SuperCharger Use Map

[Scrith]

Honestly, the arguments against Tesla sharing this information are just ridiculous. Make harmless information such as this available and leave its usage up to whoever has it.

 

[wjhepworth]

Until Tesla centralizes travel plans and actually takes ETA, speed, temperature, wind into account. Once you have a route in mind you really have few choices.

Amen, Jeffrey. I have been hoping Tesla would expand their calculations for a while now. A cold Tesla is very different from warm Tesla and it isn't like Tesla has to deploy the additional info to the cars. It can be gathered by backend services. Would also like them to help drivers cross-check perhaps by showing what expected battery should be at certain checkpoints (instead of just full trips) so you can gauge if you are over/under burning. Particularly useful for mountain driving.

 

[mspohr]

Amen, Jeffrey. I have been hoping Tesla would expand their calculations for a while now. A cold Tesla is very different from warm Tesla and it isn't like Tesla has to deploy the additional info to the cars. It can be gathered by backend services. Would also like them to help drivers cross-check perhaps by showing what expected battery should be at certain checkpoints (instead of just full trips) so you can gauge if you are over/under burning. Particularly useful for mountain driving.

I have found that the trip energy graph is very accurate. It seems to take charge state, current energy use, altitude, terrain, temperature and ? other factors into account in giving a continuously updated energy use graph with a final destination projection. It makes constant adjustments while driving so that you can see your energy use. I use it whenever I take trips to ensure I can make it to the next Supercharger or destination. The easiest adjustment to make is to your speed and I have found that just slowing down will dramatically increase range. It's particularly useful in driving through the Sierras with mountain passes and steep grades.

 

[Carl Leermakers]

I have found that the trip energy graph is very accurate. It seems to take charge state, current energy use, altitude, terrain, temperature and ? other factors into account in giving a continuously updated energy use graph with a final destination projection. It makes constant adjustments while driving so that you can see your energy use. I use it whenever I take trips to ensure I can make it to the next Supercharger or destination. The easiest adjustment to make is to your speed and I have found that just slowing down will dramatically increase range. It's particularly useful in driving through the Sierras with mountain passes and steep grades.

+1. Actually, the trip energy graph, together with the 'easiness' of controlling energy consumption by adjusting speed, for me makes for even less 'range anxiety' than when driving an ICE car. Am just back from skiing in the Alps and, just for the sport (and to let my three companions in the car know how ridiculous range anxiety is), always arrived at a SuC (or at destination) with between 1 and 10 km range left. The only wrong thing I noticed is that, where you can either take a tunnel under a mountain pass or a road over that pass, navigation will (obviously) suggest you take the tunnel, as it is quicker, but will calculate energy consumption as if you took the pass. Of course that's always a good surprise in the end (when you emerge from the tunnel) but it is noteworthy. And you can forget the warnings "drive less than 105 km/h to reach destination" etc. as long as you keep typical range around 10km higher than distance to destination.

 

[sandpiper]

I have found that the trip energy graph is very accurate. It seems to take charge state, current energy use, altitude, terrain, temperature and ? other factors into account in giving a continuously updated energy use graph with a final destination projection. It makes constant adjustments while driving so that you can see your energy use. I use it whenever I take trips to ensure I can make it to the next Supercharger or destination. The easiest adjustment to make is to your speed and I have found that just slowing down will dramatically increase range. It's particularly useful in driving through the Sierras with mountain passes and steep grades.

It's certainly not been my experience. I've found that does a poor job of compensating for temperature - if it attempts to do so at all. It's ALWAYS optimistic. I do far better by simply looking at the estimated range based on the last 50km and moderating my speed as required to make sure that i get there. EV Trip Planner seems to do much better than the Tesla software.

 

[benfrank3]

The waze Tesla browser has this. Waze for Tesla Incidents and Supercharger Traffic
not quite as detailed as you want. But very nice nonetheless.

 

[Kbra]

The waze Tesla browser has this. Waze for Tesla Incidents and Supercharger Traffic
not quite as detailed as you want. But very nice nonetheless.

I commend the creator of this Waze tool but ive noticed it has never been nearly correct. I showed up at a SC that was showing zero cars charging when in fact there were 8 and i made 9. It went to 1 when i hooked up. Since it requires each user to be using the Waze site at the time its essentially useless, in my experience.

 

[benfrank3]

Interesting. Did you tell Waze you were charging by checking in or something?

 

[jerry33]

I commend the creator of this Waze tool but ive noticed it has never been nearly correct. I showed up at a SC that was showing zero cars charging when in fact there were 8 and i made 9. It went to 1 when i hooked up. Since it requires each user to be using the Waze site at the time its essentially useless, in my experience.

Isn't that because most Tesla owners (and drivers in general) don't use Waze? I'm pretty sure it's not going to show cars that aren't Waze connected.

 

[Andyw2100]

I commend the creator of this Waze tool but ive noticed it has never been nearly correct. I showed up at a SC that was showing zero cars charging when in fact there were 8 and i made 9. It went to 1 when i hooked up. Since it requires each user to be using the Waze site at the time its essentially useless, in my experience.

