Tesla forced to open superchargers to unlock billions

[bradtem]

Tesla screwed up. Instead of 40 stalls next to DQ, they should have built some near DQ, some near Taco Bell, some near Burger King/Denny's/Arby's, etc. It's hard for me to imagine a situation where 40 cars worth of people all want to get refreshments at DQ at the same time and nobody wants to go to the other restaurants. In fact, looking at the inside of that restaurant on Google Maps, I don't think it can even serve that many people at the same time, so the parking lot of SC stalls is way too big for the facilities at that location.

It's worse. The DQ and Sub place are closed in the evening, and they aren't very good. The best tactic here is to get some of the Mexican or Green on the way to the charger and eat them at the charger at the convenient picnic tables Tesla puts at all superchargers. Oh wait, they don't. So I get out my portable table and chairs. But frankly, that's not a great experience. I would like to eat at the actual restaurant with the food hot, and not have to bring my own chairs. In time, this might get figured out.

But I put out this picture of myself alone at a 36 stall station to show how ridiculous the "You must unplug as soon as charged" idea being expressed by some here is. In this situation, you absolutely should not be expected to do so, or charged fees for not doing so. In fact, if you want to stay overnight, you will be fine and should be fine doing so, because Tesla knows that station never fills in the middle of the night. You would take the risk that, in the 1 in 10,000 chance that it fills up before you awaken, your phone would sound an alarm and you would trapse down in a bathrobe and fix it.

Why do you want that? You're tired. You just want to go to sleep. You don't want to wait 40 minutes, then go out and move your car. You want to sleep, and move it in the morning because you aren't going to hurt anybody. But people who want to demand you move it will be delaying your sleep by 40 minutes, when it is no business of theirs as long as you will take that 1 in 10,000 risk. Today, you can do it, but the fees start if it gets 50% full, which is not happening either but more likely, and there is no alarm to warn you.

This problem happens at level 2 as well. I stayed at an inn on the Sunshine Coast of BC that has a 2-stall level 2 Flo charger in front of it. Absolutely nobody else is going to use that charger except hotel guests. I plugged in late, with the other stall empty. At 3am I woke up and happened to check -- it was charging me idle fees, even though the other station was empty. So I had to get dressed and go out of the hotel to unplug. Nobody was coming at 3am to use my station or the other empty one. Level 2 has to be done overnight, so this is just silly. I would have accepted though, if they would have in their app, given me an alarm if another car did plug in and I was done, or better still, if a 3rd car showed up and indicated he wanted to charge, that could wake me up. What they did made the charger useless -- who will charge at a hotel if you need to wake up at 3am even if nobody else shows up and there is an idle stall still open anyway? (This was not the hotel's charger, it was owned by the city, but in a location where only hotel guests would use it at night. Shoppers might use it after 9am. Maybe.)

 

[STS-134]

It's worse. The DQ and Sub place are closed in the evening, and they aren't very good. The best tactic here is to get some of the Mexican or Green on the way to the charger and eat them at the charger at the convenient picnic tables Tesla puts at all superchargers. Oh wait, they don't. So I get out my portable table and chairs. But frankly, that's not a great experience. I would like to eat at the actual restaurant with the food hot, and not have to bring my own chairs. In time, this might get figured out.

Sounds like you should complain to Tesla for not putting stalls in the right places. Even if you're allowed to stay plugged in if it's not busy, it sucks to have to literally run back to your car (15 minute walk I'm assuming is about 0.3-0.4 miles, and it's going to require running to cover that distance in less than 5 minutes) if you for some reason get an alert. And it's REALLY going to suck doing that on a full stomach. Better to just put the stalls directly outside of the restaurant I want to eat at and if charging finishes, I walk the (at most) 200-300 feet to the car to disconnect it.

 

[bradtem]

Sounds like you should complain to Tesla for not putting stalls in the right places. Even if you're allowed to stay plugged in if it's not busy, it sucks to have to literally run back to your car (15 minute walk I'm assuming is about 0.3-0.4 miles, and it's going to require running to cover that distance in less than 5 minutes) if you for some reason get an alert. And it's REALLY going to suck doing that on a full stomach. Better to just put the stalls directly outside of the restaurant I want to eat at and if charging finishes, I walk the (at most) 200-300 feet to the car to disconnect it.

Tesla seems to pay very little attention to Restaurant quality/location. Sometimes Zero.

Remember, a smart app knows where you are, and how far a walk it is to the station. So if you are a 10 minute walk away, when it gets a prediction there is a risk of the station being full if you don't move, it will warn you 13 minutes in advance (3 minutes that you set to get up from the meal and 10 to walk.) Of course, ideally it never happens. You're on alert anyway, as your car is finishing or about to finish.

