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WSJ article on wait times at Tesla Superchargers

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Actually I think an accurate well researched article WOULD attract readers. I think in this case, it was a typical lazy hack writer. I don't think he was intentionally trying to write something 180 degrees from reality. He just picked up on Musk's comment, saw the 500+ thread post about it, did a search for crowded Superchargers, found the SJC thread, got a generic quote from Tesla (Tesla PR department dropped the ball here guys!!!), and voila, out pops a lazy, unresearched article. The writer is probably too stupid to realize what he wrote was garbage.

Cosmacelf, I'd rather what you were suggesting was the case, but Mike Ramsey, one of the two authors, has written misleading negative articles about Tesla time and time again. Moreover, for this piece, they pulled together a reporter visiting an Amsterdam location (where apparently Tesla cabs have put high demand on a SuperCharger), and San Juan Capistrano, which based on comments upthread has recently been the only U.S. SuperCharger location that had overcrowding... they did more than just a quick web search leading to some past SJC discussion. I agree with ecarfan, this article is just the product of an agenda.

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The comments on the article is once again predictably flooded by EV haters. I don't see this being a big hit on TSLA. Even if what he said was 100% true, there are plenty of ways for Tesla to address it.

Yeah, they may address it. From a conversation I've had with IR, I have the impression that generally they refrain from responding to the bulk of media reports with false information to avoid getting sucked into a continual back and forth with the media, but when they think false information is being put out that could affect their customers and potential customers they look to respond.
 
Put a system twice supercharging a week perhaps. Goes against elons promise but meh.
The situation is not as serious as the article makes it out to be. Sending some courtesy notices should do the trick for now. They might also have to reign in their sales people (if the quote in the article is correct, they are doing that already). No need for hard line measures yet at this point.

I think some self-policing will also help greatly, but there is a vocal group that vehemently disagree and think people suggesting self-policing is playing "morality police".
 
I've never had to wait, and there was only one time when coming back from a Tesla event that the Waco SC had all eight stalls filled. There were no cars actually waiting during the time I was there.
 
There is not too much advantage in railing against "fair and balanced" reporting on anything having to do with Elon Musk, and Tesla may be less impacted than is Space X. Either way, eventually truth will out.

The only point that nobody seems to be making in this thread is the comparison with ICE issues. I regularly observe wait times at gasoline stations, usually not long ones, but still waits. For us at Superchargers it seems nobody can come up with any systematic wait times except at Schipol and the odd peak hour elsewhere, usually due to a planned Tesla gathering. Is this even an issue any more? Frankly the biggest problem I see is that we grouse about gaps in SuperCharger coverage with different complaints depending on the country and location within a country. Major urban areas that have grid problems, such as Hong Kong, may have legitimate issues, but owners have found creative ways to deal with the issues.

As for the WSJ and others like them, I really wonder how many people actually believe their 'reporting' on issues their shareholders deem to be political.

As a final note, until recently I had no home charging and the nearest SuperCharger was a couple of hours away in traffic. I was quite anxious at the beginning but rapidly found free charging locations that eliminated any real inconvenience. Since I bought my car SuperChargers have opened and more Destination chargers have opened plus the CHAdeMO adapters arrived. if the WSJ cared about facts they might have mentioned the rapid growth of EV charging options over much of the world, the SuperCharger speed and business model, and the cheapness of EV charging.

I'd happily share my story: 5000 miles on my car and a total cost of fuel at US$2.91, which I incurred on my first day of ownership when I did not know about all the free charging options. I am sure the WSJ would rather cover my current >500% increase in charging cost since I now have home charging. Imagine that horror! Never mind that the entire monthly cost would not cover the average cost of a single tank of cheap gasoline for a subcompact car.
 
Actually I think an accurate well researched article WOULD attract readers. I think in this case, it was a typical lazy hack writer. I don't think he was intentionally trying to write something 180 degrees from reality. He just picked up on Musk's comment, saw the 500+ thread post about it, did a search for crowded Superchargers, found the SJC thread, got a generic quote from Tesla (Tesla PR department dropped the ball here guys!!!), and voila, out pops a lazy, unresearched article. The writer is probably too stupid to realize what he wrote was garbage.

