What happens if a Supercharger goes down while your are navigating to it?

[BerTX]

I decided to use an official source for information: the in-car nav. What I see in my S right now is that Vacaville is not operational. I also see that Gustine, Buttonwillow, and Bakersfield continue to be not operational.

All other California Superchargers show as fully operational except for Fremont (#1, the location at the factory right next to the delivery center area) which shows "Reduced service". That is likely not related to any of the non-operational locations.

IMPORTANT: Now that we have realtime Supercharger status in the car nav, use it! Before starting out on any trip where you will be using a Supercharger, check its status in the car nav.

Does anyone have experience with trying to navigate to a Supercharger that is out of service, or having the SC go down while they are routed to it? I sure hope there is an error message or something.

Last September we were travelling and arrived at a SC to find it down. There was no message, but it was a fairly recent development due to a storm causing an area-wide power outage. When we called Tesla for assistance, they did not seem to know that it was down, and could not tell if the next SC was functional.

 

[ecarfan]

Moderator note: this post was moved from this thread: Multiple California Supercharger locations down in past 5 months: vandalized or simple theft?

That is why the post shows a quoted post from that thread. But the post is fundamentally about a different topic and that is why it was moved. So please focus your posts in this thread on the topic that @BerTX is posting about.

If you have any questions about this, please PM me. Thanks.

 

[kort677]

Does anyone have experience with trying to navigate to a Supercharger that is out of service, or having the SC go down while they are routed to it? I sure hope there is an error message or something.

Last September we were travelling and arrived at a SC to find it down. There was no message, but it was a fairly recent development due to a storm causing an area-wide power outage. When we called Tesla for assistance, they did not seem to know that it was down, and could not tell if the next SC was functional.

a localized power outage is something that usually happens suddenly and in many places if you are en route there is not many options available, in more densely SpC served areas you would need to reroute to an unaffected SpC.
fortunately if it is just a localized outage from a pole or transformer going down or a lightning strike those are usually short lived outages.
if you happen to wind up heading towards a tropical storm or other sort of widespread disruption of power you'd probably be aware of it early enough to plan a reroute.
there isn't much that can be done about power outages.

 

[gaswalla]

This scenario highlights the benefits of having 'redundant' superchargers located near each other (Buttonwillow/Bakersfield), the 3 on the west side of LA, (Roseville, Rocklin), etc..

 

[BerTX]

This topic was taken a little out of context when it was made a separate thread.

What I don't know is if and when the nav let's you know that there is an issue with a Supercharger on your route. I certainly was given no notice when it happened to me. I had told it to navigate to the SC and got no error nor did I get one along the way.

Luckily I had charged more than needed at the previous SC, and the next one was only 63 miles away.

Now I want to optimize my charging a little better to save time on a long trip, but if I had not overcharged when I did on that trip, I'd have been stuck. Now I'm a little hesitant to cut back my buffer, especially if I have no idea if the next SC is operational.

 

[ecarfan]

What I don't know is if and when the nav let's you know that there is an issue with a Supercharger on your route. I certainly was given no notice when it happened to me. I had told it to navigate to the SC and got no error nor did I get one along the way.

What you describe is certainly an unfortunate situation. I have not see any posts on TMC where someone was enroute to a Supercharger, following the nav, and while enroute they saw a message in the center display saying that Supercharger was not operational.

Now I'm a little hesitant to cut back my buffer, especially if I have no idea if the next SC is operational.

Based on my 56K miles in over 3 years of ownership, the vast majority of those miles on long distance trips using Superchargers (so about 150 Superchargers, rough estimate) only once did I arrive at a Supercharger to find it was not operational. That was in Superior MT in 2015. Power was out to the entire town. About 10 minutes after I arrived, power was restored and I was able to charge.

I think it is a very low probability event that after entering a route in the nav and then while following that route you would arrive at a Supercharger to find it wasn't working. But it certainly could happen.

Now that the center display shows the status (and # of stalls available) of each Supercharger in real time, it certainly seems like the nav could display a message if the Supercharger you are navigating to goes down. And maybe the nav does that and no one has noticed it yet.

