Tesla Supercharger network

[joefee]

:scared: HELP...going from SOCAL to Denver in July......Anyone near the Del Taco
1091 N Bluff St #500, St George, UT SC site see signs of construction?

 

[David99]

Drove from Las Vegas to Los Angeles on a Sunday night. Lots of traffic as is typical for people to spend the weekend in Vegas and then drive back. Pulled in Barstow expecting some wait knowing it's only 90 kW and only 4 stalls. But, no one there!

 

[Newscutter]

Regretfully made trip from Pittsburgh-Philadelphia area and decided to "stay on network" with the Superchargers. Skipped Somerset and Bethesda easily. We did great until leaving Baltimore area and turning north towards Newark, DE and ran into beach traffic/Philadelphia PM rush. Traffic delays pinched our timetable and caused us to improvise a little but Hamilton, NJ Supercharger bailed us out at the end of the day.

I'll be writing up the rest of the trip this week (from NJ to DC then back to Pittsburgh) but here's a video of the first leg with some charging stats that might be of interest:

REALLY want Superchargers to spread full length of PA Turnpike. In the meantime, I'd advocate "stretching" between Somerset/Hagerstown and King of Prussia/Devon HPWCs. The "southern" route is just a traffic disaster.

 

[HankLloydRight]

Regretfully made trip from Pittsburgh-Philadelphia area and decided to "stay on network" with the Superchargers..

Why "regretfully"??

We just got back from a CT->Chicago round-trip this weekend via the SC Network, and had a great time. Sure, it was about 150 extra miles each way (since the direct route through upper PA is SC barren wasteland), but otherwise, it was a great drive, and good weather the entire way (and no speeding tickets either!).

It also gave me the chance to test out my SC Logging app which I talked about earlier. Below are the results from our return trip yesterday and today. I have a couple more days of work to do on the app as a result of my trips (and a couple of brave alpha testers).. and then I'll open it up to the community. Even just for one trip, I found it valuable to be able to go back and review distances, speed, energy that I used between certain stops (yes, I know the elevations are reversed).. but still, I found the resulting data to be interesting to review both during the trip at each stop, and at the end overall.

 

[dirkhh]

It also gave me the chance to test out my SC Logging app which I talked about earlier. Below are the results from our return trip yesterday and today. I have a couple more days of work to do on the app as a result of my trips (and a couple of brave alpha testers).. and then I'll open it up to the community.

I think this looks awesome. I'd love to test this on my upcoming trip to TMC Connect...

 

[HankLloydRight]

I think this looks awesome. I'd love to test this on my upcoming trip to TMC Connect...

Thanks, I'll definitely have a version ready for peoples' trips to TMC Connect. I really just need to size the text/links and tweak the colors to make it more pleasing (and a few other things, like the ability to edit legs after entry). I'm really a back-end data-driven web guy, not a web graphic designer.

 

[ZBB]

It also gave me the chance to test out my SC Logging app which I talked about earlier. Below are the results from our return trip yesterday and today. I have a couple more days of work to do on the app as a result of my trips (and a couple of brave alpha testers).. and then I'll open it up to the community. Even just for one trip, I found it valuable to be able to go back and review distances, speed, energy that I used between certain stops (yes, I know the elevations are reversed).. but still, I found the resulting data to be interesting to review both during the trip at each stop, and at the end overall.

Thanks for letting me test your app. Even in its current form, it was easy to use. Looking forward to updates you make and using it on our road trip this summer!

 

[dirkhh]

Thanks, I'll definitely have a version ready for peoples' trips to TMC Connect. I really just need to size the text/links and tweak the colors to make it more pleasing (and a few other things, like the ability to edit legs after entry). I'm really a back-end data-driven web guy, not a web graphic designer.

Since I have business in the Bay Area and want to go to Bonnie's BBQ I'll head out Monday morning the 14th... so as long as you're done in the next 10-13 days, I'm fine
But of course I'm also willing to test it in its current form...

 

[Newscutter]

Why "regretfully"??
We just got back from a CT->Chicago round-trip this weekend via the SC Network, and had a great time. Sure, it was about 150 extra miles each way (since the direct route through upper PA is SC barren wasteland), but otherwise, it was a great drive, and good weather the entire way (and no speeding tickets either!).

Weather was great-- but we hit that bottleneck around Wilmington, DE right around rush hour. It was just a brutal amount of traffic (we had to get all the way around Philly to Princeton, NJ) and added a lot of stress re: staying on time for our events and having time/opportunity to charge. We totally scrapped our plans and had to "wing it" for several days. Between the longer SpC route, traffic, stress we would have been better off stretch to KoP and charging off the HPWC and probably driven away from traffic from there.

That's all. The miles weren't the problem.. it was the delays. Totally defeated the purpose of staying "on network" for faster charging.

