Show Best Supercharger Stall

208

Description

When arriving at a Supercharger (perhaps within 500 ft), a pop-up will show the layout of the specific stalls and show which open stall is recommended to provide the fastest charge. This improves utilization as cars are cycled through faster, and makes for happier users and less chance of having to wait when a location is very busy.

Competitive/Pricing/Notes

When arriving at a Supercharger with multiple cars already charging, it’s often difficult to figure out which stall will provide the fastest charge, as every two stalls operate on a single supercharger. While many locations are well labeled (1A, 1B, 2A, 2B, etc.), quite a few are not labeled at all or are labeled in a way that makes it very difficult to know the paring (Hawthorne and Gilroy, CA come to mind).

In addition, when most stalls are occupied, you do not know how long or at what charge rate existing cars are at to better choose which open stall to use. For example, at a four stall location, 1A and 2A are in use, and 1B and 2B are open. This means each car has 100% of each Supercharger and are charging at the fastest rate. If car 1A is pulling the maximum power, and 2A is near fully charged, then you should use 2B to provide the fastest charge.

In this example, if the 1A and 2A owners are not nearby, you need to do the Supercharger dance – Try one open stall and wait 2-3 minutes to see what charge rate you’re getting. If it’s fairly low, then you need to disconnect, move to the other stall to see what it’s charge rate is. If slower, then return to the first stall. While many don’t bother with the Supercharger dance, picking the best stall can easily save 30 minutes or more!

Status

Unknown.

(voting combined from a close duplicate that has been removed)

Category: CY3XS Applies to:
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     Created 28-Dec-2013
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8 Comments

Add to this feature: Identify any charging stalls that have been reported as out of order.
    Created 30-Mar-2020
SC sites apparently have a maximum cumulative charging capability that is less than the number of stalls times maximum output when shared. I've been in many SCs that were fully occupied and the charge rate went as low as 37kW steady state after the warm-up period. Not sure if this will continue in V3 rollout, but it would be very nice to know what the maximum rate was going to be based on the current loading. The success of the model 3 is making SC sites fully loaded a large portion of the day, at least here in California. Another year of great sales and we are going to be underwater.
    Created 2-Jan-2020


For charging locations that tend to be busy, a charge status indicator on each supercharger would be nice.

 
    Created 31-Dec-2019
Totally agree with software display of Least Bad Stall! It is the most infuriating thing about the superchargers - if you've expected 100kWh for a 30' top=up and can only get 30kWh, that's back to standard EV chargers and a 90' wait.
    Created 2-Sep-2018
Offering this via the console or app would be easier implementation than retrofitting all superchargers. Since all chargers have a clearly visible number, it would be easy to find which charger to go to. Additionally, a mini map could make this even better.
    Created 8-Aug-2018
A simple bar light on each charge pair could show current charge power (0-100%) to that pair.  Simply pick the lowest bar.  Seems like a relatively low cost retrofit.
    Created 8-Aug-2018
Adding lights to the charger stalls would be nice, but probably a challenge from a manufacturing standpoint (BOM, part/sku numbers, retrofit on existing stalls, etc)..  This should be implemented in software, where the cars which are charging are reporting back via cell to the main system what their charge rate currently is.  Then, a new arrival's screen would show the vacant supercharger stalls in order of most available charge rate.  You could then see that stall 3A, for example, has 90 kW available, even if a car is connected to 3B.  It would imply that car on 3B is drawing very little, probably almost done charging.
    Created 2-Oct-2017
A while back, I recommended to Tesla Tech that the stalls could be equipped with a simple Tri-Color (or three separate) LEDs:

Red - not functioning / faults detected.

Yellow - Not the most power at this time. Other cars charging on this circuit. Don't choose me first.

Green - choose me first. Max charging.

 

 

 
    Created 1-Mar-2017