losing a decent amount of KWH, again despite knowing the site was queuing and hence going to deliver poor charge speeds at shared stalls

Although ... wasn't that long ago when preconditioning didn't exist ... and was then rolled out once "good enough". Since then its been improved (depending on your viewpoint ... now starts-earlier / less-dramatically, but arguably uses more kWh than before all to facilitate a few minutes time saved on charging - which also translates to people queuing for less time ... but if the battery gets cold whilst queuing its all a bit for naught )

I tend to navigate to "near to" rather than "to" supercharger to prevent preconditioning, and then change to "to" supercharger when close enough and only if I actually want pre-conditioning (i.e. a "fill it up, and quickly" stop). That would be the case if going to the Alps, but in UK I mostly need "just another 50-ish miles" to get to destination, rather than drive-charge-drive-charge, and pre-conditioning works against me in that situation. It may be that UK drivers are therefore not representative of the wider fleet.

 

[Fursty Ferret]

It may be that UK drivers are therefore not representative of the wider fleet.

Agreed. My last drive south on the M1 in relatively benign conditions (12C) used 12kWh to pre-condition the battery for one charging stop. If it didn't pre-condition, it could have made it in one run with 30% battery left. Not to mention the fact that the pre-conditioning cost me nearly ten quid.

 

[DaveNN]

What is frustrating is the battery heating taking up a significant chunk of kw to ‘speed up charging’ at a busy v2 station that will never max out your charge. I was at Telford the other day that was completely full, and only getting 55kw at my shared stall in my low SOC MY, losing about 20kw I think to battery heating. But it was pointless to lose that - I’d never get a high charge there as it was too busy with queues, and I only wanted a splash and dash. Would have preferred to put more of that 20kw into the battery rather than a potential speed up for the fraction of time the shared stall became empty.

The car also preconditioned on the drive there, presumably losing a decent amount of KWH, again despite knowing the site was queuing and hence going to deliver poor charge speeds at shared stalls. It feels like this could all be optimised a bit better to lose less battery and less charge speed when v2 sites are maxed.

Why not simply cancel the nav and ,with that, the conditioning

 

[DaveNN]

Agreed. My last drive south on the M1 in relatively benign conditions (12C) used 12kWh to pre-condition the battery for one charging stop. If it didn't pre-condition, it could have made it in one run with 30% battery left. Not to mention the fact that the pre-conditioning cost me nearly ten quid.

See above.

 

[init6]

It's worth noting that even if you set the SuC as destination at the start of your journey, the battery is not being heated all the time. Here's a recent journey with preconditioning selected at the start.


Also if it's really cold then the battery will be heated even if you don't have an SuC as destination.

 

[imstitch]

I've found preconditioning to be a waste of energy to be honest. If you've got a cold battery, it's worth doing a 5 minutes of it but if I've just done 100-200 miles and pulling into a v2, I usually get 150kw or near enough without pre conditioning.

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

Why not simply cancel the nav and ,with that, the conditioning

Or navigate to the location that hosts the Supercharger.

 

[Simonsquiff]

Changing the nav is faffy, especially when you are doing multi legs and the supercharger as been added automatically by the car. It should be smart enough to not burn lots of kw preconditioning to arrive at a charger that will be slow anyhow (busy v2)

When the pre conditioning message came up, I pressed it and it disappeared. Anyone know if this just hides the message or actually stops the preconditioning?

The battery heating whilst actually charging is more annoying, as I don’t think there is any way this can be overridden is there? losing 20kwh on an already slow shared v2 meant that my charge took much longer, I clogged up the charger longer, and it cost me more. It was never going to help as I was throttled by being on a shared v2.

This behaviour is all after the software update to optimise pre conditioning. More work needed!

 

[qwickshot]

Stopped at the Grantham super chargers on Friday, 16 V2’s no more than 5 Tesla’s charging.

As I was leaving there was 5 other BEVs crowded round the two 50kw gridserve units.

Pulled into Cambridge Xtra services for a cheeky McDonald’s tonight and all the Ionity and gridserve u it’s we’re full with 2 cars waiting. When I left 20 mins later there was 1 bay free.

Fun times being a non-tesla all the time it seems!

On a slightly different note, the gridserve 350kw hub at Grantham is under construction, I didn’t look to closely but the groundworks are well underway. Grantham was on Tesla’s coming soon map last year, perhaps we could also see an expansion or an V3 upgrade there also.

