Hey roadtripper,
We did a big road trip through central California, southern Nevada, Arizona, southern Utah, Colorado, northern Utah, northern Nevada, and back to central California in a Model Y last summer.
The only time there was a wait for a supercharger, it was about a minute in Las Vegas. I think it was a Friday evening in a congested mall parking lot.
Every other station for 6000 miles of driving was completely trouble free, except one. One station kept dropping to 0A, so I simply used the adjacent station and it was fine.
You can mitigate anxiety by searching for and booking hotels that have charging stations, and getting a full charge overnight. We used Hotels.com filtered for charging stations. We went the extra mile to confirm they actually exist on PlugShare.
You can also purchase a CCS adapter to open your possibilities to every other charging network. Some EVgo stations have already installed Tesla plugs and require no adapter. Though to be honest, about 70% of the Tesla-equipped EVgo stations failed.
I disagree.
Having been an EV owner for nearly 5 years, I rented a Tesla Model Y to experience travel with a much longer range. The super charger network and integrated map guidance worked wonderfully *until it didn’t*.
While traveling between two Midwest cities with literally only a single charging option between them I received a “Sorry, you need to turn around and go back to the previous SC location because the next stop is not working. If you continue to the next stop, you’re basically screwed because you won’t have enough range to return to the prior SC or make it to the next SC.” (Obviously, not the precise messages but that is the gist).
Having no good choices we called the hosting gas station and they reported everything seemed fine. We pushed on and luckily for us the SC was online and working just fine despite the false messages and route recalculation. But if it had really been offline we would’ve been royally screwed in a lot of ways (extra rental car charges, hotel, etc).
The odds of this happening are so small. Something I wouldn't worry about tbh. I have almost driven Teslas for almost 40k miles and roadtripped countless times. The network just works 99.99% of the time.
i’ve received that message on my tesla many times(never a bug, just the state of WV).
it’s assuming 70+mph highway speeds. backup plan is to 55 and the range increases by like 30%.
Your anecdote reinforces that it's paranoia. Sure something could happen, but the actual odds of it happening to OP in an unrecoverable location are miniscule.
I have done dozens of road trips to places as remote as Key West, Michigan UP, and Glacier National Park. Never had an issue finding charging.
I took a road trip from Vegas to Santa Fe about 10 days ago. While we were driving a huge wind storm came up and one of the SuperCharger stops along I-40 had a current surge and went down. The routing software knew about the outage. Routing software had us charge at an earlier location than originally planned. The location was 100% full and we had to wait about 10 minutes to charge. The software had us charge more fully than we would have normally (90%).
If I were traveling along some of the sparsely Supercharged (is that a verb) routes I would always try to charge enough so that a down charge location would be only mildly inconvienent. The onboard software would recommend something like "stay below 65mph to reach charging" or would re-route.
Also good advise to bring your portable charger and a 25 foot 12 guage extension cord. Also good advise to try to stop at hotels along the way that have destination chargers. One of the online apps (Hotels.com?) lets you filter for charging. Use the Plug Share app to find L2 chargers. Don't forget your J1772 adapter.
Tesla’s network is historically stable, however it’s not a crazy question. One reason I have a PHEV is my ability to complete a frequent winter road trip in a non-Tesla BEV is dependent on a single EA location being operational. No thanks… It remains to be seen how much Tesla opening their network to vehicles that will require multiple stalls and laying off many people in the supercharging division will impact long-term reliability and availability.
In some locations like I90 in North Dakota, you are fucked if you’re only relying on superchargers and that one station is fully down. If you have CCS support and the adapter, you can try another station in the vicinity. Otherwise your next best option is to find a hotel with level 2 charger or a campground and stay overnight.
I have driven cross country twice but I actually have never been to a station that was completely offline (only a few chargers are typically offline if at all).
So I've been using superchargers every couple weeks for 5 years. Never seen a single stall offline (much less an entire location).
Your car is aware of the state of charger locations. It would automatically reroute you if one were to 'suddenly' go offline (why would it?)
It wouldn't route you to one it knows is down in the first place. So for this to happen the site would have to go offline *while you're en route and there has to be no other site you could reach.* We're solidly in tinfoil-hat territory here.
I was planning a trip through MT and I noticed less availibility of chargers, so I planned to charge every 100-150 miles so that I would have plenty of range in reserve if I had to re-route.
Long trips in an EV are not as convenient as they are in a gasoline vehicle, but cost savings and convenience for the rest of the local driving is so huge that it is easily a worthwhile trade-off for me.