Now, if the station is busy (but not full) you're going to know that and know that you should plan to get back when your session ends. But if the prediction is that the station will remain with empty stalls (which is true almost all the time I charge, full stations are pretty rare) then you can relax. If that changes because a lot of people suddenly nav to this charger or show up without naving, you will get the word to expect to get back when your session ends. Today it's hard to relax. I've never been charged idle fees but I got a warning once because I was tracking the station usage count in the app and it was delayed by quite a while, so the station got >50% even though my app told me it was not there. That's bad. (I was 2 minutes walk from the station but could not physically see it inside the restaurant.)

 

[STS-134]

Tesla seems to pay very little attention to Restaurant quality/location. Sometimes Zero.

Big mistake, given that the advantage of having an EV is that you can fuel it when you are doing something else. So it's the quality of the "something else" that makes all the difference to drivers and passengers.

Remember, a smart app knows where you are, and how far a walk it is to the station. So if you are a 10 minute walk away, when it gets a prediction there is a risk of the station being full if you don't move, it will warn you 13 minutes in advance (3 minutes that you set to get up from the meal and 10 to walk.) Of course, ideally it never happens. You're on alert anyway, as your car is finishing or about to finish.

Now, if the station is busy (but not full) you're going to know that and know that you should plan to get back when your session ends. But if the prediction is that the station will remain with empty stalls (which is true almost all the time I charge, full stations are pretty rare) then you can relax. If that changes because a lot of people suddenly nav to this charger or show up without naving, you will get the word to expect to get back when your session ends. Today it's hard to relax. I've never been charged idle fees but I got a warning once because I was tracking the station usage count in the app and it was delayed by quite a while, so the station got >50% even though my app told me it was not there. That's bad. (I was 2 minutes walk from the station but could not physically see it inside the restaurant.)

Interesting question: if there's a problem with the app not giving you notifications (which can happen for a variety of reasons, including the phone killing the app in the background, mobile data not working, or Tesla's servers not properly sending the notifications), do you get charged idle fees? If it's Tesla's fault, should they be allowed to charge you? If it is your mobile provider's fault, do you have to pay Tesla and then sue them in small claims court if they refuse to refund you?

 

[moa999]

Tesla seems to pay very little attention to Restaurant quality/location. Sometimes Zero.

I think you underestimate how hard it is to find sites where the landlord is willing to host a supercharger, there is sufficient parking and where power upgrade costs won't make it unviable.

 

[jsmay311]

 

[bradtem]

Big mistake, given that the advantage of having an EV is that you can fuel it when you are doing something else. So it's the quality of the "something else" that makes all the difference to drivers and passengers.

Interesting question: if there's a problem with the app not giving you notifications (which can happen for a variety of reasons, including the phone killing the app in the background, mobile data not working, or Tesla's servers not properly sending the notifications), do you get charged idle fees? If it's Tesla's fault, should they be allowed to charge you? If it is your mobile provider's fault, do you have to pay Tesla and then sue them in small claims court if they refuse to refund you?

They can set the policy as they like. Today, if your app dies and you don't get notified when your charge is about to finish and thus don't return to the car, you would get charged fees if the station is 50% full, I think. I think it would be a nice approach to not charge fees if the notice failed, though they would not want you to be able to deliberately avoid fees by killing the app.

Is is the Tesla main servers that would decide to warn you that it will soon be time to move your car, and they can send a notice to your app, and get an ACK from the app that it displayed the notice. If it doesn't get the ACK, it would make sense to text you. If you don't get the text, I suspect they should give you 1 or 2 reversals but after it happens a 3rd time charge you fees, even higher fees to make up for your grace period. But they could take any policy they wish. You want to avoid the fees if it's Tesla's fault, or just an accident, but today they charge them so they could do that as well. Today, in theory, you could set a warning on another device for a fixed time in case your phone dies, but I doubt many do that.

A better UI might be an optionally silent notification when your end of charge is approaching (similar to now) which perhaps you ACK to say, "I want more time" and it responds, "No, the station is getting too full, you need to get back" or "Cool, we will inform you if the station looks like it will fill soon." Perhaps throwing a status box in your notifications area or on top of other apps if you want. You should not have to look at the box, but you had better be sure you hear it beep/vibrate if the actual warning comes.

