To Supercharge or Not.....

[Uncle Paul]

I rarely see owners at Superchargers "wasting their lives". They tend to use a bathroom, take a little walk, shop in the mall, grab a coffee/snack, check some emails, take a nap, read a book etc. It seems to be an enjoyable break from hyper efficiency.
People charging at home are also kind of wasting their lives, watching TV, taking a nap, reading a book, etc.

Every owner makes their own personal decisions on how to use their time. Hard to come down on an owner that uses a local supercharger to juice up their cars.

Best case of all is that owners with Solar can run on Sunshine. People in low cost electric areas can justify charging conveniently at their home.

Strange case is where owners are on tiered utilities. Their first tranch of power is relatively cheap, but if they go over that amount their prices almost double. If they go into 3rd or 4th tranches they pay very expensive rates. For those people I can see how stopping at your friendly local Supercharger can make a bigger difference.

This is why I tend not to spend a lot of time judging people about how they live their lives. Their lives might be very different from my own.

 

[EV-Fixme]

There is not evidence that shows supercharging is bad for the battery. The car I just got has 210k mile of 240 charging for the last 7 years. I realize this is a sample of 1, and also a battery marked as "failed" by Tesla. It's a 60kWh battery that now has 49kWh.

 

[devilmountain]

Save the Supercharger for traveling, besides an incredible waste of time it keeps the spots open for travelers. On a recent road trip, I used a Supercharger at 6:30am that was completely full of locals putting on make up and on their laptops, others dressed in scrubs to go to work at the nearby hospital (even though the hospital has dedicated pay per use L2 chargers). Even though my battery was down to 30%, charging speeds were extremely slow. There were only two spots available and it was completely frustrating as I was trying to start a 400-mile drive home.

This experience soured me a bit on Supercharging. Next time I do this trip I will stay at a hotel with destination charging, where the valet controls the charging, so I am guaranteed to leave with a good charge. My wife and I cannot believe how many people spend their mornings at a Supercharger to save 50-100 a month. I think it's an incredible waste of time to save a few dollars. I only use Superchargers on long trips.

 

[toolman335]

Good points by all!
This is a new supercharger and I've never seen more than 2 out of 8 spots occupied.
Great point above about what I'd do with the precious first 20 minutes when I arrive at home. Ummmm….watch Netflix, hop on social media, refresh this forum, or play a video game to unwind after work. Or I can drive from the gym to the supercharger and do those things completely in peace for 20 minutes and arrive home detoxed after a long day of work.

 

[KenC]

I'd supercharge once a week, depends upon how much you drive. Hannaford and Home Depot would probably get alot more business from me, than they already do! I'd keep it under 80% SOC, just to be safe, though maybe the best strategy is to run it 15 to 60%, to avoid crystallization? Have to read that technical paper about charging, and give it some thought.