What would be the result if, say, BP and Isuzu brought in a ruling that Isuzu owners could no longer completely fill their fuel tanks at BP stations in peak times?
Imagine if Isuzu owners could only fill their tanks to 80% of maximum capacity in order to reduce the queues at the pumps.
There would be an open revolt. Everyone would switch car brands or fuel source. But what if the car brand owns the refuelling source and has embedded software in both that allows this control?
Welcome to the Tesla EV Utopia.
Tesla is updating some of its Supercharger stations today to limit the top State of Charge (SOC) to 80% at busy stations in order to reduce wait times. In a memo sent to Tesla employees today and obtained by Electrek, Tesla announced the new 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 limit will apply to 8% of stations at all times, and another 9% will have the limitation during periods of times when they are busier.
Owners will get an alert when they are at a station with the state-of-charge limitation to 80% of the capacity.
In the memo, Tesla explained when the new limit would be enforced:
“80% SOC Limit will be enforced 24/7 at all impacted sites. Please note, some sites will have 80% SOC limits enforced on a permanent basis while others will only be enforced on national holidays and to accommodate large regional events (e.g. Coachella).”
Some Supercharger stations have been known to get very busy on certain holidays, and it often results in long wait times. We reported on the issue last year when Thanksgiving gave Tesla’s Supercharger network got a rough test.
Tesla claims that the new feature, combined with other recent updates to its Supercharger network, should result in “a 34% improvement in throughput” at the affected stations. […]
Electrek
