Do not know if this has been talked about before, is there a way to determine if the superchargers are in use or available?
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Supercharger availability
- Thread starter Merrill
- Start date
dhrivnak
Active Member
Curious why is this much of a deal? With an average of 5+ bays and a 30 minute recharge time one is talking about a average of 6 minutes before a bay is open.
Not sure on the 5+ bays. Barstow only has 4 and is probably the busiest on weekends. Have heard of others waiting 30 mins to over an hour to charge. Not everyone is courteous and is standing by there car when it is finished. So, availability of superchargers is needed.
But if you need to supercharge . . . don't you need it whether or not you may have to wait? I guess it's nice to know there'll be a wait, but not knowing how long it'd be, and wanting to get charged as soon as you could (I think), I think I'd want to be there waiting for it to free up.
My first use is coming up in a few weeks, and knowing won't help me. I'll have to wait by the Superchargers till one is free, since I'll be on a road trip and actually need it. I guess if I didn't need it (but then, why use it?), it'd be different.
IMHO more useful things would be (a) a dry-erase board where the current charger could write his/her cell #, (b) a dry-erase board where someone waiting for a charge could write his/her cell #, and (c) an alert system so one would get a text when their car finished charging at a Supercharger. I think (c) would partially remove the need for (a).
BTW I'm not saying busy/free info shouldn't be done--it should, of course--I just don't feel it'll be very helpful on road trips, which after all is the primary purpose of supercharging (IMHO, anyway). I may change my tune in a few weeks. ;-)
This is a wild guess, but I'm guessing that eventually the mobile app's will support this feature. Why? While traveling and using the Harris Ranch superchargers we found the new superchargers first (by mistake) before they were active (even though they looked active) and called TM. The nice guy who answered said he could see that one was active so I'm assuming that the supercharger is somehow sending back info to some service. TM just needs to make that API available to the mobile app's and the app's need to take advantage of that API.
Here's how I see (wish) it will work: Open the mobile app and click on location where it shows your car in the middle. And will also show Supercharger status. Click on a Supercharger station and it displays another page with status of each port. This way you'll have a better idea how much time is left for a given car.
Here's how I see (wish) it will work: Open the mobile app and click on location where it shows your car in the middle. And will also show Supercharger status. Click on a Supercharger station and it displays another page with status of each port. This way you'll have a better idea how much time is left for a given car.
Babylonfive
Power12
I used to think a 'tag' of some sort, that the owner would attach to the cord or place in their dash, could display their cell number, but I like the erase marker board idea better. It's in the right place, and can be erased when you leave. Only improvement would be some electronics/server support by Tesla themselves - the owner (known automatically by the supercharger) would just alert the owner it's done? <sigh> Sorry, once an engineer...
In Seoul, South Korea, just about every car has the owner's cell number displayed prominently on top of the dashboard facing out of the windscreen (Or attached to a corner of the windscreen itself) and there's a whole market selling these "cell number display signs" - some come with a light sensor to illuminate the cell number when it turns dark outside.
Once they improve the authentication so that you can safely give third-party web services access to parts of your account (OAuth, app-specific tokens, whatever), I predict that there will be a sudden burst of services providing useful service like this. "Supercharging complete" is one of the emails that my home server will send me from polling the web api.
After completing a 750 miles supercharger round trip, what I'd really like to see provided either virtually on the phone app/car display or physically on the superchargers themselves (green/yelllow/red LED or something) is information on which bay has the most current available from the pairing. If an entire pair is free, it's easy, but otherwise there's no good way to tell other than guess and check which of the other cars is the furthest along in their charge.
After completing a 750 miles supercharger round trip, what I'd really like to see provided either virtually on the phone app/car display or physically on the superchargers themselves (green/yelllow/red LED or something) is information on which bay has the most current available from the pairing. If an entire pair is free, it's easy, but otherwise there's no good way to tell other than guess and check which of the other cars is the furthest along in their charge.
All of this brings up the fact that to date TM has provided virtually no guidance in the use of the SC. I hear anecdotal stories on this forum about how there is supposed to be twelve pacts, 8 committed to the one station, 4 to another, with substantially different charge rates. Also that once the 8 pack user disconnects, those 8 don't automatically shift over to the other station. Only after the second station re-initiates a charge. And what is the arrangement? If there are 4 stations, labeled 1-A, 1-B, 2-A, 2-B, which ones are paired? Do A's matchup or 1's? All makes the process feel very beta-like. Like they really haven't finalized how it works.
Locations with 6 chargers have 1a,1b,2a,2b,3a,3b, so the number identifies a stack shared between a and b. It seems like they're set up so that you want to be spaced out evenly when possible.
I definitely agree with that. I personally suspect that getting this all sorted out is part of what's been delaying the nationwide rollout. That and the sexy red u-shaped charge connector that they have at Hawthorne now
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How about the protocol for how the stack is shared? Again, i've only seen anecdotal comments. Need something in writing, preferably at the SC location.Locations with 6 chargers have 1a,1b,2a,2b,3a,3b, so the number identifies a stack shared between a and b. It seems like they're set up so that you want to be spaced out evenly when possible.
I definitely agree with that. I personally suspect that getting this all sorted out is part of what's been delaying the nationwide rollout. That and the sexy red u-shaped charge connector that they have at Hawthorne now
A couple supplemental ideas:
- Since the cars are connected via 3G why not connect the Superchargers as well? (I don't know how this would work in an area with poor cell reception, though.) When checking the Superchargers via the Maps feature, it could show "Supercharger at X location has Y bays free".
- If you park close to a Supercharger (where all of the bays are full) the Tesla App could alert you that one (or more) bays are free (or that a charging car will be done in Z minutes). This wouldn't be much help if the owner(s) of the charging vehicle(s) are out shopping or getting a bite to eat, though.
strider
Active Member
Gilroy is NOT like this. There it is: 1a, 2a, 1b, 2b. So if a car is in the left-most slot, you want to plug in right next to them. I mistakenly thought it was as you had stated above. When I rolled into Gilroy there was one car charging so I skipped a spot and plugged in. Only got half-speed. Moved over to right next to the other car and got full-speed.
I'd forgotten about Gilroy - thanks for the correction. Yet another reason why they need some way to show which one to use
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I'd forgotten about Gilroy - thanks for the correction. Yet another reason why they need some way to show which one to use
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And need more charging bays in Gilroy. Of all SC locations, this one now seems to have the most reports of waiting.
I have not used a supercharger yet, plan on going to the Folsom in the near future. Is there anything special I need to know about when I plug in, what comes up on the display.
Same as plugging in at home. Except the charging speed and amperage showing on the 17" screen are just a little different.
If there are a mix of the U-shaped chargers and other ones (which I believe Folsom had if I remember correctly), use the U-shaped ones - the cable is longer and easier to plug in. Sometimes the door release buttons don't work as well as a home connector in my experience. Either be persistent or open the charge port from the screen in the car.
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