Supercharger - Barstow (EXPANDED, 5 stalls added, now 16 total)

[jeffro01]

Tony Williams provided the photo & here is one of his comments from insideevs...View attachment 203285

So Tesla hasn't secured the area & its going to take a week to replace 1 panel & a 4 circuit breakers?

People have to keep in mind that it's not all about parts availability, it's also about labor availability... Tesla doesn't have electricians on staff for this, they contract all of that out... So not only do they have to secure the parts they have to secure someone to do the work... I'm sure they are working as hard and as fast as they can but the timing couldn't have been worse...

Jeff

 

[McRat]

I know when I added a couple machines the low amp 480 breakers were over $250 each at discount. Here's used high amp breakers for 480 service:

Amazon.com: Buying Choices: SQUARE D LA36400 400A 600V 3P 30K NEW

Edit: So a rogue contractor would certain snap up stolen breakers, or steal them themselves.

 

[ecarfan]

That post by Tony Williams supports the theory that the damage to the Barstow Supercharger was intended to shut down the chargers. It was not a case of random vandalism. While those circuit breakers cost hundreds of dollars each, I am skeptical that this was a case of theft for profit given the timing of the incident, but I can't rule that out.

 

[jeffro01]

That post by Tony Williams supports the theory that the damage to the Barstow Supercharger was intended to shut down the chargers. It was not a case of random vandalism. While those circuit breakers cost hundreds of dollars each, I am skeptical that this was a case of theft for profit given the timing of the incident.

I suspect it's a disgruntled union laborer who was pissed about something... Given the surgical nature of the damage, this wasn't done by an amateur...

Jeff

 

[4SUPER9]

At the same time, I just found out that some friends were on A cross country trip and visiting the outlet malls there in Barstow, when their car was broken into and all their luggage was stolen.

 

[e-FTW]

For those of you affected by this outage, and planning to make the trip, I recommend using Teslawinds. You'll need to setup accounts for two services before you can load it in the car, but the data it provides (local wind conditions and elevation changes) could be invaluable:
Tesla Winds and Elevation Web Browser App

 

[brkaus]

At the same time, I just found out that some friends were on A cross country trip and visiting the outlet malls there in Barstow, when their car was broken into and all their luggage was stolen.

Sounds like a nice safe community

What type of car did they have?

 

[SW2Fiddler]

So a trip to Vegas could be a gamble? Who'd a thunk.

I feel like reporting my post for insensitivity to a serious incident. I don't really feel flippant about it. It's a resource, a power delivery utility really.

My hometown's public radio station had their transmitter destroyed by terrorists -twice.

Glad to hear the Nav App is routing appropriately. Hope to hear of progress in the sabotage investigation.

Reportage of any queues around turkey travel day will mention the intentional, human-caused damage, eh?

 

[mmccord]

first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win

Looks like Tesla is well into step 3.

 

[Brovane]

People have to keep in mind that it's not all about parts availability, it's also about labor availability... Tesla doesn't have electricians on staff for this, they contract all of that out... So not only do they have to secure the parts they have to secure someone to do the work... I'm sure they are working as hard and as fast as they can but the timing couldn't have been worse...

Jeff

Sorry I don't buy this. Tesla has known about the SC being down 11/19 and it is now the 23rd. This is more than enough time to overnight parts from anywhere in the US or even overseas if needed. It wasn't like major damage was done to the SC site, just critical parts have been removed. They could easily have paid OT to get a electrical contractor onsite. With this amount of time they could have pulled a team from another site and put them on a airplane and sent them to Barstow. This site is fairly critical for the Southern CA to LV drive. The fact that they have not better planned for something like this makes me wonder.

 

[AWDtsla]

Sorry I don't buy this. Tesla has known about the SC being down 11/19 and it is now the 23rd. This is more than enough time to overnight parts from anywhere in the US or even overseas if needed. It wasn't like major damage was done to the SC site, just critical parts have been removed. They could easily have paid OT to get a electrical contractor onsite. With this amount of time they could have pulled a team from another site and put them on a airplane and sent them to Barstow. This site is fairly critical for the Southern CA to LV drive. The fact that they have not better planned for something like this makes me wonder.

You don't know that, the person doing to repairs would have to judge that, and apparently they have. Also, they probably didn't touch it until the police could look at it, file reports/etc/etc.

 

[EVCarGUy]

So Tesla hasn't secured the area

That's stunning, isn't it?

 

[C_A_Braun]

I think there will be a major problem. Most people do not peruse the forums like we do. In addition, the software is still routing people to Barstow as long as it is listed as one leg of the trip. Only if you try to choose Barstow will the alert appear. There will be a lot of people stuck and TM will have to provide tow trucks to get them to the next SC.

When I traveled this route last weekend, the nav software DID NOT route me to the Barstow SC. When I was curious why, I tried to put in the Barstow SC as my destination and got a response back from the software that it was offline. Therefore I went back to the original route that was planned for me by the software which was my home to Mojave to Primm to my home in Henderson. Coming back the opposite direction was the same.

