Here's a question from an (as yet) non owner. I've spoke to a couple of ICE owners with friends with Tesla's and they claim their owners are always complaing that when they finally get to superchargers during trips, they almost always find them occupied and have to wait for (sometimes) hours to get connected. Can anyone confirm or refute this? I'm on Australia's east coast.
I assume @Nevyn72’s post was pure sarcasm so I’ll try a more serious response.
Queuing at Superchargers is relatively rare but it does happen. People who say they waited 1+ hours are I suspect grossly exaggerating. It happens when you would also expect to see cars queuing at highway service stations, i.e. peak holiday travel periods which is from Boxing Day to about the 28/29 Dec and I expect we’ll see some at this upcoming Easter. Also unsurprisingly it mainly happens during peak daylight hours so from about 11am to maybe 3 or 4pm.
There are things drivers can do to de-risk this. If possible, plan your trip so that you are plugging in relatively early in the morning or later in the afternoon. Also stay at accommodation where you can AC charge overnight so that you leave with a full “tank” every morning, reducing the need to charge while on the road.
If that’s not feasible, when navigating to a supercharger, you can tap on the icon and it will show a histogram of peak usage times, with an estimate of wait times if all stalls are occupied. Note an SC showing 1+ stalls free could quickly change to no stalls free and 3 cars queuing in 10 minutes, and vice versa. It’s just the effect of cars turning up randomly.
So have a plan B of third-party chargers you can go to if SC queuing is really bad. But of course, you run the risk of queuing there too with less granular real-time data about how busy those sites are and level of queuing.
Having said all that, I have never had to wait to plug in at an SC in 3+ years of ownership. But I don’t often travel at peak holiday times.
Also, I just received my Wall Charger yesterday (still no car LOL) and was wondering for a verhicle (MYLR) that generally does short trips, is it better to top up the battery every night or is it better to allow it to deplete and only charge weekly etc?
Just plug in every night, For cars with LFP batteries, it is recommended to charge to 100%. For NMC batteries, 80% unless you are going on a road trip the next day.
There is nothing to be gained in terms of battery life by driving until nearly empty and then doing a big charge - in fact doing that you run the risk of having a low battery charge on a day when you have an unexpected need to take a long trip, resulting in having to get a rapid charge somewhere. An EV is not like and ICE vehicle where people drive till nearly empty then fill up. Just top up every day or nearly every day and don’t worry about it.
Some say the battery calibration requires data over a range of charge values, so if the car is perpetually charged within a narrow range (e.g. 70-80%) the range estimates will start to go off. But that will fix itself the next time you do a road trip.
