Welcome to Tesla Motors Club
Discuss Tesla's Model S, Model 3, Model X, Model Y, Cybertruck, Roadster and More.
Register

Supercharger - Burbank, CA (Service Center, no longer on nav map)

This site may earn commission on affiliate links.
I agree with that too. Somebody who leaves a car parked in a SC spot long past when it's charged should not be doing that. Tesla should be able to tell when that happens without intervention. There might be extreme cases, such as a person plugging in at 2AM when all spots are empty, getting a few hours' sleep at a nearby motel, and hitting the road before there's anything close to a wait, but in general there's no justification for leaving a car parked when you don't expect to get back when it's done. Even if you are the only one there when you arrive, and are the only one there when you get back, it doesn't mean you were the only one there while your car was parked.

To be fair, I've never heard of a SpC being completely full between 11 PM - 7 AM (which is when most folks would leave their car overnight). I agree though that Tesla needs to crack down on folks who drop their car off at 12 noon and drive off in another car and don't return for a couple hours.
 
Awful. I just don't understand how they could build such a small site. I guess a small station is better than none.
Just curious, were there any cars there without their drivers?

Seems like if you were trying to get back to Santa Barbara, you would only need 60 rated miles to make it to Oxnard.
 
Everything I've been hearing about locals clogging this supercharger has really gotten me worried. I was originally excited about the prospect of this being a good "final top-off" stop on Disneyland road trips (given the lack of good destination charging at the near-the-park hotels we'd actually stay at in Anaheim).

If you park in the Mickey and Friends structure at Disneyland, there are EV chargers in there. Don't know if you have to pay (blink or others) but they've directed to me chargers before but I declined and didn't need to since I live so close.
 
If you park in the Mickey and Friends structure at Disneyland, there are EV chargers in there. Don't know if you have to pay (blink or others) but they've directed to me chargers before but I declined and didn't need to since I live so close.

I haven't needed to charge at that structure, but I do know that you need to get there early if you want a charging spot. Those spots are taken up in the morning, and it seems nobody goes back to move their car when charging is done.
 
They are Chargepoint chargers but they are awful to use. Leafs and Fiats mostly when I was there, but because of the unclear and poor design, owners were using plugs from the next stall over. I had to back my car in from the wrong direction in order to pull a plug from next stall that had an open plug. Ugh. I only did this once because I didn't want to stop at a SC after leaving the park at midnight. Still, you have Hawtorne, Redondo, Fountain Valley and Culver City within 30 miles.

As far as the Burbank SC, I find that it is full more often than not. Still, never had to wait more than 15 mins. Also, Santa Ana SC is now permitted so hopefully that will handle more of Orange County traffic.
 
By any chance did you get that car's info? I would report it to TM.

Tesla knows. they can see exactly how long someone is plugged in. It's up to them to take any action or not. I believe they let it pass for a while and only contact owners when it becomes a pattern or excessive. Sometimes people fall asleep in their cars or forget or just don't know yet.
 
BTW, there is some construction going on next to the Burbank SC. Maybe they are moving the Superchargers over there and expand it. The current on could be just a temporary one.

As long as this location took to get turned up after construction. Augment first, rather than move is what I hope they would do (should that construction be Tesla related.)
 
BTW, there is some construction going on next to the Burbank SC. Maybe they are moving the Superchargers over there and expand it. The current on could be just a temporary one.
If anyone in that area can get photos of the "constr7uction" being referred to, that could help us determine if it is for more Supercharger stalls. I've only charged there twice, and one time I had to wait for awhile.
 
It's just speculation, but it seems the two properties are connected. I just can't believe Tesla would build a Supercharger in such a high demand area (along the I5 and 134/101, which are in the nations top 10 busiest freeways) and only have 6 stalls.

Considering that Burbank Power was the hold-up, it might be that they didn't believe the power requirements that Tesla's SC team requested.

I believe @Lotsadriving mentioned the challenge when Fountain Valley was going in...

Between what hours? Did they prevent anyone from charging? If not, no harm no foul IMO.

I completely disagree with @apacheguy on this. It's a supercharger stall that fills a car up in an hour and change (from empty)... Considering that I ran across a White Model X that was doing the same thing at Rancho Cucamonga.

IMG_20160409_192745 by Dennis Pascual, on Flickr

Vin 14XX was there for at least an hour and a half (not to mention the i3 that was charging J1772 from the Supercharger) [there are two J1772 on the other side of the stalls.) (here's my post on this - Supercharger - Rancho Cucamonga)
 
Best practice would indicate that using SCs as overnight parking spaces is a Bad Idea whether or not anyone was inconvenienced.

