Line 'Em Up!
(Click to enlarge)
April 17, 2023
Mark D Larsen
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Line 'Em Up! (Click to enlarge) | More Superchargers in St. George
April 17, 2023 Mark D Larsen |
(Click to enlarge)I noticed in a Tesla Owners’ Forum that there is another Supercharger site being installed in St. George, in addition to the original site near the Starbucks to the north of the city. I therefore decided to stop by the site to check out the progress being made. This new construction is taking place in a parking lot across the street from our St. George Convention Center. For a few years, Tesla had previously placed four lowly urban-model Superchargers in this parking lot, but I noticed several weeks ago that they had been removed.
As I suspected, Tesla was planning to replace them with new v.3 models that will provide much faster charging than at the first Supercharger site. Moreover, this will prove a much more convenient location because of its proximity to the I-15 freeway, a welcome accommodation for tourists who are traveling through St. George to visit our numerous National Parks, or are simply en route between Las Vegas and Salt Lake City. You can see the 12 uninitialized Superchargers lined up in the photo at the top of the page, and in the photo on the right the control boxes that will power them.
I will continue to stop by this construction site and let readers know when the Superchargers are operational. My one hope is that they will boast “Magic Dock” connectors to accommodate other EVs, but… I doubt that will happen any time soon in this area of the country.
Update May 25, 2023
Great news for Tesla owners driving through St. George! The new 250 kW Superchargers across from our Convention Center are now up-and-running —and just in time for the Memorial Day Weekend!
NOTE: You can click on the following photos to enlarge them, and the movie to play it.
The Tesla’s navigation system does not yet list the site, and only shows it as a black inverted “pin” in the parking lot.
Nonetheless, I drove to the site and plugged my Model 3 into one of the Superchargers in the middle of the row.
As you can watch in this video, the Supercharger connected and charged my Model 3 just fine! I didn't really need a charge, as I had only lost 4 miles from my usual 80% charge to arrive at the site. You can see that the Supercharger started charging at only ~44 kW and ~177 mi/hr, but very quickly restored those 4 miles to my battery pack and ended the session. Oddly, I was not charged anything, as shown on the display.
I then received the usual notification on my phone that the charging had stopped.
Upon checking the charging stats in my Tesla app, I could see that I was not charged for the session.
I suspect that I didn’t have to pay anything because I didn’t draw even a full kWh from the Supercharger. However, it might be that the accounting for those Superchargers has yet to be set up on Tesla’s servers, which is why the location’s pin is still black on the navigation map. Either way, I’m sure that the circle will turn red soon so that owners can designate that site as their next charging destination. Also note: until that happens, I would guess that it won’t be possible to pre-condition the battery before arriving there. Still, there is now a new Supercharging site operational in St. George!
