Supercharger - Fountain Valley (LIVE 28 Aug 2015, Expanded 27 Oct 2017, 16 stalls)

[thecloud]

Interesting! On his Twitter account, the guy seems to be claiming that he is "first to hack the System" and presumably is actually charging. The other photo in the Twitter post appears to show that he's plugged in.

If this is actually a thing, and not just a troll, I'm sure we'll hear lots about it soon.

Edit: here's a photo of the Tesla charging port installed in the Karma.

 

[TexasEV]

if powersourcetech hasn't received a cease and desist letter from Tesla's attorneys yet I hope it happens first thing Mondsy morning.

 

[4SUPER9]

if powersourcetech hasn't received a cease and desist letter from Tesla's attorneys yet I hope it happens first thing Mondsy morning.

Yep. Sounds like a straight forward case of theft to me. To be clear, definitely a crime. If I was to hack the Blink network, or the Chargepoint network, and charge "for free" that would certainly be theft too. This guy was dumb enough to brag about it too.

 

[bkp_duke]

20.1kwh battery in those things would not take long to charge.

Plus, and this is my biggest concern, the voltage and amp regulation would be suspect. Can you say "Another FK fire?"

 

[dennis]

if powersourcetech hasn't received a cease and desist letter from Tesla's attorneys yet I hope it happens first thing Mondsy morning.

Is it possible that the first Tesla Supercharger partnership is with Karma Automotive?

 

[ecarfan]

if powersourcetech hasn't received a cease and desist letter from Tesla's attorneys yet I hope it happens first thing Mondsy morning.

Agreed. That Karma owner is generating some really bad karma. That is theft.

 

[dennis]

Agreed. That Karma owner is generating some really bad karma. That is theft.

I have it on good authority that Tesla management is aware of this experiment and did not object.

 

[ecarfan]

I have it on good authority that Tesla management is aware of this experiment and did not object.

Well that is an impressive display of tolerance.

 

[thecloud]

"Good hacking is a gift." -- somebody else on Twitter, 5 March 2016

Curious to know what he did to make this work. If he was able to hack the authentication protocol, that's probably not good at all. But if he took the (enabled) charger from a Model S that he owns and retrofitted it, that sounds like a nifty hack. I'm imagining the Car of Theseus, which started as a Model S and then had most of its parts replaced with Karma parts. On second thought, I guess that would be a crime against humanity.

Time for a new thread if this goes any further...

 

[TEG]

If you look at their Instagram feed you can see lots of pictures of wrecked Model S and Karma parts being 'Frankensteined' together.
I bet that Karma has a real Tesla charge inlet, and probably a much bigger battery pack than a stock Karma.
PowerSource (@powersourcetech) • Instagram photos and videos

 

[dennis]

If you look at their Instagram feed you can see lots of pictures of wrecked Model S and Karma parts being 'Frankensteined' together.

Looks like they pulled off a really smooth operation

 

[trils0n]

From the Instragram it has a Model S inlet, and it looks like two Model S drive units. Dual Motor (in a different way) Karma. Interesting.

 

[Saghost]

From the Instragram it has a Model S inlet, and it looks like two Model S drive units. Dual Motor (in a different way) Karma. Interesting.

I thought it was interesting that they both appear to be the larger motors from RWD or performance Ss. That means there's a whole lot of power and torque available if they can build a battery pack that can handle it.

It also presumably means a lot of new code, since they can't simply repurpose Tesla D inverter firmware...

 

[joebob73]

Was there yesterday and charging initially seemed to kickoff well at 102kW. However, after about 10 minutes, dropped to 28kW and stayed that way throughout the entire charge cycle. It took me about 50 minutes to go from 30% to 84% charge.

 

[No2DinosaurFuel]

People need to move their cars when they are done. Saw two guys coming out of a restaurant at the same time to pick up their teslas supercharging. One of them was for sure done charging because I was sucking most if not all the juice when I got there until I left all before the guys even drove off. There were some people waiting.

 

[SoCal Jimmy]

Drove past this location twice today to try and get a little reserve top off.
The first time there were 4 cars waiting and the second time around 12:45 was 11!!!! Everyone was in the middle of the parking lot shrugging shoulders and looking at each other. Such a mess and to top it off there's no valet person anymore because of all the fighting/altercations that's been going on recently at that location, so it's even worse now.

 

[rfmurphy81]

Drove past this location twice today to try and get a little reserve top off.
The first time there were 4 cars waiting and the second time around 12:45 was 11!!!! Everyone was in the middle of the parking lot shrugging shoulders and looking at each other. Such a mess and to top it off there's no valet person anymore because of all the fighting/altercations that's been going on recently at that location, so it's even worse now.

Sometimes I drive by on Newhope St. to skip freeway traffic from HB to north OC. Every time, I notice there's at least 3 cars waiting at all hours throughout the day. I'm quite surprised to hear there were 11 cars waiting just now AND the valet is no longer there.

It seems curious that they only have 8 stalls when there's room in that area to easily double or triple that based on the traffic through that location, assuming the property owner is comfortable with the expansion.

I would recommend emailing [email protected] to report the issue and request that they expand the number of chargers here. While adding locations in Santa Ana and Buena Park should help distribute the "fun", it makes sense to expand existing locations with excessive congestion as I have doubts that the new locations will make Fountain Valley less busy since they're selling thousands of cars every month with a fair share based on SoCal.

 

[BrokerDon]

The Santa Ana (Mainplace Mall) and Buena Park (Tesla Store) Superchargers can't open fast enough.

 

[gaswalla]

A big issue is the throttled charging (reduced rate, for whatever reason). Each car is taking twice as long to charge. Folks are blaming each other, but its the system falling apart

 

[AEdennis]

A big issue is the throttled charging (reduced rate, for whatever reason). Each car is taking twice as long to charge. Folks are blaming each other, but its the system falling apart

That's design.. Folks need to understand that. It's up to more experienced drivers to train others about pairing and sharing.

(at least until Tesla is able to upgrade each stall from the need to pair)