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Supercharger - Van Horn, TX (permanently closed)

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brkaus, thanks for posting. I had the exact same problem earlier at Van Horn during spring break. It took me a while to get on TMC to post about the incident - today by chance I saw your posting. I wish i had posted my experience earlier to save y'all some problem. I'm surpised Tesla has yet to fix that stall 3A - that's where my problem occurred.

Here's my story:

On 16-Mar, while eastbound, we pulled our Model S at stall 3A. I inserted the SC cable in the charging port and the color did not change from dark blue to green to indicate charging. The car dash was indicating “charge port ready for charging”. It was as if the car was waiting for the SC to send charge. All connections seemed ok but no charging. I tried removing the cable but it won’t budge. Tried many times- kept the button on the cable pressed for about 30 sec but the cable would not release. It was stuck in the car and not charging. Even tried nudging the cable around with force in the port with button pressed.

Called Tesla customer service, the rep on line suggested that I bring the key fob near charging the port and press the key fob as if opening the rear trunk for 10 sec. That should hv normally unlocked the port, but it didn’t work for me. I tried it few times. Tried the steering wheel buttons reset, powered off the car and powered-back on, nothing worked. The charge port color remained blue all the time.

It was late in night about 11pm CST, and luckily we were staying that night at the Hampton Inn, next to the SC. The customer rep on ph was unable to help unlock the cable the whole night. He tried accessing the SC, but his system showed that the SC stall was not connected to the car; whereas in reality it was. He was trying to get a mobile service from nearby El Paso but to no avail. He had to wait till the service centers opened in San Antonio or Austin to reach service reps. The options looked bleak - either we had to wait till morning for a mobile service rep to be available from El Paso, SanAnt or Austin that could come; OR - leave the car in place and take a rental ICE (arranged by Tesla) back home to Houston, and Tesla reps would remove the car later and tow it to Houston for servicing.

Next day, early morning, I got a call from the Tesla Florida (I believe Miami) service center rep, who walked me thru the steps to resolve the issue. He texted me a picture of what to do (see below). Basically, I had to open up the truck and access as small hatch opening right behind where the charge port is located. There is an orange colored panel, below which there is a small switch like lever that needed to be pushed to the right. The lever is behind some cables and not easily visible; had to use my phone light. The solution was to push the lever to the right, and be ready to pull the SC cable out of the port when port color turns white. It didn’t quite work for me – maybe my hands were numb due to the cold weather or I was not pulling hard or the switch was not unlocking it. Anyway, on the fourth try after moving the switch all the way to the right, and instead of pulling the cable I pressed the button in the port next to the cable. That turned the color white, the cable got unlocked, and I was relieved to remove the SC cable out of the port.

I moved the car to the next stall – 2A, and let it charge fully while we had breakfast, before leaving for our next stop eastwards – Ozona, 227 miles from Van Horn.

The service rep did indicate that he was going to put a note out for the Stall 3A to be serviced and/or temporarily take it out of service. But seems it didnt happen. I'll call Tesla again and indicate this.

We had read about the above solution on the TMC forum, but the service rep on the phone strongly recommended us not to do it, due to high voltage issues and without explicit instructions from an authorized service center personnel.

This was a scary experience, and it would have been a much bigger issue had we not planned to stay at Van Horn.

I'm glad you guys sorted it out much faster.
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This location continues to be a problem.

4A and 4B have no juice (lights are out indicating as such). I plugged into 2A and initially got 118kW but then in crashed to 50. I unplugged and plugged in again and got it up to 70 but still well below what I would hope for. There was already a guy plugged into 1A and he said it was slow, so I switched to 3B where I got a good charge rate.

Someone else was plugged into 3A and I'm really hoping the above issues were resolved and they aren't stuck there. Either way, it's clear they hadn't been there for a while because I got a solid charge rate on 3B as if no one were plugged into 3A.

Of course what exacerbates this problem is that Fort Stockton and Pecos still aren't built so if you are headed east you really need to get a range charge here.
 
I found Van Horn to be as you described on Monday June 18.

I also had difficulties at Midland, Ozona and Junction. Seems west Texas (but not EL Paso) is a Supercharger backwater in general. I was really surprised at all the issues. Other vehicles charging -- or attempting to charge -- had the same issues so it was not my Model S that was the problem -- or it shared the same proeblems with Model X and Model 3.

Tomorrow we head out from San Antonio (thank goodness for El Mirador's destination chargers!) to Houston. We'll see if that portion of I-10 has functionsl Superchargers!!!
 
I found Van Horn to be as you described on Monday June 18.

