Now added to supercharge.info, with that horrible name that doesn't roll off the tongue at all! I wonder if it's named that because there's another site coming to Civic Center Way?
It seems the actual location of this is at the Park at Cross Creek. Address: 3730 Cross Creek Rd, Malibu, CA 90265, USA A PlugShare location here shows 5 Tesla chargers, matching Tesla’s description. Apparently there is also a dual ChargePoint stall. Photos have been added on PlugShare. If you can see the Tesla stalls on these photos, I’ll be darned.
Oh man. Five stalls. Better than nothing, but certainly not a location a traveler could ever count on being usable. The rich locals with their free for life S and Xs will love it though.
Which is exactly who it's for, being that it's a small installation of urban chargers. Locals. And visitors staying in Malibu for a while without reliable destination charging. The distance between the Oxnard and Culver City superchargers is less than 60 miles via PCH (ignoring the closer Santa Monica ones that you'd drive right past because they're also urban chargers), and a diversion off of PCH to/from Thousand Oaks (depending on direction) isn't very far or particularly onerous if one erred with their charge planning, so why would a hypothetical traveler ever really care at all if the small, urban supercharger in Malibu was almost permanently full?
Trips up and down the 1 are incredibly common. It's one of the most famous freeways in America. I would wager the vast majority of visitors going from LA to SF or vice versa would take the 1. Regular travelers who are time sensitive would take the 5 or the 101 instead.
Yes, I'm familiar with the road. When taking the 1, Malibu sits in the middle of a horrifically massive charging gap of a whole 60 miles, **gasp and clutch pearls**, between two bookending 150 kW superchargers with a combined 36 stalls between them (20 @ Oxnard and 16 @ Culver City). Plus another (10) 72kW urban supercharger stalls at Santa Monica Place which is even closer than Culver City. This 5 stall Malibu supercharger isn't necessary in the slightest for travelers on the 1. And not being able to make use of it because locals are, more or less, permanently using it shouldn't inconvenience them a bit. My point is that not all superchargers are, or need to be, designed to meet every use case for every Tesla on the road. This is most especially true when there already exists such a multiplicity of other supercharging options available to meet those other use cases. So the fact that this one seems designed primarily for local or extended visitor use and, assuming it's as busy as we all seem to think it will be, that it likely won't benefit travelers on the 1 much at all is not a big deal.
If I had to guess I’d say this supercharger was installed to attract new tesla buyers The rich folk who visit Whole Foods will see the chargers and possibly look into Tesla a bit more It’s kind of like a billboard
I'm guessing you haven't used the Culver City supercharger since the Model 3 was released? Almost the entire day there's a line of at least 3-4 cars waiting to charge. The Santa Monica one is a bit better but there is often a line there too. I've only been to the Oxnard one a few times but that one has always been busy when I've been there. Supercharging is no longer about range anxiety - 99% of the population has been covered for years now - so your point about the 60 mile gap isn't really relevant. The issue now is convenience. Tesla needs to close the convenience gap between charging and filling up a tank of gas. If I were driving up the coast with a low charge and every charger for a hundred miles had a line, I'd be stuck for 1-2 hours waiting and charging. That would definitely leave a bad taste in my mouth.
I tweeted about this SC just after midnight yesterday @rrosenbl & charged there today on the way home. I'm concerned that with only 5-stalls and dense Tesla penetration in this area, the charger will soon be oversubscribed. Just feet from the soon to open Blue Bottle Coffee (~July 4th) The only Supercharger where you can get in a game of chess while you charge! J-1772s near by
Redundancy along heavily traveled routes are paramount to wide scale adoption of Teslas. We take for granted clusters of gas stations along highways and at urban intersections. Requiring drivers to detour even as much as 10-min off route turns people , who may adopt an EV, off and needs to be considered. The SCs at Culver City and Santa Monica are full much of the daylight hours increasing the import of this install. Though point taken many locals may charge here regardless of the fees because of the convenience, they can afford it. I only wished Tesla would have installed 12 or more plugs.
Sure, it’s going to be heavily used. But it’s better than no Supercharger there at all. Sure, more stalls would be better. But that is likely all the space Tesla could get at that location.
Was I the first one (at least on this board) to charge here? I charged here on the 13th late at night, ~11 PM. I happened to be in Southern CA, trying to bag as many as possible for the Most Superchargers Visited Contest.
I charged there yesterday. Next to me was a Chevy Volt blocking the charger even though the parking lot had plenty of other spaces.
Be aware that one of the 5 stalls is handicapped only and seems always empty. So the supercharger map will always show one stall available which really isn't the case. Tesla should fix this with some additional color coding.