Supercharger - Kettleman City, CA (LIVE 15 Nov 2017, 24 V2 + 16 V3 stalls, lounge)

[Owner]

There was a worker giving away Cheez-It and bottled water to folks in the queue which I thought was really nice.

That sounds a bit cheesy.

And not very healthy or environmentally correct. Bring your own refillable water bottle!

 

[brucet999]

We have seen reports of lines here obviously around the holiday times, but the report of overall change over seems to be about 1 car a minute, so the wait impact should be pretty predicatable. Now that its a 150 kWh station, it should be at least 10% faster? ;-)

I think what this location should do is ADD a barista or floor support person during holiday times and do VALET when the line gets to be more than 10 ppl deep. Many people need to get inside and use the LAV, or would really like to drop car and head to starbucks or something. Assuming one wasn't worried about theft, one VALET attendant could easily move cars into opening slots and let people do some other task. Probably cost them less than 15$ an hour during peak times to facilitate.

Tesla has provided a huge 40-slot SC facility, with all stalls shaded by solar panels, and with a large air-conditioned waiting room, but you want valets (complete with salary costs, scheduling and oversight effort) to move your car during those few days when there may be a few minutes wait time to plug in?

Don't you think expansion of other SC sites would be a better use of money?

 

[miimura]

I agree that a valet is not necessary here. If you have passengers, drop them off first at their chosen dining location or just give them the code and let them go in the lounge before you get a charging space.

IIRC, they will be upgrading at least some of the spaces here to V3. That should further increase the turnover rate.

 

[tivoboy]

Tesla has provided a huge 40-slot SC facility, with all stalls shaded by solar panels, and with a large air-conditioned waiting room, but you want valets (complete with salary costs, scheduling and oversight effort) to move your car during those few days when there may be a few minutes wait time to plug in?

Don't you think expansion of other SC sites would be a better use of money?

I didn’t say I “wanted” this, I just said they “should” do this for relatively low cost and appear to offer a wicked customer service experience. The variable costs for something like this for just the peak holiday days in the USA (probably 8-12 overall with front and back end dates for the primary TRAVEL holidays) could be paid for probably with the money found in Elon’s sofa. Or the seat in his private jet. Or by adding .05 cents (that’s one half of one cent) to supercharger prices overall in the areas where SC’s could have this seasonal dynamic valet service.

 

[ecarfan]

A Tesla person onsite to move waiting cars to a Supercharger stall is an unnecessary and unneeded service. On peak travel days there is sometimes a wait time of a minute or two before a stall opens up. It is rarely over 10 minutes. If you need to use the bathroom, park your car on the street, walk in and use the bathroom, then return to your car and wait a couple of minutes.

Justifying your request by saying that Elon could pay for it out of spare change lost in his living room sofa is silly.

The Kettleman City Supercharger is an exceptional charging facility, quite possible the nicest EV charging location on the planet. Every time I use it I think “Thank you Tesla!”.

 

[cpa]

Or by adding .05 cents (that’s one half of one cent) to supercharger prices overall in the areas where SC’s could have this seasonal dynamic valet service.

Not quite. .05 cents is five one-hundredths of a cent, or 1/20th. One-half of one cent is 0.5 cents, or 5/10. But not here to quibble with a possible typo.

Your statement assuming $15/hour is low. You are neglecting employer-paid payroll taxes. Social Security and Medicare taxes are 7.65%, or another $1.15/hour. If these are new employees to Tesla, there is also federal and state unemployment insurance paid on the first $7,000 of annual pay. The federal rate is low, 0.6%, but the state rate can be as high as 6.2% depending upon Tesla's unemployment claims from terminated employees. Let's run with a 6% total. That's another 90 cents per hour. Then there is workman's compensation. I have no idea how Tesla would categorize these valet persons, but let's say that the unadjusted manual rate for this sort of work is $5/$100 of payroll, or 5%. Another six bits. Perhaps Tesla would draw upon existing employees instead who are not normally scheduled. This might cost overtime premium for those people who come to work on their days off or who clock in early or clock out late. This is unknown, of course. Or, maybe Tesla contracts with a security company to send contracted employees to perform this function. The security company is going to mark up the actual costs of these valets by about 35% to cover its overhead and profit.