My remarks hearken back to the old principle of news: "If it bleeds, it leads." A well researched and balanced article about this topic would certainly be interesting to certain readers, but experience suggests that WSJ editors would not consider it newsworthy. It might be considered newsworthy in any number of other publications.
 
This article is misleading, but I do think Tesla needs to protect the original intent of superchargers.
(i) Introduce an automatic prioritization system (like Airline boarding) - if you supercharge often you get automatically bumped down que. So if there is a wait at a station, your wait time will depend upon an automatically calculated priority. Tesla should be able to predict usage of the supercharger not just based on who is waiting there, but also based on who is likely to arrive there based on gps locations and charge levels of cars and traffic conditions within say 1-hr time horizon.
(ii) tesla shd limit the # of free superchargers ppl can do to a certain # per year - so if you want to take that long road trip, you can still avail of supercharging, which probably was the main intent of this program..
(iii) there needs to be some way to handle peak load -> people drive a lot more in summer holiday times - there has to be a better solution to handle that.. tesla shd not back off the battery swap program (apparently customer interest was low) - this will make sense in certain spots during peak driving seasonal periods.. but if you are not planning to drive back the same way you travelled - exchanging back the battery etc present a logistical challenge..
(iv) ultimately we really need to see much faster charging period.. you got to be able to refill at 100miles/min, which is what you get with gasoline cars more or less. perhaps the batteries need to be even smaller - nano batteries - such that an individual battery can be recharged in 3min from 0 to full ..
 
perhaps the batteries need to be even smaller - nano batteries - such that an individual battery can be recharged in 3min from 0 to full ..

Sorry if this statement was just meant as dry humor that I didn't get, but of course this won't work...

Apart from a tiny fraction of initial Supercharging near 0 which is supply-constrained, charging is constrained based on battery charge level.

So a Lithium battery of 1kWh, 10kWh and 100kWh that has the same lifespan goal, will all charge for about the same time (the 40 minutes to 80%, 75 minutes to full, that we all know from the Supercharger site).


Always keep in mind that Tesla isn't charging a single big 85kWh cell. They're charging a bunch of individual NCR18650 3.78V, 3.4AH cells. Whether you charge one of them, 500 of them, or 7000 of them in parallel, it's still a bunch of individual cells charging, and those cells take 75 minutes to charge if you want them to survive 10 years


What we need is a battery that's SO big that once you've spent your 40 minutes or whatever to charge them, you can skip the next SuperCharger. That will instantly cut demand on the network by half.
 
Tesla needs to protect the original intent of superchargers.
(i) Tesla should be able to predict usage of the supercharger not just based on who is waiting there
(ii) tesla shd limit the # of free superchargers ppl can do to a certain # per year
(iii) tesla shd not back off the battery swap program
(iv) ultimately we really need to see much faster charging period. ..

TESLA should, Tesla should.

Tesla is doing, as fast as they can. They are increasing charge sites and reducing charge times. They make battery packs bigger, and people buy the smallest one and b**** because they have to stop more often to charge on a road trip. People insist on following the herd and charging during peak usage times (that's Friday night to Sunday morning, boys and girls). People are thoughtless, and plug in and walk away for a couple hours.

Reality tells us that there is VERY LITTLE crowding at these superchargers because we charge at home 95% of the time. After 75,000 miles, I have never waited for a spot, never saw anyone else waiting for a spot, and due to the amazingly quick recharge capabilities of the Model S, you spend minutes (unlike every other electric car out there) and your spot is open again.

This is another stupid bit of journalism, and we all know it. Tesla is doing what no other car company will do: building out a huge international network of really fast charging sites, where you need them, with plans to make them faster and plans to add more every week. If people think Tesla needs to do something, they should try working with them, supporting them, helping them grow, before they start complaining.

