Supercharger - Goleta, CA (LIVE 6 May 2020, 12 V3 stalls)

[CharleyBC]

There is no such thing as Santa Barbara supercharger. The State Street pin you refer to is probably the one that is at the "center" of the city which is a default location when a map isn't sure where to place something. I know the person that owns a company where the pin falls and he assures me there is no charger.

There isn't now, but apparently there will be. Someone found a permit last month for a location on State Street in SB. See the SB Supercharger thread; scroll down to the December posts and it gets relevant: Supercharger - Santa Barbara (Permit found Dec 2019).

Supercharge.info is currently linking SB to the Goleta thread, however. I think it should link to the thread I linked above. @Chuq, is that your duty?

 

[sygyzy]

There isn't now, but apparently there will be. Someone found a permit last month for a location on State Street in SB. See the SB Supercharger thread; scroll down to the December posts and it gets relevant: Supercharger - Santa Barbara (Permit found Dec 2019).

Supercharge.info is currently linking SB to the Goleta thread, however. I think it should link to the thread I linked above. @Chuq, is that your duty?

I see, thanks for the correction.

 

[Chuq]

Supercharge.info is currently linking SB to the Goleta thread, however. I think it should link to the thread I linked above. @Chuq, is that your duty?

Yep - now fixed!

 

[88911cs]

Perhaps that area has nothing to do with the coming Supercharger, it’s something else?

I picked my car up from the SC today, they say it's going where the hole is. I don't see how. Maybe that's where the switching gear and such goes and the chargers themselves are 90 degrees away or across the street going through the center. Doesn't make sense to me to put it at the hole, no room and where do you form a line.

Maybe others who have seen the hole can offer their two cents.

No movement on anything this week.

 

[goletaspring]

I picked my car up from the SC today, they say it's going where the hole is. I don't see how. Maybe that's where the switching gear and such goes and the chargers themselves are 90 degrees away or across the street going through the center. Doesn't make sense to me to put it at the hole, no room and where do you form a line.

Maybe others who have seen the hole can offer their two cents.

No movement on anything this week.

I agree the area looks really small, and is in an awkward location that's already congested, especially when the driveway is closed off on Sundays for the farmers market.

 

[88911cs]

I was out there tonight and the traffic light going into the center malfunctioned. The line to get out went all the way back to Costco, at least 30 cars deep. Imagine a bunch of Teslas navigating to a spot inside that, all the time. I can't see it. Maybe they dug the hole, no movement there at all since I first saw it, and then thought, wait, maybe this will be a problem

More equipment arrived today, pipes behind the bigger fenced in area, a forklift belonging to the contractor and a rectangular something, not sure what it is, leaning against their trailer.

 

[88911cs]

Okay, here it is. Work started again today. You can tell the equipment is going in the hole, chargers 90 degrees away. The hole I didn't get close to, they were working on it, but you can now see big fresh piles of dirt. 10-15 guys working, five or six trucks, backhoe, tractor, I'll bet this goes fairly quickly. Vantage point is I'm standing over by Vans, at the four way stop, facing Ross.

 

[Darin Garard]

I was there today. I tried to talk with one of the workers to ask about the timeline but he told me to go away. I guess it’s good they would rather work than be bothered.

 

[88911cs]

I would suspect that they, having done this before, probably get a lot of guys like us, or me anyway, who know what they are building and want to know about it.

@Darin Garard, did he really tell you to go away? It's kind of a public parking lot, kind of a big job, he's going to get asked by people who don't know what the project is.

I didn't ask anyone anything, but I saw I was getting stinkeye from one guy when I started taking pictures. And I wasn't driving a Tesla. If you really wanted to, at least today, it wasn't blocked off from the side, you could park in what should be a stall without going around their cones. I think I will, just for fun, stop there tomorrow or the day after, buy lunch, and park my Tesla at the site, get out and walk around, take some pictures of it in the stall before it's a stall. Actually it's my wife's Tesla, it started out as mine but somehow changed hands, so I'll have to pry her hands off of it.

This would be the woman who derided my car obsession for years, "I don't see what the big deal is. A car is a way to get from point A to point B, and that's it". Now we have to park her Tesla away from any potential door dingers/any other miscreants, just like I do with my cars.

I'm not stalking, really, i usually go here for lunch, it's about two miles from my office.

