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Supercharger Navigation Screen

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cpa

Active Member
May 17, 2014
3,802
5,874
Central Valley
(If the moderators wish to move this, I understand.)

The list of proximate Superchargers that appears on the touchscreen needs a lot of work. It is essentially worthless for me right now. Below I list the eleven Superchargers that appear on my screen when I press the thunderbolt. I show the distance per Google (as the crow flies, obviously) and then the actual mileage and estimated kWh (classic 85) needed to reach that particular Supercharger. I live in Fresno, 3.4 miles from the SC, so all distances assume leaving from my house. They are listed in increasing distances per Google.

Fish Camp: 46 miles per Google; 59 actual; 24kWh
Harris Ranch: 46 miles per Google; 51 actual; 14kWh
Gustine: 67 miles per Google; 74 actual; 23 kWh
Groveland: 72 miles per Google; 105 actual; 36 kWh
Mammoth Lakes: 74 miles per Google; 386 actual (via Bakersfield and Mojave; Tioga Road is still closed); 135kWh
Gilroy: 95 miles per Google; 109 actual; 33.5 kWh
Manteca: 100 miles per Google; 103 actual; 33 kWh
Lone Pine: 101 miles per Google; 288 actual; 99 kWh
Buttonwillow: 103 miles per Google; 124 actual; 40 kWh
Atascadero: 104 miles per Google; 131 actual; 40 kWh

Fish Camp, Gilroy, Manteca and Atascadero make sense. They are locations en route to other destinations and can be reached easily.

Gustine makes a little bit of sense if one were to go to the East Bay and did not want to risk Dublin or Fremont.

Harris Ranch makes very little sense. Unless one is headed to Pinnacles for an extended visit, there is virtually no reason for someone to leave Fresno and go to Harris Ranch. That drive is longer and out-of-the-way.

Similarly, Groveland makes very little sense. Access to Yosemite from Fresno is from SR41 through Fish Camp. In the alternative, one can access Yosemite Valley via Merced and SR140. But Groveland is the northwest entrance. There might be occasional usage if one's destination were off SR4 or SR108, but I submit that would be a rare exception.

Buttonwillow makes no sense unless Fort Tejon is out of service. It is about a 30-minute detour off 99.

Mammoth Lakes (really?) is absurd. Even when Tioga Pass is open, the elevation gain into and out of Yosemite Valley makes reaching that Supercharger extremely remote without stopping at Fish Camp first.

Lone Pine is similar. You just cannot reach it without stopping at Mojave.

Absent from this list are 8 Superchargers easily reached in an 75kWh+ battery: Mojave, Tejon Ranch, Dublin, Seaside/Monterey, Folsom (Iron Point), Folsom (Palladio), Roseville, Rocklin. The kilowatt-hours needed to reach these other locations range from 47.5 (Dublin) to 63 (Mojave.)

The absent locations listed above are those that someone charging in Fresno would need. Not Mammoth; not Lone Pine; not Harris Ranch.

I would suspect that the lists are similar throughout the world.

Tesla really needs to rework the logic behind this software and provide meaningful information for travelers.
 
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(If the moderators wish to move this, I understand.)

The list of proximate Superchargers that appears on the touchscreen needs a lot of work. It is essentially worthless for me right now. Below I list the eleven Superchargers that appear on my screen when I press the thunderbolt. I show the distance per Google (as the crow flies, obviously) and then the actual mileage and estimated kWh (classic 85) needed to reach that particular Supercharger. I live in Fresno, 3.4 miles from the SC, so all distances assume leaving from my house.

Good write-up (which I can relate to because I grew up in Fresno, and the Fresno Supercharger is one of my most-used chargers). A few other thoughts:

1. The nav screen (the map part) should ideally show all of the chargers that you can reach given your current state of charge. I know that's kind of hard to do without actually doing all the routing computations, but hey I wrote "ideally", right? When I pull into Fresno from the Bay Area, with like 30% SOC (I made that number up), I really don't care about the state of any other Supercharger in the world...just Fresno, because I can't reach any of the others. So I want that map zoomed in. If I'm starting a trip I want to see a zoomed-out view so I can find the next charger 100 miles (or whatever) away.

2. Assuming you have a decent SoC, you probably don't care to see about chargers right next to you. Here in the Bay Area, there are Superchargers all around me, but if I'm starting a drive (full battery) it doesn't matter. I really don't care about anything closer than about 50-100 miles out. (The fact that these are some of the most congested Superchargers in the world is interesting but irrelevant.) So really the set of chargers that are interesting to me are in a donut-shaped region where the inner edge is the 50-100 mile radius and the outer edge is my range (OK the edges aren't really round...need to consider roads, topology, etc.).

3. Having said that, presenting the ordered list of chargers in some logical order would be highly desirable. The current list is sorted by increasing order of distance, which makes sense in the "I'm running out of juice and I need a charge now" scenario but not the "I have a full battery, find my next charging stop going towards LA" scenario. More than once I've scrolled to the bottom of the list, trying to find the Supercharger I want, and then realizing it's not on the list at all because there are too many closer chargers, and I need to unzoom the map to find it (or type it in the search box). I wouldn't mind so much if I knew that the far-away charger I'm looking for would actually be on the list when I looked for it, but having to abort and use another method to select a charger is just annoying.

I don't have a real suggestion for how to do this better, just that these are thoughts that occurred to me on my last road trip.

Bruce.
 
Frankly I don't find Tesla's 'show me chargers' feature to be useful in general. It lists Superchargers which is fine, but other than that there is nothing but desitination chargers which make up maybe 1% of all available L2 chargers in the US. Not having any database of public L3 nor L3 chargers in the car's navigation is inexcusable. Plugshare would be delighted to help Tesla with that.
 
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I look at this matter from a traveler's viewpoint. If the traveler stops in Fresno to Supercharge, he only cares about the Superchargers on his route. If he is heading north towards Sacramento, he does not care about Fish Camp, Harris Ranch, Atascadero, etc. But he would care about Roseville, Rocklin, and the two in Folsom. Likewise, if he is heading south to LA or to Vegas, the traveler wants to see Tejon Ranch or Mojave, not Gustine, Manteca, Groveland or Atascadero.

I really think that the touchscreen could enable a function for us to select our compass direction. The Superchargers displayed would be in radius to our direction. The results would still give some absurd choices, but at least the ones that are opposite to our journey would be eliminated, thus freeing up a few spots for those that are in the vicinity of where we wish to go.

But, it needs a lot of work in any event.
 
I guess I thought it's only purpose was for when we are at a low SOC. Otherwise just put in your destination and let it suggest superchargers. ( I will also admit that my first thought was that you should slap yourself for even saying that with that many superchargers around you! Would love to have that problem.)
 
Frankly I don't find Tesla's 'show me chargers' feature to be useful in general. It lists Superchargers which is fine, but other than that there is nothing but desitination chargers which make up maybe 1% of all available L2 chargers in the US. Not having any database of public L3 nor L3 chargers in the car's navigation is inexcusable. Plugshare would be delighted to help Tesla with that.

I agree. The ability of chadmeo chargers to populate when hitting the lightening bolt would be helpful as well. I seem to use PlugShare app more than any other app while driving.
 
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