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Supercharger - Seattle, WA - Union Street

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I couldn't care less about getting a supercharger in downtown proper. If they just put superchargers at the malls on each side of the town, they would work for all parties; people travelling through the city, people travelling to Seattle and back, and people who live in Seattle. Almost no one lives downtown, and many of those that do don't have cars. What I'm talking about is Northgate and Southcenter which both have plenty of space and then hopefully squeezing one into Bellevue somehow.

Anyways, this location does stink. And the fact that it isn't 24 hours is a huge negative. I remember when I first started following this stuff envisioning a FREE 120kW supercharger in Seattle. That was back in 2015 and it was "Target opening 2015!" back then. The concept of urban superchargers and superchargers in pay garages didn't exist back then. So obviously the fact that this is coming 4 years later, 72kW in a non-24 hour pay parking garage is highly underwhelming. I can't say I'm surprised though.
 
Given that its downtown, I do like that this location is super easy off and on the freeway. We live in north Seattle and keep the car parked on the street with inconvinient charger access of our own. We also make almost weekly trips to Puyallup. So on the weekends it will be nice to pay $7 (fairly low for downtown) and charge to full while visiting Pike Place or Westlake. If we want to stay longer for a meal or a show, we can spend 10 minutes at the supercharger and then switch over to the destination charger before heading to the event. It appears the existing downtown Vancouver one is decently utilized so I'm sure this supercharger will do fine as well. I'm really excited about it as it fits our circumstances well, but totally understand that this one won't be everyone's prefered charger.
 
But how practical is it? You would park and sit for an 30-45 minutes, then move and re-park your car in the garage and go where you were intending to go? Or plug in and come back in 45 minutes and move your car, then go back to whatever event you are attending? If you are only there to charge and leave, the $7 isn't that much different from $9.
It is actually amazing! If you are staying downtown for a while, use the destination charger. If you are just passing through, there are dozens of restaurants or stores in the area. This is so much better compared to eating at McDonalds in Centralia or Bob's Burgers in Burlington over and over again. You could stop here once a month and try something new every time. I can easily get 50 minutes if I charge to 100% without getting idle charges. 50 minutes is almost exactly the amount of time you need to get through a decent restaurant. Headed east from Seattle, I often pay to charge at the Summit, Suncadia or downtown Ellensburg just because I am tired of eating at the Taco Del Mar in Ellensburg and I really don't like Taco Bell.
 
There are almost 100,000 of us, and it’s the largest concentration of people who can’t install a charger at home in the state. It’s also the largest concentration of hotel rooms. For me and a lot of others, this will be a life changer.

The Demographic Statistical Atlas of the United States - Statistical Atlas
Your link is for Capitol Hill, not downtown. In fact, the link shows "Downtown" with a population of ~8k, coming in 23rd on the list of most population Seattle neighborhoods.
 
The link shows the populations of all the neighborhoods in seatte. I’m in Capitol Hill and I’m 6 blocks from this charger, and including the other neighborhoods that are a 5 minute drive from it (Capitol hill, first hill, downtown, belltown, Denny triangle, north beacon hill, and east Queen Anne, there are ~82,000.
 
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PLUS EV, your point is essentially correct, that Tesla could probably have served more people by building at the malls at the north and south ends of town. Lynnwoood and Southcenter. One is open already; I imagine the other is coming soon. BB though is right about the neighborhood atlas, which is a useful tool (thanks, BB) though. Anywhere that's walking distance from Amazon is going through some huge population upheavals. Seattle, for better or worse, remains a city in which you need to have a car to get anywhere that's not walking distance from one of the very limited public transit systems.

I live in Belltown, 8 blocks from the location of this thing. It won't be too bad to get to from the freeway, but it will be a nightmare to get to from anywhere else for the 10 or so hours a day that the streets of downtown are horrendously screwed up by traffic. It frequently takes me 45 minutes to get to the freeway, half a mile away. (I expect this to get exponentially worse next week with the closure of the viaduct). You are nuts to have an EV in the densely populated part of the city without home charging.

