# Tesla supercharger



## Karter2 (Nov 17, 2011)

Whilst it does seem strange that Tesla, who have thrown open most of their tech patents and heavily spruk the EV mantra etc, ...want to prevent any other EV from accessing their recharge network even if there is money to be made from it.
...but I guess they see the Supercharger network as a marketing advantage over their main EV competitors that may be a factor in luring customers to Tesla in preference to any other EV that doesn't have that network support.


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## CKidder (Dec 12, 2009)

Karter2 said:


> Whilst it does seem strange that Tesla, who have thrown open most of their tech patents and heavily spruk the EV mantra etc, ...want to prevent any other EV from accessing their recharge network even if there is money to be made from it.
> ...but I guess they see the Supercharger network as a marketing advantage over their main EV competitors that may be a factor in luring customers to Tesla in preference to any other EV that doesn't have that network support.


But that's the thing. They do want other EVs on their supercharger network! They're really trying their best to get GM, Ford, Mercedes, BMW, etc to agree to put supercharger ports on their cars and use the network. No one is taking them up on the offer. Instead the other manufacturers are trying to push their own standards. It's craziness. We're heading toward at least three competing fast charge standards. 

Now, I want to be able to support the super charger network but I'm nobody. I might be able to convince people in the DIY space to buy the hardware and pay the money to Tesla but it won't be a drop in the bucket compared to BWM deciding to put it on every EV they make. So, to Tesla I may as well be invisible. The only way I can see a hobbyist being able to use the network is if someone hacks their way in and it hits the news. That will wake the sleeping giant up. I really doubt anything else will. That's the thing with these big companies. They. do. not. care. about. hobbyists. We're little ants running around. Those ants might be industrious but they are of no consequence to a giant. To get the giant's attention you have to bite it.


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## Hollie Maea (Dec 9, 2009)

I'm glad you set up a thread for this so we can discuss it more extensively.

As you know, I think this is a really bad idea. I said as much on Jack's site and his response was that I'm ignorant. But since you are the one who will be doing the actual work on it, I'll say my piece here too, in a little more depth and detail.

This scheme unambiguously amounts to theft from Tesla. The fact that you are offering to buy it doesn't fix it. When someone does not offer to sell you something, it is not acceptable to steal it and then ask what it costs when you get the proprietor's attention.
Of course you might argue that you won't take any electricity until you have an agreement with them. But it's not about electricity. That's what everyone seems to be missing--you aren't stealing electricity from Tesla. You are stealing access. Tesla has spent tens of millions of dollars setting up the Supercharger network, and have chosen to make it exclusive to people who buy their cars. They have not chosen to sell that access to other people, which is their right. Once you have taken that access, you can't give it back. If you can't afford their price (or if it's not for sale), you are stuck with stolen goods. Under the best of circumstances, you are negotiating the sale of that access with the implied threat of the fact that you have take it without paying if you don't like their terms. That's extortion--a felony.

And you can believe that they are going to come after you. The Supercharger Network is their crown jewel, and the loss of exclusivity to it will constitute a huge loss of value to them. The idea that they will be so impressed by your little CAN tools that they'll chuckle and say you deserve access since you worked so hard for it is a complete fantasy. They will come after you through the courts, you will be facing felony charges, and they will easily win. The best case scenario for you is that Jack will take the complete fall, but that's not a gamble I'd want to take.

Nor is there any glorious "big company vs. the little guy" thing at work here. Unlike the issue of whether or not people who buy a car own its subsystems, there is literally no argument to be made whatsoever that you or anyone else has any claim to access to the Supercharger Network.

In short, this idea is unwise, illegal and unethical. Or anyway, that's my ignorant opinion. Obviously, no one is going to convince Jack not to do this. The only thing you can do is tell him you aren't going to take part. Of course that will cost you your job with him, and will get you a twenty minute segment on his show about what a scoundrel you are and how anyway you never were nearly as smart as Ed Clausen or whoever he gets to take your place. But let's be honest--that's going to happen eventually regardless what you do. Anyway, that's what I'd do if I were you. Jack isn't paying you enough for you to fall on your sword for him. The work you have done for him so far would get you a job wherever you wanted to work. But things change drastically with a felony charge.