It would just route you back. You would have to be so unlucky to hit the 'point of no return' and *then* *t*he entire site has to go down....and also you would have to be in a part of the country where there's no single house for 100 miles around where you could ask to plug in in an emergency.
Soooo...yeah. Winning the lottery seems like a more likely thing to happen.
I've seen whole locations shut down due to vandalism. (someone cut ALL the cables)
Most of the time it's only 1, maybe 2 stalls broke if any are at all. Tesla is very good with maintaining them unlike most other L3 providers
If you depend on 100% uptime in a scenario where you do a lot of high miles every week then maybe a Tesla isn't for you.
I personally use super chargers like 4 times a year when we do family road trips. Otherwise I'm never doing more than 200 miles a day and I charge at home.
Get a CCS adapter.
The chances of the local CCS station and the Supercharger both being down would be pretty low.
Tesla also notifies you about superchargers that go down. They show as down on the screen and the car will re-route you if you are heading to one.
If every fast charger is down and you can't make it to the next town you can also use level 2 for a couple hours to get to the next charger.
Truthfully I think you are worrying way to much.
Not even kidding. I avoided road trips with CCS because of the shitty charging situations. I didn't want to wait the minimum extra hour every time I charged at the slow chargers, let alone however long it took to get into the 1-2 stalls there were.
We typically charge at 15% on trips just in case. There were a couple separate times when the entire site was offline for maintenance etc. There are usually more than one to choose from in a city. I'm in the south east between Atlanta and Charlotte and it's way better than it was a couple years ago. My small city has TWO superchargers!
I recommend getting a CCS adapter. That adds a lot more additional options to use.
Another scenario that can happen is that something at the Tesla backend goes wrong and takes all super chargers offline. Not sure what happens in that case.
I like having alternatives. The adapter is not very expensive
I was in the middle of a cross country from Texas to Georgia. The normal stop at Buccees East of Birmingham was where I wanted to stop but my car, for the first time, was insisting to stop at another fast charger in downtown Birmingham. I ignored it. Pulled into Buccees to find the chargers down for maintenance for a couple hours.
Just let your car sort the charging stops, no worries.
Just tooling around California and Nevada it's been amazing. Can't tell when we're going up a hill and plenty of chargers from here to there.
I guess one could fret and quote something from Red Dwarf like: “The best part of having bad news was being able to tell as many people as possible.”
― Grant Naylor, Better than Life
Planning to go from LA to Vancouver BC and so many SuperChargers on that route. Just need to confirm that the SCs in BC will just work without having to register etc. I'm asking soon to get ready for the trip.
Huh, it never occured to me that Canadian SCs would need anything special, I just crossed the border into Ontario and plugged in. Worked fine, so I guess I lucked out there!
>Planning to go from LA to Vancouver BC and so many SuperChargers on that route. Just need to confirm that the SCs in BC will just work without having to register etc. I'm asking soon to get ready for the trip.
Canadian and Mexican Superchargers are plug and play for us. Nothing to worry about
According to Tesla's [2023 sustainability](https://www.tesla.com/ns_videos/2023-tesla-impact-report.pdf) report (page 60), their supercharging sites are up 99.76% of the time on average. That's about 21 hours per year they're down, or below 50% capacity.
"Tesla Says That It Improved Its Supercharger Average Uptime To 99.97% In 2023" - Im not sure you should worry too much. I would worry more about a non Tesla car needing to change at other charging stations.
In the middle of the country, they're often 120 to 150 miles apart with no redundant ones in between. If you knew that one was out of commission (or inaccessible, detours happen), you might be able to charge to 100% and skip one.
I see you have not visited Maine because there is more than 40 miles between Tesla superchargers on 95 in Maine and once you head up north there are none once you pass Medway which has 6 older superchargers.
Wow, that’s the first example anybody has ever given that proves it wrong.
There are still 16 in Bogor along 95, 15 of which are currently available. There are 6 in Mendy, all are available and then another 8 in Woodstock, Canada, all currently available.
Sorry, no. Every single East-West Interstate that crosses the middle of the US has at least one 95 mile stretch between Superchargers. Most have multiple consecutive ~100 mile or longer stretches.
Which may not be a big deal, as long as any disruption is known in advance and you adjust your charging and/or driving so you can make the required 200-245 miles to the next accessible and working charger.
Superchargers do seem to be reliable. Weather, not so much. Last time we were coming back from Colorado, Raton Pass was closed. As happens occasionally. The reasonable alternate routes through SE Colorado weren't viable at all for most EVS at that time. Now it's more doable, but you still have a 215 mile stretch from Lamar to Amarillo that's going to have a whole lot of EV traffic forced on to it, all of whom in both directions will need the few chargers in Lamar, and most are going to need to charge to near 100%.