I think the right way to understand this particular charger is the same as understanding the one in Arlington. The building itself has enough Teslas that park there regularly that they thought it worthwhile to put in a supercharger, to encourage them to continue to park there. They did whatever it took to make it easy for Tesla to put it in. It's not about serving the general public at all. They're happy to take their parking fees, of course, just as the Casino is willing to take your money. But it's not about Tesla trying to make driving a Tesla in and around Seattle a better experience. It's about that particular business trying to protect and extend its income.

In a way, this is an encouraging sign for the growth of the network. It's no longer about basic coverage here. There are still many areas that need basic coverage, but Seattle is no longer one of them.

(Charging for apartments and condos is going to be a very big issue real soon now. When I bought my S 4 years ago, I went through quite the struggle to get a 14-50 installed. There are now 7 teslas and a half dozen other EVs in the condo building (of 121 total parking spaces) and it turns out that we're reaching the limit of the building's capacity. I'm thinking we're going to have to resort to some sort of load sharing. HPWC is a start but we're going to need a bigger network than that provides)


-Snortybartfast
 
PLUS EV, your point is essentially correct, that Tesla could probably have served more people by building at the malls at the north and south ends of town. Lynnwoood and Southcenter. One is open already; I imagine the other is coming soon. BB though is right about the neighborhood atlas, which is a useful tool (thanks, BB) though. Anywhere that's walking distance from Amazon is going through some huge population upheavals. Seattle, for better or worse, remains a city in which you need to have a car to get anywhere that's not walking distance from one of the very limited public transit systems.

I live in Belltown, 8 blocks from the location of this thing. It won't be too bad to get to from the freeway, but it will be a nightmare to get to from anywhere else for the 10 or so hours a day that the streets of downtown are horrendously screwed up by traffic. It frequently takes me 45 minutes to get to the freeway, half a mile away. (I expect this to get exponentially worse next week with the closure of the viaduct). You are nuts to have an EV in the densely populated part of the city without home charging.

I think the right way to understand this particular charger is the same as understanding the one in Arlington. The building itself has enough Teslas that park there regularly that they thought it worthwhile to put in a supercharger, to encourage them to continue to park there. They did whatever it took to make it easy for Tesla to put it in. It's not about serving the general public at all. They're happy to take their parking fees, of course, just as the Casino is willing to take your money. But it's not about Tesla trying to make driving a Tesla in and around Seattle a better experience. It's about that particular business trying to protect and extend its income.

In a way, this is an encouraging sign for the growth of the network. It's no longer about basic coverage here. There are still many areas that need basic coverage, but Seattle is no longer one of them.

(Charging for apartments and condos is going to be a very big issue real soon now. When I bought my S 4 years ago, I went through quite the struggle to get a 14-50 installed. There are now 7 teslas and a half dozen other EVs in the condo building (of 121 total parking spaces) and it turns out that we're reaching the limit of the building's capacity. I'm thinking we're going to have to resort to some sort of load sharing. HPWC is a start but we're going to need a bigger network than that provides)


-Snortybartfast
This.

My wife works in this building and in her small firm of less than 20 there are 4 Tesla owners (us included). Not all of them commute with them though. I also know there is a good size tech presence in the building including a few floors of Apple employees.
 
(Charging for apartments and condos is going to be a very big issue real soon now. When I bought my S 4 years ago, I went through quite the struggle to get a 14-50 installed. There are now 7 teslas and a half dozen other EVs in the condo building (of 121 total parking spaces) and it turns out that we're reaching the limit of the building's capacity. I'm thinking we're going to have to resort to some sort of load sharing. HPWC is a start but we're going to need a bigger network than that provides)

-Snortybartfast

You are so right. Preaching to the choir here...

I'm in a Belltown condo as well and have been working 4 years on getting a program approved in our building. We are "close" now... and I'm on the board. Sigh. People are afraid of change and also focus too much on planning for what happens when capacity becomes an issue, but it's a chicken-and-egg problem - few EVs because people cannot charge, but also, it's a huge waste of resources to provision transformers and sub-panels and complete load studies for an unknown future demand level of EVs.

