I read an article not that long ago saying that supercharger electronics with high use were overheating and not getting a chance to cool down between charges and were failing. No idea where to look for the article but certainly Mt. View would likely fall into that category...or did. Anyone remember seeing this article?
No, but I'd place a sizable bet that it is true. The Sunnyvale V2 supercharger was already having lots of problems by the time it hit its first birthday. Here's hoping the V3 hardware is better designed.
To make matters worse, besides being one of the busiest superchargers, Mountain View is also one of the oldest, built way back in 2015 (somewhere around number 400), and started out as an experimental design with liquid-cooled power lines, which means they probably put in all sorts of other hacks when they converted it to a normal V2 supercharger a few years later. That no doubt contributes to its higher failure rate, and might also make it a more painful upgrade than average.
Either way, at this point, continuing to operate this supercharger likely creates so much ill will toward Tesla that they'd probably be better off shutting it down entirely and cutting their losses. It's that bad.
I'm just counting down the days until Scotts Valley opens, after which I won't darken the door at MTV unless it's an emergency.
I’m surprised this hasn’t been addressed having gone on for so long. If they are planning to go v3 on all of them I assume that will mean electrical permitting and who knows what...would new transformers and new PG&E calculations need to be done before equipment could go in? The Factory when they got v3 was down for a while with retrenching if I correctly recall.
Yeah, they'll need permitting, new transformers, new cabinets, probably a larger building to house the equipment... it won't be a small job. When it starts happening, we'll know it, and I'd give them only a 10% chance of doing it without multi-week downtime, even if they just reuse and supplement the existing conduit. If they have to tear everything out and start from scratch, we're talking probably half a year.
Maybe they could just build a V3 station right next to it, and then tear down the old one?
The good news is that because it is such a total train wreck right now, it is getting a lot less use, so it might not be a total disaster if they had to shut it down for a while. But if it's half a year, that's still going to suck.
Unless, of course, that's what the apparent electrical trenching is in the Googleplex parking lot a couple of blocks away. Not likely, but hey, I can dream, can't I?
