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UK Supercharger locations currently unbalanced.

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Center of British Isles Dunsop Bridge, Lancashire
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centre_points_of_the_United_Kingdom using Centroid locations

Yet only one Tesla charger is north of this point. Over 12 or more I believe are currently South of this point. And before users say, but the uptake of the MS in the South is higher, remember these people may want to actually travel North too. ( I realise this is a big assumption lol!)

If anyone wants to go North if you can get to Stretton Supercharger charger, near Warrington, in an S85 and get a range charge, it will show around 250 miles typical. In cold weather I think mine actually showed 242 typical. Then head to the next SC at Edinburgh Airport in winter without any midway Ecotricty stops, (many are faulty anyway.) it's 241 miles.

In winter, with four people, baggage, heater on lights on, wipers on, heated seats on, at 70 mph you wont make it.

Maybe at 55mph under these conditions it's possible, however good luck doing 55mph on our motorways.

I've just done this run as described and without Ecotricty stops it was 100% impossible at 70 mph.

It's must be fairly obvious to anyone that we need more chargers Northwards. I realise they are in the pipeline, but it appears every month another in the south pops up.

I'm planning a trip to Winchester, next month, great I can pass Birmingham SC, Reading SC, and I find to my delight a new one in Winchester opening soon. But then my wife tells me another one called Winchester Norton a few miles away from it is already open.

I'm really not complaining about what a fantastic job Tesla is doing all round, but really ONE SC in the top half of the British Isles?

Is this meant to be a joke on people wanting to get North in an MS by Tesla?

Are Tesla trying to tell owners we want our MS to stay in the southern half of the UK?

[I ready myself for the slaughter from forum members.....lol.]
 
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There are gaps in most of the UK's "extremities" but the 2015 map shows them being filled in. We are planning a trip to Cornwall in September for our anniversary and I am keeping my fingers crossed that the Plymouth Super Charger will have appeared by then.

I too have faith in the Supercharger team. They seem to be working hard but most of the new SCs are South East based at the moment although Barnsley is definitely progress northwards. As RLuner says there is some work to be done in Scotland. I would love to see one in Fort William for selfish reasons as we spend a lot of time on the West Coast of Scotland.
 
It's a completely valid point.

If you look at the European SC map, the bunching around London is unprecedented.

There's also an west>east bias. The only one so far that would have been of use to me is the Northampton one, and at the time I made the trip it wasn't open.

M6 is OK, M1 will be OK when Sheffield opens, A1(M)(+M11->A1(M) you can forget.

Disclaimer: I have a 60, so I'm waiting until there is a service I can actually use before I pay for it, so I guess I have less right to complain. :)
 
It's a completely valid point.

If you look at the European SC map, the bunching around London is unprecedented.

There's also an west>east bias. The only one so far that would have been of use to me is the Northampton one, and at the time I made the trip it wasn't open.

M6 is OK, M1 will be OK when Sheffield opens, A1(M)(+M11->A1(M) you can forget.

Disclaimer: I have a 60, so I'm waiting until there is a service I can actually use before I pay for it, so I guess I have less right to complain. :)

... and there's one at Tankersley Manor just off the M1 J36 from next month ... it's a start!
 
With the greatest of respect, I fail to see how one in the North vs all the rest in the South is not bias. I am referring to the UK btw.

It's a definite bias, but then we aren't really in the target geographic for Tesla to shift a big volume of cars. The current sites are great advertising for Tesla, and enable people with no home charging to own such a wonderful car..

I was always nervous of the speed of rollout on my routes, and a real factor for me in going with the 60 is it meant I could keep an ICE rather than going all in with a more expensive variant of the Model S. This is coming from my perspective of being in the in the East Midlands not the Northwest, which I'd be even more nervous about. I'm maybe a quarter of the way into my ownership of this car, and so far it's proven to be a sensible choice. The first useful one for me was Northampton, and I've not driven past it since it opened, last month. I've taken the ICE on trips which even an 85 couldn't manage.

Longer term I'm worried that we will see legislation regarding CCS as is being discussed in Germany. Irrespective of outcome in the Ecotricity vs. Tesla court case, the prime locations (geographically and electrically) will fall foul of the planners, so Tesla's window to get a true countrywide solution is time limited.

Putting it into perspective. The Outlander was Europe's best selling EV last year, and already outnumber Tesla's on the road here in the UK by around 3:1. I fully expect the trend to accelerate with VW, who will probably smash the company car market this year with the Golf GTE/ A3 eTron. Heaven help the public charging infrastructure, which is bad enough already.

When the CCS cars come on stream (Passat/A4/A6 Golf GTE v1.5) it will be carnage at Ecotricity points (it's going to be bad enough in mid 2015 with all this extra volume of AC/CHAdeMO point only cars, we can argue these PHEV's don't "need to charge", but I've already waited an Outlander on the services, after all it's free and in the most convenient spot in the car park... why wouldn't you use it if you were driving an Outlander?)

At that point, given the scarcity of suitable sites, the planners will have to get involved and go for the most prevalent demand, especially when all the "decision risk" for the local planning departments can be blamed on an EU guideline.

Where do we think we will be in Q4-2015? 8k+ Outlanders, 2k Teslas (with a fair wind), 10k+ VW/Audi's is my guess.


All of which is a very long winded way to say I completely agree agree with you. Tesla will win short term with the southern placement focus, but the impracticality to go anywhere in the UK could hurt them in the long run.
 
You've seen the speed at which Tesla has got superchargers out now that they've decided to activate plan B rather than wait on the outcome of the ecotricity case. If in a few weeks, maybe summer at the latest, there aren't more sites in the North, then I think you will have a legitimate complaint.
 
