SLT has been much requested and is certainly needed before a 2nd Truckee SC site.
That, and an end to the drought, would be most welcome. There hasn't been a good ski season since the Model S came out.
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I am sure that Tesla is aware of how busy the Harris Ranch location is (they have the realtime data on usage) and has plans to address it. But the landlord there may not be willing to give up more ICE parking spots for Supercharger stalls, or there may be an issue with bringing in more power.
I've never seen a general parking problem at HR so I don't think they are in danger of losing customers because the farthest spaces are taken. I also don't know what percentage of people who charge will eat at HR, but considering the location, it's a more feasible place to eat than others on I80. It's not that there aren't places to eat near other SCs. It's that with the trips I've made, it was unlikely or impossible to make HR a quick stopover. I'd rather stop at TR for a quick frozen yogurt and eat at HR than eat at Chipotle and sit at HR for 45 minutes doing nothing. If there were more places to charge on the way, it would be a different story.
Assuming that only one or two cars per hour results in somebody going into the restaurant, and assuming a check size of about $100 (all random assumptions) and this happens for the eight hours that are most likely to coincide with meal times, then that could translate to about $300K to $600K of revenue per year. I don't expect everybody who charges to eat there, but there's not a lot else to do there when charging. Since I don't see people sitting in all the cars that are charging, the people must be going somewhere.
It could be that there are far more people than that who are stopping to eat, but even if there are fewer, it seems like a good deal compared to the value of that number of parking spaces in a sparsely populated area. I would think that the landlord would want more chargers, and I could see Tesla charging landlords for exclusive territory rights for a given number of years. If a company can make more money with it than without it, it's a sound business decision.
Personally, I'd prefer to see the number of sites increase instead, with something halfway between TR and HR, and something halfway between HR and Gilroy. It would be good if it came down more often to which stop to skip and how long to charge at the previous stop in order to do so.