 

[C_A_Braun]

So contrary to what some others have reported in this thread recently, the car nav knows that Barstow is not available right now. For my route it clearly indicates that I have to do a full charge in Mohave to get to Primm, which is about 183 miles (an S60 could maybe make that at 55-60mph with no significant headwinds). The displayed route doesn't even show the Barstow Supercharger, but I noticed that while it was calculating the route the map did show Barstow but not with the usual symbol, it showed a different and grey-out symbol which I assume indicated that the Barstow Supercharger was not available to the route planning software.

So the Tesla car nav appears to be smarter than some people think it is.

Yep, the nav is fine at routing around Barstow right now. And for the record we made it last weekend in our S60 from Mojave to Primm on a full charge (212 range). We did the speed limit the whole way (45 to 70 depending on the stretch of road at the time) and made it to Primm with 28 miles left. Coming back we did the same (may have hit 75-80 a time or two) and made it from Primm to Mojave with 25 miles left.

 

[Brovane]

You don't know that, the person doing to repairs would have to judge that, and apparently they have. Also, they probably didn't touch it until the police could look at it, file reports/etc/etc.

Ok - Damage done on the 19th. Police called, police should have their reports filed and survey of the damage within 8-24 hours. However the Police don't know what they are looking at. Tesla will need to submit a report to the Police as to what is damaged and cost of repairs. There isn't really that much for the Police to do but take some pictures and wait for Tesla to fill them in on the details. Barstow is less than 2-hours from LA area, plenty of resources to get a electrician out to Barstow. You mean to tell me in all of Southern CA, Tesla cannot find any qualified electricians that they can pay to go out to Barstow within 24-hour of this happening? Survey of damage should have been completed by the 21st, and necessary parts ordered. I have a hard time imaging that all the parts are not someplace in Southern CA, send a Tesla employee to collect the parts and drive them out to Barstow and hand deliver to the team onsite and get the repairs started. Kind of disturbing that on the 11/22 nobody was around and no signs it was out of service. Seriously nobody from Tesla thought to put a sign up? SC out of service our apologizes, if you are stuck please call this number. To me it seems like somebody at Tesla really dropped the ball on this.

 

[tinm]

I'm dismayed that Tesla's handling of this situation is so sloppy. This is the kind of thing that they should be able to manage swiftly and confidently on all fronts, but it sure doesn't look like that's happening. Who is accountable? Who within Tesla owns this? What are they doing right now?

 

[aesculus]

UPDATE to my earlier post: I just entered "Las Vegas NV" as a nav destination in my S85 which currently shows 220 miles of range. I live near San Francisco. The resulting route displayed in the nav took me as follows:

Gilroy (charge for 15 minutes) / Harris Ranch (charge for 50 minutes) / Mohave (charge for 60 minutes) / Primm (charge for 15 minutes) / arrive in Las Vegas with 29% SOC.

So contrary to what some others have reported in this thread recently, the car nav knows that Barstow is not available right now.
...

So the Tesla car nav appears to be smarter than some people think it is.

Maybe, but not necessarily. I have seen the exact same behavior with a full set of chargers. In my car the Trip planner has skipped superchargers when it could charge enough to get to every other one.

However that created longer overall trips because the amount of charging required to skip the next charger was actually longer than charging less and then stopping at the next charger for 20 minutes.

 

[cmbdole]

Just called Tesla help desk and they said the charging station is back online. Can anyone confirm that?

 

[jeffro01]

Man some of you really need to take a freaking chill pill... I swear, some of you would complain no matter what Tesla did... Say they fixed it in 12 hours, you'd be here complaining they didn't do it in 11...

Some of you have absolutely zero idea how logistics works... You simply cannot pick up the phone book and call the nearest electrician, it simply doesn't work that way...

Jeff

 

[Gizmotoy]

Man some of you really need to take a freaking chill pill... I swear, some of you would complain no matter what Tesla did... Say they fixed it in 12 hours, you'd be here complaining they didn't do it in 11...

Some of you have absolutely zero idea how logistics works... You simply cannot pick up the phone book and call the nearest electrician, it simply doesn't work that way...

Jeff

Assuming it was fixed today, that's a 3 business day response time. That's on the longish side for critical infrastructure. I don't know how Tesla's service contracts work, but in areas we operate we typically keep a contractor essentially on retainer: if our system goes down, they must respond within X amount of time. In our case it's 12 hours, but that probably doesn't make sense for Superchargers. In any case, the point is we're not hunting through the phone book trying to find someone to do the work.

In all likelihood, Tesla has something similar in place. Had it just been clipped or disconnected wires, maybe it could have been back up quickly. But combine it with component theft the contractor doesn't keep in stock and maybe you have a problem. It seems pretty likely to me that Tesla's going to have some of these breakers available in each region in the future.