Cheapest case would be $15.00+$1.15+$.90+$.75 = $17.80, disregarding compensated absences if these people work elsewhere for Tesla.

It could only increase from there depending upon the technique that Tesla chooses to fulfill this role.

This analysis also ignores possible liability issues if the valet damages one or more vehicles while moving the cars about.

 

[ucmndd]

Now that its a 150 kWh station, it should be at least 10% faster? ;-)

I know you've got a winky face here so not sure as to the seriousness of your post, but the "upgrade" from 120 to 150kw didn't actually add any power capacity to Supercharger v2 stations - just changed the rules by which each pair of stalls can share the energy between two pedestals.

So while an individual may hypothetically see a reduced charge time (particularly when stations are not congested), the throughput of the location at 100% capacity doesn't really change at all.

 

[PLUS EV]

Not quite. .05 cents is five one-hundredths of a cent, or 1/20th. One-half of one cent is 0.5 cents, or 5/10.

Just gave me a flashback to this!:

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[PLUS EV]

A few more reasons VALET would be a bad idea here:

i) With any significant line, you would likely need more than one employee to facilitate, especially when you consider that the employees need breaks. You would almost need one employee just to explain what is going on, because unlike many VALET operations, this one wouldn't get many frequent users. If the line is insignificant, say <10 cars, the VALET is of little use anyway.

ii) Many people, such as myself, don't wish to use a VALET. So now you have a complicated situation where some people are self parking while others are not.

iii) You cannot easily predict which days having VALET attendants would be useful. Sure, you could guess that the first and last day of a holiday weekend will likely be busy, but in this case, for example, you would have had multiple VALET employees show up on Friday when no line ever formed. Predicting which days/times will be busy around Thanksgiving, Christmas and the New Year is even harder.

 

[tivoboy]

Not quite. .05 cents is five one-hundredths of a cent, or 1/20th. One-half of one cent is 0.5 cents, or 5/10. But not here to quibble with a possible typo.

Your statement assuming $15/hour is low. You are neglecting employer-paid payroll taxes. Social Security and Medicare taxes are 7.65%, or another $1.15/hour. If these are new employees to Tesla, there is also federal and state unemployment insurance paid on the first $7,000 of annual pay. The federal rate is low, 0.6%, but the state rate can be as high as 6.2% depending upon Tesla's unemployment claims from terminated employees. Let's run with a 6% total. That's another 90 cents per hour. Then there is workman's compensation. I have no idea how Tesla would categorize these valet persons, but let's say that the unadjusted manual rate for this sort of work is $5/$100 of payroll, or 5%. Another six bits. Perhaps Tesla would draw upon existing employees instead who are not normally scheduled. This might cost overtime premium for those people who come to work on their days off or who clock in early or clock out late. This is unknown, of course. Or, maybe Tesla contracts with a security company to send contracted employees to perform this function. The security company is going to mark up the actual costs of these valets by about 35% to cover its overhead and profit.

Cheapest case would be $15.00+$1.15+$.90+$.75 = $17.80, disregarding compensated absences if these people work elsewhere for Tesla.

It could only increase from there depending upon the technique that Tesla chooses to fulfill this role.

This analysis also ignores possible liability issues if the valet damages one or more vehicles while moving the cars about.

Because. Kettleman City.

 

[ohmman]

Because. Kettleman City.

Come on, @cpa provided a really nice analysis of the outlay for an employer based on what you called for in your post. Surely there is a response that's at a level at least halfway as thoughtful as his post was. Or, one could concede the point, which would also be respectable.

 

[Dave EV]

We have seen reports of lines here obviously around the holiday times, but the report of overall change over seems to be about 1 car a minute, so the wait impact should be pretty predicatable.

