I have seen people waiting in line at Supercharger stations. Does the system recognises how many chargers are occupied and indicating it before suggesting a Supercharger or sending you to it?
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Sounds like possibly an easy software feature to add via the internet connectivity. Showing a map of local stations and a number of active stalls (and also ones maybe down for service) could be a very useful feature of the system.
they will block out SpCs that are not operating.
showing how many units are occupied is not a good use of resources because many SpCs are in areas with limited options and are the only choice for many miles around so you if you're on a trip and need a charge you will need to stop at that particular SpC regardless of how busy it is and also because if you look at a chart of usage 10-15 minutes prior to arriving in the time it takes you to arrive things can easily change.
Adding an "occupied ratio for the last 4 hours" can give an indication of how busy things are in the past few hours. Might be useful. It can also keep people from piling up in line including those who don't need a charge but just want one. If the line of waiters is full of people who could easily make it home, maybe they would not go there to begin with if they knew all SC were full - thus cutting the length of waiting line down somewhat. It's a psychological choice. Once there, why not wait in line. But if they knew it was full maybe they would avoid.
I would have liked to see the cars sold for $1000 less and a small price per kWh, such as .05/kWh in most markets. That way, those who just fuel-up daily could avoid the constant use. But sure, it would have also lowered the demand for cars with "free fuel for life".
Also, over time, a ratio of busy state on a week to week basis could be developed. Predictive knowledge of when a SpC is busy could even be shown on a graph by using historical data. The only way to know it now is to physically be there. But Tesla has the data to offer predictive activity data for any of the SpCs that are over 1-year old - including holiday periods. Even apply a weighting factor based on how many cars were sold in the past year within 250 miles of that SC which could cause additional use in the near term. It's Silicon Valley after all and programmers who think this way are "everywhere".
The situation varies in Europe - the distances between charges might allow one to consider another station instead of waiting in line...
8.1 is supposed to have real time supercharger status as well as a major navigation system overhaul, so you might get what you want in a few weeks.
Great -Thank you for sharing the news! now, need to wait for the X to be delivered, first (3/17);-)
What I would like to see is some kind of a "check in" functionality. When the car senses it is close (100 yards?) to superchargers, it could give you an option to "check in" and get "in line" for charging. When it is your turn to charge, it would send you a message on the phone that it is your turn and you have 5-10 mins to start charging on Supercharger 1B for example.
This way 1) you will know up front your wait time (you would be able to check how long the line is on a specific Supercharger) and 2) the navigation could avoid busy Superchargers
Just dreaming...
This way 1) you will know up front your wait time (you would be able to check how long the line is on a specific Supercharger) and 2) the navigation could avoid busy Superchargers
Just dreaming...
Figuring out wait times will be challenging - even if every car is running under navigation and passes the time it needs back up to a server, there are still large variables in it.
Having a computerized queue and showing your place in it is certainly easy enough - and might be an outgrowth of what I'm hoping they do, where when you approach the Supercharger it tells you which stall is the best one for you, with a nice chart of the locations on the center console (and maybe an option for fully automatic parking in that stall on AP1 cars.) When more than half the stalls are filled, it'd pair you with the most charged car; otherwise it'd use some algorithm to level the usage among the available unpaired stalls.
Having a computerized queue and showing your place in it is certainly easy enough - and might be an outgrowth of what I'm hoping they do, where when you approach the Supercharger it tells you which stall is the best one for you, with a nice chart of the locations on the center console (and maybe an option for fully automatic parking in that stall on AP1 cars.) When more than half the stalls are filled, it'd pair you with the most charged car; otherwise it'd use some algorithm to level the usage among the available unpaired stalls.
How about this. If they cannot do "SuperCharger activity logistics" - how are they going to do "connected car autonomous highway chaining" ?
I'm sure they can give you a guess. My point is that the sessions are long enough and variable enough that it will be a guess, and could easily be off by five or ten minutes - it'd be about as accurate as restaurant wait time for a restaurant with only a dozen tables.
The other thing is, Tesla is putting a bunch of money into reducing the chance it'll happen in the future - is a dollar better spent there, or in software to tell you how long the wait is?
And it can only be right if the driver is in the car and we can determine if they will unplug when it is "full" or even with 5% remaining as that is just enough for their trip. Once charge is under way, it is hard to know how long they will loiter (unless enough data is stored in the car for the last 10-20 charges at this particular supercharger and some average applied with one or two standard deviations for worse-case result). And times changes if someone pulls up and plugs into the "B" side of your 'A' connection thus lowering the draw possible on the lone plug. And it gets worse if some reason, the grid throttles the power to the transformer that powers everything.
Like you said - it is always an unknown and only rough estimates could be possible. Today, I went to cook hard boiled eggs. Set the timer for 10 minutes. Forgot about it - 25 minutes later my 10 minute eggs were done.
Like you said - it is always an unknown and only rough estimates could be possible. Today, I went to cook hard boiled eggs. Set the timer for 10 minutes. Forgot about it - 25 minutes later my 10 minute eggs were done.
Given the various posts on it, I'll be surprised if 8.1 doesn't include that much.
However, Tesla has a bunch of data, and they could do more to help us.
Oceanwolf
Oceanwolf
I think your last point is where the rubber meets the road.
Supercharger status doesn't help roadtrippers, who usually have no options. So we're asking Tesla to invest time and resources into helping local chargers.
It will probably happen soon enough. It shouldn't be a priority, though.
In California and much of Europe there are options now, and elsewhere there will begin to be options as density increases - if you know one Supercharger is backed up, you can charge a little higher at the one before and then skip on to the next one beyond the backup.
Of course, that requires knowing about the backup not only from hundreds of miles away, but also a couple hours ahead of time.
One of the things I expect Tesla to eventually evolve from the real time Supercharger status map is a usage predictor which will not only use daily/weekly trends for cars that aren't on Navigation, but will also record the expected arrival and departure times of every car that is using navigation at each location - and then start to adjust trip plans in the Nav software to mitigate backups, either by shifting cars to alternate supercharger chains or by subtle time phasing - if it gives you an extra five minutes of charging here, you arrive at the next site five minutes later and needing less time there.
I'm not sure it'll happen next year, but I'm pretty sure it'll happen. The effective improvement in network capacity from such a system is far larger than the impact of adding a few new sites, and it is just software, which can be added to all the cars immediately once the get it developed (not simple software, and not cheap it easy to build, but on the cost scale of Supercharging sites, not terribly expensive weigh either.)
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