 

[cmf]

I had this happen this past Thanksgiving, traveling from Dallas to Atlanta, the Shreveport Supercharger went down as I was on my way. The navigation advised me to fully charge at Lindale, TX and skip Shreveport, re-routing me to Monroe LA and to slow down and watch the speed, because I have a 70D.

What I found was interesting that the nav would indicate that it was online, then offline and switching back and forth as I was slowly making my way towards Shreveport.

Trusty plugshare indicated someone charged at the supercharger in question a few hours before I was scheduled to arrive and I messaged them and they confirmed it was working.

I took it as a learning moment, realizing that if I eased off a bit I could have made it from Lindale to Monroe, but a bit of a pucker moment nonetheless.

 

[Electroman]

"What happens if a Supercharger goes down while your are navigating to it?"

Screwed !

 

[yobigd20]

"What happens if a Supercharger goes down while your are navigating to it?"

Screwed !

This happened to me a few weeks ago. Tannersville went down as I was on route to it. If I recall I arrived with like 15 miles range left and 20 miles to get to my home. They were doing major repair upgrade or something and it was not coming back online for a few days per the guys that were there working on it. Needless to say, I didn't make it home and ran out of juice.

I found out afterwards that Tesla has a policy that they'll flatbed you for free if this happens. Super inconvenient though.

Fortunately for me when I ran out of juice, it was on my street ALMOST at my house. I had drive all 20 miles at 30mph in the freezing cold like 0 degrees in order to get this range given what I had left. I surely pissed off a lot of people behind me lol but I did pull over when I could a few times for people to pass me. I was able to daisy chain two 100ft extension cords to trickle charge at 7A 104V for about an hour before the car would let me put it back in drive and pull into my driveway.

 

[Missile Toad]

@cmf your post is golden! I too drive the 70D. So some subtle take-aways from your post:
1) Level ground; ~57ºF average temp on 11/23/17; slight crosswind 8mph NW; from Lindale to Monroe, LA you can get 204 miles on a 240 rated mile S 70D;
2) Tesla will 'do the hokey-pokey' if it gets intermittent communication that a Supercharger is working -- and rapidly inform the Nav of your charger's status;
3) The PlugShare 'messaging' feature actually works, two-ways (I tried it once, but never got a reply)
4) Slow and steady wins the race

 

[apacheguy]

This happened to me a few weeks ago. Tannersville went down as I was on route to it. If I recall I arrived with like 15 miles range left and 20 miles to get to my home. They were doing major repair upgrade or something and it was not coming back online for a few days per the guys that were there working on it. Needless to say, I didn't make it home and ran out of juice.

If major repairs are being performed the Nav should indicate this at least 24 hrs in advance, not the moment that power is killed to the site.

 

[bmah]

If major repairs are being performed the Nav should indicate this at least 24 hrs in advance, not the moment that power is killed to the site.

^^^ This. Or even more in advance, really. (On the flip side, at least we _have_ the current status.)

I work for a large research network service provider. If we have to take a link down, upgrade a router, etc. that goes into a planned maintenance calendar, which sends emails in advance to affected stakeholders, including the projected impact and duration. We try not to surprise people.

In aviation, airport and/or airspace closures are publicized well in advance (where possible).

It's that communication thing.

Bruce.

 

[bob_p]

The recent software changes are a step in the right direction, and they need to do much more.

In order to achieve their goals for FSD and the Tesla Network, Tesla must provide enough information on SC status to correctly plan trip routing and send cars to superchargers without risking running out of charge. With FSD, the car might be driving itself on the Tesla Network - and as charge is getting low, the car would automatically route itself to the nearest SC - plug in (using the snake connector) and then move on.

If Tesla isn't providing enough status information, this will never work - and Tesla will have a PR challenge with cars getting beached along the roads, running out of charge...

It's been several years since Tesla introduced the SC network - and they are only now starting to implement fees. In anticipation of the influx of increasing numbers of Model 3's over the next few years and with their intent to roll out FSD/Tesla Network, it seems likely we'll see increasing information provided on SC status in upcoming software releases.

