Gremlin
Member
This is why I have a CHAdeMO adapter (besides driving down route 3 in VA -s still an issue) or route 81's lack of Superchargers at the time). Tesla reps listened to me during Tyco store's pre opening gathering. You guys have much bigger battery packs and range. The only time I have ever waited for a supercharger is the Salisbury Supercharger during last year's TelsaRoadTrip.org Tesla meeting (had a ball by the way folks). I noticed there's a Level 3 charger not far from this year's Williamsburgs gathering Highlanders. Aaron stated it shouldn't be a problem. Wait until the Model 3 hits the road (if Supercharging is enabled). Tesla just updated the DE (Newark) Supercharger site to 12 stalls (thank you Lord and Tesla listening to me).
Tesla's Superchargers need to be like ChargePoint's in informing users how many are chargers are in use for a particular site and the number left remaining. Tesla are you listening? I used to be one of the few Tesla in Northern VA. Not anymore as I see the Deep metallic blue, D models nows, and newer Titanium colors (oh I can't stand that deep blue metallic color) please bring back Ocean blue then I'll upgrade ;- P
Tesla's Superchargers need to be like ChargePoint's in informing users how many are chargers are in use for a particular site and the number left remaining. Tesla are you listening? I used to be one of the few Tesla in Northern VA. Not anymore as I see the Deep metallic blue, D models nows, and newer Titanium colors (oh I can't stand that deep blue metallic color) please bring back Ocean blue then I'll upgrade ;- P
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roblab
Active Member
I can see needing to know how many chargers are in use when there are only a couple or three stalls and it takes an hour to charge, but Tesla isn't in that category. By the time you get there, just about all the cars have rotated out and gone on their way. And what's the option? Waiting ten minutes is better than going to find an L2, I would think.
But I don't know. VA is not CA. Tesla is going to have to up its game, but what if they can't? Will some owners sue because they can't access supercharging?? Personally I have only had to wait once, for three minutes, in nearly 100,000 miles. But planning is key.
whitex
Well-Known Member
This is unavoidable and will happen again for sure. There are people without scruples who consider kindness and consideration of others a sign of weakness. Last Christmas at a mall I personally witnessed an couple intentionally gun their Corolla at the parking attendant who was guiding cars waiting in line for open spots. The attendant jumped out of the way, they parked in the freshly opened spot without waiting in line, shrugged their shoulders as they proudly got out of the car and went shopping. As I was actually the one next-in-line who the parking attendant was guiding into the spot, I opened my window and snapped a photo, then drove off (decided to go to a different parking structure). Taking the photo apparently pissed off the woman who started yelling at her companion what I can only guess was to take my picture (she was yelling in what sounded like Chinese, but I'm no expert on Asian languages), because he started fumbling for a phone then ran after my car taking pictures - at least he got some exercise out of this and some nice pics of the rear end of a beautiful Model S. ;-)
roblab
Active Member
But they DO have an option. Right now they choose to charge in the evening after work, and then go home. How many choose to leave an hour early to charge before work? I have been at several chargers early AM, and, guess what!? No cars! I'm just sayin, if you can't get your apartment to put in an outlet (not that hard, many folks have done it, even with a separate meter), then since you want FREE supercharging, you get to charge other times. Or get your work to put in an outlet. There are LOTS OF OPTIONS. One is, don't charge during peak times.
Another is, don't buy an electric car. It's just too hard.
Andyw2100
Well-Known Member
The thing is that this is something that Tesla could do that provides service (or perhaps just perceived service) that essentially costs Tesla nothing once the software is written, bug-checked, and deployed. I'm not suggesting it should be a priority over lots of other software issues that are more pressing. But in my opinion services and software enhancements like this one--things that are either free or dirt cheap for a long time once the initial software is written--are the areas in which Tesla can and should excel.
The firmware should just blow everyone out of the water because once Tesla has coded some improvement for the first car, it's basically free to install it on the next 500,000 cars. Spend the time and effort now making the firmware so amazing there's nothing that compares to it, kind of like much of the other technology is today. I really think that strategy would pay long-term dividends.
Mark Z
Active Member
Can you see into the future of 2020?
Imagine all the Model 3 vehicles...
