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Shamrock Supercharger Offline

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After driving from Tucumcari, New Mexico across I-40 to Shamrock, Texas, I plugged in my car into the Supercharger and after about 15 seconds the entire Supercharger went offline. All the stalls went dark, and then after a second they came back on. This repeated every seven or so seconds, and the car went from a Supercharging state to Not Charging. I unplugged the car, and the Supercharger kept repeating this cycle.

I called Tesla and they stated the Supercharger was offline on their end. After about 15 minutes it came back online. They asked me to plug the car in again. The same cycle repeated--car started charging for a short while, then the Supercharger went offline again. Tesla called me back and claims it's a power issue and not the Supercharger.

Conveniently, there are no other public chargers in Shamrock. I have 50 miles of charge remaining, which isn't enough to get to another Supercharger. There are some NEMA 14-50 charger within that range, but if they aren't working for some reason or not accessible, that would strand me in a more remote location. Tesla has suggested I drive to the nearest town I can reach (Sayre) and they can have a tow provider meet me and then tow me to the next Supercharger (Weatherford, Oklahoma). It would not be a Tesla certified tow provider, so they'd need to talk the tow operator through towing the Model S. Not really crazy about this solution.

I waited another 15 minutes and moved my car from 1A to 2A, assuming this would use a different Supercharger. Unfortunately, the same thing happened. :(

Here is a video:


Not sure what I'm going to do at this point.
 
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Tesla needs to massively improve their online/busy/offline information for superchargers.

As it we go from one supercharger to the next with expectation that the destination supercharger is going to work.

But, in these not so used areas who knows. From this example it doesn't seem like Tesla has a very good self-test system. It fails when it tries to deliver power to the car, and that bring them all down. Sure it's a power problem, but it's a power problem some kind of self-test should detect.
 
Albert, sorry to hear about your situation, what's your status now? Sounds like you should accept the towing offer.
I had a brief anxiety producing situation at the Superior MT Supercharger 3 months ago. Arrived to find that the entire town had lost power minutes earlier. Fortunately power returned in about 10 minutes. I would not have had enough range to get to the next Supercharger.
But such incidents are quite rare, fortunately.
 
Had the car towed to Weatherford and it is now charging. I drove out to a Lpve's truck stop about 20 miles east of Shamrock and met the wrecker there. I drove the car up onto the flatbed and also backed it down when we arrived at Weatherford. That all went smoothly.

I was relieved that this Supercharger did not trip when I plugged my car in! Confirming that it's definitely something with the Shamrock Supercharger and not my car.

Tesla was great in their handling of the situation and they did the legwork in hunting down a towing company and of course paying for the tow. Hopefully they can get Shamrock back online quickly so others don't have to deal with this headache!

Heading to the Love's (sorry, blurry photo. Had 9% battery remaining upon arrival):

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Charging!!

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Frankly, I'm in awe of Tesla for providing this level of service. Occasionally, big Superchargers will go down like Harris ranch, and Tesla sends out fleets of flatbeds to get people on their way. Very impressive.
 
Hopefully you weren't carrying young children or anyone elderly along with you.

Just me, fortunately.

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Sorry, this sucks, hope your trip wasn't ruined...

I'm on my way back home, so it's a not a huge inconvenience, just cost me some time. However, if this had happened on my way up, it could have been a disaster, as I had a hard deadline for getting to Portland, Oregon. It was a rather long road trip (Austin to Portland, Oregon, to San Diego, back to Austin), covering over 5,000 miles. Half of those using Auto-Steer, so I have feedback to give Tesla on that front. And I did stop for a tour of the Tesla Factory while in California, which I cannot recommend highly enough.
 
Just me, fortunately.

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I'm on my way back home, so it's a not a huge inconvenience, just cost me some time. However, if this had happened on my way up, it could have been a disaster, as I had a hard deadline for getting to Portland, Oregon. It was a rather long road trip (Austin to Portland, Oregon, to San Diego, back to Austin), covering over 5,000 miles. Half of those using Auto-Steer, so I have feedback to give Tesla on that front. And I did stop for a tour of the Tesla Factory while in California, which I cannot recommend highly enough.

WOW, hope you write up and post your AP feedback! 5K is quite the scenic tour.
 
I agree with Cosmacelf: outstanding for Tesla to find another way to provide all necessary service for you and get you back on your way.

Good for you to take time out and do the Factory Tour.
Did they take you to any areas with Model X on assembly Lines?
Or would your NDA preclude you addressing/responding to that question?
 