 

[Jason71]

Stopped at the Grantham super chargers on Friday, 16 V2’s no more than 5 Tesla’s charging.

As I was leaving there was 5 other BEVs crowded round the two 50kw gridserve units.

Pulled into Cambridge Xtra services for a cheeky McDonald’s tonight and all the Ionity and gridserve u it’s we’re full with 2 cars waiting. When I left 20 mins later there was 1 bay free.

Fun times being a non-tesla all the time it seems!

On a slightly different note, the gridserve 350kw hub at Grantham is under construction, I didn’t look to closely but the groundworks are well underway. Grantham was on Tesla’s coming soon map last year, perhaps we could also see an expansion or an V3 upgrade there also.

Tesla never upgrade existing V2 to V3 (so far) so its more likely additional V3 or nothing

 

[WannabeOwner]

Anyone know if this just hides the message or actually stops the preconditioning?

I've read (no personal knowledge) that it only turns off the message - heating remains on. Hopefully someone else can confirm

 

[Hurricane]

Stopped at the Grantham super chargers on Friday, 16 V2’s no more than 5 Tesla’s charging.

As I was leaving there was 5 other BEVs crowded round the two 50kw gridserve units.

Pulled into Cambridge Xtra services for a cheeky McDonald’s tonight and all the Ionity and gridserve u it’s we’re full with 2 cars waiting. When I left 20 mins later there was 1 bay free.

Fun times being a non-tesla all the time it seems!

On a slightly different note, the gridserve 350kw hub at Grantham is under construction, I didn’t look to closely but the groundworks are well underway. Grantham was on Tesla’s coming soon map last year, perhaps we could also see an expansion or an V3 upgrade there also.

But it’s very different in other parts of the country. I can’t remember when I last charged at Tebay and didn’t have to queue. When I go to Gretna the SuC always have a queue, but the 350kw Ionity chargers often have stalls free. I charge far more often there using Ionity, and I get a faster charge than I do at the V2 SuC.

Just occasionally there are actually better alternatives to the SuC network.

 

[GRiLLA]

The network is definitely creaking in places. I drove Oxford - Swansea and back yesterday and on the way out Membury Westbound was showing 5 minutes queues at about lunchtime, on the way back at about 5pm it was >25minute queues. Cardiff also seemed to be full both times.

Fortunately we don't need to stop there, and had the choice of Newport but charged at a quiet Sarn Park without issue.

I would also mention that the choice of charge stops doesn't really make sense when using waypoints, it wanted my to stop at Newport for 40 minutes on the way out, with the battery at 50% then drive to Swansea and back all the way home, that must be to over 90%. Makes far more sense to charge on the way back surely, and therefore get better speeds at lower SOC. We spent 30 minutes charging at Sarn to get home, so that's a 10 minute saving.

It's about time this hapless government starting spending the money they announced for grid upgrades to service stations to allow more chargers to be installed.

 

[Jason71]

The network is definitely creaking in places. I drove Oxford - Swansea and back yesterday and on the way out Membury Westbound was showing 5 minutes queues at about lunchtime, on the way back at about 5pm it was >25minute queues. Cardiff also seemed to be full both times.

Fortunately we don't need to stop there, and had the choice of Newport but charged at a quiet Sarn Park without issue.

I would also mention that the choice of charge stops doesn't really make sense when using waypoints, it wanted my to stop at Newport for 40 minutes on the way out, with the battery at 50% then drive to Swansea and back all the way home, that must be to over 90%. Makes far more sense to charge on the way back surely, and therefore get better speeds at lower SOC. We spent 30 minutes charging at Sarn to get home, so that's a 10 minute saving.

It's about time this hapless government starting spending the money they announced for grid upgrades to service stations to allow more chargers to be installed.

to me it feels as if Tesla has shifted the charger routing from "charge when it makes most sense for the journey / car" to "charge when it makes most sense for the network".
Last three out of range journeys I have done it has tried to route me to a charger in the first 20% of the journey, which only makes sense if it is doing aggressive demand management.

 

[GRiLLA]

to me it feels as if Tesla has shifted the charger routing from "charge when it makes most sense for the journey / car" to "charge when it makes most sense for the network".
Last three out of range journeys I have done it has tried to route me to a charger in the first 20% of the journey, which only makes sense if it is doing aggressive demand management.

I wonder if it was anticipating that the cost would be peak on the way back so better to charge earlier.