Isn't that because most Tesla owners (and drivers in general) don't use Waze? I'm pretty sure it's not going to show cars that aren't Waze connected.

It has the option to allow people to manually update the information for others. This is what the author wrote about it in his thread:

Mostly correct. However the implementation is realtime. To clarify, there are 2 pieces of information the website now tracks:

1) It passively tracks Teslas using the web app as they pass through supercharger sites. This translates into a tailing 1hr summary of Tesla presence that can be seen from the web app.

2) It offers the option for Teslas using the web app to volunteer information on the wait time in terms of queue length (How many Teslas are waiting for a charge). This is reported separately from 1) as a trailing 1hr average of the reports.

 

[Edward75]

Thanks for posting, good thread.

 

[Ed Hart]

In a similar vein, would anyone want to see more information on their Tesla Mobile app? Here is a proposed representation of the charging situation at the Harris Ranch Supercharger. Most folks stop here and head off to an hour-long lunch. But, it you knew that all, or nearly all stalls were in use, you might be courteous enough to go move your car as soon as it is fully charged in order to make room for others. The app could be preference to alert you when you SHOULD move, not just when you are nearly full. I know that I went out to take a look when I got a "nearly fully charged" message in the middle of lunch, just to make sure there were still empty stalls. What do others think? If we think this is worthwhile, I will submit it to Tesla.

 

[apacheguy]

The screen should automatically appear once you're within a 1 mile radius of the SpC and it should show available kW at each stall.

 

[MorrisonHiker]

In a similar vein, would anyone want to see more information on their Tesla Mobile app? Here is a proposed representation of the charging situation at the Harris Ranch Supercharger. Most folks stop here and head off to an hour-long lunch. But, it you knew that all, or nearly all stalls were in use, you might be courteous enough to go move your car as soon as it is fully charged in order to make room for others. The app could be preference to alert you when you SHOULD move, not just when you are nearly full. I know that I went out to take a look when I got a "nearly fully charged" message in the middle of lunch, just to make sure there were still empty stalls. What do others think? If we think this is worthwhile, I will submit it to Tesla.

That would be cool and very useful but I doubt they would ever implement such a feature due to privacy/safety concerns. I think they could still do something similar, such as showing which stalls are empty and perhaps the charge rates of the stalls so you'd know which one would provide the fastest charge. While one could extrapolate how much time is left based on the charge rate, they wouldn't specifically be saying how many minutes are left for each car.

 

[benfrank3]

I don't see how publishing supercharger parking is a privacy issue. It's public knowledge to anybody within eyeshot; so what's the difference if the system publishes the real time connections? It's not publishing the license plate numbers or any car data for that matter. Funny - if you're on-site you have public access to all this information.

 

[Andyw2100]

I don't see how publishing supercharger parking is a privacy issue. It's public knowledge to anybody within eyeshot; so what's the difference if the system publishes the real time connections? It's not publishing the license plate numbers or any car data for that matter. Funny - if you're on-site you have public access to all this information.

I think the concern would be knowing how much longer someone is likely to be charging.

Someone with less than honest intentions who came upon a car that had just started charging, and had no occupants around could probably reasonably assume that the occupants would be gone for at least a while longer. Just looking at a car with no occupants around doesn't tell you how long it has been charging. Sure, those looking to break into Teslas could stake out Superchargers, but I believe the point made up thread is that Tesla would not want to provide information to make things easier for potential thieves.

 

[emchen]

Ahem...potential thieves must own a Tesla in order to access the Tesla app.

 

[Mike Robinson]

The thing that bothers me when this discussion comes up (and keeps coming up, and keeps coming up) is that, let's get real, folks, people often charge their cars for only about a half hour. Or sometimes less. You make your decision to use a supercharger maybe 100 miles away (or there is no decision to make because that's the only available supercharger on your route), and rest assured, things WILL change by the time you get there. Ya think?

This little app (wall sized app) does not tell you the current charge of the car, whether or not the owner is in the car, or what charge the owner wants to be at (which may depend on how good the book is that he's reading). Some superchargers sit a long distance from another, and people going from one to another will want full charge, maybe 2 hours. Or maybe the owner is headed home, we don't know, and only needs 10 minutes.

So this whole idea is not very useful. Driving to the next supercharger and waiting a few minutes is what usually happens. Except on WEEKENDS. If you insist on doing long distance drives on the superchargers' busiest times, you very probably will end up waiting, and knowing that there may or may not be a slot left by the time you get there won't make any difference.

I have driven thousands of long distance miles, and I have had to wait only once. It was on a Saturday afternoon. Imagine!

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As I said, I'm not so sure there is any advantage. This from only about ninety some thousand miles of driving and Supercharging my Model S.

I thought the Superchargers could fully charge any MS in a half hour. Is that not correct?

 

[EdA]

I thought the Superchargers could fully charge any MS in a half hour. Is that not correct?

That is not correct. Understanding Supercharger rates

 

[smartypnz]

I thought the Superchargers could fully charge any MS in a half hour. Is that not correct?

No, but typically one does charge in 20-40 minutes - when traveling it is enough to get you to the next charger plus a buffer