I was one of the people who reported 20 cars in line at Kettleman when I arrived and 40 when I left. The wait time is not really that bad but the problem is compounded by the fact that - IMHO - because of uncertainty people were charging up more than they needed to get to the next Supercharger. This is a problem Tesla should be able to solve or even push to the cars in queue i.e. you are in line for stall 3A eta 5 min and next person is stall 4b ETA 10 min etc.
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Thanksgiving 2019 Supercharger lines?
- Thread starter israndy
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Thanksgiving seems to be the worst travel congestion. Probably because it's a holiday just long enough for people to go out of town, but most people have to travel at the same time to get there. During the Christmas/New Years holiday the bottlenecks aren't as bad because people travel at different times.
I hate traveling on holidays and I haven't in almost 30 years, but I wouldn't worry about the one time of the year when superchargers might be backed up. If you are really nervous about it you can buy an electric car and if supercharger congestion looks bad you can rent an ICE for the one trip a year that might be bad.
Another way around some supercharger bottlenecks is to strategically use destination chargers. Take two days to make the trip and stop overnight someplace that has a destination charger.
Another possibility, if your OK driving at night is to make the trip nocturnally when nobody else is on the road. My first trip to California in my Model S I went through the Siskuyus at night and that was actually a lot of fun. There was nobody else within a few miles of me in some stretches and I was able to open it up to 90 with no worries. The car has so much extra power that it climbed the steepest part of the grade like I was going over a small hill.
ddawson
Member
I drove from Roseville to San Mateo Wednesday night and arrived with 15%. I went to two different SC locations on Highway 92 and all were 10 cars deep at 5PM. Had to charge at my mother in laws on a 110 outlet to get me 1/2 home after thanksgiving. The added stress kind of sucked.
Wvapoker
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PWlakewood
Active Member
seattlite2004
Active Member
Kettleman City has 40 stalls, but half were unavailable as of 11/9/2019. Did Tesla finish upgrading all the stalls to V3 before Thanksgiving? I wonder if limited stalls was another contributing factor to the long lines. It is great to see real-time charger capacity but it can't tell you how long the line is.
Dr. J
Active Member
I suppose you meant "cars coming in from all different sides", no? I've been in a couple/three lines, but only one that was significant. Gaithersburg, MD seems to have regular congestion, mostly late afternoon, early evening. Fortunately they finally got the new station up in Frederick, about 25 miles away and likely a better place to charge for many. That now seems to be a busy spot. I hope it doesn't get congested like Gaithersburg. If it does, owning a Tesla will start to really suck for me just when I thought charging hassles were over.
Let's not kid ourselves about where the power is coming from at the charging stations at home or on the road. We all know that >70% of electric power is fossil fuel sourced, so switching to electric vehicles is better because of the efficiency of the car and NOT because the car isn't burning fossil fuels directly. Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fan of Tesla and there is certainly one in my future, but the argument of clean cars is hollow.
Yes, EVs are "better" than ICE in terms of releasing carbon, but not to a useful extent. The carbon problem is ginormous. I saw a book once with an illustration showing the present state of the atmosphere carbon content and the future increase was divided into a number of equal wedges corresponding to the number of proposed solutions to the problem. The book then goes on to show that not a single wedge was completely mitigated by the solution applied to it. Not one.
Driving an EV is exactly the same sort of solution to a problem that is so massive it would appear that humans literally can't comprehend the magnitude of it. A problem of our own making. So patting ourselves on the back when we buy an electric car seems inappropriate when it isn't even solving a portion of the problem.
Oh yeah, that book was written around a decade ago and in the meantime we have climbed higher up on the curve without making much of a dent in the slope.
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