Since the impression of prospective Tesla owners of Supercharger congestion is that there is always a wait, I thought I would share my experience with my Thanksgiving 2022 road trip. My trip was 2123 miles in total, generally in the eastern/northeastern part of the US. The trip began the Saturday before Thanksgiving and included Charlotte, NC, greater Washington, DC area, western NY, northern NY, and then concluded the Sunday after Thanksgiving with a marathon 750 mile trip from northern NY to Durham, NC.
I did not travel on I-95 this trip, which admittedly might be worse than the roads I did travel on, however I have used that road in the past on holiday weekends and have not had trouble. I did take I-81 through Pennsylvania which has very limited Superchargers, and V2 at that, so that does represent a possible bottleneck, as opposed to I-95 which has a lot of larger V3 sites. Traffic on I-81 on the Sunday after Thanksgiving was as heavy as I've seen it, with several off-highway diversions suggested by Waze to avoid slowdowns, so this was a very busy travel day.
A few of the Superchargers visited are admittedly not high volume (Mansfield, PA and the older Syracuse, NY Electronics Parkway site (now called Liverpool)), but as mentioned above, some of the sites were potential "bottleneck" sites being 8-stall V2 sites with large gaps between. Plus, the weather was pretty bad on that leg, meaning more frequent charging for all.
Superchargers visited:
Lynchburg, VA (x2) (8 stall V3)
Sterling, VA (8 stall V3)
Gettysburg, PA (8 stall V3)
Williamsport, PA (8 stall V3)
Mansfield, PA (4 stall V3)
Liverpool, NY (8 stall V2)
Potsdam, NY (4 stall V3)
Binghamton, NY (8 stall V2)
Moosic, PA (8 stall V2)
Carlisle, PA (8 stall V2)
Woodstock, VA (8 stall V3)
Of the 12 Supercharger visits, only 3 were close to capacity: Sterling, VA, Moosic, PA and Carlisle, PA. I never had to actually wait to plug in.
The Moosic and Carlisle stops, being V2 sites and with a fairly large gap between them with no other charging opportunities, presented the "best" possibility of having to queue, but that never happened. I was the 8th car to plug in at Moosic, and 7th at Carlisle. Charge speed was reduced at both stops due to stall sharing, which did extend the stay. In 4.5 years of Tesla ownership, I can count on one hand the number of times I've actually felt like I had to sit and wait while the car charged, and that includes these two stops. That said, the wait was not extraordinarily long (at Moosic in particular we always plan a meal stop), and by the time I got caught up on phone notifications, it was time to leave anyway. Had the weather been better, or the traffic a bit less heavy, I suspect the wait would have been minimal.
All in all, another successful road trip without any significant impact to travel time, even though the last day was longer and had more stops (5) than it's been taking us in the summer (3) for the same trip.
I did not travel on I-95 this trip, which admittedly might be worse than the roads I did travel on, however I have used that road in the past on holiday weekends and have not had trouble. I did take I-81 through Pennsylvania which has very limited Superchargers, and V2 at that, so that does represent a possible bottleneck, as opposed to I-95 which has a lot of larger V3 sites. Traffic on I-81 on the Sunday after Thanksgiving was as heavy as I've seen it, with several off-highway diversions suggested by Waze to avoid slowdowns, so this was a very busy travel day.
A few of the Superchargers visited are admittedly not high volume (Mansfield, PA and the older Syracuse, NY Electronics Parkway site (now called Liverpool)), but as mentioned above, some of the sites were potential "bottleneck" sites being 8-stall V2 sites with large gaps between. Plus, the weather was pretty bad on that leg, meaning more frequent charging for all.
Superchargers visited:
Lynchburg, VA (x2) (8 stall V3)
Sterling, VA (8 stall V3)
Gettysburg, PA (8 stall V3)
Williamsport, PA (8 stall V3)
Mansfield, PA (4 stall V3)
Liverpool, NY (8 stall V2)
Potsdam, NY (4 stall V3)
Binghamton, NY (8 stall V2)
Moosic, PA (8 stall V2)
Carlisle, PA (8 stall V2)
Woodstock, VA (8 stall V3)
Of the 12 Supercharger visits, only 3 were close to capacity: Sterling, VA, Moosic, PA and Carlisle, PA. I never had to actually wait to plug in.
The Moosic and Carlisle stops, being V2 sites and with a fairly large gap between them with no other charging opportunities, presented the "best" possibility of having to queue, but that never happened. I was the 8th car to plug in at Moosic, and 7th at Carlisle. Charge speed was reduced at both stops due to stall sharing, which did extend the stay. In 4.5 years of Tesla ownership, I can count on one hand the number of times I've actually felt like I had to sit and wait while the car charged, and that includes these two stops. That said, the wait was not extraordinarily long (at Moosic in particular we always plan a meal stop), and by the time I got caught up on phone notifications, it was time to leave anyway. Had the weather been better, or the traffic a bit less heavy, I suspect the wait would have been minimal.
All in all, another successful road trip without any significant impact to travel time, even though the last day was longer and had more stops (5) than it's been taking us in the summer (3) for the same trip.
