If you pulled up to this Tesla Supercharger with a near empty battery pack, I hope you brought a book to read.
The true test of any Tesla Supercharger station is Thanksgiving weekend. With most Tesla owners traveling to and from family, this is probably one of the few times Tesla owners will have to top up on Tesla’s supercharger network if they want to make it back home without running out of juice.
Tesla Superchargers were packed with lines all along California’s Interstate 5 freeway. I-5 is a major artery between NorCal and SoCal and is a strategic spot to place any EV charging station.
While some Tesla Supercharger line videos over this holiday weekend were sort of impressively long, this one has to take the cake.
Regular gas car passenger Shanon Stellini took this video of a biblically long line at the Kettleman City supercharger station, literally smack dab in the middle of the trip between Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Check out the epically long line below.
Like a scene straight out of the oil embargo lines of the 1970’s, Teslas are lined up bumper to bumper for over half a mile according to Shanon.
I counted 30 Teslas in the main line and another 15 entering the driveway. There were a few Teslas milling around the stalls so there’s a good possibility there were upwards of 50 Teslas or more waiting for a charge at any one time.
Holiday weekends are like the superbowl for Tesla Supercharger stations. With lots of demand and dozens of charging stalls, it’s a scene that plays out every Thanksgiving and a bit during Christmas.
Search “Thanksgiving” and “Tesla Superchargers” and there are dozens of videos every year that pop up, not to mention just as many forum threads on Tesla websites.
This Kettleman City supercharger is one of the world’s largest with 40 supercharger stalls on any day of the week. The largest stations have 50, those are in China.
Tesla is well aware of this bottleneck problem. At least at their San Luis Obispo charging stations, semitrailers with upwards of eight mobile chargers running off a rechargeable Tesla megapack were trailered in to ease congestion. In the twitter video below a Tesla supercharger attendant says they got wait times down to two minutes.
Not bad.
My wife @veganShelly stopped by the San Luis Obispo #Tesla #Supercharger and got the scoop on the new mobile #megapack! It’s a bank of urban chargers on wheels! Also #V3 coming soon, like I suspected!!!??? pic.twitter.com/J5HDaO4Tbu
— Sofiaan Fraval (@Sofiaan) November 28, 2019
While that 45 car line looks daunting, as far as I know, Tesla does limit charging times during peak days like this down to 45 minutes per car. Theoretically, with a line this long your wait and charging time would be two hours or less, a pain in the rear but a small price to pay for adopting EV car technology.
If you own a Tesla and are traveling, it would behoove you to top off as often as you can wherever you can. If you can’t, you just might wait in one of these lines.
