[Rant] locals clogging the Highland Park, IL supercharger

[AWDtsla]

Someone had the idea of restricting supercharging rates for anyone with an ownership address within 100 miles of the supercharger, I don't see how that works. All that's going to do is cause people to hang out there even longer and is likely getting into a legal issue, as well as, unnecessary customer angst during abnormal situations.

That would be a disaster. There are trips I cannot make without stopping at a supercharger 50-70 miles away and range charging first, because there aren't enough superchargers.

 

[jeffro01]

That would be a disaster. There are trips I cannot make without stopping at a supercharger 50-70 miles away and range charging first, because there aren't enough superchargers.

Exactly, I tried to stay away from my personal example but it's 85 miles from my house to the Folsom CA supercharger which is a necessary stop on my way to South Lake Tahoe...

Jeff

 

[CatB]

noticed the couple of livery plated Model S's at the super chargers. Now that would PISS me off if I needed to charge fast to be on my way. A local company taking advantage of the free fuel to keep their black car service running. There are abuses to the system. Density is not making it critical in its mass yet. Yet.

This totally drives me nuts. We have same problem at Bethesda SC (which is exasperated because there are only 2 stalls and they're slow). I think Tesla legal should review the supercharger policy and update it to exclude commercial entities ASAP at a minimum. I also liked the idea of reducing charging speeds or adding fees after a certain amount, but...

Does anybody know if/how Tesla might address this??
If they want volunteers to hammer out options, I'm guessing we'd have a few volunteers here.

 

[pvogel]

Take a note from AT&T and there unlimited cell phone internet usage....

Every supercharger within 100 miles of your home, Tesla limits to 5kW charge rate. Slower than the HPWC's.

Therefore Tesla meets its contractual requirement of unlimited charging in the SC network, any local needing an emergency charge can get one to get home, the A-B charger set up allows the B site to still charge at full rate.

If I was a SC abuser at lunch, I wouldn't even plug in for 2.5KwH of power. If I was a SC abuser at home, I couldn't leave my car there overnight.

Anyone upset should go back and listen to what they were told (like AT&T internet abusers), unlimited free access to the SC network. Still true.

Interesting idea, but 100 miles isn't the right answer here because, for example, on the way to Bakersfield from my house in Santa Clara I'm going to want to charge up in Gilroy before going through the Pacheco pass to be sure I can make it to Coalingua/Harris Ranch in my X.

Peter+

 

[hockeythug]

Occam's Razor reasoning, build more superchargers.

 

[dc_h]

Perhaps a robot that would slide under the car and park it nearby? Bezos and Elon aren't on best of terms, but Amazon has a robot that would fit under a car and could move it a short distance.

Occam's Razor reasoning, build more superchargers.

 

[caddieo]

Highland Park is a northern suburb of Chicago, and the median income is 115k/year. .

^^^^THIS. Not surprising. Psychological studies and experiments have confirmed that those who have more are more acquisitive and cheating-prone.

 

[marcad80]

Please don't take 100 miles as the right distance, I just picked that arbitrarily.

The trick would be to pick a distance that's within the circle that these abusers are in. IE: Some greater distance than the average from home to work.

I hadn't considered the legit users that need a close charge as a jumping point to next SCer. This problem should fix itself overtime when the network continues to fill in, but in the meantime I would do like chargepoint did before they sent me my card. When you need to use a SC that's at "Home" call the 1800 number to activate full rate charging. Clearly they know who the abusers are and aren't, if they can sent a letter, they can say "sorry SC are for long distance travel only, thank you" and hang up.

 

[jbcarioca]

Occam's Razor reasoning, build more superchargers.

In the end that is the only solution. In most such situations adding more stations to existing locations might work better than more Supercharger locations but looking five years ahead near-ubiquitous Superchargers in most active Tesla countries will be the solution. Long term they"ll probably end out having to charge for the power.

 

[Kipernicus]

I have long ago said that Elon's promise of free supercharging for life was a bad idea and knew that these sorts of issues would inevitably surface.
It just isn't scalable in the long term because people go to great lengths to take advantage of things they think are free.
It's even worse if they think about an up-front cost and now they want to use it as much as possible to make it "worth it"
For most of these people, it's not a waste of time because they are reading email, talking on the phone, or playing candy crush. Why not get free juice while doing that?
For some of them, they are going shopping or the gym or whatever. Given the placement of some superchargers, that is actually desired behavior.
Slowing the charge rate is totally self defeating, because it won't get those people out of there any faster, and in fact keeps them there longer.

The only way to get the cheapos out of the supercharger is to make it more expensive than charging at home/work. Then only the ones who really need it will use it.
I'm ok with locals who don't have a garage using the supercharger as their primary source, but they should pay a reasonable per-kWh or per-minute charge.
Same goes with livery and other commercial vehicles - they should pay for it.

BUT, we have Elon's promise standing in the way.