A) these are not Level 2 chargers, and B) it takes very little time to move one's noble chariot 20 feet to a non-SC space after charging is complete.

Can't wait to see technology solve this problem through a combination of Summon and relatively new GPS-enabled mapping down to inches rather than feet.

We already see inconsiderate overnight ICEing with hotel HPWCs. One never knows who else might want to charge at whatever hour. Further, SCs can go from empty to full in minutes.

Example: Cheyenne, WY after the annual Sound of Silence Custer rally every May, in which everyone should participate at least once. 2 SCs were broken, then worked, then were broken again in the space of a week or two. Couldn't tell by looking at them. Meanwhile, owners are coming through. When you've got dozens of cars coming from wherever at whatever hour at unknown intervals, the last thing you want to see is ICEing by our own - and that's what overnight unattended parking is.

Better to simply ingrain the best practice of exiting the stall once the charge is complete. Mostly because people aren't psychic and neither are the SCs. Yet.

I would pay money to hear a car make uncomfortable noises if it had been left too long in an SC space. A recorded C3PO voice perhaps: "My owner doesn't care about me... Oh, dear - my inner Leaf is showing."

Or if perhaps the car just called the owner of record every 5 minutes until they came to move the car.

Lots of opportunity for education with that quarterly newsletter some intern should manage.
 
  • Like
Reactions: callmesam
@AEdennis - Not what I said. Someone was prevented from charging. That's a no, no.

Just trying to ascertain the facts. Was someone prevented from charging? Yes or no will suffice.

The only way to know would be to sit there all night watching all the chargers. It's a safe bet that at a location with few chargers that is regularly backed up during the day, there's a much greater chance of inconveniencing somebody than if it were at a location with many chargers that is usually mostly empty during peak daytime hours. Burbank is on what is probably the single most used long distance route for Teslas in the entire world. More Teslas are sold in the US than anywhere else. Half of those are sold in California. The two largest concentrations are in the LA area and the Bay Area. The trip between the two has Burbank on it.

The car is going to route me through Burbank on any trip I take to the area, and I might get there at night. If it's the night before any major event whatsoever, there are going to be others doing the same thing.

That being said, it would be very difficult to tell who is parked overnight without watching the car overnight. I've had trips where other cars on the road stop at every charger I do, meaning they might consistently get there a few minutes before I do. I've also taken trips where I've seen the same car on the way over and the way back, and the trip planner will pick the same stops. That means I see a car there, it might be there when I leave, and when I get back two days later it might still be there. All it takes is the person getting there a few minutes before I do each time, and deciding to eat there when I decide to leave a few minutes before the other car finishes. The times when it happened, I did see the cars either arrive or leave each time so I know they weren't there overnight, but a change of a few minutes on the trip would have meant otherwise.
 
For some context, check out supercharge.info - the midwest is en fuego (with apologies to midwestern Canada atm), permit-wise, and the northeast is as well construction-wise. A nice recovery halfway through the year by the SC teams in total.

Who knows - maybe they'll light up Nebraska and the Great Alaskan Highway before getting around to the I-10 Supercharger Wasteland betweenst Tucson and San Antonio. There is of course no hope for now the 3rd year in a row, despite forecasts to the contrary, for the completion of the first safe, year-round transcontinental route (that being I-10) that does not require chains or AWD or sometimes both.

Meanwhile, Burbank... Wouldn't have thought of Burbank as a vital stop to anywhere - with no offense to Burbank or its denizens.

With regard to supercharging in general, the position that it's okay to use a supercharger space as a parking space needs to stop - networkwide, and with a quickness. It is an untenable position, supportable neither by best practice nor by common sense.

With any luck, a sharp intern will be able to code a way out of this festering malaise. At least to include a more functional nag in the app that triggers 3% prior to the car's specific charge complete setting, with the text of that nag being a tad more educational. "Please return to your car a few minutes before the charge is complete in order to vacate the space immediately after the charge is complete" but shorter, of course would suffice nicely. I wish they could clone Ben, who presumably will start his internship by first adding much-needed value to that other malaise known as Trip Planner.

This may not be a big deal now in the more rural areas (DISTANCE versus DENSITY), but it will be. Can't wait for a competent periodic newsletter as well as for the Tesla app to push timely notifications with some inherent logic.