Tesla offers way to override new charge limitation at busy Superchargers

Tesla introduced a new 80% limit to the top State of Charge (SOC) at busy Supercharger stations in order to reduce wait times, but the automaker now clarifies that there are more ways to override the new charge limitation.

As we reported last Friday, Tesla sent a memo to employees to announce a new “Supercharger feature”:

Today, we released a new Supercharger feature that will limit owners’ State of Charge (SOC) to 80% at select high-traffic sites.

The automaker says that it will affect 17% of all its Supercharger stations in the US.

The feature is quite controversial because even though most people don’t need to charge to 100%, it can be a necessity in some occasions.

When first announcing the feature, Tesla told employees that it has thought of a way to bypass the new limitation for owners on long-distance trips. If you are routed to a Supercharger station through the trip planner, you are going to be able to get the charge needed to complete your trip.

Now a Tesla spokesperson reached out to explain that they have other ways to bypass the charge limit:

“We’re optimizing the efficiency of our busiest Supercharger stations to get drivers back on the road faster. Most drivers don’t need to charge to 100%, and because EV charging rates begin to slow down as the battery reaches a very high state of charge, we’re implementing a new 80% default charge setting at select Supercharger locations to make the charging experience faster and ensure that more drivers have access to charging at our busiest sites. Those who still wish to charge to 100% can elect to do so by using their mobile app or in-car settings.”

After asking Tesla to clarify, a spokesperson confirmed that owners can change the max charge to more than 80% on the charge screen or the mobile app.

Owners would simply have to slide the charge limit line on the screen to the right:

Electrek’s Take

That’s a pretty simple override.

Effectively, the new limitation amounts to simply a new default max state-of-charge forced at the affected stations, but it can be easily changed.

Tesla says that it was always the plan, but it wasn’t in the original memo to employees nor in the communication Tesla sent us directly after we reached out for our report.

It’s not clear if it was really the plan all along or they changed it following the feedback after our report, but it seems to be a better solution either way.

Most people won’t bother changing the max state-of-charge, which should help with the wait times as originally intended, and those who really need it to get to their next destination will be able to override it easy.