Really sorry to hear of the supercharger being off line- There definitely aren't many options when you arrive with that little of a charge and the supercharger is down. I personally have now experienced 2 times where superchargers were down when I arrived at them, Both times I was able to handle it with a call to Tesla, first one, they found me an RV park within range of the car the second time, I was able to slow down about 10MPH and make the next supercharger. My score is 95% of the superchargers I have arrived at have been working. I think we'll always have a risk that the utility power might have a problem. Both of my down supercharger experiences were due to utility issues. First one was Perry OK soon after it opened, and the utility power was out of spec so the supercharger shut down to protect itself, The second one was El Centro and the input power had gone off line due to a storm the night before, and I was apparently the first charge of the day so it hadn't been reset yet. My charging strategy is to charge enough at each supercharger to skip the next one- in case it's off line- As the superchargers fill in this strategy should work well. Unfortunately, for Shamrock until Amarillo is on line, this strategy won't work. BTW- during the day the little museum/shop at Shamrock is very nice and the ladies that run it are very friendly. Glad you made it with the help of the flatbed.
 
Tesla needs to massively improve their online/busy/offline information for superchargers.

As it we go from one supercharger to the next with expectation that the destination supercharger is going to work.

I agree with this. This one of those "removing range anxiety" things that I have always been surprised has not had attention in Tesla's infrastructure and with the car firmware. It's not like you can just go to the gas station on the next corner.

Before taking a trip of any significance I have called Tesla and asked specifically about the status on the superchargers I planned on visiting. There's always a bit of fumbling on the Tesla side of the call and then I receive a general update on each (usually only ask about two or three in my route). Its a bit like calling a flight service station for a briefing before flying off on a plane trip.

The way the cars can communicate with the mother ship, you would think that the cars would have a complete and current update on the status on any superchargers with issues. It is a bit of a puzzle why the superchargers don't provide detailed or continuous updates back to Tesla and then to the cars.

Maybe they do, but I am still baffled why we still have to find dead superchargers through "customer audit" like you just did.
 
Maybe they do, but I am still baffled why we still have to find dead superchargers through "customer audit" like you just did.

I have to think someone was sleeping on the job here. But if they don't currently have a robust monitoring system with load projections, etc., then you're right - this is an imperative. When we take road trips, I charge to just make it (5% remaining or so) to the next SC, so I'd be in pretty rough shape if one were down. Having a status icon for them in the Nav would be very cool (and presumably not terribly difficult) as well.
 
There was a kerfuffle about a year ago about supercharger limiting that I think, in my personal case, came down to one or two units at one supercharger stalls having lower performance. When I called Tesla and the indeed knew that one of the units (stalls) was not performing fully and indicated that I should avoid it and use another stall. This information too should/could have been communicated to the car and avoided another kind of anxiety.

Just like the interns must be working on the classic v7 ui, it seems the same team is working on the supercharger intelligence :) (please don't drift the thread!)
 
Cut some slack here on the shamrock Supercharger. It was actually working when the OP visited it. It died 15 seconds into the charge. So Tesla couldn't have known it was going to be offline until someone tried to use it.
 
Cut some slack here on the shamrock Supercharger. It was actually working when the OP visited it. It died 15 seconds into the charge. So Tesla couldn't have known it was going to be offline until someone tried to use it.

I suspect there was a problem before I arrived. The behavior was it would charge for about 15 seconds and then the Supercharger would go offline. After 15 minutes (where you could watch the lights on the SC stalls "reset" every seven seconds), the SC would go back online, and also appeared online again to Tesla. If I plugged my car back in, this cycle repeated. It's probable that I'm the first person who encountered the SC in this condition and called Tesla about it, though.

I usually do charge more than than 5% to get to the next Supercharger, as you never know what's going to happen along your route, and it certainly is good insurance in case the next Supercharger is down. Unfortunately, there are many segments (including this one, as another poster above mentioned) where you cannot charge enough to get to another Supercharger. And if you're traveling at night, as I was, many businesses are closed, which may restrict access to other chargers.

I do agree that Tesla needs to make it much easier to see the current status of the Supercharger network within the car. They certainly have this information (the Tesla employee on the phone could see when the Shamrock SC was going online and offline), and it would be extremely beneficial to someone if they knew the next SC along their route was offline. Don't think that would have helped in my case, though, since the SC was online until you tried to charge your car with it!

I received a followup call from Tesla about 30 minutes ago to verify everything was good. I asked about the status of the Shamrock Supercharger, and he could not give me a definitive answer.

That's the first Supercharger I've ever had any issues with. Hopefully I can now have a long run of Supercharger visits without further drama! :D