Flying cross country should reduce the traffic jam.
Imagine all the Model 3 vehicles...
Flying cross country should reduce the traffic jam.
Yes, because like Elon said last night, they're done with the supercharger network build out.
Brutewolf, how do we know that the OP didn't mean Native American when stating Indian woman? But I agree with you that ethnicity doesn't belong here.
Roblab, couldn't agree with you more, when I used to fill my ICE at Costco gas station, I would go at 6:30am on my way to work and no line!
I've noticed at San Juan Capistrano and Fountain Valley Tesla had someone from the Supercharger team there when I charged (mostly in late afternoon). Might be time for Tesla to have valet ervice in San Diego, but I've only had to wait 5 minutes once.
Tesla launches Supercharger valet service
Roblab, couldn't agree with you more, when I used to fill my ICE at Costco gas station, I would go at 6:30am on my way to work and no line!
I've noticed at San Juan Capistrano and Fountain Valley Tesla had someone from the Supercharger team there when I charged (mostly in late afternoon). Might be time for Tesla to have valet ervice in San Diego, but I've only had to wait 5 minutes once.
Tesla launches Supercharger valet service
Sir Guacamolaf
The good kind of fat
I hate to say this, but today you have ~100K supercharger capable vehicles on the road.
By end of 2018, you will have 1/2 a million supercharger capable vehicles on the road.
That is a 5x increase.
The 2x promised expansion won't be enough for 3 reasons,
a) 5x > 2x by a lot, and the network is already overloaded in many places.
b) We may not see 2x.
c) Most of that 2x will be overseas in India and China.
So yeah you're going to see more of these fist fights at superchargers.
In 2-3 years, this is gonna be a big problem.
To me this is so obvious, Ray Charles blind folded on a dark night dancing with Hellen Keller could tell you this.
By end of 2018, you will have 1/2 a million supercharger capable vehicles on the road.
That is a 5x increase.
The 2x promised expansion won't be enough for 3 reasons,
a) 5x > 2x by a lot, and the network is already overloaded in many places.
b) We may not see 2x.
c) Most of that 2x will be overseas in India and China.
So yeah you're going to see more of these fist fights at superchargers.
In 2-3 years, this is gonna be a big problem.
To me this is so obvious, Ray Charles blind folded on a dark night dancing with Hellen Keller could tell you this.
Sir Guacamolaf
The good kind of fat
Also I'd like to add, if I was waiting in line, and some jerk cut me off in the line, I'd be quite mad too, especially because they'll sit there charging for the next 30mins to hour or so. IMO Tesla needs to address the supercharger abuse issue a bit more sternly. I am not sure how that would be though .. 
Yes, because like Elon said last night, the supercharger buildout will stop at the end of 2017 and to hell with the half million cars that will hit the road in 2018.
Sir Guacamolaf
The good kind of fat
Your tone sounded surprisingly sarcastic, or perhaps I'm being sensitive.
Elon also said 2x a buildout by end of 2017. And Elon didn't say 5x the buildout by end of 2018.
2x is QUITE a ramp up from what they have so far. 5x by end of 2018 would be quite an incredible ramp up.
I'm only going by what Elon said, under the assumption that he delivers on the dates and numbers he promises (historically untrue), we still have a big issue.
Either way, I do hope I am wrong. But I do hate to be right about these things.
ggr
Expert in Dunning-Kruger Effect!
ShotgunF15E
Member
Elon never promised you'd never have to wait in line at a SuperCharger. Just like I may have to wait at Costco. Go at a different time or go somewhere else or don't buy the car. Pretty simple folks....if you want more stations, complain to Tesla.
Elon said that the factory was capable of producing 500K cars a year when it was run by Toyota/GM, not that he would be making 500K cars in 2018. Given that part of the factory space is an indoor QC test track, I doubt whether it will ever produce that many cars during a year--and certainly it won't during the first year when Model 3 production ramps up from zero. (Tesla will likely add a second or third factory in Europe and Asia to serve those markets.) Recall the Model S ramp up time. The Model 3 ramp up time should be similar (and we'll have the same whining posts). I'd guess we're looking at 2020 before the factory reaches it's full potential and maybe not then.