Anyway, that's just my 2 cents. I don't have any personal skin in the game--I don't work for Tesla or even own a Tesla. But I'd hate to see you take a fall for such an obviously bad idea.


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## Hollie Maea (Dec 9, 2009)

CKidder said:


> But that's the thing. They do want other EVs on their supercharger network! They're really trying their best to get GM, Ford, Mercedes, BMW, etc to agree to put supercharger ports on their cars and use the network. No one is taking them up on the offer.


Don't believe the hype. Those offers, if they really exist, come with a price tag that far exceeds Jack's Board Watch money.

They aren't giving away Supercharger Access for a nominal sum. They just aren't.


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## Hollie Maea (Dec 9, 2009)

Karter2 said:


> ...but I guess they see the Supercharger network as a marketing advantage over their main EV competitors that may be a factor in luring customers to Tesla in preference to any other EV that doesn't have that network support.


There is no guessing about it. They have publicly stated that all of their marketing dollars have gone into building the Supercharger Network instead of going towards advertisements.


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## twright (Aug 20, 2013)

But, I also don't think Colin or Jack are in any danger of being arrested by "stealing" from Tesla.

If Tesla gets mad, they will send you a strongly worded letter FIRST. Any court action (if it happens) will follow the warning.

IF you guys get a letter, then you can decide if its time to stop.


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## nimblemotors (Oct 1, 2010)

Why play in the billionaires sandbox? 

Aren't people smart enough to see Emperor Has No Clothes?
Tesla is a big stock exchange traded corporation intend on making big profits, not a public interest group that can spend millions on helping the environment.

Here is a better idea, an EV that doesn't NEED a 'supercharger',
any public level 2 charger is just 'super' when you need only 1/4 or 1/10th the charge/battery than a Tesla.


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## CKidder (Dec 12, 2009)

Hollie: It might shock you to hear that I actually agree with you. I tried to say somebody and be generic because I am a bit reluctant for many of the reasons you mentioned. If someone were to use the supercharger without being in a Tesla that'd be stealing electricity in effect. And, yes, you can get in trouble for picking someone's locks on their house even if you just pop your head in and say "Hey, it worked!" so there's an issue there too. I don't know if anyone will really try to do it or not. If someone does try it you can be assured it will not be me. I was involved in hacking onto CHAdeMO. But, that's a bit different since those chargers really are free for people to use or for pay but there are proper arrangements in place to pay and be authorized. So, it's a bit weird to see a DIY car at a chademo station but it's not illegal. The supercharger is a whole different can of worms.

But, it's perfectly legal to develop tools to crack a safe. You can crack your own safe all you want. It's only bad when you take that stuff to a bank and use it. Here's the thing - the hardware and software necessary to hack a super charger already exists. Yes, I helped make a bunch of it. What people do with it after that is not my problem. Currently someone could drive a working Tesla right up to the charge station and capture all the traffic between the charger and the car. Thereafter, there is software I wrote that helps with reverse engineering canbus protocols. Then, the same software is capable of doing replay and generated traffic onto the bus. So, I'd imagine that the means to do this pretty much already exists. To my knowledge no one has done so but it's already possible.

So, I guess that's my take on the situation. I think that the realities of the situation will make it difficult for anyone to really do this. It'd just be super cool if they opened up the super charger network. Not sure that'll ever happen. Dare to dream.


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## Karter2 (Nov 17, 2011)

CKidder said:


> But that's the thing. They do want other EVs on their supercharger network! They're really trying their best to get GM, Ford, Mercedes, BMW, etc to agree to put supercharger ports on their cars and use the network. No one is taking them up on the offer. Instead the other manufacturers are trying to push their own standards. It's craziness. We're heading toward at least three competing fast charge standards.