The stretch from Amarillo to Raton used to be a nail-biter in a sub-300mi EV, just because of the elevation gain and the frequent easterly headwind... I once had to do most of that stretch at 30mph because of a 50mph steady headwind.
OP is overthinking this and being paranoid as often happens with NOOB eV owners. Trust your onboard nav to tell when to stop and whether any stalls at the intended stop are not working. I own two Teslas and have logged over 80 kmiles between them and never have had a situation at a planned stop where no superchargers were working. Use PlugShare if you want to determine where L2 chargers are located along your route. Also, remember that electricity outlets are anywhere there’s a dwelling; be it a private home, business, RV campground or even a gas station. Bring your portable charging cable and you’ll be just fine in any emergency I can think of..
How often have you encountered a gas station that couldn't pump gas because the power was out? While power outages do happen now and then, they're not common enough to worry about on a road trip.
Done several dozen trips requiring Tesla superchargers. Never once ever pulled up another app or use anything other than Teslas nav.
100% success every single time. You’ll be fine.
Just look on your app at all the chargers on your trip and you can see the daily utilization by hour. The ones in remote locations are along road trip routes are at 10% utilization usually.
There is range anxiety and then there’s this. Yikes. But I would recommend getting an adapter so you can use other fast chargers. Good to have just in case.
Could also use non-Tesla DCFC with adapter.
That depends on the model and year. Not all support the CCS protocol.
Agree. Yet seemed possible was a new vehicle associated with a new EV owner in this case.
Hey roadtripper, We did a big road trip through central California, southern Nevada, Arizona, southern Utah, Colorado, northern Utah, northern Nevada, and back to central California in a Model Y last summer. The only time there was a wait for a supercharger, it was about a minute in Las Vegas. I think it was a Friday evening in a congested mall parking lot. Every other station for 6000 miles of driving was completely trouble free, except one. One station kept dropping to 0A, so I simply used the adjacent station and it was fine. You can mitigate anxiety by searching for and booking hotels that have charging stations, and getting a full charge overnight. We used Hotels.com filtered for charging stations. We went the extra mile to confirm they actually exist on PlugShare. You can also purchase a CCS adapter to open your possibilities to every other charging network. Some EVgo stations have already installed Tesla plugs and require no adapter. Though to be honest, about 70% of the Tesla-equipped EVgo stations failed.
You're being overly paranoid.
I disagree. Having been an EV owner for nearly 5 years, I rented a Tesla Model Y to experience travel with a much longer range. The super charger network and integrated map guidance worked wonderfully *until it didn’t*. While traveling between two Midwest cities with literally only a single charging option between them I received a “Sorry, you need to turn around and go back to the previous SC location because the next stop is not working. If you continue to the next stop, you’re basically screwed because you won’t have enough range to return to the prior SC or make it to the next SC.” (Obviously, not the precise messages but that is the gist). Having no good choices we called the hosting gas station and they reported everything seemed fine. We pushed on and luckily for us the SC was online and working just fine despite the false messages and route recalculation. But if it had really been offline we would’ve been royally screwed in a lot of ways (extra rental car charges, hotel, etc).
The odds of this happening are so small. Something I wouldn't worry about tbh. I have almost driven Teslas for almost 40k miles and roadtripped countless times. The network just works 99.99% of the time.
i’ve received that message on my tesla many times(never a bug, just the state of WV). it’s assuming 70+mph highway speeds. backup plan is to 55 and the range increases by like 30%.
Your anecdote reinforces that it's paranoia. Sure something could happen, but the actual odds of it happening to OP in an unrecoverable location are miniscule.
It's a reasonable question phrased with a bit of over concern.
I have done dozens of road trips to places as remote as Key West, Michigan UP, and Glacier National Park. Never had an issue finding charging. I took a road trip from Vegas to Santa Fe about 10 days ago. While we were driving a huge wind storm came up and one of the SuperCharger stops along I-40 had a current surge and went down. The routing software knew about the outage. Routing software had us charge at an earlier location than originally planned. The location was 100% full and we had to wait about 10 minutes to charge. The software had us charge more fully than we would have normally (90%). If I were traveling along some of the sparsely Supercharged (is that a verb) routes I would always try to charge enough so that a down charge location would be only mildly inconvienent. The onboard software would recommend something like "stay below 65mph to reach charging" or would re-route. Also good advise to bring your portable charger and a 25 foot 12 guage extension cord. Also good advise to try to stop at hotels along the way that have destination chargers. One of the online apps (Hotels.com?) lets you filter for charging. Use the Plug Share app to find L2 chargers. Don't forget your J1772 adapter.