Tesla's model should actually be able to show you a graph out into the future of the predicted occupancy - as noted, they know most of the cars that are coming, and also when most of the currently charging cars will be done. In most cases you might look at that graph and say, "I have tons of time" or you might say, "High load is coming in 20 minutes, I should be ready for an alert." But ideally you just put the phone in your pocket and wait until you hear it ring/vibrate.

Of course, if it's convenient, just move the car and not worry. But sometimes that is quite inconvenient.

 

[KJD]

They can set the policy as they like. Today, if your app dies and you don't get notified when your charge is about to finish and thus don't return to the car, you would get charged fees if the station is 50% full, I think. I think it would be a nice approach to not charge fees if the notice failed, though they would not want you to be able to deliberately avoid fees by killing the app.

Is is the Tesla main servers that would decide to warn you that it will soon be time to move your car, and they can send a notice to your app, and get an ACK from the app that it displayed the notice. If it doesn't get the ACK, it would make sense to text you. If you don't get the text, I suspect they should give you 1 or 2 reversals but after it happens a 3rd time charge you fees, even higher fees to make up for your grace period. But they could take any policy they wish. You want to avoid the fees if it's Tesla's fault, or just an accident, but today they charge them so they could do that as well. Today, in theory, you could set a warning on another device for a fixed time in case your phone dies, but I doubt many do that.

A better UI might be an optionally silent notification when your end of charge is approaching (similar to now) which perhaps you ACK to say, "I want more time" and it responds, "No, the station is getting too full, you need to get back" or "Cool, we will inform you if the station looks like it will fill soon." Perhaps throwing a status box in your notifications area or on top of other apps if you want. You should not have to look at the box, but you had better be sure you hear it beep/vibrate if the actual warning comes.

Tesla's model should actually be able to show you a graph out into the future of the predicted occupancy - as noted, they know most of the cars that are coming, and also when most of the currently charging cars will be done. In most cases you might look at that graph and say, "I have tons of time" or you might say, "High load is coming in 20 minutes, I should be ready for an alert." But ideally you just put the phone in your pocket and wait until you hear it ring/vibrate.

Of course, if it's convenient, just move the car and not worry. But sometimes that is quite inconvenient.

This is getting really old. I am sick and tired of hearing your 101 ways to modify the app. None of which will ever happen.

Just get off your lazy a** and move the car when it's done charging. Problem solved.

 

[Dennisis]

This is getting really old. I am sick and tired of hearing your 101 ways to modify the app. None of which will ever happen.

Just get off your lazy a** and move the car when it's done charging. Problem solved.

In a perfect world sure, but I’m still waiting for FSD I paid for 5 years ago and again 3 years ago, at least a reliable TACC that doesn’t brake at mirages. This suggested app upgrade is just above Apple CarPlay on my priority list which is to say almost dead last.

 

[texas_star_TM3]

Tesla seems to pay very little attention to Restaurant quality/location. Sometimes Zero.

Remember, a smart app knows where you are, and how far a walk it is to the station. So if you are a 10 minute walk away, when it gets a prediction there is a risk of the station being full if you don't move, it will warn you 13 minutes in advance (3 minutes that you set to get up from the meal and 10 to walk.) Of course, ideally it never happens. You're on alert anyway, as your car is finishing or about to finish.

Now, if the station is busy (but not full) you're going to know that and know that you should plan to get back when your session ends. But if the prediction is that the station will remain with empty stalls (which is true almost all the time I charge, full stations are pretty rare) then you can relax. If that changes because a lot of people suddenly nav to this charger or show up without naving, you will get the word to expect to get back when your session ends. Today it's hard to relax. I've never been charged idle fees but I got a warning once because I was tracking the station usage count in the app and it was delayed by quite a while, so the station got >50% even though my app told me it was not there. That's bad. (I was 2 minutes walk from the station but could not physically see it inside the restaurant.)

what "fine dining" can be accomplished during the 20-30 min it takes at a V3 to charge basically from "empty" to "full" ?
if you don't like the restaurant option at the SC... do a drive thru on your way to the SC and eat in your car?
for any sit down dining the charging is way too fast and you'd have to run outside half way thru the meal and move your car away from the stall to avoid idle fees...

 

[Earl]

what "fine dining" can be accomplished during the 20-30 min it takes at a V3 to charge basically from "empty" to "full" ?
if you don't like the restaurant option at the SC... do a drive thru on your way to the SC and eat in your car?
for any sit down dining the charging is way too fast and you'd have to run outside half way thru the meal and move your car away from the stall to avoid idle fees...

