All I know is that if they don’t have a SC I will be taking my tourist dollars elsewhere. As EV market share grows, it will be an increasingly big deal.
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Supercharger - Kalispell, MT (under construction Apr 2024, 12 V3 stalls)
- Thread starter RobertSeattle
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- montana supercharger
StealthP3D
Well-Known Member
Flathead Valley/Glacier NP areas have already lost out on hundreds of millions of tourist dollars in the last 4 years due to the delays in getting a Supercharger. The beneficiaries are few, but they include local car dealers and auto shops. The economic loss is many times the economic gain. The bad actors don't even know how much economic damage they have caused area residents, particularly bars, restaurants, hotels, motels and bed/breakfasts, real estate, grocery stores, etc. Some Superchargers would not reduce ICE tourism at all, so the economic harm is hard to justify, especially in an area with so much poverty.
Tesla should dispatch a local task force to find out what kind of anti-capitalistic subversive forces are at work in Flathead Valley. My money is on the local auto dealership group.
WadeMT
Member
Your imagination is running wild lol. Tesla is very popular in the Flathead Valley. Lots of people want a supercharger here. Many business people own Teslas. Tesla had an early issue finding a host location. They have the Town Pump working with them now. The current delay is scheduling with the contractor. If you go to Atlas EV Hub to see the number of Tesla vehicles registered in MT by county as of the last update (Dec ‘22) you will see that Flathead has more Teslas registered than Bozeman, Missoula, Billings, and Helena combined. Don’t make up stuff about Kalispell, you don’t know what you’re talking about.
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StealthP3D
Well-Known Member
What some people don't understand about Superchargers is it's not the ones near your home that are important, it's the ones 100 miles away from your home. I agree, the lack of Superchargers is not doing a lot to slow down EV adoption in Flathead Valley (where I actually lived 30 years ago), but EV opponents and naysayers don't understand that you don't need a Supercharger near your home to buy a Tesla, you need them in a 100 mile radius around your home. The loss of tourist dollars is the big impact, not the preservation of local auto sales. However, that doesn't prevent the auto dealer mentality from making a connection between local Superchargers and lost sales.
Visiting Flathead Valley in an EV has been problematic for many Americans because the typical visit consists of staying in the valley 1-3 nights (or more) and, unless you have a destination charger, it's not easy to make it work, particularly if you want to sample many sights, including Glacier N.P. Also, there are a few million Tesla in N. America that love to use the Supercharger Network to plan road trips. Tesla owners with free Supercharging tend to be more affluent than average, retired, and particularly active travelers. If there are no Superchargers in the area, they will not be visiting, not without a compelling reason.
I have family in the Flathead Valley, so I visit anyway (there are multiple ways to make it work, none of them ideal). The last time I was there, I had a crappy and over-priced hotel, simply because it had destination charging. But the charging infrastructure in the valley is so poor, there were not enough destination chargers to serve the demand. I ended up leaving a day earlier simply because I had enough charge to make it out of the valley and whether I would be able to plug in another night was enough of an unknown (with the number of other Tesla fighting over the same charging cable), and I wanted to wake up early charged up and ready to go, not sit around until noon.
The fact that you used EV registration data to try to tell me I didn't know what I was talking about only shows that the point I was making flew right over your head! Lack of Superchargers in a local does not do much to prevent the adoption of EV's, it mostly serves to keep Tesla travelers away.
As to the delay being caused by a scheduling problem with the contractor, I'll remind you that over four years ago you posted this:
This is the location that was nixed by local government officials without providing any guidance on what a better location would be or, what, in particular, was wrong with the location selected by Tesla. There were a number of odd delays and circumstances surrounding this process. That's not normal and Tesla is accustomed to making things happen at lightspeed, not delaying the installation of a Supercharger in Flathead Valley for over 4 years. I'm not willing to blame that on a scheduling problem with a contractor.
Regardless of the actual reasons for the many lengthy delays and refusals to grant permits, there is no doubt the greater Flathead Valley area has lost out on millions of tourist dollars, simply by not being featured on the Supercharger Network maps. And given that those on the lowest economic rungs in Flathead Valley are often dependent upon tourist dollars just to survive, I find that very sad.
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Right. When I saw the line about "Lots of people want a Supercharger here!" my mind was already going to "Yeah, but 'people' aren't necessarily the big local businesses or the local governments that can be influenced by them." We had some problems like that with Tesla trying to get a location built here in Boise. They had almost lease agreements a few times, which were then backed out of. It finally got done, but seemed to have some obstruction for a while.
WadeMT
Member
lol. It’s entertaining to hear how outsiders conflate pieces of information to put together a narrative that makes sense to their limited point of view! It makes perfect sense… lol.