 

[2015 85D]

I stoped by the big hole today about 11am and nobody was there. Took a few pictures. Then a couple of workers showed up and I said:

Me: HI
Him: Hi
Me: What's going on?
Him: What do you mean?
Me: Pointing to the hole
Him: ...um, we're under a non disclosure agreement
Me: Tesla?
Him: Smile
Me: Smile

Then I went to the other site behind Home Depot. There was a lot going on, people, construction equipment, dirty looks, so I kept on moving.

 

[CharleyBC]

I stoped by the big hole today about 11am and nobody was there. Took a few pictures. Then a couple of workers showed up and I said:

Me: HI
Him: Hi
Me: What's going on?
Him: What do you mean?
Me: Pointing to the hole
Him: ...um, we're under a non disclosure agreement
Me: Tesla?
Him: Smile
Me: Smile

Then I went to the other site behind Home Depot. There was a lot going on, people, construction equipment, dirty looks, so I kept on moving.

I like the first half of your story. If the guy is under an NDA, that's cool, but he was polite and said "hi" and smiled. I don't like the second half--not your story-telling, but what you encountered. Why would people give you a dirty look just for looking at stuff that's in a public place and in plain sight? What was the job posting like? "Seeking construction workers with naturally crabby or antisocial dispositions."

 

[2015 85D]

I was slowly driving a Tesla..... These guys are hyper sensitive to any contact with even the word Tesla. Probably because any contact with a "T" puts them in jeopardy of loosing their job. In other words, go away. That's fine, I learned what I wanted to know.

 

[88911cs]

Him: ...um, we're under a non disclosure agreement

Thanks for that. I sign a lot of those and respect them. Parking a Tesla where I think a stall is going to be would just be irritating. So I'll do it at night when they are not around, for posterity

They actually are digging in a different spot today, if you enter the center from Hollister, immediately to the left there is yet another green fenced in area. Behind the access road behind Vans, the food court, etc.

 

[ajsbesla]

non-disclosure agreement is weird.. why?.. permits are public records.

 

[88911cs]

They probably don't have real NDA's, just asked not to talk about what they are doing. If they did then they would get a lot of spectators wanting to know everything there is to know about it, like some of us, and they'd never get any work done.

The Tesla crowd is a little different, there are a lot of people who are really into most everything about the cars. You get the same thing with Porsche and Ferrari, that's about it among car makers. If it were known that either of those were building something in that lot you'd see the same thing, guys trying to figure out what was going on and such. Most definitely you'd see me

Mercedes and BMW guys and the rest don't care, we do. So they have to shoo us away in whatever way they can, and NDA is what they've been told works best. My guess

 

[CharleyBC]

I think another advantage of an NDA (whether formal or not) is protection against complaints and worse. Imagine an eager spectator (any of us, for example) asking, “when will this new Supercharger be open?” And getting some answer like, “the end of next month.” Then there is some delay. If you follow these things, there is often some delay. Then someone starts complaining that they were promised it would be done by the end of February, and now it’s April and it’s still not open. Whine, whine, whine. If they don’t talk about it, they set no expectations.

 

[sygyzy]

I am super confused. They really are putting in the Superchargers near Ross and not behind Home Depot? Why? This makes really no sense as this is an extremely high traffic area. I have a feeling there's going to be real issues here like icing.

Edit: Wait, this is actually by Vans, close to the movie theatre, and not by Ross? That's an even worse location as it's near the entrance and even a busier side of the shopping center!

 

[88911cs]

The coned off area is by Vans, I would think that for the shopping center this would be one of the worst places to put it, traffic wise, best for drawing people into stores. Much better if they put them across on the Ross side. The big hole is on the Vans side, so I would guess that at least some cabinets or something are going there. I don't know why they would put that there and the stations themselves somewhere else. The coned off area, in front of Vans, right now they are using it to haul dirt and such, but I suspect that's not all they'll be using it for. Time will tell.

 

[CharleyBC]

I am super confused. They really are putting in the Superchargers near Ross and not behind Home Depot? Why? This makes really no sense as this is an extremely high traffic area. I have a feeling there's going to be real issues here like icing.

Edit: Wait, this is actually by Vans, close to the movie theatre, and not by Ross? That's an even worse location as it's near the entrance and even a busier side of the shopping center!

You should be confused. There are currently three locations that may have something to do with this project.

1. The parking lot in front of Vans, kinda near the entrance. Digging and cones observed.
2. Behind the Home Depot garden area. Tesla materials stockpiled.
3. Behind the food court. Green fence and digging.

It seems one of these is a red herring. Or purple tuna.

 

[88911cs]

I would guess power comes in to that part of the center at 3, staging is done at 2, chargers will be near 1.

All three spots have the same contractor's vehicles and equipment.