Brainstorming: How to reduce supercharger wait times

tdiggity · Jul 15, 2013

I've been reading a lot of comments about how people would like a reservation system or status of how busy superchargers are. It makes a lot of sense at first, but I think that it would be more trouble than it's worth.

For example, reservation system:

Pros:

You get a reserved slot of time to charge

Cons:

You don't show up for your appointment and someone is waiting for it
You miss your appointment because of traffic and you lose your reservation and the rest of the day is reserved
You don't have a reservation and you arrive 15 minutes before a reserved slot and so you can't finish your charge
etc

There's probably a bunch of things i'm leaving off. But, what I'm getting at is that a reservation system would be not be ideal due to unforeseen traffic delays, user error, and life.

Even real-time status wouldn't help.

If all the superchargers indicated they were in use, and you were 2 hours away, would you wait? You don't know how many other cars are incoming.
If it indicated that they were free and you showed up 10 minutes later and they were all busy, you'd be mad.

Again, a real-time status indicator wouldn't help much unless you could get to the supercharger very quickly. ChargePoint has a reservation system and almost all the stations in remote areas in California have reservations disabled. Probably because it was too much trouble. But, I don't see anything wrong w/ having a status indicator, they just wouldn't give you good signal.

What I think would help a lot of people is a usage over time graph. When are superchargers busiest? Is 2pm @ harris ranch bad? How bad is Sunday? etc.

Anyone else got any ideas?

jerry33 · Jul 15, 2013

IIRC, it was written in Swiss Family Robinson, "The true answer is patience and fortitude".

Calisun · Jul 15, 2013

A fairly simple queueing system would help, the software suposts geofencing so when you are within 5 mailes it can prompt to place you in the queue as well as display how many cars are ahead of you. That way if they do get very busy as sales grow there is no question about who's next etc.

Teriyaki88 · Jul 15, 2013

I like simple, first-in/first-out, "KISS" principal. I'm going to assumes all of us are reasonable, polite, and everyone in line follows generally accepted, unwritten rules for waiting in line.

A reservation system would be great but not ideal. For example, say I have reservation at Hawthorn SC at 1:00. There are 5 cars already in line at 1:00 and I'm running 15-30 minutes late. Those 5 cars in line should have the opportunity to charge their car since I was stuck in traffic/late for a meeting/had an emergency come up/or whatever excuse I had to be late for my appointment. That would be rude of me. I also shouldn't be allowed to jump ahead of other 5 cars already there if I showed up late.
That's just me.

efxjim · Jul 15, 2013

My son came up with, red, yellow and green lights on each bay. Red means currently charging or broken. Yellow means you can charge but will not have full power because someone is using the other half of your charger, 1A 1B problem. Green means you have full power available in that bay. This could be reflected on the website.

deonb · Jul 15, 2013

tdiggity said:
Anyone else got any ideas?

I like Elon's idea from Teslive the best:

"Increase the number of SuperChargers."

eidco · Jul 17, 2013

I've only used Superchargers 6 times (Gilroy twice, Harris Ranch, Tejon, Buellton, Hawthorne). None of them had more than half of the stalls in use. Has anyone actually arrived at a SC and found all stalls in use?

Banahogg · Jul 17, 2013

I had to wait at Gilroy once (just a couple minutes) and Hawthorne was full as we left last time.

ggr · Jul 17, 2013

eidco said:
I've only used Superchargers 6 times (Gilroy twice, Harris Ranch, Tejon, Buellton, Hawthorne). None of them had more than half of the stalls in use. Has anyone actually arrived at a SC and found all stalls in use?

Yes, last thursday/friday going to San Jose and Sunday leaving again... TESLIVE!

brianman · Jul 17, 2013

eidco said:
I've only used Superchargers 6 times (Gilroy twice, Harris Ranch, Tejon, Buellton, Hawthorne). None of them had more than half of the stalls in use. Has anyone actually arrived at a SC and found all stalls in use?

Yes. I visited all 8 in California last week. The general trend was that if you have < 8 slots, then they will fill up. I never encountered an 8 or 10 slot supercharger site with all of them filled. Gilroy, Tejon, and Hawthorne were full up at least once when I visited.

Lloyd · Jul 17, 2013

I have a better idea for reducing time while at the supercharger, and possibly saving wear on your battery. When you are say 5 to 10 minutes out from a supercharger, and you are going to supercharge, your car goes into a cooling mode to pre-cool the battery prior to arriving to charge. This shoud allow you to charge at a higher rate longer, saving time at the supercharger.

LagunaHJames · Jul 22, 2013

The only time we have had to wait was in Hawthorne last Friday around 3 pm on the last leg of our 10 day central coast and Bay Area road trip. As indicated in another post the problem at Hawthorne was one unit was down and another taken up by a staff car that had been left there by someone attending a meeting at the Design Center. I suspect that will not happen again. Elon is right - more SC's are the answer. If the projected Oxnard or Ventura SC had been online we would not have had to detour to Hawthorne to get all the way home to Orange County. We did encounter the 1A, 1B situation in Gilroy once but another owner alerted us and we switched units.

earlyretirement · Sep 11, 2013

Just out of curiosity, at Hawthorne when you are finding a line, what has been the typical wait time for you to finally get your car up for a charge when it's your turn in line? Are you noticing the delays/lines specific days of the week vs. other days?

dsm363 · Sep 13, 2013

Maybe they can add 2 more spots to each location that are reservation and pay only. This would still keep the promise of free charging for life (the other 6-10 spots would be free) but would allow someone who didn't want or couldn't wait some kind of security. That or simply make 2 spots free but reservation only.

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Brainstorming: How to reduce supercharger wait times

tdiggity

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jerry33

(S85-3/2/13 traded in) X LR: F2611##-3/27/20

Calisun

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Teriyaki88

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efxjim

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deonb

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eidco

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Banahogg

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ggr

Expert in Dunning-Kruger Effect!

brianman

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Lloyd

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LagunaHJames

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earlyretirement

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dsm363

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