Definately need a Supercharger in the Jacksonville area

Mnlevin said:

The distance between St Augustine and Savannah is by far the largest gap in the I 95 corridor. As an owner of a MS 60, I am very hesitant to attempt the distance. Currently I am on a trip from S Fl to Orlando, and drove my car very carefully from the PSL Supercharger to my destination at Championsgate, southwest of Orlando. The distance was 138 miles. I left the PSL SC with 190 Rate Miles, and drove the car 65 mph to see how it would do. We had 4 adults and light luggage, but the outside temp was 58 and we had a slight wind from the North that I am sure affected the miles. When I arrived I had only 38 rated miles left and averaged 328 wh/mi. I understand the efficiency and don't fault the car, but putting a 170+ hurdle for our MS 60s is a bit scary for me. Would love to drive my car to our second home in Western Mass but think I better put it on the Auto Train instead.

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Hi Mark,

In December I discussed this issue with Supercharger Deployment management. I had mentioned earlier that it made more sense to for them to defer the installation of the Saint Augustine Supercharger, since it was very close to the Port Orange Supercharger. Instead I suggested that they place Superchargers in the Gainesville/Ocala area. The thought was that the distance between the then planned Jacksonville Superchargers would be a comfortable distance from the Port Orange Superchargers and therefore we didn't need the Saint Augustine location during the initial roll-out of the Supercharger network. In responding I was told that the Supercharger team had difficulties developing a location in the Jacksonville area and in the interest of quickly expanding the network along the important I-95 corridor that they decided to go ahead with low-hanging fruit in the form of the Saint Augustine Supercharger.

Whereas its true that the Jacksonville Supercharger is no longer shown on the Tesla interactive map, and I received no specific commitment from Tesla that they would pursue the Jacksonville Supercharger, nevertheless driving more than 170 miles in a Model S with a 60 kWh battery is problematic and the Supercharger team of course is very aware of this. Elon's objective is not to build a charging network exclusively for 85 kWh Model Ss, and he has publically gone on record as saying Superchargers will eventually be spaced at around 150 miles if I recall correctly. Therefore, I am confident that the team will resume efforts to place Supechargers in the Jacksonville area. Being ever the optimist I think that we will see a newly restored Jacksonville dot on the map.

Its of course easy for us to provide feedback just looking at Google maps at ideal locations along a highway, but the Supercharger team is also dealing in the reality of dealing with property owners, utilities and permit authorities. I think that the team has done a good job to date and that track record leads me to believe that they will eventually backfill these longer spans between Supercharger locations.

Larry

I was told by the Supercharging team that the problem was that they could not locate an area with sufficient electrical power for the chargers.

There was already a thread on an east coast trip in a MS60. The trip between St A and Savanah was accomplished. Maybe a search will find you more info. It can be done. Not saying they don't need to add more - I feel your pain.