 

[AlMc]

Weather was great-- but we hit that bottleneck around Wilmington, DE right around rush hour. It was just a brutal amount of traffic (we had to get all the way around Philly to Princeton, NJ) and added a lot of stress re: staying on time for our events and having time/opportunity to charge. We totally scrapped our plans and had to "wing it" for several days. Between the longer SpC route, traffic, stress we would have been better off stretch to KoP and charging off the HPWC and probably driven away from traffic from there.

That's all. The miles weren't the problem.. it was the delays. Totally defeated the purpose of staying "on network" for faster charging.

The bottleneck is caused mostly because of the closure of 495 that takes you around Wilmington,DE. A bridge was deemed 'unsafe' about a month ago and shut that route down. Now everything goes through Wilmington on I95...a royal PIA.

 

[PV_Dave]

Yup. Harrisburg/Carlisle on the "2014" map will be a tremendous help. In the mean time, an 85 should be able to make it to the Devon service center's HPWC, or the King of Prussia Mall's showroom HPWC (which has more entertainment options than Devon). If dual chargers, you should be able to pick up enough charge in under 2 hours to make it to Hamilton, NJ (or Newark DE), which will be faster than detouring through MD/DE to stay "on network".

 

[SamGarber]

Yup. Harrisburg/Carlisle on the "2014" map will be a tremendous help. In the mean time, an 85 should be able to make it to the Devon service center's HPWC, or the King of Prussia Mall's showroom HPWC (which has more entertainment options than Devon). If dual chargers, you should be able to pick up enough charge in under 2 hours to make it to Hamilton, NJ (or Newark DE), which will be faster than detouring through MD/DE to stay "on network".

Agree on KOP instead of Devon. Though they do have 4 HPWCs instead of one that can be often taken. The nice Devon folks will drop/pickup you at a nearby plaza with Chipotle/Sbux if you ask them during business hours. It is about 2 miles away.

 

[JakeP]

We could really use Superchargers at these Service Centers, and so could they. I heard a rumor that this was actually going to occur at each Service Center, even if only a single unit with two stalls. We'll see if that actually happens.

 

[dirkhh]

I talked to a senior Tesla guy (can't remember his title, but he said he was responsible for the roll out in the North Western US) and he said that supercharger stations at each service center had been considered but that they decided against it in general, but there would be exceptions (like Fremont) where it made sense based on location.

 

[Cottonwood]

I talked to a senior Tesla guy (can't remember his title, but he said he was responsible for the roll out in the North Western US) and he said that supercharger stations at each service center had been considered but that they decided against it in general, but there would be exceptions (like Fremont) where it made sense based on location.

Even just putting in one Mobile Supercharger can get pricey. Because most commercial locations don't have 480 Volts available, even a single Supercharger Cabinet (like in a Mobile Supercharger) can put a big hit on the electrical service. It takes something like a 300 Amp, 3-Phased, 208 Volt breaker to run just one Supercharger Cabinet at 90 kW. A lot of places don't have that kind of extra capacity, and as we all know service upgrades get expensive...

I'd rather have Tesla spend the money and effort on rolling out lot of 6, 8, and more stall, Superchargers; I's really like them to step up the North American pace to 4 turn ons a week to get to the magic 200 by the end of 2014.

 

[paulkva]

Interesting point about power requirements at service centers making superchargers there less practical. I would've guessed that the incremental cost to build one while building a service center would've been relatively low. I wonder, though, if a lower-power version (say, 208V, ~200A, for ~40kW) would be easier / more cost-effective but still compatible with the supercharger protocol. If they have enough power to run multiple HPWCs simultaneously at 20kW each, then they should have enough power to put in a 40kW "mini" supercharger. (Or am I missing something? Either way, I'm clearly NOT an electrical expert.)

I agree, though, that it's probably a better use of Tesla's time and money overall to build out the bigger inter-city superchargers.

 

[HankLloydRight]

I talked to a senior Tesla guy (can't remember his title, but he said he was responsible for the roll out in the North Western US) and he said that supercharger stations at each service center had been considered but that they decided against it in general, but there would be exceptions (like Fremont) where it made sense based on location.

All I can say is that the fact that the Highland Park, IL Service Center and Store has a 4 stall SC there -- without that available to me, it would have made my return trip from the Chicago much more difficult, as I would have had to rely on L2 charging to get me to the nearest alternative SC (Mishawaka or Aurora -- which is in the opposite direction). Saved me several hours of delay/inconvenience.

 

[Kleist]

In general superchargers at service centers are a must in order to test customer cars, however they don't have to run full power or be accessible to the public. When local conditions allow, there is a good chance that Tesla will place them in a public area.

 

[airj1012]

Someone uploaded this to a different thread saying it was about 2 weeks old. It looks like there is a second dot in GA (maybe Valdosta?) that we don't have and one in Tampa?

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

Someone uploaded this to a different thread saying it was about 2 weeks old. It looks like there is a second dot in GA (maybe Valdosta?) that we don't have and one in Tampa?

<the Supercharger board>

Well, that's not a good sign for Northern New England.