My .02 on Supercharging on our April 6th solar eclipse road trip from L.A. to TX in our Long Range Model Y
Our first day plan is to get to Deming, NM, about 700 miles
Left home at 6AM at 100%,
First charge stop is at Morongo just off the 10 freeway
250 kw Chargers located near the 24hr convenience store
No waiting, and near all the gas pumps, so u can grab windshield washer if u need it.
That gives us enough charge to get us up the hill and along to the CA/AZ border.
Next stop Quartzsite, AZ
We plugged in at the solar canopy covered 80 250kw stalls, and there is another 20 something stalls less than a quarter mile away.
Grabbed a coffee at the “Terribles” convenience store, walked around the chargers for some exercise, then after about 25 minutes we’re on our way.
Next charge stop is Buckeye, AZ just before Phoenix
These are 150kw, and this where things start to slow down, the chargers are all in use, and our charger gives us 34kw.
We walk around the mall area twice, and stop inside some of the big box stores.
After about 35 minutes we have enough charge to get us to Casa Grande, AZ
Casa Grande is another 150kw, and only 6 stalls, same slow charge as at Buckeye.
We have lunch at Culver’s restaurant next to the chargers, and since it is slow charging we decided to continue to the next charging stop at Tucson
The Tucson West River Road 250kw Superchargers we go to are about 3 miles off the freeway, which adds time.
After charging in Tucson, we have enough charge to get to the 150kw Superchargers at Wilcox, AZ, so off we go.
Now, this is where the in-vehicle UI fails us.
The Supercharger UI in our vehicle shows 8 stalls at Wilcox, and all stalls available, so we drive past the Superchargers south of Tucson at the Pilot station, and continue to Wilcox. Approximately 30 miles outside of Wilcox, the UI says, no stalls available and greater than 25 minute wait! If we had known this we could have charged at the last Superchargers just past Tucson, and made it to Deming, NM.
As we pull into the Superchargers in Wilcox, there is a long line of around 20 Teslas. At least two of the stalls are non-working.
There is a friendly vibe among the Tesla folk, and one guy informs us it will be about 2 hours from where we are in line to get to a charger.
It was about 3 hours later when we leave Wilcox, and we get to Deming, NM at 10pm.
The rest of the trip was mostly smooth, luckily a new 250 kw Supercharger had just opened in Ozona, TX, and we did bypass a 2 hour wait at the Superchargers in Fort Stockton, TX on the way back.
The Supercharger Network got stress tested in many States during the eclipse, and it had quite a few points of failure
My thoughts; Yes, the permitting process for new Superchargers is slow, so the first order of business would be to upgrade all 150kw to 250kw
And also, fix the UI to actually show the reality of what is happening at all Superchargers, so that anyone road tripping can know exactly what the situation is.