-
Want to remove ads? Register an account and login to see fewer ads, and become a Supporting Member to remove almost all ads.
Wait Time at Tesla and 3rd Party Charging Stations
- Thread starter diver110
- Start date
KerryOH
Member
In NJ, NY, PA and DE I have never waited at a Tesla SC in the year and a half I have owned my MX. Only used public chargers less than 5 times never waited there either. I doubt MD is very different with the possible exception of the DC Metro area.
GHammer
Dark Star
It depends on the location and time of day, some of the California chargers in urban areas sometimes get quite busy and have a que.
Holidays can also be an issue on some major travel routes.
In about 40,000 miles of long distance travel and visiting over 250 different supercharger cites I have waited 3 times for less than 5 minutes
San Juan Capistrano CA
Downey CA
Colorado Springs CO
We hit a line during New Years at Corning CA that was about 20 Minutes.
I have also gone by Culver City CA when there was about a five car lineup. I didn't wait, I went to another location.
Third party stations seem rarely used however most locations only have one plug so it only takes one other person to make you wait. I have had to wait for someone to finish on a third party station twice.
Holidays can also be an issue on some major travel routes.
In about 40,000 miles of long distance travel and visiting over 250 different supercharger cites I have waited 3 times for less than 5 minutes
San Juan Capistrano CA
Downey CA
Colorado Springs CO
We hit a line during New Years at Corning CA that was about 20 Minutes.
I have also gone by Culver City CA when there was about a five car lineup. I didn't wait, I went to another location.
Third party stations seem rarely used however most locations only have one plug so it only takes one other person to make you wait. I have had to wait for someone to finish on a third party station twice.
Silicon Desert
Well-Known Member
As another poster says, there is no blanket answer to this question. It depends on where you live. Many big cities have become quite congested in my travels. Out on the interstate, I barely see anyone in past years, but even now I have noticed that some SCs are becoming more busy, yet I don't have to wait.
It's very location dependent, and there are relatively few locations out of the total that even have any crowding problems. But obviously they have the most people, so that's where you hear the most complaints about it. I've been doing this for 5+ years and hit over 60 locations and still never had to wait. I've only ever seen a site full once, and only even had to be paired sharing charge with another car about twice ever! And that's because I don't drive in California or New York City or those crowded places.
Well, when I pull the trigger, I will have to hope Baltimore is as good as Boise (where I have a niece and Boise State Professor nephew-in-law).
I'll take the low traffic for as long as it will last. Boise has been in the top 10 fastest growing cities for the past several years. A stat showed that during 2017 and 2018, 60% of the new people coming into Idaho came from California. There was a clip from one of our news anchors that went viral saying, "Boise is full."
The shoe is certainly on the other foot regarding Superchargers. Back when I first got my Model S in 2014, there weren't any Superchargers within range of me for the first year and a half. And I was gritting my teeth with the forums being full of discussions about, "Should I stop at this Supercharger or that one? This one is 20 miles farther out of my way. Ugh." Now, it's all flipped about who is irritated, where those early areas are getting really saturated and full, but I can go all around Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Nevada, Utah, etc. and the stations are barely half full when they're busy. It's sweet.
GHammer
Dark Star
It's interesting that the first time I was at the Boise SC in 8/16 there was only one other car charging in what seemed to be a very busy shopping center. I was there for the second time last month and there were two other cars charging. So in three years the Tesla population in Boise has doubled
Here in the Bay Area it is a function of time of day more than anything else. Go early or mid-morning and no lines. Wait until lunch, or after work and you are going to wait. In some places there may 6 or 7 cars in front of you at 7 PM. I think a lot of people plug in the car, set it to 100% and go and have dinner.
This is one reason even through there are 5 Superchargers within 15 miles of my house and I have free Supercharging I just charge at home.
This is one reason even through there are 5 Superchargers within 15 miles of my house and I have free Supercharging I just charge at home.
The typical experience along the east coast is you pull into the station and go direct to a stall. You may be the second is a pair in which case, if another pair becomes free, you may want to move to that pair in order to get to a faster charge but depending on your goals you may not find that worth the effort. Note that the Baltimore SC has Urban units which do not share so this won't be an issue there.
I've never been to a full supercharger so I've never had to wait. I have been to CHAdeMO and Tesla destination chargers where, if I had arrived 2 minutes later, I would have had to wait. Most of those have a single stall. If you do have to wait it may not be that long. But it may. It depends on how fast cars are arriving, how long people charge and, of course, how many stalls there are. Note that SCs are for people on road trips and those people tend to limit their charging to what it takes to get to the next station which might typically involve charging from 20 to 65 or 70%. The cars charge faster at these low levels so many people use that strategy as it can save charging time if not the annoyance of having to stop more frequently.