 What exactly do we (you) know of these offers ?
Are they an open "Come on in and join us". Type free offers, ..
...or are there huge complex strings and financial commitments involved ?
Are Tesla trying to become the "Texaco" of the EV refuelling world, with overriding control of recharge networks ?
This really could be a case of ...." He who controls the power,..has the power !"


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## kennybobby (Aug 10, 2012)

*supercharger is of little practical value for us*

1. Unless you have a very large, liquid-cooled battery pack then you likely don't have enough range to traverse between the TSC stations and take advantage of their locations for long-distance trips.

2. Unless you have a very large, liquid-cooled battery pack then you likely don't have enough thermal control available to allow safe charging at the very high currents possible anyway.

i think that the biggest and best use of an EV is for the daily commute between home and work. My 16kWh air-cooled pack will get me ~50 miles a day if i drive easy and hypermile. All the cells are packed touching together and a hot cell in the middle could be a bad day. 

So even if free, or for pay, i wouldn't and couldn't utilize a TSC--how many DIYs really could? 

Or how many OEMs could? i doubt anything from BMW or Ford or Nissan, etc. could. 

Not even all the Teslas can utilize SC-- only the 85 kWh pack can, not the 60, 70 or Roadsters, due to 1 and 2 above.

But i think Colin is right in that the tools are already available if someone wanted to prove they could do it.

So there is the Technical aspect of how/can it be done, which would be a good discussion.

There is the Legal/Ethical/Moral/Tax-payers funded Teslas build-up aspect, which i find boring, preachy, and political.

So maybe there should be two threads on this subject--and keep em separated?


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## Karter2 (Nov 17, 2011)

I'm no expert on this, but I assume these SC Stations are "smart" and communicate with any vehicle that connects to them to know what charge rate, voltage, etc...is needed.
All vehicles may not have the ability to benefit from the 100+ kW charge potential, but they should be able to use the SC as a simple charge point, ..
....IF they are officially approved to do so ?
I could envision a scenario where the SC units are automatically restricted to only allow the fast charge rates on Tesla vehicles, or maybe even if they wanted to limit charge to non Tesla vehicles to say, 10kWhr or some " emergency" charge at a premium $$$ rate !
Lots of possible ways to set up a business model around this .


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## tomofreno (Mar 3, 2009)

I can think of a couple reasons Tesla wouldn’t want diyer’s using the SC network. The main one I think is that it is a significant part of the cache’ of owning a Tesla S. Only YOU as an S owner can use the SC network. It makes you feel special. I think that is part of the appeal of the S to many of the affluent who purchase them, they are part of a special club that has rock star Elon as a member. And a more and more important part as high status BMW and others set their sights on competing products. They are in the market where people purchase the vehicle that will turn the most heads. Another reason is that Tesla has no idea of the safety of the diy vehicle. A vehicle fire at a supercharger would be massive bad publicity even if it is not a Tesla, and that can easily be omitted in the report. Correcting it later doesn’t help much. As Mark Twain said “A lie can be half way around the world before the truth puts its shoes on.” I would really dislike seeing Tesla get such bad publicity and ev opponents handed such fodder just because someone wants to show they can do it, though I suppose connection/operation could be demonstrated without risk of mishap by someone with enough knowledge. But then there could be copycats without that knowledge.

I agree that it wouldn’t do most of us much good since we don’t have sufficient temperature control of our packs, especially during hot summer months when you are more likely to be taking trips. I could charge maybe once at a lower rate than their standard, but if I tried to drive long distance and charge several times my pack would overheat - and I wouldn't even be able to make it between SCs. I think you move to another level of temperature control of most major components – motor, controller, batteries - than the simple air cooling many of us have when you want to drive hundreds of miles and do fast charging multiple times. And you need a larger pack.

I also think that it seems equivalent to breaking and entering, which would prevent me from doing it, but I am confident that isn’t a deterrent to some others.


