I just finished a round trip from Casper WY to Tucson AZ. Total distance was 2,290 miles in my 2016 S90D. I had problems at three different Superchargers. I thought I'd list them here, along with some thoughts about each one.
First problem:
First leg of the trip was from Casper to Rawlins, WY. Destination was set for the Craig CO supercharger. When I was just a few miles short of Rawlins, a message popped up on my screen saying the Rawlins supercharger was down! Navigation wanted me to drive all the way back to the supercharger in Casper, then head down a lot of that same road again, this time taking the cutoff to Medicine Bow and Laramie. Getting back to Casper was dicey, to say nothing of wasting about six hours' travel time. I called roadside assistance and selected option 3 - charging and superchaargers. Got someone in about two minutes. He tried to help, but he said "Wow, there's nothing anywhere near you!" He suggested I try to make Laramie (navigator said 2% left when I arrived there), and even told me there was 3-4% of the battery usable after it reached zero. I asked if he could tell what happened, and he said it looked like "a breaker tripped." He also said it would probably require a tech visit to reactivate the supercharger.
I got onto my Plugshare app and found a J1772 charger at the Rawlins Dodge dealer. Since Craig was only about a negative 7% without recharging at Rawlins, I opted to go that route. I plugged in for about 90 minutes (during which time I walked to a restaurant for breakfast), then discovered that the supercharger was back up! I went over to it and finished charging.
THOUGHTS:
On the way back home I stopped at Santa Fe to charge up. All but two stalls were in use. I pulled into one of them, plugged the cable into the car, and got the blue ring. And waited. After five minutes the car still was not charging. It displayed the message "No power available." I moved to the other open spot and plugged in - it worked. This was Saturday afternoon. I tried to call Roadside assistance again, to let them know the one pedestal was not supplying power (though it apparently did talk to the car). After sitting on hold for someone for over 20 minutes, I hung up.
THOUGHTS:
In Alamosa CO on the way home I plugged in and the charger would not lock into the port. I kept getting the orange ring and a message on my phone. I moved to another pedestal and charged without a problem. I didn't even bother to try to call Tesla this time.
FINAL THOUGHTS:
First problem:
First leg of the trip was from Casper to Rawlins, WY. Destination was set for the Craig CO supercharger. When I was just a few miles short of Rawlins, a message popped up on my screen saying the Rawlins supercharger was down! Navigation wanted me to drive all the way back to the supercharger in Casper, then head down a lot of that same road again, this time taking the cutoff to Medicine Bow and Laramie. Getting back to Casper was dicey, to say nothing of wasting about six hours' travel time. I called roadside assistance and selected option 3 - charging and superchaargers. Got someone in about two minutes. He tried to help, but he said "Wow, there's nothing anywhere near you!" He suggested I try to make Laramie (navigator said 2% left when I arrived there), and even told me there was 3-4% of the battery usable after it reached zero. I asked if he could tell what happened, and he said it looked like "a breaker tripped." He also said it would probably require a tech visit to reactivate the supercharger.
I got onto my Plugshare app and found a J1772 charger at the Rawlins Dodge dealer. Since Craig was only about a negative 7% without recharging at Rawlins, I opted to go that route. I plugged in for about 90 minutes (during which time I walked to a restaurant for breakfast), then discovered that the supercharger was back up! I went over to it and finished charging.
THOUGHTS:
- In many areas, even with a newer vehicle the loss of a supercharger will leave people stranded. It should take more than "a" breaker tripping to disable an entire site (losing power delivery to the site is a different issue). The architecture of the charging sites needs revised to eliminate this single-point failure (SPF). "A" breaker will take down all the superchargers being fed through it, but if these breakers only fed half the chargers at the site then such a failure would cut the available pedestals by half, but it wouldn't leave people SOL. Maybe newer locations don't have this SPF; Rawlins are older 150kW units.
- Maybe, along with maintaining the supercharger and destination charger databases, Tesla could also access lists of non-Tesla chargers and provide that information to customers left high and dry when one of the their system components fails. RV Parks (which generally have NEMA 1450 plugs), J1772 charging sites, maybe even Electrify America and other charging locations.
On the way back home I stopped at Santa Fe to charge up. All but two stalls were in use. I pulled into one of them, plugged the cable into the car, and got the blue ring. And waited. After five minutes the car still was not charging. It displayed the message "No power available." I moved to the other open spot and plugged in - it worked. This was Saturday afternoon. I tried to call Roadside assistance again, to let them know the one pedestal was not supplying power (though it apparently did talk to the car). After sitting on hold for someone for over 20 minutes, I hung up.
THOUGHTS:
Answer the phone within a reasonable period of time! 20+ minutes is NOT reasonable! The problem could have been a lot worse than just one dead pedestal. If the call center is swamped at times, PUT ON MORE STAFF!
Third problem:In Alamosa CO on the way home I plugged in and the charger would not lock into the port. I kept getting the orange ring and a message on my phone. I moved to another pedestal and charged without a problem. I didn't even bother to try to call Tesla this time.
FINAL THOUGHTS:
I have never had so many charging problems on one trip before. Each and every one was a problem with a supercharger, not my vehicle. I don't know if this is typical for road trips these days or not, but if it's at all common then Tesla needs to devote more maintenance and support resources to their existing supercharger locations. I had more problems this trip than in all my other trips up and down the east coast, across country several times, and around the western US combined! I hope this was just a confluence of unlikely events, but it could be a bit of a harbinger of future long-distance travel using the Tesla charging network if it's not just a fluke.
Anybody else have any thoughts, or perhaps similar chains of experiences?