I just hit 250k miles in my Model S. I do many long distance road trips and I have visited over 250 different superchagers. On my most driven routes I have visited the same stations countless times over the last 6 years. One thing I noticed in the last 2 years is how many and how much more likely it is now to have a station with stalls not working or having issues. 4 years ago I remember posting here about how impressed I was by how reliable the Supercharger network was. I was always able to plug in and charge at full speed.
Today is a different situation. From the top of my head I'd say about 40% of stations have at least one stall or more that isn't working for some reason. Some sites I visit almost on a daily basis (I drive a lot for work). Those sites go for weeks with broken stalls. When they finally fix them, it takes just days for yet another stall or two to go bad. This seems to be especially a problem with busy city sites. The sites just aren't holding up with the non stop traffic of cars charging.
Back in the old days it was very rare that I had to switch stalls because I got a slow charge rate. That is a common thing these days. Paired stalls is an obvious problem, but the problem is actually deeper. I talked to other owners and peeked into other cars that shared A/B to see what the total power between both cars was. In all cases I did this the total power was 100 kW or less. That's far lower than the theoretical max of 150 kW. But also unpaired stalls are not getting the power they could when a site is busy overall. It seems the total power at most sites is not enough to fully power all chargers to the max.
Another side issue is the black plastic rings (from the charge port pins in the car) getting brittle and getting stuck in the plugs at Superchargers. In the last 2 months I have found 4 stuck in superchargers. Once in there, they disable that plug. I was able to get them out in all cases, but most people wouldn't even know why the plug isn't working. As more cars are getting older, more and more of these rings break off and getting stuck in supercharger plugs.
All of this is compounded by Tesla not taking any calls for issues at superchargers any more. They say they can detect issues with superchargers automatically. Well that isn't true for any mechanical issues.
Today is a different situation. From the top of my head I'd say about 40% of stations have at least one stall or more that isn't working for some reason. Some sites I visit almost on a daily basis (I drive a lot for work). Those sites go for weeks with broken stalls. When they finally fix them, it takes just days for yet another stall or two to go bad. This seems to be especially a problem with busy city sites. The sites just aren't holding up with the non stop traffic of cars charging.
Back in the old days it was very rare that I had to switch stalls because I got a slow charge rate. That is a common thing these days. Paired stalls is an obvious problem, but the problem is actually deeper. I talked to other owners and peeked into other cars that shared A/B to see what the total power between both cars was. In all cases I did this the total power was 100 kW or less. That's far lower than the theoretical max of 150 kW. But also unpaired stalls are not getting the power they could when a site is busy overall. It seems the total power at most sites is not enough to fully power all chargers to the max.
Another side issue is the black plastic rings (from the charge port pins in the car) getting brittle and getting stuck in the plugs at Superchargers. In the last 2 months I have found 4 stuck in superchargers. Once in there, they disable that plug. I was able to get them out in all cases, but most people wouldn't even know why the plug isn't working. As more cars are getting older, more and more of these rings break off and getting stuck in supercharger plugs.
All of this is compounded by Tesla not taking any calls for issues at superchargers any more. They say they can detect issues with superchargers automatically. Well that isn't true for any mechanical issues.