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## PStechPaul (May 1, 2012)

I was just wondering - is there any explicit warning on the Tesla Supercharger stations that it is only for Tesla vehicles and any attempt to charge any other vehicle is illegal and subject to prosecution? In the absence of such a specific warning, an attempt to use it for a DIY conversion would normally just result in the inability to use it. If someone should succeed, well, that would just mean their protections were not adequate.


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## Hollie Maea (Dec 9, 2009)

PStechPaul said:


> I was just wondering - is there any explicit warning on the Tesla Supercharger stations that it is only for Tesla vehicles and any attempt to charge any other vehicle is illegal and subject to prosecution? In the absence of such a specific warning, an attempt to use it for a DIY conversion would normally just result in the inability to use it. If someone should succeed, well, that would just mean their protections were not adequate.


If I break into your house, neither "There wasn't a sign saying I couldn't" nor "you should have had better locks" will be effective defenses.


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## palmer_md (Jul 22, 2011)

CKidder said:


> I'm busting the discussion out to a new thread so we quit hijacking Eldis' thread about his controller.
> 
> Yes, there are a lot of issues and I don't see anyone releasing details to the public about how to go about interfacing with a Tesla supercharger. They could potentially try to use the courts but, I don't think anyone wants to just use them without payment. People would be willing to pay the fee to gain access. The problem is, I specifically asked Tesla to let us do that and my cries went unheard. So far it hasn't hit their radar. It is likely that the only way to get their attention is to just do it and put it on youtube. That ought to get it to the right people's attention. But, the goal isn't the steal but to get them to even listen at all. I want people to be able to use the super charger network legally.
> 
> I think you're right that a technical solution would be easiest for them. But, there are lots of ways to subvert that too. I still hope that Tesla has the common sense to play along and let us pay them rather than dig their heels in and try to fight it.


I fully agree with your approach. Build the black box and have Jack use it to charge his cars, since he has paid for access to the network. Once you have that Tesla will probably approach you to license the access in the same way that they have asked the other manufacturers to do so for their vehicles. I'd be more than happy to purchase a "black box" that has licensed access to the supercharger network.


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## CKidder (Dec 12, 2009)

palmer_md said:


> I fully agree with your approach. Build the black box and have Jack use it to charge his cars, since he has paid for access to the network. Once you have that Tesla will probably approach you to license the access in the same way that they have asked the other manufacturers to do so for their vehicles. I'd be more than happy to purchase a "black box" that has licensed access to the supercharger network.


Well, that's about the best anyone could possibly hope for - That something could be constructed that is useful for this task and someone like Jack who is technically allowed to use the charger anyway might test it. That way he's not stealing - he was given the right to use it because he's got a P85. The alternative of having some poor schmuck test it and get sued is not a great alternative. I mean, I was fine with it so long as that schmuck wasn't me but whoever did it would be asking for trouble.

Of course, that means he'd have to test with that exact vehicle and with that vehicle's VIN but if the black box works instead of the built-in systems in the car then we know it works. At that point no one has exactly done anything wrong. It alleviates many problems. No one is stealing. No one is breaking in. Nothing was really spoofed. The correct VIN # gets sent for the correct car which is really in the correct place. At that point Tesla would have a choice to make. They could say yes and we'd make the boxes and pay them money. They could say no. In that case who knows what Jack would say - I'm not him. I'd imagine he'd be pretty pissed if they said no. 

As other people have said, it's probable that Tesla saying that they're opening up the network to competitors is a load of dung and they're really being very duplicitous. So, we might soon find out just how much of a liar Elon really is. But, he runs a very large company and the level of lies usually scales with the corporate worth. So, I'm not sure I'm holding my breath on this one. Still, it'd be neat to at least have someone give it a try. The worst that happens is that Tesla gets mad that their comm scheme was figured out and changes it. But, it's fun to try anyway. 

Other people are already on that trail anyway. I'd almost be surprised if they haven't already tried to do all of this. I have no idea if they've succeeded though I know there are people out there that were going to do it. They might have thought better of it. They might have done it and told no one.