"Charging for time not charging" would (technically) not violate the promise, and help keep the cars moving along after they are done charging.
If someone is cheap enough to use the local superchargers all the time, paying for parking time will hurt and they aren't likely to take the attitude of "I'm paying for it so I'm staying here all day!"

Otherwise, yeah Tesla has to keep building 'em.

Here is a very simple solution, that I propose for progressive billing:

• Give owners, many, multiple educational warnings. Accept special situations, and give two more warnings before starting to bill.
• First hour free, even after going to Bill mode.
• Second hour $5.
• Third hour and beyond, $50 per hour.

That gives many chances and even when an owner has been put in the "Bill" mode, the first hour is free and the second hour reasonable. Once in the "Bill" mode, going into the second hour is annoying, and going into the third hour and beyond will get most folks attention.

 

[Archer]

I have long ago said that Elon's promise of free supercharging for life was a bad idea and knew that these sorts of issues would inevitably surface.
It just isn't scalable in the long term because people go to great lengths to take advantage of things they think are free.

This kind of broad statement is disputed by EM himself when he says that 90% of owners don't even use SCs. Are 10% abusers then? I don't think so. Of course there are some who will take advantage but since the vast majority don't, I would hardly consider the mission of free supercharging a failure.

 

[stopcrazypp]

This kind of broad statement is disputed by EM himself when he says that 90% of owners don't even use SCs. Are 10% abusers then? I don't think so. Of course there are some who will take advantage but since the vast majority don't, I would hardly consider the mission of free supercharging a failure.

I had the same thought. Anecdotes about certain stations do not mean the overall idea has failed. They can adjust the supercharger option cost to account for any local users. The idea I threw out is that for locations with lots of local "abuse," convert it to a paid location (not a "supercharger" but a different "brand" in order to keep the same free supercharging promise).

 

[AWDtsla]

This kind of broad statement is disputed by EM himself when he says that 90% of owners don't even use SCs. Are 10% abusers then? I don't think so. Of course there are some who will take advantage but since the vast majority don't, I would hardly consider the mission of free supercharging a failure.

10% could be taking up 90% of supercharger time, sure. Not that I think 10% is the right number.

 

[CTemp222]

I actually live in the northern suburbs of Chicago, and the Highland Park SC/ Service Center was where I first test drove the S. Thst was about a year ago, when I was there I didnt notice any of this. When did you first notice locals waiting to charge? It seems silly how cheap people can be, especially when they live in the Northshore.

 

[RiverBrick]

Occam's Razor reasoning, build more superchargers.

In densely populated areas they will fill up with locals faster than you can build them. Whatever happened to the 2012-early 2014 strategy of placing sites off highways, but in the middle-of-nowhere?

 

[AWDtsla]

In densely populated areas they will fill up with locals faster than you can build them. Whatever happened to the 2012-early 2014 strategy of placing sites off highways, but in the middle-of-nowhere?

I wish I knew. I keep trying to get Tesla to build them in the middle of no-where so it actually possible to go there without huge inconveniences over an ICE, but they keep building new ones close to and in cities. Whatever the plan is, it doesn't seem like free long distance anymore.

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And speaking of Quebec, can't get there from the US on two major interstate highways because of lack of superchargers, 93 or 87. 248/218 miles, respectively. Of course in the winter only going to get ~170 miles out of the car to begin with.

 

[bhzmark]

I'd be more than happy to pay for supercharging, as long as the superchargers were actually available where and when I need them.

+1
Available supercharging at small marginal cost is much better than unavailable supercharging for free.

Should charge $ for supercharging within 50 miles of your home.

 

[Babasnoopy]

Here’s the $10,000 question that kind of makes it or breaks it: @Babasnoopy, are you making it full and creating a line of people waiting to charge?

Never have, never would. I have witnessed the vacant car phenomena many times though. Even the service center has been guilty of this. Charging customer cars or inventory cars for hours. I guess until lines start developing around the Boston area chargers, we will count ourselves lucky.

 

[deonb]

This kind of broad statement is disputed by EM himself when he says that 90% of owners don't even use SCs. Are 10% abusers then? I don't think so. Of course there are some who will take advantage but since the vast majority don't, I would hardly consider the mission of free supercharging a failure.

Thats not what Elon said. He said 90% of charging is done at places other than Superchargers. Nothing to do with % of people using it.

 

[Fezzik]

Wow. Sorry you had a bad experience there. I live just a couple miles from there. I was charging there when I moved and didnt have a charger at home at the time. I had to do that for about 2 months. There was only one time I was there that another car pulled in when the spots were full. I was at 50 percent but they were out of towners, SO I pulled out and let them have it and went home and charged another day.

Also. They have 8 of the HPWC also that are sometimes free. But they installed those to help charge their stock vehicles cause they are the CPO hub and wouldnt use the superchargers up. That was nice of them.