I also had difficulties at Midland, Ozona and Junction. Seems west Texas (but not EL Paso) is a Supercharger backwater in general. I was really surprised at all the issues. Other vehicles charging -- or attempting to charge -- had the same issues so it was not my Model S that was the problem -- or it shared the same proeblems with Model X and Model 3.

Tomorrow we head out from San Antonio (thank goodness for El Mirador's destination chargers!) to Houston. We'll see if that portion of I-10 has functionsl Superchargers!!!
I had serious problems at Midland as well. I will update that thread in a bit. At first I thought it may have been some issue with my car, but I've now supercharged a few times since then without issue.
 
Stopped in at Van Horn again. It continues to be the worst supercharger I encounter in my travels (which is basically all of them). 4A and 4B are still completely dark. Tesla logo not even lit up on those two stalls which means there's no power going to them.

I tried one each of 1, 2 and 3 and got the dreaded West Texas spike up to 115kW and then immediate crash down to a much lower level. The first one crashed to 20kW, the next crashed to 30-something and the next crashed to 50kW where it leveled off. This was all with SOC in the 15-40% range, so that wasn't the issue.

Then finally I tried 2B and it worked as it should. Went up to 115kW and then slowly tapered as is normal after the SOC hit 60% or so. I still had to hang out for a while as I needed a near full charge to make Ozona, which I did with exactly ZERO Rated Miles remaining.

This time I was able to get through to Roadside Assistance without much of a wait so I reported the issues to them. I also told them I was disappointed to see no power to stalls 4A and 4B in March and now in August, which clearly indicates that they never bothered to fix them. The guy got a little defensive and claimed that they had been out there and worked on this supercharger, but I am highly skeptical. If they did work on it, they didn't manage to actually fix anything! He did say that 2B and 3A were the ones people had been having the most success with so that jibes with my experience today. I didn't dare try 3A however, since that's the one that got stuck in my chargeport back in March. Perhaps that's what they fixed on their maintenance visit, but I wasn't going to chance it.
 
Stopped in at Van Horn again. It continues to be the worst supercharger I encounter in my travels (which is basically all of them). 4A and 4B are still completely dark. Tesla logo not even lit up on those two stalls which means there's no power going to them.

I tried one each of 1, 2 and 3 and got the dreaded West Texas spike up to 115kW and then immediate crash down to a much lower level. The first one crashed to 20kW, the next crashed to 30-something and the next crashed to 50kW where it leveled off. This was all with SOC in the 15-40% range, so that wasn't the issue.

Then finally I tried 2B and it worked as it should. Went up to 115kW and then slowly tapered as is normal after the SOC hit 60% or so. I still had to hang out for a while as I needed a near full charge to make Ozona, which I did with exactly ZERO Rated Miles remaining.

This time I was able to get through to Roadside Assistance without much of a wait so I reported the issues to them. I also told them I was disappointed to see no power to stalls 4A and 4B in March and now in August, which clearly indicates that they never bothered to fix them. The guy got a little defensive and claimed that they had been out there and worked on this supercharger, but I am highly skeptical. If they did work on it, they didn't manage to actually fix anything! He did say that 2B and 3A were the ones people had been having the most success with so that jibes with my experience today. I didn't dare try 3A however, since that's the one that got stuck in my chargeport back in March. Perhaps that's what they fixed on their maintenance visit, but I wasn't going to chance it.

Have you tried Iraan? That's how I do the Van Horn - Ozona Leg. I think the detour is faster than waiting for 100% in Van Horn...
 
Have you tried Iraan? That's how I do the Van Horn - Ozona Leg. I think the detour is faster than waiting for 100% in Van Horn...
I charged in Iraan once but that was when I was doing a Van Horn>Pecos>Fort Stockton>Ozona trip so it was necessary.

This time I charged to about 93% in Van Horn and then went 85mph the whole way to Ozona. I admit I was being more stubborn than I needed to be about not slowing down :)
 
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I thought EVERYONE drove through West Texas during the night. My last trip west I stopped at Van Horn Supercharger and slept for a couple of hours until the hotel breakfast was open. After all, I was a guest (at least a Supercharger guest), LOL. We ate and then left for El Paso.

After waiting since mid-2014 (when I bought my P85) for Supercharging along I-10 in western Texas, I'm very appreciative of the motels in Ozona and Van Horn, and the Chevron in Junction for hosting Superchargers.

Did you really need to rip-off food from the Van Horn Hampton Inn?
 
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I thought EVERYONE drove through West Texas during the night. My last trip west I stopped at Van Horn Supercharger and slept for a couple of hours until the hotel breakfast was open. After all, I was a guest (at least a Supercharger guest), LOL. We ate and then left for El Paso.

How to get hotels to not want to host superchargers...