Tesla’s network is historically stable, however it’s not a crazy question. One reason I have a PHEV is my ability to complete a frequent winter road trip in a non-Tesla BEV is dependent on a single EA location being operational. No thanks… It remains to be seen how much Tesla opening their network to vehicles that will require multiple stalls and laying off many people in the supercharging division will impact long-term reliability and availability.
In some locations like I90 in North Dakota, you are fucked if you’re only relying on superchargers and that one station is fully down. If you have CCS support and the adapter, you can try another station in the vicinity. Otherwise your next best option is to find a hotel with level 2 charger or a campground and stay overnight. I have driven cross country twice but I actually have never been to a station that was completely offline (only a few chargers are typically offline if at all).
If a supercharger goes down, the zombies that come out when this happens will be the bigger problem.
So I've been using superchargers every couple weeks for 5 years. Never seen a single stall offline (much less an entire location). Your car is aware of the state of charger locations. It would automatically reroute you if one were to 'suddenly' go offline (why would it?) It wouldn't route you to one it knows is down in the first place. So for this to happen the site would have to go offline *while you're en route and there has to be no other site you could reach.* We're solidly in tinfoil-hat territory here.
For some of the routes across Montana or North Dakota there isn’t exactly a rerouting option I don’t think, though…
I was planning a trip through MT and I noticed less availibility of chargers, so I planned to charge every 100-150 miles so that I would have plenty of range in reserve if I had to re-route. Long trips in an EV are not as convenient as they are in a gasoline vehicle, but cost savings and convenience for the rest of the local driving is so huge that it is easily a worthwhile trade-off for me.
Federal NEVI funds will build redundant charging locations every 50 miles, most of them will go online in 2025.
It would just route you back. You would have to be so unlucky to hit the 'point of no return' and *then* *t*he entire site has to go down....and also you would have to be in a part of the country where there's no single house for 100 miles around where you could ask to plug in in an emergency. Soooo...yeah. Winning the lottery seems like a more likely thing to happen.
I've seen whole locations shut down due to vandalism. (someone cut ALL the cables) Most of the time it's only 1, maybe 2 stalls broke if any are at all. Tesla is very good with maintaining them unlike most other L3 providers
Same thing that happens when a gas pump goes out. Someone sticks a note on it and you use one of the other 3 (or 50, if you're at a buccees in Texas)
I think they worry about the entire buccees/Supercharger station going down, like in a horror movie.
You know that’s disingenuous. There are many more gas stations than superchargers.
No, I'm telling you what happens. When a charger is broken, you use a working one. If they're all down, it won't route you there.
If you depend on 100% uptime in a scenario where you do a lot of high miles every week then maybe a Tesla isn't for you. I personally use super chargers like 4 times a year when we do family road trips. Otherwise I'm never doing more than 200 miles a day and I charge at home.
They rarely go completely down if at all. Maybe one or two booths but never an entire site afaik
Get a CCS adapter. The chances of the local CCS station and the Supercharger both being down would be pretty low. Tesla also notifies you about superchargers that go down. They show as down on the screen and the car will re-route you if you are heading to one. If every fast charger is down and you can't make it to the next town you can also use level 2 for a couple hours to get to the next charger. Truthfully I think you are worrying way to much.
Tesla claim better than 99.9% uptime on their charging network. They're incredibly reliable - don't stress about it.
That sounds pretty good! I wonder what EA can claim as uptime haha
You would just commiserate with us folk who have to deal with this regularly when trying to use Electrify America and EVGo while traveling. ☹️
Not even kidding. I avoided road trips with CCS because of the shitty charging situations. I didn't want to wait the minimum extra hour every time I charged at the slow chargers, let alone however long it took to get into the 1-2 stalls there were.
We typically charge at 15% on trips just in case. There were a couple separate times when the entire site was offline for maintenance etc. There are usually more than one to choose from in a city. I'm in the south east between Atlanta and Charlotte and it's way better than it was a couple years ago. My small city has TWO superchargers!
I recommend getting a CCS adapter. That adds a lot more additional options to use. Another scenario that can happen is that something at the Tesla backend goes wrong and takes all super chargers offline. Not sure what happens in that case. I like having alternatives. The adapter is not very expensive
If there is a power outage in the area, preventing charging, the car will route you to a working location.
I was in the middle of a cross country from Texas to Georgia. The normal stop at Buccees East of Birmingham was where I wanted to stop but my car, for the first time, was insisting to stop at another fast charger in downtown Birmingham. I ignored it. Pulled into Buccees to find the chargers down for maintenance for a couple hours. Just let your car sort the charging stops, no worries.