Many Belltown condos have gone down the path of trying to allow chargers at 100% owner cost; one of the more interesting buildings I learned about (2000-2008 era building) measured supposed EV interest and ownership, put in sub-panels and step-down transformers, designed a program for up to 8 chargers and people to be able to buy those 'slots', installed it all, sold 6 'slots', and then found out ... only 2 users then wanted to spend the additional $3-7k to run the conduit, wire and more to their spaces; individuals thought the runs would be cheap.

Seattle City Light claims they love EVs and want to support them, but the raw costs are insane. The city's requirements for demand studies and other electrical work is the opposite of encouraging EV use. Even reading the plan documents for this downtown supercharger and other L2 chargers project, the back and forth comments between City Light and the engineering firm is pretty amazing, you can tell the project management team does not have a good relationship from the comments about lack of communication and a few other asks in the doc.

Sigh. It's so exhausting. Very few of our owners want to spend the $5-10K to get a private charger approved and wired up - the multifamily electric infrastructure cost makes gas look cheap. We are encouraged by the newer HPWCs supporting 4 unit load sharing but our community's shared Clipper Creek charger is what most people want to use, since it's already installed and also means there are cost savings over gas without having to spend on the install. I wonder how real the 49 ft. load sharing comm wire HPWC distance requirement really is.
 
Northgate and Southcenter are way too far away for capitol hill residents. So this will be far more convenient for me. My go-to charging is Pacific Place. I'm a little disappointed by the cost. Also it's going to be really hard to do anything except sit in your car for 45 minutes while charging. By the time you ride down an elevator, walk 2 blocks get seated at a restaurant you'll need to head back.

That's the problem with North/South malls too... idle fees just don't work with Urban Superchargers. It's too little time to do anything and too long to sit in your car. I would much rather have gotten like 30 destination chargers at pacific place: 24 hr, $5 nights, food and movies in house and an 80A charger would be great timing to watch a movie and get half a charge.

I mean, this is still awesome but it's far from perfect. Keep it coming Tesla. MORE chargers.
 
Northgate and Southcenter are way too far away for capitol hill residents. So this will be far more convenient for me. My go-to charging is Pacific Place. I'm a little disappointed by the cost. Also it's going to be really hard to do anything except sit in your car for 45 minutes while charging. By the time you ride down an elevator, walk 2 blocks get seated at a restaurant you'll need to head back.

That's the problem with North/South malls too... idle fees just don't work with Urban Superchargers. It's too little time to do anything and too long to sit in your car. I would much rather have gotten like 30 destination chargers at pacific place: 24 hr, $5 nights, food and movies in house and an 80A charger would be great timing to watch a movie and get half a charge.

I mean, this is still awesome but it's far from perfect. Keep it coming Tesla. MORE chargers.
Supercharge for 10 or 20 minutes while you stay with the car, then move it to one of the 10 L2 chargers that they are also installing in the same garage. After you've plugged in to the lower powered connection, leave to enjoy the area. Best of both worlds. It'll take longer than just plugging in to the L2 and walking away, but you'll get way more charge for a minor delay. Or, do it the other way. Plug into the L2 to start charging, go to dinner/etc., come back and finish charging at the supercharger before leaving. That way will be a bit less efficient as you might charge enough on the L2 to reach the power tapering when you move to the supercharger, but shouldn't be too bad.
 
You know, perhaps we should formulate a group letter to the mayors of the Seattle region, Seattle, Tukwila, Mukeltio, AND to the various Chambers of Commerce expressing our group desire to have Superchargers and Urban chargers at free municipal parking lots. Such a letter might emphasize the advantages of having a steady flow of customers to an area. Fred Meyer gets it. Numbers talk. The Urban Charger in Tigard, OR is on the lower level of a parking structure at a mall. You can easily walk to the Cheesecake Factory without getting wet or having to bundle up, it's that close.
 
If I’m around north gate near the freeway and need the juice (sub 50 miles in range) I’ll just hit AP and go to Lynwood . Bellevue and needing a charge , AP over to Issaquah.

Thing is SC is free for me for the next 6 months , no way I’m paying parking fees and SC fees to juice up, car will just sit idle and charge at 22 Mph on the dryer outlet.

Now for travelers and people needing a charge, this is fine but not for city folk in the surrounding neighborhoods.