Here's a cool feature that should be added re: superchargers

Jer in Toronto said:

A thought...

Superchargers should have built in internet. When you enter the bay for charging, your car should tell the supercharger via the internet how much time you'll be there for (based on your remaining charge and charge settingsetc). The supercharger should then broadcast the bay status to all other MSs... so imagine you're driving and approaching a supercharger station and your display tells you how many of the bays are free and of the occupied ones, how long the car is likely to remain charging for (of course some people may not be sitting for a full charge but it would at least be a conservative number).

J

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I actually really like this idea, though I'm sure someone else will point out some esthetic issue. As far as I know, this would be a very convenient feature.

Great idea! I likes!

Great idea! Email [email protected]

Don't they already collect usage stats? They just need to make availability info public and integrate it into the map. Feature request for fw v6?

You just did.
TM monitors these forums fairly closely. You can also email ownership.

I've already suggested this along with a bunch of other ideas and the supercharger team emailed me back to "look forward to a LOT of improvements coming soon" whatever that means. Either they're doing all of these cool ideas or that was just a generic response.

BTW these superchargers already have "built in internet".

Sweet!

Awesome idea.

This doesn't even require any changes to the superchargers.

Think about it, each car knows where it is (GPS), an internet connection (3G or Wi-Fi) and I wouldn't be surprised if the supercharger has a UUID so it knows exactly which bay it's plugged into. You have all the data already available right there.

Heck I'd be surprised if they weren't already at least monitoring it...

I'like to see them display like the Blink Network that shows how many are in use or available.

Having a display of how long a car has been charging at a supercharger stall was something I thought would be cool, as I pulled into the Fremont Supercharger and 4 stalls were open, but didn't know which one had a car parked in the alternate spot and how long. So I picked blindly and ended up getting a really slow rate of charge (40A). So slow, I ended up leaving and going to a Tesla store and charging at their HPWC.

Good idea, just not new. This idea and additions to it were discussed on the firmware wish list and the 6.0 "new nav" threads as early as June of last year. After several days of discussion, a few other ideas emerged, including the Nav system placing 'reservations' across the supercharger network for stalls. As the density of superchargers increases, it would skip locations that were already busy or booked in favor of a 2nd location that was still in range and had an open time slot, etc.

My thoughts today while reading about the Coleman Ave, San Jose, California SuperCharger:

PLUS EV said:

Might be obvious to some, but in order for the app to work, both your phone and your car need a good connection. I use Verizon for my phone and I believe the car uses ATT. I've definitely been places where one or the other works, but not both. The Gardnerville and Groveland superchargers come to mind. Annoying because you can't check on charging status without being in the car.

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Us multi-phone people are able to leave one in the car as a wifi hotspot in these situations when it is important. When I owned my Model S, I would do that on occasion when I wanted to know when the charge would finish. That would often result in my car deciding that that was the great time to download the next new big firmware version, and use up my phone data provision for the month. Battling each device's refusal to hook up to the next one in chain was so annoying that I only did it when it really mattered. I wish all Tesla's would just do a laser link to a SuperCharger's ground based Internet connection, upload and download new store-and-forward data like map updates and firmware updates, and have a fat pipe back to the Internet, since a lot of people will be stationed in SuperChargers often. That, plus I think bathrooms would be nice to have near every SuperCharger, but the bathrooms would have to be paid, secured, cleaned, and guarded, probably as part of nearby always-open businesses like convenience stores. And, all SuperChargers should have big solar inputs and big batteries to get ready for the many cars coming to charge during the night. All of those things probably aren't going to happen during the Model 3 ramp up and Tesla's current debt, but I will enjoy seeing what if any improvements Tesla decides to make to their SuperCharger systems longer term.

In the limited data sample of my wife and I, on our multiple long road trips, it would be almost impossible to figure out what we were going to do. I do have the nav set, so it knows about the amount of time that I need to be there, but I often take longer, sometimes a lot longer, sometimes shorter cuz I know there's a supercharger closer and I just want to get going. I would hate to be the guy to try and figure out how long I was going to be there!

A user friendly way of doing this could be a suggestion of what stall to use together with a detailed picture of where the stall is located. With some AI it should actually be easy to predict at what time someone will leave.

Devil is in the details as usual. With idle fees, I bet most people set their charge limit higher than when they plan to leave. If they set it to 100%, they will more than likely leave early and a new car can take it's spot for another hour, so it's not that useful for planning to arrive at the supercharger at some point. Showing how many chargers are in use can be somewhat useful (again, not reliable, I once needed a ChaDeMo charge, it was not in use when I decided to drive there but was when I got there - by another Model S too, so potentially up to a couple of hours wait). What might be more useful is showing the SoC on each supercharger - this would give you an idea approximately what the wait might be, but only if you are already there in line for the charger.

As we are at it, a "feature" I really would like is to have the SC stalls covered with a roof; it will shelter you and the car from the sun during summer and from rain/snow during winter.