Good points. There is definitely a market for ~50 kW fast chargers without a penalty for staying past full (maybe a 2-hr limit to avoid hogging) to be installed at restaurants that will guarantee you a full charge when you're done, yet allow you to enjoy your meal.

 

[Altes]

Yes, the goal is to make charging infrastructure open to the masses.

I myself am not impressed by my being a member of the Tesla club. At the same time, when superchargers instantly get double, triple, or quadruple the eligible user base there will be far more horror stories of two hour waits to get to grandma's house on Thanksgiving, and that will reflect negatively on the EV experience.

IMHO, not opening the Tesla connector specification until now was a major strategic blunder on the part of Tesla. It could easily have become the industry standard and they pissed away that chance.

tesla made their charging standard design FREE to anyone wishing to adopt it so its not their fault that no-one took them up on it

 

[jboy210]

Elon has talked about having a charging and drive-in restaurant (with or without roller skates!) like the 1950s. I could see that being popular in some areas as a destination.

 

[bradtem]

what "fine dining" can be accomplished during the 20-30 min it takes at a V3 to charge basically from "empty" to "full" ?
if you don't like the restaurant option at the SC... do a drive thru on your way to the SC and eat in your car?
for any sit down dining the charging is way too fast and you'd have to run outside half way thru the meal and move your car away from the stall to avoid idle fees...

Yes, current charging is too fast for a good sit-down meal, I have often written that. The obsession with "15 minute charging" really only applies to people who expect to wait during their charge rather than do something. There are few tasks that fit 15 minutes -- it's too long for a bathroom break, too short for dinner and most shopping.

While there are exceptions, the right principle is to charge where you were already wanting to stop and do something else. The #1 thing to do while charging is sleeping, and that's when I do most of mine. On a road trip, the #2 is eating.

There is a flaw in this plan though, which is it doesn't work to have everybody charge at the same time, so more than this is needed. Also dinner time is a time of expensive electricity.

But for sit-down dining, you do want to not have to go move the car. (That's also true for counter-serve food though you can often fit a fast food meal in a charging session.)

Solutions for that include chargers with more stalls so you don't have to go move the car, better policies on moving the car. There is another solution which Tesla could implement if they stopped wasting all this time on FSD - the car moves itself. The driver who has arrived wanting your spot is told by their screen/app to unplug the car in stall #5 which has finished charging. Then that car (your car) leaves the stall and goes to a regular parking spot. If Tesla could get parking lot summon working. (As a plus, the sensors of the cars in all the other stalls could help it see, since those stalls are full in this situation.)

A short hassle for the arriving driver, but well worth doing because the next guy will do it for you, pay it forward style. In fact, anybody arriving at the station (to charge or to leave) is given a list of cars to unplug or plug in as a favour to other drivers. You can pay them to do this if you want but again, it's mostly a pay it forward thing. Or they can refuse because somebody else will come soon enough. In the advanced version of this cars that were "waiting in line" are assigned to an empty stall when somebody leaves it and drive themselves into it, then wait for the next human to plug them in. (Or their own human comes from what s/he is doing if in a hurry.) No need for idle fees.

(If somebody new is about to arrive, the car doesn't do that without its driver there, and it pulls back out if nobody plugs it in by the time somebody new is arriving, so that person can pull into the stall as though nobody was ever there.)

Something actually useful to do with FSD and Summon tech.

 

[Genie]

It’s not realistic to expect Tesla/EA/other charging vendor to custom tailor their sites like that, 50kW near restaurants, 250kW near starbucks etc.
All that DCFC station cost has to be paid by someone, ultimately the vehicle owner even if it’s ‘free’, the dinner will have to cost more.
The desired 2 hour charge while dining could be had with much less equipment and expense if the restaurant or parking lot owners install lots of L2. Adding 10-20kWh cheaply while dining would be a good experience,the sort of thing Chargepoint is better suited for than Tesla or EA.

 

[Earl]

It’s not realistic to expect Tesla/EA/other charging vendor to custom tailor their sites like that, 50kW near restaurants, 250kW near starbucks etc.

Tesla already did that with the 70 KW "urban" Superchargers. I'm not sure exactly why they halted this approach but, as with most things, Tesla has looked into and tested the waters here.

The desired 2 hour charge while dining could be had with much less equipment and expense if the restaurant or parking lot owners install lots of L2. Adding 10-20kWh cheaply while dining would be a good experience,the sort of thing Chargepoint is better suited for than Tesla or EA.

