Supercharger Stall Availability

[Ehamel22]

Hey guys,

I just noticed the map in my model S no longer shows supercharger availability (for example ‘4 of 8 stalls available’ ). The map simply shows the location and the idle charge fee. I called Tesla and they said this is correct and that “stall availability data” will no longer be available.

I’m definitley perplexed as this was beyond useful helping me to determine if I was going to charge at an open stall or wait until later that day or week as they were all full .

Not knowing this info will turn choosing a supercharging station into a guessing game.

Anyone know why this was done?

Thanks.

 

[Raechris]

Interesting, you are correct. I am on 36.2 and noticed the same thing. A supercharger that is always busy has a notice that says reduced service and the icon is different on the map. I believe this is Tesla acknowledging that the stall occupation is inaccurate and they are probably working to upgrade that feature before re-introducing it

 

[Tam]

...probably working to upgrade...

I hope you are right that it gets worse now in order to get better.

...perplexed....

Knowledge is power.

Tesla didn't show stall availability to the public for a long time even though it demonstrated that it could in a few waiting rooms such as headquarter's.

There were lots of complaints of long lines and owners couldn't make an uninformed decision to blindly risk trying a nearby station.

That's when Tesla finally made stall availability to owners' cars' navigation so they could make an informed decision such as to whether stopping by Barstow or Yermo 17 miles away or Baker 68 miles away...

It's very concerning that the transparency is now getting muddy.

Tesla should come clean and announce why such a decision was made (onboard release note would be nice.)

 

[outdoors]

Kind of bummed about this. Charger leapfrog can work well to work with the taper if you are not paired with others. Once a rhythm is achieved you can blast through miles. Other than a stray coming from their home to charge. Did I say that? All joking aside. I try to leap ahead of the cars at more than 50% stall occupancy. After being at the same SC's with the same folks on long road trips you try to sometimes push it to the next empty SC for the sake of all of us. Well at least I do. 100D also helps.

Taking this away makes it all now random. Interested to see what other roadtrippers think. Would like to here the rationale from Tesla as well.

 

[BerTX]

I guess it's more of a California thing. Never once has the occupancy graph influenced where I would charge. In the Real World, there just is no choice if you are on a road trip -- you have to charge there, and all the graph does is tell you if you might be waiting longer to finish charging.

 

[outdoors]

I guess it's more of a California thing. Never once has the occupancy graph influenced where I would charge. In the Real World, there just is no choice if you are on a road trip -- you have to charge there, and all the graph does is tell you if you might be waiting longer to finish charging.

Go to a charger with 4 stalls and 3 occupied. Have the range. Hop charger to next one. Don't really enjoy pulling 39kw for an hour for what I can get in 15 min or so. Happened 3 days ago in SD. So I think that is the real world we both live in.

 

[EVSteve]

Much of our road trip driving is at night. In unfamiliar areas I would use the availability chart in the opposite fashion. I’d look for SC which were not empty for the added security of not being a lone target while in turn helping whoever might currently be solo charging at night. I’ve seen posts of locals in rural areas being less than enthusiastic about our presence.

I will however try to avoid any SC where half or close to half the spots are in use.

 

[TaoJones]

I had to head to El Cajon/Alpine today to pick up some rear upper control arms before a meeting because Tesla doesn't seem to answer their parts line no matter who calls. From LA County, with clogged SCs on the rise (see Redondo, FV, SJC, and of course San Diego/Sorrento/Qualcomm, plus with Nav telling me all would be well getting to El Cajon with 16% at best (yeah? and THEN what?) a bit of experience came in handy.

With enough charge to get to Clemente, I charged there enough to have a buffer of 7-10% *after returning to Clemente from El Cajon and then the meeting in Alpine*. Easy peasy, and without having to endure the brain damage at the aforementioned timesinks. As noted above, there's nothing like an unannounced low power charger, let alone pairing into a 30Kw experience for the better part of an hour.

