As more and more superchargers are built and as new cars get increased range, it will happen more and more often where there are many superchargers along your route. Experienced EV road trippers will often structure their charging stops so that they arrive with a low SOC and can take advantage of being on the fast part of the charging speed curve. With a congested supercharger network, the speed gains from optimizing for a low SOC at charge time may be significantly outweighed by having to wait for a spot.
If you are using the in-car nav, it knows you intend to charge. I would love it if there was a behind the scenes load balancing of charge sites, where it might ask you to charge sooner than needed in an effort to spread out the usage.
Example: I have 120 miles of range left. If I have two chargers ahead of me on a route, Charger A 40 miles ahead and Charger B 80 miles ahead, I might normally choose Charger B. (Arrive with 40 miles left vs arrive with 80 miles left)
What Tesla knows (and I don't) is how many people are currently headed to either of them. If Charger B is much more frequented than Charger A, they could urge me (and others) to head to Charger A instead to split the demand and potentially reduce waiting times.
Does that make sense? I know it's not often that superchargers are 40 miles apart, but I do believe this will become more and more common as the amount of Teslas on the road increase. There will need to be redundancy to support the increased demand for supercharging, and to mitigate the effects of maintenance issues at any one site.
If you are using the in-car nav, it knows you intend to charge. I would love it if there was a behind the scenes load balancing of charge sites, where it might ask you to charge sooner than needed in an effort to spread out the usage.
Example: I have 120 miles of range left. If I have two chargers ahead of me on a route, Charger A 40 miles ahead and Charger B 80 miles ahead, I might normally choose Charger B. (Arrive with 40 miles left vs arrive with 80 miles left)
What Tesla knows (and I don't) is how many people are currently headed to either of them. If Charger B is much more frequented than Charger A, they could urge me (and others) to head to Charger A instead to split the demand and potentially reduce waiting times.
Does that make sense? I know it's not often that superchargers are 40 miles apart, but I do believe this will become more and more common as the amount of Teslas on the road increase. There will need to be redundancy to support the increased demand for supercharging, and to mitigate the effects of maintenance issues at any one site.