Bear in mind that this same argument (too many cars for the SC) was made when production was 20K, and for the vast majority of locations it hasn't come true. While I don't doubt that there will always be some locations with wait times, there are some gas station locations with very long wait times and they have been building them for over 100 years.
The problem with that is the information you've described would only be helpful if you are both close to the station and able to easily reach the next one - and even then, the information on the next station would be dangerously obsolete by the time you got near it, and you might have a delay there that's longer than the one you would have had at the original station.
Having said that, I think there is an opportunity here, and I'm pretty sure you'll see Tesla creating firmware to take advantage of it eventually. As I've pointed out a couple of times, what you need isn't the current status of the Supercharger - it's the status it will have when you would get there. The problem is, no one can know the future, right?
Well, Tesla can. Or at least, Tesla can model it with fairly good accuracy if they assemble all of the data they have access to. Tesla knows the real time status of every charger, the charging habits of every car, and the navigation plans of all the cars on longer trips using built in navigation.
With that information, Tesla can not only predict that the three cars eastbound out of Silverthrone and the four westbound out of Limon are all going to meet at the Denver area just as the afternoon rush draws local or semi-local folks to the chargers, but they can try to mitigate it - use the navigation to route some cars to Denver and others to Lone Tree so that neither site overloads (or if the crush is bad enough, so that both sites have about the same overload.)
This is how I'd expect it to work. Tesla would build a (weekly? monthly?) historical model for the local/semi-local non-Navigation usage, and use it to predict stall availability for a given time on a given day. As each car gets a navigation through superchargers request handed to it by the driver, it would go to a Tesla server and put up estimated arrival times.
When the model suggests an overload, the server would hand back an alternate set of superchargers instead (where possible - right now there are a lot of chains where this isn't really doable, but it'll become more practical in more places as time goes on. Even single route chains might be mostly deconflicted by charging a little higher at some stations and a little less at others.) Just like the traffic routing part of the Navigation, it'll consider multiple options and give you back the trip that should be the shortest time for you - including both current/anticipated traffic volume and anticipated supercharger delays.
No user would ever be forced to follow the route plan and schedule or leave a station "on time", but most likely enough folks would that Tesla can avoid most of the delays and get a lot more usage out of the same group of stations.
(Implicit in making this work is getting reliable models of each car's energy usage in the actual weather conditions and realistic supercharger routing in Navigation, but I believe both of those are well within Tesla's grasp right now - the car can see in real time the actual consumption relative to both speed and acceleration in addition to real time weather and forecasts, so it should be easily able to compensate for you putting three people in the car or adding a bicycle on the roof from the actual energy consumption as well as head winds and freezing rain. The data's all there, easily in Tesla's reach. It just takes smart code to take advantage of it.
)Walter
Lol.
That's my point. Humans have an inexplicable tendency to ignore all reason and logic whenever it's convenient. It's the 'forest through the trees' problem. In this case, the trees being Elon's words.
The fate of The Vision, The Company, and The Supercharger Network are one in the same; the panic and hysteria over the notion of gas-crisis lines and bare knuckle battles at superchargers is unfounded.
jeffro01
Active Member
It'll be interesting to see just what happens when someone rolls up to a supercharger site which is full of Model 3's... I can see an S or X owner expecting one, or more, of the Model 3's to move to give them a spot.
I'm not saying all Model S\X owners would take such a stance before anyone jumps on me for that, I'm just saying that I can see it happening...
Tesla's expansion plans, given the insane amount of Model 3 preorders, are significantly short of the potential need. This is going to set the stage for things to get potentially ugly....
Jeff
I'm not saying all Model S\X owners would take such a stance before anyone jumps on me for that, I'm just saying that I can see it happening...
Tesla's expansion plans, given the insane amount of Model 3 preorders, are significantly short of the potential need. This is going to set the stage for things to get potentially ugly....
Jeff
That seems like a completely unreasonable expectation to me. Does a Signature P90 owner have a right to expect a S60 owner to move? What about an XP90DL signature expecting an X70 owner to move?
Both of those folks paid far more for their earlier, fancier cars than a typical S owner has over a future 3 owner, and Tesla made the same promises to all of those folks. What possible justification for such entitlement could there be?
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