So it would be nice if Tesla ever implements the feature request to replace the somewhat puerile red/grey SC usage approach with a far more useful red/yellow/green/white/grey method where r/y/g denote the health of each pedestal, and white/grey show how full/empty the site is. Or just a simple x/y number would get the point across for how full/empty. When they remember to use it, the site icons for down or impacted are ok, but would also be far more useful if some granularity made it into the pop-up (e.g., temporarily down *for days/weeks/months/construction/other* rather than just temporarily down - and the same for reduced power. More info is better.)

Knowing pedestal and site health at least gives the driver a fighting chance to route around problems that can add HOURS to a trip. For example, when I called Support from Cheyenne, Wyoming about some issue or another, they could have told me, or better, Nav could have told me that Silverthorne, Colorado had been down at that point for over an hour (triggering a 4-hour SLA). I could have charged more at Cheyenne, or stopped in Denver to get enough to bypass Silverthorne and make it to Glenwood Springs. Instead, I almost had to get flatbed-ed from S to GS as the entire town was without power for 4 hours plus by that point. Another example would be Quartzsite recently that had a bad pedestal when I got there Friday night, and then went down almost completely by Sunday. Had this been clearly marked in Nav, I could easily have charged at Buckeye and then gotten to Indio. Instead, both Indio and Q were overloaded for hours and stacked 5 deep waiting.

I've submitted the above feature request 3x since they introduced red/grey. No interest, evidently. While it may be that only coastal chargers are getting hammered at peak times (even Redondo is fine at non-peak times), the more information we have, the better across the board.

 

[Snowstorm]

What? Why?
Tesla needs to provide more explanation for regressions. I still missed my color maps.

 

[thecloud]

I have definitely made use of this feature in the past to know whether I should take my chances waiting in a line or continue on to the next supercharger where there are many stalls available. As was said earlier, it may be a "California thing" since we are more likely to experience full superchargers with lines. Hopefully the feature returns soon.

 

[Tozz]

It's not only california. Same thing in Europe. No availability anymore.

 

[gilscales]

I had to go look at the car just now to confirm as I was showing this feature to my brother in law last night about 28 hours ago!

I have been on 36.1 for five days so it did not take an update to make the change.

I do not understand why they chose to remove this feature, as a newbie I found it very handy even for showing the number of stalls let alone the available number, if I were in range of 2 fully occupied places and one of them was a 20 plus stall place then I could easily choose that one for faster access.

I have also noticed that idle fees went to .50 cents an hour which is a good thing, overcrowding is here already in SoCal and its only going to get worse, everywhere I go I see more 3's on the road, I like to see them but road trips are going to be a little longer when traveling the coastlines!

 

[alloverx]

Real time data accuracy can be tricky. Especially if hardware is involved.

 

[EVSteve]

Real time data accuracy can be tricky. Especially if hardware is involved.

If Chargepoint can get it right then Tesla can. They’ve had reliable real time availability in their app for years.

 

[Snowstorm]

I don’t know if this is related to firmware or not. I am on 32.2 and the availability went away too. I think it might be turned off on their side. Even if it is not fully to the second accurate, it would still be useful.

 

[tivoboy]

Major MAJOR fail in y opinion. It was pretty accurate for me and no way am I heading to an SC without knowing availability.

 

[gilscales]

I don’t know if this is related to firmware or not. I am on 32.2 and the availability went away too. I think it might be turned off on their side. Even if it is not fully to the second accurate, it would still be useful.

Not related to an update as mine went away a few days after the most recent update I have, definitely turned off on their end

 

[tivoboy]

IT's BACK!!!. I can see all areas in my area at least.

 

[MorrisonHiker]

I remember when they rolled out this feature, it was a change in the data feed that they send to the cars (and doesn't require a firmware update to turn it off or on).

They are probably getting ready to release changes since the new Idle charges have started and they need to have accurate numbers for 50% or 100%. Maybe they will eventually do away with the per stall data and just show percentages. While it looks nice for a few stalls, it takes up a lot of space to show the status for those Supercharger locations with 20 to 40+ stalls.

 

[outdoors]

IT's BACK!!!. I can see all areas in my area at least.

Just reappeared on the 3, but not S.