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Supercharger - Oak Brook, IL
- Thread starter eCharcoal
- Start date
Bikeman
Member
Yes, it looks that way as Google Maps no longer lists them being there. Unfortunately. I wonder if all that was planned before the SC was built. Panera sure could have benefited from those charging up, and vice versa. The new Panera is in a newly-built store about a mile south-west on 22nd Street.
Now, if the leaked future SC list is to be believed, the next Oak Brook SC location would be in the lot at the north-west corner of 56 and Meyers Road. There are plenty of restaurants there, but no Panera.
FielderJones
Member
If it is that corner, I hope they relabel the SuC as Lombard as that corner is technically part of.
Tam
Well-Known Member
I'm in California but YouTube describes a terrible scene with many cars stranded at the (broken) station. What's going on?
Another example the mainstream media wants Tesla dead. The batteries don’t just “die” in cold weather. If that’s the case, Tesla would have failed in Norway already.
I see a lot of these Teslas on TV are Model 3s with fleet plates which means they’re Hertz rentals. A lot of renters don’t know what they’re dealing with and expect to get 240 miles out of the pack if the screen reads 240 miles. And I mean doesn’t the nav tell them the SC is down? Did they even use the nav before driving there?
I see a lot of these Teslas on TV are Model 3s with fleet plates which means they’re Hertz rentals. A lot of renters don’t know what they’re dealing with and expect to get 240 miles out of the pack if the screen reads 240 miles. And I mean doesn’t the nav tell them the SC is down? Did they even use the nav before driving there?
Oh please. Enough with the conspiracy mongering.
This IS a very valid story to be reporting on and it's interesting to the general public. And to paraphrase Hanlon, never ascribe to malice that which can be adequately explained by ignorance. These reporters are not immersed in EV knowledge or terminology like we are.
And you can never expect every EV driver to be 100% savvy on all the ins and outs of their vehicles, especially in extreme circumstances.
And it's not the drivers' fault so many Superchargers failed. That's all on Tesla.
And it's also on Tesla that their battery preconditioning logic and controls are way too opaque for drivers and poorly designed for using local Superchargers in extreme cold. Even if you route navigation to a Supercharger, if it's only a few miles away that won't give the car nearly enough time to warm up in any meaningful way.
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As EV advocates we all need to own up to this issue. For me it hits home since I was scheduled to charge at Oak Brook but luckily made a restroom stop in Kenosha instead.
This is not the same as long lines in mild climates. This was a "perfect storm" so to speak that Tesla, our policy makers and society as a whole can and must learn from.
This is not the same as long lines in mild climates. This was a "perfect storm" so to speak that Tesla, our policy makers and society as a whole can and must learn from.
jgillispie
Member
Hopefully at some point the cause comes out. Whether it's a problem on Tesla's end or someone controlling the grid shutting down or limiting power to them.
TBH, at the beginning of it, it all looked very suspicious to me too. But in the end, most of the root causes are pretty "nerd level 9000" type things. I can't blame the media for not taking that angle. So far, the coverage has been decent overall.
The real bad reporting will come later, when it gets reframed wholly as "evs don't work in cold weather".
Tam
Well-Known Member
I agree with @jsmay311 that this cold weather issue for EVs is valid and needs to be addressed.
If you look up your Tesla app, there's an uptick of out-of-order Superchargers in the area. In this case, it's the entire Oak Brook shutdown by Tesla. Indeed, Norway in the Arctic region works well, but I guess it takes more work to winterize your Tesla Superchargers. Tesla needs to beef up its maintenance crew in winter, and resetting the stations from the comfort of a warm office won't cut it.
Due to multiple out-of-order stations, the wait is longer. Someone arrived with a 30% charge in another station but gave up and left for another one but couldn't make it because the range in winter is not the same as in summer and had to be towed. Thus, in this case, range is an issue that Tesla is in denial "There are essentially zero trips above 400 miles where the driver doesn’t need to stop for restroom, food, coffee, etc. anyway.”
This kind of problem is not good for professional rideshare drivers either.
If we want to wean people off from petroleum, we need to address the cold winter issue.
It's solvable, but it costs more effort: Winterization, maintenance crew, longer-range cars, and more chargers (Tesla can bring portable Superchargers to these special events).
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The cause has been known for a while. It's lazy, inconsiderate or incompetent drivers that throw or drop the plugs in the snow after charging. The warm plug melts the snow that goes inside the plug. Due to the extreme cold melted snow will flash freeze in the plug and now you have a charger out of service. You see this at busy stations where the chances of idiots increases. We can't have nice things if we have a population of imbeciles!
See my reply above about why the specific plugs went out of service. it's not about winterizing, it's about an idiot population. Your example of the person with 30% who drove to another supercharger and probably passed 30 level 2 chargers along the way is another example of an Idiot.
Finally the ONLY reason Tesla shut down the chargers on the app was to dissuade people from coming to the chargers so that they could clear the backlog of dead Teslas. They were able to get the chargers to work quickly by heating the plugs to clear the ice inside them.
The fact of the matter is the Idiocracy that is the tesla Uber Hertz driver is the problem and I had a good time laughing at these morons over the past couple days
Tam
Well-Known Member
It sounds like there's an issue in the cold weather that's not the problem in summer, so these reporters didn't invent the issues.
There's a solution for icing plugs: Winterizing them. V3 and V4 have thermoregulated cables.
Shutting down is the wrong thing to do. Tesla has been known to bring in additional portable Superchargers in busy locations.
It's better to solve problems rather than blaming drivers.
Bikeman
Member
Oakbrook is V3 with 8 stalls. Eight, unlike the TV show title, isn't enough. Not even close. At midnight it isn't unusual to see 6 of 8 stalls in use. Very popular location. There will be another one built about 1.5 miles away next year, and that won't even cover the need. Even peppered on the map with a lot of stations, it seems like a charging desert with so many Tesla drivers around here. There's also another one in the plans near O'Hare Airport with 52 stalls - thank goodness!
But if it is true that the cables are thermal in V3's, then it didn't seem to help. The cables might be thermally regulated, but what about the handle and the connectors?
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Bikeman
Member
Learned tonight on a pretty reliable YouTube VLOG, that in 2022, Illinois had 19,000 new EV registrations, whereas the new registrations in 2023 that number had grown to nearly 90,000. That's new yearly registrations, not the total registered Illinois EV's one the road, which would be a larger number. I did not verify these figures with the state. But I should. One way or another, there seems to be more demand for public charging than there is capacity when we get into winter and bad weather. California has had a similar and growing problem keeping up with the build-out of charging infrastructure, and it is causing problems and irritation -- without storms such as this.
FielderJones
Member
I have yet to see a six-digit Illinois EL plate, but I'm sure they're going to start issuing them this year.
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