To minimize the chances of having to wait or wait long stay away from stations with few chargers in places and at times where the arrival rate is high. For example, avoid Paramus, N.J. during rush hour. Once you get the car you will be able to display nearby charger location and real time occupancy data on the map screen. If you are considering using a particular charger on a particular day of the week you can check on that charger from time to time to see if it tends to be full. You can also do a search on the particular charger and find comments as to what it's like.
Ultimately the thing you need to understand is that cars arrive randomly at the stations and what happens at a particular station at a particular time can vary over an extreme range. It's pretty clear that a station with 6 stalls can accommodate 12 cars per hour if each charges for a half hour and if they arrive (and so depart) neatly spaced at 5 minute intervals. But change the scenario to one in which cars arrive randomly at an average rate of 12 per hour and charge for random times with an average of 30 minutes and the situation changes dramatically. While 0.6% of drivers arriving won't have to wait for a stall the rest will and the queue could be as long as several hundred cars. If the arrival rate is reduced to an average of 10 per hour then 13% would not have to wait and of those who did 50% would wait less than an hour. If, OTOH, cars are arriving at a 12 stall charger at an average rate of 12 per hour only 14 % would have to wait more than a minute (implying that most would not wait at all) but even then some drivers could wait for hours (theoretically 0.6% would wait more than 2 hrs). This is because of the "perfect storm" nature of random events.
I think the most important thing to convey is that this is not something you need to worry about. A survey showed that anxiety about range and the ability to charge is high in people who have no experience with EVs but that it rapidly dissipates once they are exposed.
Also keep in mind that Tesla is continuously expanding the SC network and that others, notably Electrify America are building a network which Tesla owners can use.
Tesla could do much more to help drivers with finding charging by using the data being collected from vehicles to provide status of the superchargers and destination chargers.
For superchargers, Tesla knows which chargers are currently in use. They also have information on which chargers may be having hardware problems causing some stalls to be unavailable or operating at less than full speed. When approaching a supercharger, the software could provide advice on the best stalls to use (due to hardware issues or A/B sharing).
Tesla could also provide notification of which destination chargers are available or are being used. While this doesn't guarantee the charger is actually available (the parking spot could be blocked), it would be helpful to know if the charger is being used.
And more could be done to encourage drivers to disconnect when charging is finished - and in notifying any waiting drivers that a charging spot has been freed.
For superchargers, Tesla knows which chargers are currently in use. They also have information on which chargers may be having hardware problems causing some stalls to be unavailable or operating at less than full speed. When approaching a supercharger, the software could provide advice on the best stalls to use (due to hardware issues or A/B sharing).
Tesla could also provide notification of which destination chargers are available or are being used. While this doesn't guarantee the charger is actually available (the parking spot could be blocked), it would be helpful to know if the charger is being used.
And more could be done to encourage drivers to disconnect when charging is finished - and in notifying any waiting drivers that a charging spot has been freed.
The map application in the car indicates the status of the nearest chargers. It displays a bar with a little box for each stall at the station. If a box is red that means a stall is occupied. If it is not red that means that the stall is available. I do not know if a stall with a known hardware problem would be marked red (unavailable) but it would certainly be a simple matter to do this if it is not already being done.
The mother ship certainly knows which stalls are in use, how long they have been occupied and probably what the SoC of the attached car is. But how would you boil this down a useful recommendation to an approaching driver and how would you display it? With a window that says "Approaching Podunk Supercharger. Best stall recommendations: 1A, 1B, 4C..." I guess. Would that really be that useful? Suppose more that 1 car is approaching and both head for 1A? Yes, you could sort that out using GPS info, in fact you could have the mother ship assign a stall to each arriving car but now we are talking a software effort of some magnitude not to mention the physical aspects of the implementation. And would this really be a help to the driver. I don't use Super Chargers a lot (only 13% of my charging) but I have found that my average time at an SC is 25 minutes. I don't suppose my use of them to be much different than most peoples but answers to the question "How long do you usually spend at an SC?" from others might be of interest to the OP.
Also, perhaps of interest to the OP:
•I've found that the average power delivered by an SC to be 76.6 kW.
•I, having been advised to avoid charging while sharing a pair, moved from a paired stall to an unshared one only to find that the paired stall was giving me 73.8 kW and the unpaired 103.2 and within a couple of minutes of my making the move the other guy in the pair finished and pulled away.
My conclusions from this is that being stuck in a paired situation may not be such a bad deal after all. Yes, the first guy who shows up gets the lion's share but there is a minimum amount available to the second car. That amount is going to increase as the first car's demand tapers and, if a typical SC time is only 25 min. it isn't likely to be very long before the secondary car becomes the primary one.
How would Tesla know whether a destination charger is in use or not?
75K miles, about half highway. Supercharged enough to get capped. Never had to wait at any public charging location. In fact I have only been forced to use paired Superchargers about 3-4 times.
But then I'm retired and almost exclusively travel on weekdays, and generally avoid California.
Similar threads