 

[brucet999]

What I don't know is if and when the nav let's you know that there is an issue with a Supercharger on your route. I certainly was given no notice when it happened to me. I had told it to navigate to the SC and got no error nor did I get one along the way.

Now I want to optimize my charging a little better to save time on a long trip, but if I had not overcharged when I did on that trip, I'd have been stuck. Now I'm a little hesitant to cut back my buffer, especially if I have no idea if the next SC is operational.

Similar thing happened to me when Nav showed the route to Santa Ana SuperCharger site with all but two stalls available, but upon arrival I found one car just finishing charging and all other stalls blocked by traffic cones or tape. Crew on site said that they were closing down to do testing on major components and it would be at least 4 hours. Obviously a planned event, but Nav showed no warning about shut down.

Fortunately, Buena Park was only 9 miles away.

 

[cpa]

We already have a thread that addresses the outages of certain Superchargers around California. It would seem sensible for Tesla to revamp some of the features on the touchscreen to have a listing of Superchargers separate from the navigation menu. That listing could be sorted by us by highway (like traveling Interstate 5) or by geography (like Southern California, where we have choices for Supercharging and routing). This listing would have up-to-the minute availability. It would also include anticipated closures or partial closures, and for how long the closure is expected to last.

And, I think this same information should be available on our cell phones for those times that we are not in our vehicles.

 

[Saghost]

We already have a thread that addresses the outages of certain Superchargers around California. It would seem sensible for Tesla to revamp some of the features on the touchscreen to have a listing of Superchargers separate from the navigation menu. That listing could be sorted by us by highway (like traveling Interstate 5) or by geography (like Southern California, where we have choices for Supercharging and routing). This listing would have up-to-the minute availability. It would also include anticipated closures or partial closures, and for how long the closure is expected to last.

And, I think this same information should be available on our cell phones for those times that we are not in our vehicles.

It's not entirely on topic here, but one of the things I was hoping for in the new App was access to the same information and servers that the center console uses - Tesla Trip Planning on your phone, and of course easy transfer of that into the car from the phone.

Maybe the 8.1 Nav overhaul will enable that, and let us reach the same waypoint system the car uses for supercharging.

 

[SMAlset]

Our 75D just arrived so we haven't made any trips in it. This is the kind of thing that you think about and hope doesn't happen to you, although in all fairness if electricity goes out for some reason like a storm gas pumps wouldn't be working either. Nice to hear about cmf's experience with the rerouting and advice info. Also about the flatbedding if it came to that. Hubby just signed up for ChargePoint and if we plan any trips we'll research the route and see what type of other charging will be along the way and what adapters we might need in an emergency. I looked up where my Mom lives and only J-1770s are in the area. Will feel much better when all those 300 or so additional SCs get installed this year that Musk mentioned recently.

 

[Mark Z]

I always plan for an extra day of travel when driving long distances with the Tesla. Even when the Superchargers were working, the charge port did fail one time. I had enough charge remaining to drive from Gilroy to Fremont where Tesla replaced the charge port. Having an extra day to travel turned a problem into an overnight vacation with added rest and relaxation.

The same technique helped at other times with long airline delays, a missed flight and a broken alternator in the ICE vehicle. Planning for a possible delay can reduce stress. Don't forget to look at the bright side during a delay to add entertainment value.

 

[apacheguy]

@Mark Z - when you say the charge port failed what do you mean by that? Door wouldn't open?

CP is basically just some contacts that route through cabling to the HV junction box. I suppose the micro controller could fail and prevent CAN messages from being relayed but that seems unlikely.

 

[Missile Toad]

The charge port has two mechanical parts. 1. the cosmetic cover, which is magnetically latched when closed. and 2. the internal locking mechanism, pictured as 409, below. The locking mechanism applies when charging, and you have not de-activated it with the corresponding handle switch of the charging cable. Necessarily, the car limits de-activation of the latch to you having an authorized key-fob AND that key-fob is powered with a battery.
I have personally experienced a sticky latch even with the fob present. However 2-3 tries and mild fiddling with the handle has gotten the car to release the latch.