Supercharger Live Status

[MorrisonHiker]

Conspiracy theory time!!!1!111

What if some kind of charger hardware issue resulted in some low draw on a supercharger which triggers a 'current is flowing so the charger must be in use' message.

And what if that hardware issue is related to the reduced charging rate phonomenon?

You may have a point there. I did experience really slow charging in the 3 stalls that I tried. Since I have a loaner (with a B pack), I wasn't sure if it was due to the car and SOC or the Superchargers. Previously, I've charged at least twice as fast there.

 

[scottf200]

If you look at my pictures you will see what I saw on the in-car map and we did not call tesla.

Well if you don't report it then Tesla can't look into it and find solutions. Calling Tesla is the direct way to get it resolved and help the community. JMHO

 

[Ulmo]

Sometimes the data is very wrong.

At Mountain View SuperCharger, all stalls full, and line of 4 waiting.

Yet, status shows 5 available.

Luckily, in short order, 5 stalls emptied out. Counting me plus another car waiting in line after I arrived, plus one person who skipped the line, the line was down to two cars, and a minute later I'm first in line.

Had I known that there was a line rather than 5 empty, I would have used a Chademo later in the day past most of the rush hour traffic (in an insufficient capacity roadway area which causes horrific slowdowns the later I set out). As it turns out, I don't think the extra wait will be more than 5 minutes.

It ended up being a ~10 minute wait. I got full speed when plugged in.

 

[oktane]

Glad you ended up getting into a stall quickly. This type of situation would make me slam my forehead against the steering wheel. You sound like a much more patient person than myself.

 

[wayner]

Is it really any different than with ICE cars and gas stations. Every once in a while I have had to wait in line for a few minutes.

 

[oktane]

Yes, it is vastly different. It takes less than 5 mins including credit card to fill 20 gallons and be good for 400 miles. Most USA automotive gas pumps will dispense between 5-10 gallons per minute.

It will take over an hour to fill a Tesla assuming full charge rate (which is a big IF). Some SC are much slower (3 hrs for a full charge). The SC are also not close enough such that if one is full you can simply drive elsewhere. There are often multiple gas stations on every block. Not sure how the experiences are comparable, is Toronto really that rural where the difference is not obvious?

 

[CSFTN]

Yeah, that's one of the sites that seems to have misinformation. @wolfson292's site, using my interpretation of the data, is reporting it as at least 2 available with 2 more probably available, which is the best estimate based on what the internal data is giving to the car. I do hope Tesla cleans up the data.

So, apparently the data is NOT BINARY? Care to disclose what the data actually reflects, rather than interprets?

 

[apacheguy]

So, apparently the data is NOT BINARY? Care to disclose what the data actually reflects, rather than interprets?

I second this. The way it ought to work is if a specific stall is connected to a vehicle it changes status to 1 and reverts back to 0 when the car disconnects. To get availability for a site, you simply sum the stalls with 1 status. I don't understand why Tesla sees the need to complicate this further.

 

[wk057]

The data only provides the number of known available stalls and whether or not the site has 50% or more stalls in use. That's it. No per stall data. It only provides per-site. Not all stalls seem to report, so the 'available' number doesn't include what I've dubbed "sleeping" stalls since the issue only appears to affect sites where there's basically no traffic.

I've exposed some historical data on my API. @wolfson292 plans on doing some display of it soon. So far I've compiled data for every hour of the week for every site showing the max usage for that hour and least stalls available that hour. As I collect more data it will average with existing data and hopefully become more useful. How to best present this I'll leave to the UI folks.

It's worth noting that the vast majority of sites (~90% or so) have not even reached 50% capacity since I started collecting data.

I've not forgotten about the folks who've requested API access, however I'm going to harden my API a bit more before allowing essentially people who are essentially anonymous (no offense to anyone intended) to access it. I also need to do some more obfuscation of the particulars to ensure it can't be matched up easily with Tesla's side, since I have to work under the assumption that at least one of the people requesting access to my API is a Tesla insider and will use that access to try to isolate and block my scraping efforts.