You've seen the speed at which Tesla has got superchargers out now that they've decided to activate plan B rather than wait on the outcome of the ecotricity case. If in a few weeks, maybe summer at the latest, there aren't more sites in the North, then I think you will have a legitimate complaint.

If I lived in Wincester as you do, I would agree with your point of view. Relax, give them time to complete the coverage. But why is it so bias in the first place?

How many SC are currently in Wincester alone? Two or is it three? [They add them so fast down south it is hard to keep count] With a 2011 population of just under 120k people. [ Winchester - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia ] One SC is in the top half of the entire UK. I will stick my neck out and have a complete guess at 10 million people live in the top half of the UK. ( just under one sixth of the total UK 64 million population). So one SC for 10 million people, and three for 120k people?

I'm sure they will [fingers crossed] roll out more in the north. My point is why has it had to be SO bias to the south in the first place?
 
Firstly the two (not three) are not for the exclusive use of the townsfolk of Winchester. If anything, far from it. If I owned a Model S (I don't, I have a Roadster) I wouldn't need the local superchargers because like the vast majority of EV owners I charge at home.

Tesla have the data on where owners are and where they drive. I'd like to think they are focusing efforts on where they are needed most. I suspect, given the concentration of wealth in this country, the majority are in the south east.

If I did have a Model S, I could travel west or east without recharging. It's only going up north that I would need to supercharge and then I would be at a disadvantage. On the other hand if you need to drive south you are spoilt for choice.

When I was planning on getting a Roadster, I got out and talked to locations nationwide about hosting an HPC. With the help of a couple other owners we got 10 HPCs installed nationwide.
 
Firstly the two (not three) are not for the exclusive use of the townsfolk of Winchester. If anything, far from it. If I owned a Model S (I don't, I have a Roadster) I wouldn't need the local superchargers because like the vast majority of EV owners I charge at home.

Tesla have the data on where owners are and where they drive. I'd like to think they are focusing efforts on where they are needed most. I suspect, given the concentration of wealth in this country, the majority are in the south east.

If I did have a Model S, I could travel west or east without recharging. It's only going up north that I would need to supercharge and then I would be at a disadvantage. On the other hand if you need to drive south you are spoilt for choice.

When I was planning on getting a Roadster, I got out and talked to locations nationwide about hosting an HPC. With the help of a couple other owners we got 10 HPCs installed nationwide.

I agree with this. Unless the Superchargers are being used in lieu of off street parking, a local Supercharger is superfluous. So in many ways it's more sensible to put them further away from where the cars are sold. So they would have been better off starting up north ;)

For example until Northampton opened, it was impossible to drive from London to Nottingham and back using Supercharging (Unless you went via Birmingham which would have been a complete nightmare, and slower than an Ecotricity stop). However I could drive in the other direction using Superchargers from Nottingham to London and back.

For Rluner and I this would have been worse, but would open up more routes to more owners.

For true long distance travel across the whole country, fairly widely spaced locations along key routes (like in Germany), would be ideal, like at say motorway services (but the less said about that the better ;) )
 
When I laid out the Roadster HPC network, I worked out the ideal locations for long distance motorway travel then tried to find quality and cooperative locations within 5 miles of the ideal spot. We wanted to get the primary network in first with secondary destination charging to come later (something which zero carbon world then handled). We targeted the London - Cornwall run first then moved north. The reality is that locations we thought would be easy took months (in one case over a year), whereas a couple that we thought would be tricky happened very quickly with some financial lubrication. I have to say, we came across more resistance in the North and perhaps Tesla have found the same.

As it happens our first Roadster stop north on the M1 from London is Q Hotels Nottingham. I am glad they are continuing the relationship with Q Hotels started 5 years ago. It will help as they expand the network.

For the Model S owner heading to a meeting, the 22kW charger is enough to get a full charge in a morning or afternoon at your destination. They are far more common.
 
While agreeing that the long-distance network is currently somewhat unbalanced, and that this is actually more of a problem for those in the south wanting to drive north than for those in the north wanting to drive south, there's a couple of other things to note:

1) There are two rather separate roll-outs in progress: the long-distance network, which started in the USA, spread to Europe and now is spreading through the UK, and the inner-city charging provision.

The inner-city provision didn't just start in the south rather than the north of the UK, it started first in London before anywhere else in the world. Up until that announcement (and the unveiling of the charger at The Crystal), Superchargers were only for long-distance travel. Now, they are being installed in places where there is housing that is expensive enough for the Model S demographic yet lack off-street parking. Most of these city Superchargers are at sites which are useless for long-distance travel, so shouldn't really be counted in considering the north/south balance of the long-distance network.

Also, the long-distance network for the UK can be viewed as an extension of the existing network in Europe - so it makes sense to start in the south, enabling drivers from increasingly large portions of the UK to reach the continental network, and the (currently larger than UK) population of Model S owners on the continent to reach likely destinations in the UK.

2) The duplicate provision in Winchester/Bristol/Exeter shouldn't be considered as twice the number of sites. Evidently they wanted 4-stall sites in these three cities: maybe the Sainsbury's deal was Plan A, and the other sites were a Plan B when the Sainsbury's deal took too long, or vice-versa, or maybe getting enough power/land for the 4 stalls considered necessary proved too hard and splitting it into two sites of 2 stalls was easier, or some combination. Whatever the cause, "2 sites in Winchester and none in Doncaster" isn't any more of a north/south bias than "1 site in Winchester and 1 in Doncaster".