No longer a supercharger virgin!
Also popped my SuperCharger cherry today!
We wanted to go check out the Chrysanthemums that were on display in Longwood Gardens (Kennett Square, PA). I had maybe 150 miles on the battery, so I decided to see if I can charge up there while we walked around the gardens (PlugShare showed 2 J1772 free chargers).
When we got there, I had maybe 85 miles remaining on the battery and I was a bit disappointed to find 2 Volts already occupying the spots and chargers.
I came out an hour later to see both still there, but one of the chargers indicating the white Volt was done charging. I thought about parking in one of the other spots, though they were marked handicap and stretching the cord. By the time I decided to act on the plan, the family who owned the red Volt came out and left so I simply pulled into it's spot.
After 2 hours of charging, I was only up to 96 miles, this being on the slow side of other J1772s (I think only 190v on the circuit).
Since we had to make an exchange at an Apple store anyway, we decided to go to Christiana Mall, which was a bit out of the way (maybe 10-15 miles southeast) but was close to the Newark, DE SuperCharger!
When I got there, there were no other Tesla's around.
There was, however, some guy in an old beater ICE parked in one of the bays and was doing something in the car who missed the obvious sign:
I decided not to bother with him since there was no one else there... Plugged up to 1A and the MS started gobbling up the juice!
I knew how fast these things are, but my mind was still blown by the 262 miles per hour charging. By the time I locked the car to go inside to get a bite to eat, there were already +32 miles on the battery! One thing I noticed is the SuperCharging disables the estimated time remaining like on other chargers.
When I came out 35 minutes later, the battery was at over 260 getting towards max range charge. There were more Tesla's around! I met Kevin who was a fellow Philadelphian who was heading down to Atlanta. We chatted for a bit and talked about his plans to SuperCharge in Glen Allen and Burlington, and then try for a home charger on PlugShare near Charlotte (Gastonia) that showed to have 100A HPWC. The other MS owner stayed in the car (he was from DC based on the plates).
By the time we finished chatting with Kevin, the battery was up to 269! Driving pretty quickly home discharged me to 198.
Based on this experience I conclude that I like SuperCharging!
