Cross post from Kettleman city thread...
Getting 16 of the Kettleman chargers switched over to V3 was hugely important, for the relief it provided, but also from a data acquisition standpoint. The question that needs to be answered here, and at other soon to be realized choke points, is what is the optimum solution taking everything into account. You can model what you think is going to happen when V3s are in place versus V2s, but that only goes so far, you need real people traveling during the peak period to see how they behave. Tesla now has V3 vs. V2 utilization data for the biggest Holiday choke point in their system. This will let then know precisely what benefit upgrading the remaining V2 chargers to V3 will accomplish. I'm assuming that they also have visibility into the number of line waiters via the in car data connection.
The solution space includes such things as: 1) Upgrading V2 to V3 chargers, 2) Only allowing charging to 80% based on users anticipated route and other charger availability down the road, 3) Raising idle fees to get people motivated to unplug as soon as they are done (only during Holiday rush), 4) Altering the in car navigation routing to send people to less used Superchargers depending on their usage and the drivers intended route. Thats just a start, but most of the list is nothing more than smart software upgrades. The last resort is building another large Supercharger across the street unless it is absolutely necessary. Of course, given Model 3 sales rates, it is going to be necessary at some point, just when is the question.
Having said all that, I don't believe the "goal" for Tesla is to never have a line at any Supercharger during busy Holiday periods. Not much consolation for people having to wait in line for 30 minutes yesterday. EV drivers already know that charging takes longer than using a gas car. Adding another 20 minutes for a line wait once a year isn't going to result in the death of the company or any amount of people selling their cars. The worlds finest Tesla lounge is right there, plenty of beverages on tap, clean restrooms, etc. People are adaptable and many will rethink their travel timing if it bothers them enough. Exhibit A for first world problems.
The bottom line here is that Tesla the company is uniquely (currently) in the position of having to solve this problem, and the methodology they use to solve it will be used over and over down the road as other site also need to solve the Holiday travel issue. The big difference with the EV competition is that nobody else has this problem yet, but it is coming. And because the other EV drivers are going to be using a different set of DCFCs that aren't part of a single ecosystem, they are going to end up having an ever worse problem than Tesla has during the Holiday periods. And the other players will not have the ability to alleviate it like Tesla does. This is yet another area that Tesla has a huge advantage versus other companies, but one that the other companies won't be able to "catch up" due to the fact that so many different players are involved.
RT
Getting 16 of the Kettleman chargers switched over to V3 was hugely important, for the relief it provided, but also from a data acquisition standpoint. The question that needs to be answered here, and at other soon to be realized choke points, is what is the optimum solution taking everything into account. You can model what you think is going to happen when V3s are in place versus V2s, but that only goes so far, you need real people traveling during the peak period to see how they behave. Tesla now has V3 vs. V2 utilization data for the biggest Holiday choke point in their system. This will let then know precisely what benefit upgrading the remaining V2 chargers to V3 will accomplish. I'm assuming that they also have visibility into the number of line waiters via the in car data connection.
The solution space includes such things as: 1) Upgrading V2 to V3 chargers, 2) Only allowing charging to 80% based on users anticipated route and other charger availability down the road, 3) Raising idle fees to get people motivated to unplug as soon as they are done (only during Holiday rush), 4) Altering the in car navigation routing to send people to less used Superchargers depending on their usage and the drivers intended route. Thats just a start, but most of the list is nothing more than smart software upgrades. The last resort is building another large Supercharger across the street unless it is absolutely necessary. Of course, given Model 3 sales rates, it is going to be necessary at some point, just when is the question.
Having said all that, I don't believe the "goal" for Tesla is to never have a line at any Supercharger during busy Holiday periods. Not much consolation for people having to wait in line for 30 minutes yesterday. EV drivers already know that charging takes longer than using a gas car. Adding another 20 minutes for a line wait once a year isn't going to result in the death of the company or any amount of people selling their cars. The worlds finest Tesla lounge is right there, plenty of beverages on tap, clean restrooms, etc. People are adaptable and many will rethink their travel timing if it bothers them enough. Exhibit A for first world problems.
The bottom line here is that Tesla the company is uniquely (currently) in the position of having to solve this problem, and the methodology they use to solve it will be used over and over down the road as other site also need to solve the Holiday travel issue. The big difference with the EV competition is that nobody else has this problem yet, but it is coming. And because the other EV drivers are going to be using a different set of DCFCs that aren't part of a single ecosystem, they are going to end up having an ever worse problem than Tesla has during the Holiday periods. And the other players will not have the ability to alleviate it like Tesla does. This is yet another area that Tesla has a huge advantage versus other companies, but one that the other companies won't be able to "catch up" due to the fact that so many different players are involved.
RT
