Tesla announced that it would finally launch wait queues at Superchargers, a feature long requested by Tesla owners after a fight broke out at a station between owners arguing about who is next to charge.
For years, Tesla owners have been asking the automaker to implement a system to queue at Supercharger stations when they are full.
It doesn’t happen often — in fact, we now learn that it happens about 1% of the time — but when it does, it can be problematic.
When a Supercharger station is full, and more Tesla drivers arrive, they generally try to form a physical queue at the station. However, the parking lot can sometimes be limited, leading to issues with people cutting ahead.
We reported that this would become a bigger problem after Elon Musk fired Tesla’s entire charging team last year. This slowed down Tesla’s Supercharger deployment, which was already expanding at a lower rate than Tesla’s fleet.
A simple solution would be for Tesla to include a system to queue through the Tesla app or in-car system for people as they arrive at the station.
This week, Tesla finally announced that it is going to pilot a virtual queue at some sites next quarter:
Virtual queuing pilots starting in Q2 at select sites. Goal is a net customer experience improvement for the ~1% cases of a wait time. Wider rollout this year if feedback is positive. We also continue to expand the network 20%+ year-over-year, closely tracking site-level demand.
What did it take for Tesla to move forward with that finally? A fight.
Top comment by pj
one of the things that made tesla uniquely cool was the effort and cleverness they put into their software. it’s really surprising that they didn’t implement something like this sooner because it’s such an obviously good idea, but it’s also not surprising given all the layoffs and the CEOs distractions.
The above message from Tesla’s charging team about launching a queue system was in response to this video of a fight between Tesla owners at a full Supercharger station that has been going viral:
While this is the first time I have seen a video of such a fight at a Tesla Supercharger, there have been many reports of such incidents over the last few years.
It’s good to hear that Tesla is finally addressing the issue. Now, the question is: will this virtual queuing system also work with non-Tesla vehicles, which Tesla is onboarding on Tesla’s Supercharger network – contributing to the crowding issue.
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