EA is hardly suited for anything other than wasting punitive money (buy junk, install it poorly, throw it away, repeat).
I do agree that L2 while eating is certainly better than just wasting that time while on the road, however, 50 KW is probably closer matched to a nicer meal (as long as it doesn't stop after 30 minutes like the old EVgo ones did). I was working away from home for a while and there was a CHAdeMO charger in the town where I was staying (close to food but not to my hotel) or I could drive 20 minutes out of the way (40 minutes total) to a Supercharger. I became quite familiar with trying to charge while eating dinner but the limitation of EVgo stopping after 30 minutes was a major annoyance. It limited the convenient distance between the charger and the restaurant and I still had to leave my meal to restart the charging session.
I've considered using the CHAdeMO adapter to enable charging during a good meal while on road trips, however, when you factor the expected 30 minutes needed to fight with customer service and then, still, have only about a 75% chance of it ever working leads one to just push on to a Supercharger, even if it means wolfing down fast food, leaving during the meal to move the car, or just wasting the opportunity to charge, extending one's trip.
Sure, 50KW DCFC stations are a lot more expensive today than L2. However, when every restaurant has a half dozen or so, economy of scale can probably bring them down to the cost of a lamp post.
Remember Tesla's original scalable chargers in the early Model S? Tesla mass-produced a 10 kW (240v, 40a) charger that could support daisy-chaining multiple together:
1 charger = 10 KW onboard charging (base)
2 chargers = 20 KW onboard charging (premium car equipment)
8 chargers = 80 KW Supercharger
They later optimized the Superchargers, breaking away from this model. Such a model may still have merit under some circumstances - and, we can be sure Tesla knows when since they've tried it.

 

[bradtem]

It’s not realistic to expect Tesla/EA/other charging vendor to custom tailor their sites like that, 50kW near restaurants, 250kW near starbucks etc.
All that DCFC station cost has to be paid by someone, ultimately the vehicle owner even if it’s ‘free’, the dinner will have to cost more.
The desired 2 hour charge while dining could be had with much less equipment and expense if the restaurant or parking lot owners install lots of L2. Adding 10-20kWh cheaply while dining would be a good experience,the sort of thing Chargepoint is better suited for than Tesla or EA.

While a Level 2 charge in a meal is "nice" that is all it is. It doesn't really solve any problems. If I am stopping for a meal on a road trip, I want to fully recharge for the next leg of my road trip. (If I am stopping for dinner in the town I will sleep in, the hotel is the right place to charge with Level 2 while I sleep, and I don't care that much about dinner charging.)

For people in their home city with no charging at home, they need to reliably pick up about about 250 miles every week. While they can pick it up in little 30-40 mile spurts at stores and restaurants, they would probably prefer to just get filled up at those places and not have to constantly be on the hunt.

The reality is that public level 2 charging is largely a waste, and the 100,000 public level 2 chargers that subsidies paid for often sit unused most of the time. Level 2 charging belongs where cars park for long periods -- homes, work, commuter lots, street overnight parking. It's generally not public except the streets and some commuter lots.

This is the problem. The government doesn't want to fund private charging, so it funds public charging that is useless rather than doing that.

For those that have level 1 at home, it can be reasonable to also pick up 30 miles in an hour at a restaurant to supplement that, but some people can't even get level 1 at home. I think that for people who can't charge at home, the best answer is 100kw chargers at grocery stores, lots of them.

• Most people visit a grocery store 1-2 times/week. (Though some walk!)
• Visits tend to be at least 30 minutes
• People visit at all hours of the day, making full use of the station. (restaurants are mostly visited at mealtimes, duh.)

There are not many locations that people reliably visit 1-2 times/week for a short period. Of course people go to work more reliably but level 2 is fine for them, in fact better.

 

[RoyT]

Really simple: If Tesla is going to take the govt. carrot of $7.5 Billion at our inconvenience, they darn well better make it easy for us to use the others' CCS Networks by giving every Tesla owner a FREE CCS Adapter. That will level the playing field a (little) bit.

 

[israndy]

If you don't already have a CCS adapter, don't bother. It's like they were all installed with grant money and the money for repairs wasn't discussed before the install happened. Shocking how many non-Tesla chargers I saw broken on my long roadtrip this weekend

 

[SO16]

If you don't already have a CCS adapter, don't bother. It's like they were all installed with grant money and the money for repairs wasn't discussed before the install happened. Shocking how many non-Tesla chargers I saw broken on my long roadtrip this weekend

Even in Canada a couple times this summer to Nova Scotia, I’d pull into the supercharger, plug in and go get something to eat while noticing people fidgeting with the CCS charger nearby and their non-Tesla. I’d come back out 20min later ready to go and they were STILL messing with it and on the phone with support.