Tesla had a deal in 2019 with super one, owned in Idaho, and they changed their mind. Then the chamber of commerce stepped up (which has nothing to do with ‘local govt’) but they didnt want to give up 24/7/365 day control of those spaces due to annual events. No govt involvement, local or otherwise. Then Town Pump signed agreements realizing their opportunity was in servicing Tesla patron's convenience store needs rather than selling electric energy. Nothing to do with local government. So Tesla scheduled installation in Q4 2023. I was excited about it happening sooner, but Tesla is in charge, not me. Don’t conflate a bunch of different circumstances to create an untrue narrative. That’s my advice.
Tesla had a deal in 2019 with super one, owned in Idaho, and they changed their mind. Then the chamber of commerce stepped up (which has nothing to do with ‘local govt’) but they didnt want to give up 24/7/365 day control of those spaces due to annual events. No govt involvement, local or otherwise. Then Town Pump signed agreements realizing their opportunity was in servicing Tesla patron's convenience store needs rather than selling electric energy. Nothing to do with local government. So Tesla scheduled installation in Q4 2023. I was excited about it happening sooner, but Tesla is in charge, not me. Don’t conflate a bunch of different circumstances to create an untrue narrative. That’s my advice.
StealthP3D
Well-Known Member
You forgot the part about the selected contractor having a scheduling conflict. Don't you think there are time constraints built into the contract?
In any case, I'm impressed with your apparent desire to dissipate suspicions that anyone might be stonewalling Tesla's desire to install a simple Supercharger station. I imagine it won't be long before the excuse is that the ground is too frozen to dig. Oh, wait, they already used that excuse, right? It's interesting that Tesla can open up entirely new routes, on new highways spanning hundreds, if not thousands, of miles in little more than a year and yet the just keep failing at opening a single charging station anywhere in Flathead Valley for five years.
I'll keep waiting and watching. Hopefully they will get it in before Christmas.
WadeMT
Member
Ya it’s me trying to defend Kalispell lol. In reality I’m just trying to set the record straight with regard to our part of the world. It’s not Kalispell s local govt. it’s timing, circumstances, and competing interests. Tesla for a period of time changed their priorities from covering rural locations to reinforcing existing routes that needed more stalls. They (Tesla) told us this, and we appreciated their situation. I’m glad we will eventually have some stalls. And if you really want to visit NW MT buy a CCS adapter, there’s a couple ChargePoint connectors you can use in the meantime.
WadeMT
Member
So what did I miss? What were those meeting minutes? In the Flathead? I would love to know about this!
StealthP3D
Well-Known Member
In late 2020 or early 2021 I was digging around online, trying to find more info about the permitting activities, and came across some meeting minutes. Apologies for not trying to relocate those (it may take me an hour or more with no guarantee of success), and I can't recall with certainty the exact political body, dates or the location of the proposal, but I will tell you I distinctly remember reading some meeting minutes in which one of the council (or commission) members said he didn't like the particular location and the meeting ended with no approval for Tesla's location, without providing any specific reason why it was not a good location. I believe, but am not sure, it was the Super 1 location in Kalispell, in case you want to try to dig it up yourself. It could have been a City Council or a Planning Commision meeting, I don't recall. I'm not sure exactly how these projects are approved/denied in the Valley, but I know enough about local planning and permitting in general to know such projects must go through the process and that I was reading part of that process.
WadeMT
Member
Mrbrock
Active Member
There is now a supercharger at Yokes in Pasco so senior management has shifted their opinions. Probably worth another try there.
For Kalispell, again I go back to the issued permit. I agree that there is opposition but part of the permitting process is reviews by various committees and sometimes city councils and the like. It was approved and issued so it passed all those. That was the time for objections and hold ups. I think we are just waiting for Blackstone to come back to MT to do this job.
StealthP3D
Well-Known Member
I am absolutely not talking about anything that happened in Shelby, this was in Flathead Valley! It seems you may be muddying the water here.
StealthP3D
Well-Known Member
Don't make the mistake of thinking that determined opposition would limit themselves to the permit process only. Determination knows no bounds and the most effective opposition will happen out of the public eye. The contractor of every Supercharger install is publicly known and corruption and or opposition does not need to stop at the governmental level.
While I admit that my suspicions do not have hard supporting evidence to back them up, it's also not a wild conspiracy theory to think certain opposition (threatened financial interests) might be determined enough to interfere with Supercharger progress on multiple levels (both governmental and private business). This kind of "dirty business" is not at all uncommon.
