The "teardrop" looks like it might be slightly west of 17 near Summit Road. If this is the case, then that makes some sense in terms of being able to access it from either direction: there is already a full interchange between Summit Road & Hwy 17. You can get on and off from any direction to any direction, with Summit Road a bidirectional road crossing Hwy 17 using a bridge and the highway interchanges dumping directly via the road on either side of the bridge. It is still a highway intersection so you have to have full awareness exiting & entering, unlike a freeway, especially on the southbound direction of Hwy 17 :scared: (you come around a blind curve into the offramp which has a sharp almost-hairpin turn and steep grade that could scrape your car so you have to go from highway speed to blind turn careful hairpin steep climb speed, and re-entering southbound you also have to watch for cars coming around a blind corner where you can't see each other and everyone possibly distracted by all the exiting mayhem). But, crossing 17 at this Summit Road interchange would be ten thousand times safer than crossing 17 at the business area down at the next hwy 17 hill peak.
If you get a bit of a ways up or down Summit Road from Hwy 17 Westward or Eastward on a satellite map, a few spots with enough space to create a decent charging parking area are visible (and possibly enough sunlight for a few solar panels), so I would not be surprised if a charging area is quite a few blocks away from the highway. I didn't see many exciting businesses around that area, though --- this would be a backup charge location. It would be smart to make it a boring area without cell coverage or wifi so that cheapskates don't use it for free commute charging :frown:; that may be why they like this siting location above 17&85. During winter snow is common there (and I assume ice too?), so it needs proper weatherization.
The location is mystifying from a long distance charging network point of view
. Maybe people may run out of juice from air conditioning in backed up summer beach traffic, but at the summit they can coast down and recharge. Maybe CHP doesn't want a bunch of stuck cars just past the bottom of the hill once they've coasted all the way down. Maybe they are concerned by even slower traffic that doesn't even allow the car to charge going downhill with A/C on. Another possibility is that CHP wants to buy a few Tesla's for patrol vehicles, perhaps juiced up P85D's that can "launch" to catch someone really efficiently, and end up saving "fuel" and "pollution" from all the patrolling, and CHP wants a satellite parking area with one car on supercharge at all times (they keep one at SC and a few on patrol and swap them out). Other than that, I see lots of other superchargers near by --- Fremont, Gilroy, etc., that SHOULD reach through this area. The one thing I can think of that might make this location (very) sensible is that there is a sort of social wormhole between Santa Cruz & San Francisco which may suck up a lot of round trip juice, and that extra little supercharge may be all that's needed to get you through your occasional social trip without having to find that perfect EV parking spot in San Francisco (for eight gazillion dollars).