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## Karter2 (Nov 17, 2011)

Even a Tesla owner using a SC station with a "fake" connector, is no different to a bank customer trying to get cash from an ATM using a fake PIN.
...even though he may have cash in the bank...it's a fellony !
If Tesla want to, they could make a messy situation out of it.


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## CKidder (Dec 12, 2009)

Karter2 said:


> Even a Tesla owner using a SC station with a "fake" connector, is no different to a bank customer trying to get cash from an ATM using a fake PIN.
> ...even though he may have cash in the bank...it's a fellony !
> If Tesla want to, they could make a messy situation out of it.


Who said it'd be a fake connector? People routinely wrap Teslas around telephone poles while showing off to their friends. I'm sure Jack can find a wrecked car and buy another charge port to use. Or, he might be able to disconnect the control wiring from his existing connector and hook it up to our "black box" instead. There are lots of options. Also, I don't think that Tesla wants the negative publicity of suing Jack for charging his Tesla Model S on their charge network. It's really more like getting in trouble for cloning your own debit card and using the clone at the bank. You're still the correct authorized user and you're using your correct pin (VIN) number. Nothing uncouth is actually happening. Does the bank want you to clone your card? Probably not but you can't really steal from yourself.


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

PStechPaul said:


> I was just wondering - is there any explicit warning on the Tesla Supercharger stations that it is only for Tesla vehicles and any attempt to charge any other vehicle is illegal and subject to prosecution? In the absence of such a specific warning, an attempt to use it for a DIY conversion would normally just result in the inability to use it. If someone should succeed, well, that would just mean their protections were not adequate.


There is no warning. I took a picture of the supercharge cable poked into the fuel filler opening on my RX-7. One of these days I will mount the J1772 inlet there but for now its just an opening.

If they have done their job with the super station design then there is no voltage at the end of the cable until the negotiation has completed. I am sure that part of the negotiation is going to be an identification of the vehicle. The obvious thing would be the VIN number. If you want security then you do a public/private key query so that you are actually identifying the vehicle. It would not be practical to break such a system.


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## palmer_md (Jul 22, 2011)

Tesla's version of payment is to purchase the car, and then you can charge that car at any Supercharger. If he charges his own car with a different computer doing the charge control into his Model S it is not stealing. 

ChaDeMo network charge stations are owned by various companies and they offer subscriptions to use them, so hacking the protocol does not do anything to steal electricity, you still have to subscribe to get power from them. The free ones are not really free (at least in the US), they are payed for by our tax dollars. Most of those free stations have exhausted the government money and are switching to the payed access either by the hour or subscription or a combination of both. For example EVGo charges $14.95/month for access AND $0.10/min while you are connected. The DIY ChaDeMo will work well for this since we can set it up to charge at full power until a specific voltage and then just shut off. My Leaf would charge at full power for only a very short time and then within a few minutes be charging at rates that are below L2 charge rates, so it would not make sense to keep paying the high rates. I'd just move to the L2 and pay $1/hr for the remaining charge. Most folks don't do that but just finish the entire charge on the DC charger even though it is not any faster.

Tesla is different in that the subscription is to purchase a Model S and you can charge that car at any Supercharger.

For me, if I were to use DC charging regularly, the $2000 access fee to Tesla would be well worth it after just 5 years of use. I plan to keep my car longer than that, so it would be a great solution for me.


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## Hollie Maea (Dec 9, 2009)

dougingraham said:


> If you want security then you do a public/private key query so that you are actually identifying the vehicle. It would not be practical to break such a system.


If any encryption breaking whatsoever is required, you would be on shaky legal ground indeed--even if you only used it to charge your own car.

And unlike Colin suggested earlier, you CAN be liable for creating tools that people others use to break the law, if you make it easy enough for them--the court precedents are clear on this. Something generic like the SavvyCAN wouldn't be a problem, but if you make someone a tool for breaking the encryption, you'd definitely be liable if they used it illegally.