You can keep talking in circles with various justifications, but the bottom line is, this series of events did not take place in many other similar towns and Tesla has been operating superchargers in those towns for years. Meanwhile, we don't even have construction in Kalispell. And it's almost 2024. It's more than reasonable for people to wonder what the hell is going on up there.
Mrbrock
Active Member
Yet Blackstone continues to build supercharger sites and Town Pump continues to host them. Map says Q4 so if we don’t see construction this quarter then we can start to worry.
There has been a supercharger at the Super 1 Foods in Helena, Montana for over 3 years. And there is another one at the Super 1 Foods in Two Harbors, Minnesota. The Idaho management didn't have a problem with those.
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so, i'm taking a look at this and I am not understanding something about the numbers. I believe the data that @WadeMT sent here. there are a lot of Teslas registered there. That data comes from State EV Registration Data and they link directly with the states. I have no reason to think it's incorrect.
What I find so weird is that it has 3x as many registrations as any other county in the state. It's not the highest per capita income, nor median household, nor median family income. it's not especially populated. It's not urban. it doesn't have a good charging infrastructure. It doesn't have a traditionally EV friendly political base. The four richest people in Montana don't live there. The weather isn't good for EVs. 3x as many Teslas as anywhere else in Montana, you'd expect to see them everywhere when up there, but you don't. While I do think the resort town of Whitefish will skew things a bit, it shouldn't skew it that much from Big Sky in Madison county, which doesn't rank. It has 40% more EVs than Benton county, OR, which has a college town, milder climate, better infrastructure, much closer to urban area, comparable population, and twice the per capita income.
Short of it, I can't explain why there are so many registered there. It makes no sense from traditional data sources.
My first guess is that there are a lot of folks taking advantage of Montana's liberal vehicle registration laws. These laws allow them to open a Montana-based LLC, register the vehicle to the LLC, and keep your personal name off record. There are a number of advantages to this, including no sales tax. Montana has the highest number of vehicle registrations per capita in the US, which would support some sort of oddity in their registration process.
Unfortunately, I'm unable to find a list of LLCs registered by county in Montana, nor a per county break down of number of vehicles registered in Montana as a whole to do a comparison that way, and I don't know of a way to get data that would help confirm any of this. I can't get a breakdown by model to even confirm if the higher end models are overrepresented, indicating some sort of financial linkage. What I can say is there are several car registration services based in Kalispell. I was able to find three with a small bit of google-fu, and they represented the bulk in my brief searching.
What I find so weird is that it has 3x as many registrations as any other county in the state. It's not the highest per capita income, nor median household, nor median family income. it's not especially populated. It's not urban. it doesn't have a good charging infrastructure. It doesn't have a traditionally EV friendly political base. The four richest people in Montana don't live there. The weather isn't good for EVs. 3x as many Teslas as anywhere else in Montana, you'd expect to see them everywhere when up there, but you don't. While I do think the resort town of Whitefish will skew things a bit, it shouldn't skew it that much from Big Sky in Madison county, which doesn't rank. It has 40% more EVs than Benton county, OR, which has a college town, milder climate, better infrastructure, much closer to urban area, comparable population, and twice the per capita income.
Short of it, I can't explain why there are so many registered there. It makes no sense from traditional data sources.
My first guess is that there are a lot of folks taking advantage of Montana's liberal vehicle registration laws. These laws allow them to open a Montana-based LLC, register the vehicle to the LLC, and keep your personal name off record. There are a number of advantages to this, including no sales tax. Montana has the highest number of vehicle registrations per capita in the US, which would support some sort of oddity in their registration process.
Unfortunately, I'm unable to find a list of LLCs registered by county in Montana, nor a per county break down of number of vehicles registered in Montana as a whole to do a comparison that way, and I don't know of a way to get data that would help confirm any of this. I can't get a breakdown by model to even confirm if the higher end models are overrepresented, indicating some sort of financial linkage. What I can say is there are several car registration services based in Kalispell. I was able to find three with a small bit of google-fu, and they represented the bulk in my brief searching.
This right here. And it's also much cheaper to register a vehicle there when compared to where these people actually live (Seattle, San Francisco, etc.).
It costs about $1000/yr to register a Tesla in Seattle. I used to live in a high end apartment building in a nice neighborhood in Seattle and I would always chuckle at all the out of state plates in the parking garage. Montana, Wyoming, Alaska, etc. were all very popular. Nearly half the cars had out of state plates. And of the nice cars (say >$60k MSRP), it was more than half. I believe there are a lot of Teslas registered in Teton County, Wyoming as well.
I had not considered the EV specific fees in many states. Montana doesn't have those. This would radically alter it. that doesn't explain why Flathead specifically, but I think several registration services might skew those numbers a bit.
I still hope whatever is keeping a supercharger from happening there gets cleared up
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