 

[apacheguy]

Right, understand that @wk057 is restricted to the data that Tesla provides. However, it is a reasonable assumption that if a stall is sleeping it is also available. Tesla should count sleeping stalls when they report available stalls, but it appears this is not the case.

 

[sorka]

Fremont shows 3 of 12 available, but it's wrong cause I'm waiting in a line of 3 Nobody has moved in 20 minutes.

I'm going to guess that 3 of these stalls have cars that are no longer charging.

 

[apacheguy]

Interesting. So I guess that is why Tesla doesn't count sleeping stalls?

The simple work around of course is to have stalls report status on every connect/disconnect. That way even if a stall enters sleep and a vehicle is in the "connect" state the last reported status will still reflect that.

 

[wk057]

If Tesla has a problem with it they are welcome to contact me directly.

Someone decided to take me up on the above. After a relatively long but pleasant conversation, and some pretty compelling points that I hadn't originally considered, I've made a gentleman's agreement to discontinue my private API with the real-time and historical supercharger data. I won't go into more detail, so please don't pry. Suffice it to say there was no legal action or anything drastic involved, and the decision to discontinue my API is entirely mine.

While I know this may be disappointing, the positive side is that I had the opportunity to discuss the usefulness of this data from an owner's perspective directly with the people involved at Tesla. The popularity of the data obtained through my API has at least proven that customers do indeed find the information useful/helpful. Tesla is definitely committed to providing more information that is useful for owners as things progress, and it's possible that they're driven even more so to do this as a result of my exposure of the data for this short time. I'm convinced they'll do the right thing for owners on this matter and will leave it in their hands.

For those of you using my API, I will be changing all sites to report 100% unknown soon. Historic data will be unavailable.

-wk

 

[apacheguy]

Dang. Thanks for the heads up. Did the Tesla rep indicate whether they will roll out a website that will provide the same functionality?

 

[dhcp]

Was at one of the Bay Area chargers last weekend and the nav said 1 spot available which was right. I pulled in and watched the display and timed - took 5 minutes before it said zero available so that might be the update frequency.

I find myself clicking on some of the area chargers to watch the status, not that I'm going to use it, but just a mild obsession of watching when they seem to be busy or not busy. Tonight (thursday) I wasn't getting any status data on any of the half dozen of locations I clicked on that previously had status, maybe the service is down right now?

 

[dhcp]

Someone decided to take me up on the above. After a relatively long but pleasant conversation, and some pretty compelling points that I hadn't originally considered, I've made a gentleman's agreement to discontinue my private API with the real-time and historical supercharger data. I won't go into more detail, so please don't pry. Suffice it to say there was no legal action or anything drastic involved, and the decision to discontinue my API is entirely mine.

....aaannd that's why we can't have nice things. If you guys hold that person down I'll get the sock and bars of soap.

 

[oktane]

Disappointing. I found the live status site very useful and interesting.

 

[TexasEV]

Disappointing. I found the live status site very useful and interesting.

Probably Tesla's competitors for siting DC charging stations did too.

 

[apacheguy]

Probably Tesla's competitors for siting DC charging stations did too.

Elon has broadly advocated for mass EV adoption and he welcomes new EVs to the market even if they are from competitors. I'm not sure that locating DC charge sites near superchargers so that other brands can use them would be viewed negatively by Elon.

Additonally, if the competition is serious they've already bought Teslas and they would still have access to the same data.

 

[oktane]

I guess but the data isn't exactly secret. It was nice having access to it from the web (and away from the car) on a much faster refresh interface. Were they afraid of historical data showing how busy some SC can get? Were they afraid utilities would price gouge them based on the data? I hope they incorporate this functionality into the mobile app. Given the lackluster latest mobile app release, I doubt it will happen for a very long time.