Not having had to wait at Kettleman - but having used it a few times - the bigger issue seems to be poorly performing stalls. I've got about a 50% success rate at picking a stall that will give you full charging speeds there.

Another question - with a location this big - it's just about impossible to see all the stalls - how do you reliably see when a stall opens up when there 40 cars charging? It does seem that an attendant or two would be required, lacking an automatic system of some kind.

 

[Uncle Paul]

I have seen other congested stalls, where a line waiter would take it upon themselves to line everyone up and direct traffic to the next open stall while he waited for his turn to charge.

Thought it was a great example of the Tesla community taking the initiative to help out other Tesla drivers.

One of the slots was down, so he taped up a hand written sign to keep others from edging into that tempting empty slot. At the same time he got on the phone with Tesla to let them know which slot was down, and that there was a line up building.

It happened as a large sporting event was just letting out. Within 30 minutes the line was gone and once again that Supercharger had lots of empty stalls for the taking.

Owners can easily take a look at their displays and judge for themselves which Superchargers in their path might be the best choice to offer an empty stall. This proactive approach could also go a long ways to eliminating congestion.

 

[JRP3]

Soon enough cars will drive themselves to empty spaces where snake chargers will plug them in. Well, maybe not soon enough.

 

[gilscales]

One of the slots was down, so he taped up a hand written sign to keep others from edging into that tempting empty slot. At the same time he got on the phone with Tesla to let them know which slot was down, and that there was a line up building.

I would like to see more of this Tesla brotherhood you speak of, or just more common courtesy at the SC's
I went to Hawthorne once and there was a non operation unit that the locals clearly knew was not working for a while, as I pulled in and realized what was up I quickly unhooked and began to pull into the only other open unit when suddenly a local lady doing 20 mph jets in front of me and knew exactly what she was doing when she scooped up the last spot, I waited another 20 min to get in and then could only get 30kw for a while, I was headed home so I only needed to grab 50 mi. of range and I left.

I have seen a few "Entitled" people jump the line when things got busy and it's always a bummer to see it, of course all the problems I have seen are in high use areas where Tesla's are prolific and free supercharging reigns, I get why Tesla offers the free charging and uses it succsesfully as a demand lever now but it does make for extra congestion for sure.

 

[Blu Zap]

I have seen a few "Entitled" people jump the line when things got busy and it's always a bummer to see it, of course all the problems I have seen are in high use areas where Tesla's are prolific and free supercharging reigns, I get why Tesla offers the free charging and uses it succsesfully as a demand lever now but it does make for extra congestion for sure.

This kind of owner behavior has been remedied at other congested SuperChargers. Seeing the role of a valet at Mountain View and the original San Mateo SuperChargers has been significant. They bring order to the queue. They also enforce the time limit, if needed. They retain the respective fobs and will move the Teslas off the SuC if needed. Very orderly and keeps everyone in line - literally. Perhaps busy weekend valet coverage should be extended to Kettleman City.

 

[smak]

I don't think they need an extra person. They just moved out one person from inside to direct cars to SC's for the middle of the day.

It's clear that this place gets crowded in the middle of the day a few times a year, when people from LA and people from the Bay area meet in the middle.

It's probably not even needed for more than 2-3 hours.

 

[Doug Martoccia]

Way too many comments on how Tesla should reduce customer service IMHO. It's just a couple of times a year that they have an employee come out to help guide traffic....jeez.

 

[Owner]

I have seen a few "Entitled" people jump the line when things got busy and it's always a bummer to see it, of course all the problems I have seen are in high use areas where Tesla's are prolific and free supercharging reigns

I had that once when someone approached me from Corning from behind the bank and said "that's where the line starts...I've been here before...blah, blah..."

 

[gilscales]

I had that once when someone approached me from Corning from behind the bank and said "that's where the line starts...I've been here before...blah, blah..."

At least I have never seen anything as aggressive as this yet!
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