When I bought my car, Superchargers did not even exist. I drove to Canada a month after I got my car, using outlets at the motels, RV parks during the day, relatives' circuit breaker boxes (no, you can't use the microwave; I'm charging), and public outlets for building lighting. What a great trip! And what a change now that we can charge while we eat lunch -- if we eat fast!
 
...And here the WSJ article gets FUDDED around....:cursing:

Tesla Buyers Getting Irritated With Charging Station Queues


Whack-a-mole time.

It seems to me that if you're incompetent enough to place on-line an article that regurgitates in fine, plagiaristic fashion an article two days old from a Rather Large Organization, you might want to consider choosing one that isn't itself so blatantly erroneous. Or maybe that's where an author's* incompetence truly, uh, shines.

* - using that term extremely broadly
 
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So is this a thing now, you get to use someone else's article and change the grammar and add a few misspellings, and then you're allowed to make money of that?

WSJ:
"Even as Tesla has poured millions of dollars in creating a global network of free charges, owners of the $76,200 and up luxury sedans feel there still aren’t enough."

vs.
VALUEWALK:
"Although Tesla has shelled out millions of dollars in creating a global network of free chargers, owners who spent as much as $76,200 on one of the company's luxury electric sedads feel the company isn’t doing enough."
 
So is this a thing now, you get to use someone else's article and change the grammar and add a few misspellings, and then you're allowed to make money of that?

WSJ:
"Even as Tesla has poured millions of dollars in creating a global network of free charges, owners of the $76,200 and up luxury sedans feel there still aren’t enough."

vs.
VALUEWALK:
"Although Tesla has shelled out millions of dollars in creating a global network of free chargers, owners who spent as much as $76,200 on one of the company's luxury electric sedads feel the company isn’t doing enough."

That's insane. I assume WSJ was original?
 
As long as the network is free, Tesla can (try to) use community pressure and appeals to morals to keep people from abusing local Supercharging. If Tesla starts charging for excessive use, it's now just a business transaction and loses any moral argument.

There's a great story in Dan Ariely's Predictably Irrational in which a daycare center, faced with parents chronically showing up late to pick up their tots, started charging for being late. After the switch the problem became worse: instead of people feeling guilty about being late, they simply viewed it as a time/money tradeoff. I can see a similar problem arising with Supercharging.
 
Picked up by Business Insider. They spoke to Tesla and wrote a report far closer to reality than the WSJ. Business Insider still doesn't quite seem to get that from day one SuperCharging was described as free long distance charging (Elon literally said this at the SuperCharger reveal in the Fall of 2012), but they did include a comment in an email from Tesla today clearly stating that the intent of the SCs is long distance travel.

Tesla could have a problem with one of the best things about owning its cars - Yahoo Finance
 
TESLA should, Tesla should...

If people think Tesla needs to do something, they should try working with them, supporting them, helping them grow, before they start complaining.

I like Tesla and all that, which is why I bought one in the first place.. But I want more people to buy Teslas (and other EVs). When you are talking mass adoption, everything needs to improve, all the time. It is one thing to support tesla - but completely different to be fanatically fond of Tesla and suppress constructive criticisms. Issue debates among actual users in the real world will only help make the Tesla platform even stronger. Musk will settle for nothing less.
 
This article is misleading, but I do think Tesla needs to protect the original intent of superchargers.
(i) Introduce an automatic prioritization system (like Airline boarding) - if you supercharge often you get automatically bumped down que. So if there is a wait at a station, your wait time will depend upon an automatically calculated priority.

Yes, we agree that the article is misleading and that Tesla needs to stay on top of the situation to protect the original intent of Superchargers. This will become increasingly difficult as the number of Teslas on the road increases by an order of magnitude and as the number of Tesla owners living in urban centers and multi-unit dwellings increases.

Nevertheless, you fail to explain how your suggested automatic priorization system will be implemented in a practical manner. Just how exactly does this queing get implemented?

Larry