Black Friday shopping lines weren’t the only queues frustrating people this past weekend. A number of Tesla drivers took to social media to vent about extremely crowded Supercharger stations that turned a promised fast stop into an hours-long slog to recharge during one of the year's busiest travel times. With Model 3 mass production in full swing, there are now well over 400,000 Teslas on American roads, and it appears that growth is exposing the Supercharger network's pain points in high-traffic times like this past weekend.
One Facebook clip shows a line measuring roughly a quarter mile in length, consisting of 50-odd Teslas waiting at a Supercharger in Kettleman City, California, just off Interstate 5. To be fair, the station's popularity is compounded by its location about halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco, but even its 40 stalls aren't enough to accommodate the increased demand, especially when all that simultaneous recharging lowers the speed for everyone. The video's caption—"When you regret your Tesla"—has got to ring true for some of these drivers. Or maybe a modified version: When you regret bringing your Tesla.
Salmundo on December 3rd, 2019 at 17:30 UTC »
I’ve been driving electric (non-Tesla) for several years. Where I lived before, I just charged at home, though there was a charger at work which allowed non-homeowners to charge easily. I’ve moved and don’t work, and have a long drive into town for shopping. I can either charge at the public parking garage (no extra charge), at the grocery store (free), or DC fast charge (four minutes, costs less than a dollar).
From my experience, today, it’s working well for commuting. We’re working it out, incrementally adding chargers where we need them. A big change will be getting chargers installed at apartment complexes and other locations for non homeowners, which California and Oregon are working on in the US.
As far as corner cases go, such as long distance holiday travel: I don’t think that’s a valid indication of the state of the EV world. You could argue that air travel is impractical based on what happens around holidays.
It costs a lot to set up a charger, and the DC fast chargers are hella expensive, and no one is going to make money on them unless we look at the big picture. But then no one is making money retailing gasoline in the US either unless you look at the larger picture.
EDIT: I removed the reference to how long DCFC takes because it made too many heads explode, and IS BESIDE THE G@&&&@M POINT OF THE DISCUSSION.
payitforward3 on December 3rd, 2019 at 16:38 UTC »
Eventually Gas stations will start to have EV chargers.
phillybride on December 3rd, 2019 at 16:13 UTC »
Elon can tell his programmers to add meters to all home Tesla chargers and let home and business owners set prices and promote their plugs on the Tesla app. Overnight, you would have a huge network of available chargers. Add surge pricing for holidays and the network would be unstoppable.