Packed Superchargers

[adsheff]

Yeah I don't know if 2021 is an unusual year - far fewer people going abroad and you notice it on the roads and in the service stations. I think superchargers, and all chargers, will suffer the same issue as the road network. 80% of the time the roads are clear, because everyone drives at the same times leading to jams and queues.

I think ultimately the solution is not just building more and more just to satisfy rare peak cases (we've all seen that constantly expanding motorways does not stop Friday evening traffic jams, not matter how many lanes they squeeze on). The solution has to be making better alternatives for those peak times - so nicer, cheaper, faster trains so that people would pick them over a long drive for example. But that would require people of vision and intelligence in charge, and that doesn't happen very often.

 

[Adopado]

Charnock Richard yesterday afternoon was packed. 1 stall available when I landed at about 1PM, and about 10 in use when I left. THe screen popped up a note saying that the charging limit had been reduced to 80% (was set at 90%) to try and control usage. The charge limit could be changed manually, but I thought that it was a very clever touch that the system is aware of need.

Tebay routinely has an automatic 80% soft limit that can be overridden (even when quiet). I assumed that it was a standard feature of Superchargers everywhere.

 

[Adopado]

Yeah I don't know if 2021 is an unusual year

It's a very unusual year. We live in a countryside area that is normally quite lightly populated with visitors, even in summer, but it's significantly busier. Most have travelled up the motorway system from further south.

 

[Zakalwe]

Tebay routinely has an automatic 80% soft limit that can be overridden (even when quiet). I assumed that it was a standard feature of Superchargers everywhere.

I've charged at Tebay a couple of times and never noticed that. Then again, I may have had the charge limit set at 80%

I assumed the car was reacting to how busy the SC was giving the wording of the message.

 

[Adopado]

I've charged at Tebay a couple of times and never noticed that. Then again, I may have had the charge limit set at 80%

I'm thinking it pops up if your charge limit is set at above 80% when you plug in. I think that the high-usage Supercharger station may be an overall rating ... it certainly could be monitoring how busy it is in real time but given that it popped up for me when it was quiet I'm doubting that.

 

[Aero]

I was at Rugby services S/C last night around 5pm and when I arrived there was only 1 S/C free, which surprised me.

Were a couple of the Gridserve chargers free as well, but overall it was way busier than I expected.

Still a really good setup though.

 

[CMc1]

It’s in Tesla’s interest to get more locations/stalls rolled out and upgraded so I have no doubt they will.

2020 stats: 17 new sites with 192 new stalls

2021 (so far): 12 new sites, 3 upgraded which is 128 new stalls. There are another 36 new stalls across 4 sites which we’ve had “eyes on” and due to go live anytime now.

There’ll be undoubtedly another 1-2 sites out there which no one has spotted yet.

So I think Tesla are doing alright and will smash last year’s UK rollout record.

 

[Jason71]

I'm thinking it pops up if your charge limit is set at above 80% when you plug in. I think that the high-usage Supercharger station may be an overall rating ... it certainly could be monitoring how busy it is in real time but given that it popped up for me when it was quiet I'm doubting that.

it does pop up if your charge when you plug in is over 80% to explain why it has lowered it to 80% BUT it only does it if the supercharger is busy to encourage you move on at 80%. Nothing to stop you upping it. Yes it is based on real time monitoring of that particular supercharger. No idea what the algorithm is

 

[Blokie]

I was doing some Mother-in-Law taxi service duty this weekend, and had to do a 40% charge in York and another 40% charge in Guisbrough. First tried a CYC 50Kw charger in York that was no longer in use by the company, so then tried a 50Kw bp charger at the Ibis hotel. Accessing the charger needed a contortionist due to the location of it within the tiny car park, and I had to wait for the ICE parked in it to move before use too. Then took about 50 minutes to add the 40% charge. Used GeniePoint in Guisborough and has to wait for a M3 to finish charging (thankfully only about 5 minutes), but then it was only charging at 25Kw for ages before going to 32kw, but then it just stopped charging after adding about 20% (in over 34 minutes!). Finally managed to get it going again after disconnecting everything and starting again, adding the extra 20% in a total time of almost 1hr 10 mins!

In contrast I nipped in at Woodall on the way home for a quick topup - added 35% in under 20 minutes with no issues at all.

If I had to rely on non-Tesla charges anything other than on very rare occasions I'd have sold the car by now and gone back to an ICE.

 

[GRiLLA]

It’s in Tesla’s interest to get more locations/stalls rolled out and upgraded so I have no doubt they will.

2020 stats: 17 new sites with 192 new stalls

2021 (so far): 12 new sites, 3 upgraded which is 128 new stalls. There are another 36 new stalls across 4 sites which we’ve had “eyes on” and due to go live anytime now.

There’ll be undoubtedly another 1-2 sites out there which no one has spotted yet.

So I think Tesla are doing alright and will smash last year’s UK rollout record.

What's that as a percentage? I couldn't find a good source but my feeling it that the total number of available stall is more than double what it was in 2019.

Right at the very start only 2 stalls actually had the CCS connectors, and Model S owners were upset about us riff raff taking up space at their SuperChargers,

 

[Jason71]

What's that as a percentage? I couldn't find a good source but my feeling it that the total number of available stall is more than double what it was in 2019.

Right at the very start only 2 stalls actually had the CCS connectors, and Model S owners were upset about us riff raff taking up space at their SuperChargers,

Maybe but the M3 deliveries did not start until mid 2019 so my feeling is the number of Teslas on UK roads is now probably 4x plus what it was before mid 2019

 

[Mrklaw]

how do people queue up? currently seems like ad-hoc relying on commonsense and politeness? Surely that won't last

should charging area designers include allocation for queuing users?