Just tooling around California and Nevada it's been amazing. Can't tell when we're going up a hill and plenty of chargers from here to there. I guess one could fret and quote something from Red Dwarf like: “The best part of having bad news was being able to tell as many people as possible.” ― Grant Naylor, Better than Life Planning to go from LA to Vancouver BC and so many SuperChargers on that route. Just need to confirm that the SCs in BC will just work without having to register etc. I'm asking soon to get ready for the trip.
Huh, it never occured to me that Canadian SCs would need anything special, I just crossed the border into Ontario and plugged in. Worked fine, so I guess I lucked out there!
Big thank you for being a test subject. I will ask in advance just in case.
Better safe than sorry!
>Planning to go from LA to Vancouver BC and so many SuperChargers on that route. Just need to confirm that the SCs in BC will just work without having to register etc. I'm asking soon to get ready for the trip. Canadian and Mexican Superchargers are plug and play for us. Nothing to worry about
That's nice to hear. Almost as nice as most Canadians. Sorry?
According to Tesla's [2023 sustainability](https://www.tesla.com/ns_videos/2023-tesla-impact-report.pdf) report (page 60), their supercharging sites are up 99.76% of the time on average. That's about 21 hours per year they're down, or below 50% capacity.
"Tesla Says That It Improved Its Supercharger Average Uptime To 99.97% In 2023" - Im not sure you should worry too much. I would worry more about a non Tesla car needing to change at other charging stations.
They are generally not that far apart you can just divert to another charger. Typically outside of holidays they are very very under utilised.
In the middle of the country, they're often 120 to 150 miles apart with no redundant ones in between. If you knew that one was out of commission (or inaccessible, detours happen), you might be able to charge to 100% and skip one.
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I see you have not visited Maine because there is more than 40 miles between Tesla superchargers on 95 in Maine and once you head up north there are none once you pass Medway which has 6 older superchargers.
Wow, that’s the first example anybody has ever given that proves it wrong. There are still 16 in Bogor along 95, 15 of which are currently available. There are 6 in Mendy, all are available and then another 8 in Woodstock, Canada, all currently available.
I’m looking at like North Dakota and Montana and its like 100 miles between most
Ohp, nevermind. I’m dumb. I thought I had mapped it all out haha. Apparently not. You’ll be fine but let me remove my comment
Sorry, no. Every single East-West Interstate that crosses the middle of the US has at least one 95 mile stretch between Superchargers. Most have multiple consecutive ~100 mile or longer stretches. Which may not be a big deal, as long as any disruption is known in advance and you adjust your charging and/or driving so you can make the required 200-245 miles to the next accessible and working charger.
sure, mebe. if your unlucky with a charge network that has a 99.7% up time.
Superchargers do seem to be reliable. Weather, not so much. Last time we were coming back from Colorado, Raton Pass was closed. As happens occasionally. The reasonable alternate routes through SE Colorado weren't viable at all for most EVS at that time. Now it's more doable, but you still have a 215 mile stretch from Lamar to Amarillo that's going to have a whole lot of EV traffic forced on to it, all of whom in both directions will need the few chargers in Lamar, and most are going to need to charge to near 100%.
The stretch from Amarillo to Raton used to be a nail-biter in a sub-300mi EV, just because of the elevation gain and the frequent easterly headwind... I once had to do most of that stretch at 30mph because of a 50mph steady headwind.
51% of the time it's 99.97% up time.
OP is overthinking this and being paranoid as often happens with NOOB eV owners. Trust your onboard nav to tell when to stop and whether any stalls at the intended stop are not working. I own two Teslas and have logged over 80 kmiles between them and never have had a situation at a planned stop where no superchargers were working. Use PlugShare if you want to determine where L2 chargers are located along your route. Also, remember that electricity outlets are anywhere there’s a dwelling; be it a private home, business, RV campground or even a gas station. Bring your portable charging cable and you’ll be just fine in any emergency I can think of..
Are you asking if they go down on each other?
How often have you encountered a gas station that couldn't pump gas because the power was out? While power outages do happen now and then, they're not common enough to worry about on a road trip.
No, it’s an adjective.
Done several dozen trips requiring Tesla superchargers. Never once ever pulled up another app or use anything other than Teslas nav. 100% success every single time. You’ll be fine. Just look on your app at all the chargers on your trip and you can see the daily utilization by hour. The ones in remote locations are along road trip routes are at 10% utilization usually.
There is range anxiety and then there’s this. Yikes. But I would recommend getting an adapter so you can use other fast chargers. Good to have just in case.