 

[jamherber]

how do people queue up? currently seems like ad-hoc relying on commonsense and politeness? Surely that won't last

should charging area designers include allocation for queuing users?

They will need something - on a trip back from Wales a week or so ago at Gordano services Supercharger on a Saturday lunchtime it was chaos - we were lucky and got the last available stall - 9 cars arrived in the next 5 minutes and were parked all over the place waiting.

Still, better than the poor Leaf owner who was at one of the two both broken ecotricity chargers with less than 10% charge - chap was nearly in tears.

Tesla network aside, the country couldn't be further away from having the infrastructure in place to support the EV revolution at the moment (IMHO).

 

[Jason71]

They will need something - on a trip back from Wales a week or so ago at Gordano services Supercharger on a Saturday lunchtime it was chaos - we were lucky and got the last available stall - 9 cars arrived in the next 5 minutes and were parked all over the place waiting.

Still, better than the poor Leaf owner who was at one of the two both broken ecotricity chargers with less than 10% charge - chap was nearly in tears.

Tesla network aside, the country couldn't be further away from having the infrastructure in place to support the EV revolution at the moment (IMHO).

Coming from Wales you join south of Cribbs so Gordano was your only easy option but for anyone else, at a busy time I would avoid Gordano and just head to Cribbs. 6V2 at Lysander road and 12V3 + 2 V2 at Cribbs causeway. its only 2 minutes from the motorway and a V3 vs a shared V2 at Gordano is going to get you back on the road more quickly anyway.
Same goes for the Leaf. 5 brand new Gridserve at Mollies diner Cribbs. admittedly limited facilities ( except for the diner) but lets face it Leaf drivers can't be choosers at this point.

 

[Tonybvi]

it does pop up if your charge when you plug in is over 80% to explain why it has lowered it to 80% BUT it only does it if the supercharger is busy to encourage you move on at 80%. Nothing to stop you upping it. Yes it is based on real time monitoring of that particular supercharger. No idea what the algorithm is

I’m not sure if this is the case as I seem to get the message at Tebay (if I want to charge to higher than 80%) even on those occasions when there have been very few other cars charging. I even got it on one very rare occasion when I was the only car there! Simple to manually increase the charge limit though provided that you see the message in the first place.

 

[26ct2143]

Still have our leaf (but only use for local trips <150miles) and I know only too well the deal with broken chargers etc.
I think if (at some point) the tesla charge network is opened up to all makes, then because they are probably the only network that work well all the time, we will see the tesla chargers massively packed out.
We could then all find ourselves (tesla or not) going to other networks which have varied reliability and speed.
Not exactly looking forward to that situation.

 

[Adopado]

I’m not sure if this is the case as I seem to get the message at Tebay (if I want to charge to higher than 80%) even on those occasions when there have been very few other cars charging. I even got it on one very rare occasion when I was the only car there! Simple to manually increase the charge limit though provided that you see the message in the first place.

It appears that we are all correct ... some are slected to be 80% 24/7 and some only show 80% when busy. Given that some of us have been there when it's quiet that seems to suggest that Tebay is one the strategic sites that shows the limit 24/7. Here's the link: Tesla starts limiting charge to 80% at busy Superchargers to reduce wait times

 

[gangzoom]

They will need something - on a trip back from Wales a week or so ago at Gordano services Supercharger on a Saturday lunchtime it was chaos - we were lucky and got the last available stall - 9 cars arrived in the next 5 minutes and were parked all over the place waiting......

I've also had the 'Pleasure' of using the M-way network at half term and summer holidays. Mayhem is probably the best word for the services we visited, nothing like 'normal'. Virtually every Supercharger site was running at capacity, and though we didn't need to queue I was prepared for it.

However looking the Supercharger network today, essentially end of the school holidays, its a very different picture. I wonder for next summer/holidays Tesla will be deploy 'temporary' additional chargers. These are often powered by diesel generators but lets face it, none of us here would choose to queue versus charging up regardless how the chargers are powered!!

Still, better than the poor Leaf owner who was at one of the two both broken ecotricity chargers with less than 10% charge - chap was nearly in tears.

This was Albington services when we stopped to charge up at lunchtime a few weeks ago. Only 1 of the Ecotricity charger was working, imagine if you just rolled up in a £100k+ Taycan expecting to charge.....and how quickly you will trade in the Taycan for a petrol 911/Panamera.

Anyone who wants to see mass EV adoption happen has to realise scene like this is the best advertisement for BP/Shell interms of staying with combustion cars!!

Frankly the lack of legislation to force rapid charger capacity at Mway services is a joke. Without better Mway rapid charging people will be trading in their EVs as quickly as they buy them, and a large percentage of car buyers will never want a Tesla regardless of the Supercharging network.

 

[UrbanSplash]

Can everyone please get back to going on holiday in Benidorm. Thank you

 

[GRiLLA]

There's still a couple of weeks of holiday for English schools, and a bank holiday weekend coming up, it'll be busy next weekend and monday.

This year is clearly exceptional due to travel restrictions, but I would point out that so far the posts above all reference getting one of the last spots, no one yet has said they had to wait hours to charge. Say an 8 stall SuperCharger like Gordano is full, it's most probable that someone will finish within 5 minutes (say 40 mins average charge). You would need to be 12th in a queue to have a likely one hour wait.

I don't really see a problem, as new cars are sold new SuperChargers open, if the ratio is maintained we will be fine. I'm not really sure I believe the stuff about opening SuperChargers to everyone, people seem to be putting a lot of faith in Elon's casual comments. I think it will be one car from a startup in the US that did a deal, and then maybe some SuperChargers where governments have sponsored the creation in Norway. I won't care as it's given in 'Elon time' my car will be self-driving to charge itself before we see any change in the UK.