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## CKidder (Dec 12, 2009)

dougingraham said:


> There is no warning. I took a picture of the supercharge cable poked into the fuel filler opening on my RX-7. One of these days I will mount the J1772 inlet there but for now its just an opening.
> 
> If they have done their job with the super station design then there is no voltage at the end of the cable until the negotiation has completed. I am sure that part of the negotiation is going to be an identification of the vehicle. The obvious thing would be the VIN number. If you want security then you do a public/private key query so that you are actually identifying the vehicle. It would not be practical to break such a system.


Keep in mind that VIN numbers are short, canbus frames are only 8 bytes long, and known plaintext attacks are pretty successful usually. That is to say, a public/private key exchange is somewhat difficult to do properly in this case - not impossible but somewhat difficult. It is very, very unlikely that they used actual public/private key asymmetric encryption for something like this. It's way overkill. They could have used a shared AES key (either 128 or 256 bit encryption) which would be annoying to figure out but not entirely impossible. In that case the encryption would be identical for every exchange. Except that that issue is why people use salt when encrypting things. A VIN number is 17 characters and they aren't just HEX digits so you either need three frames to send it or you need to hash it and then send the hash. If you hash it you might not even bother to encrypt it unless you're really paranoid about being it hacked (which Tesla could be). If you don't hash it then you need three frames but frames have 8 bytes and you need to send 17 bytes so 8*3 = 24 which means you have room to either send command/sync bytes or salt. Let's say they use two bytes per message for control and 6 for sending. That means there is an extra byte left over for salt somewhere in there and you can encrypt all three frames. It would be difficult to crack a scheme like that. I have, in fact, implemented such a scheme over ZigBee for a project. It's not impossible to crack if you know what was being sent (say, if you know for a fact that the VIN is being sent in the clear before the encryption is applied) but it's hard. If they bothered to go to this extreme I doubt that anyone will bother actually cracking it. It'd be harder than it's worth and the DMCA would screw you. If they just implemented something similar to existing protocols but with some extra validation then it might get cracked. In that case it really depends on what they did.


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## Hollie Maea (Dec 9, 2009)

Anyway, they don't encrypt the VIN, so it's all academic for now.


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## CKidder (Dec 12, 2009)

Hollie Maea said:


> Anyway, they don't encrypt the VIN, so it's all academic for now.


Heh, I didn't think that they did. I thought that I heard that it was sent in the clear on the traffic. It seems like the other people who wanted to hack the supercharger might have actually gotten some captures. But, I haven't really looked into the comm protocol at all.


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## RIPPERTON (Jan 26, 2010)

This happened in Goulburn on the weekend. There was some fete in the park accross the road and all the Superchargers got "Iced". Was posted in the Tesla forum. Some of the offenders were rounded up and a few stations were freed up.


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## Karter2 (Nov 17, 2011)

Ha ,....i know there are a few Teslas around Aus, but what is the probability of more than one being in the Gouldburn Supercharger station at any one time ?
6+ charge stations...Thats a better definition of optimism than the previous record holder in Au........those 27 boarding gates at Adelaide airport !


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## RIPPERTON (Jan 26, 2010)

They are starting to see queues at Superchargers in the US.
AT Goulburn there were only 3 cars on a road trip arriving at the same time.


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

I haven't had to wait yet but I took the last stall at the Maumee OH Supercharger. Went to use the restroom and grabbed a beverage and when I got back I was the only car there.

An interesting thing about superchargers is that when you stop at one if there is someone there going the same direction as you then you will see them again at the next supercharger. I've experienced this several times and it is just another thing that makes taking a road trip in a Tesla a unique experience.


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## Kevin Sharpe (Jul 4, 2011)

Does anyone have any updates on this topic? We intend to use the Type 2 connector in our conversions and would like to use the Tesla CHAdeMO adaptor with that interface.

Unfortunately the Tesla Type 2 car connectors are proving difficult to buy from salvage and we thought we'd upgrade the pins on some generic connectors from a third party OEM


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## Kevin Sharpe (Jul 4, 2011)

Hope EVTEC have good attorneys 

Tesla statement (here) - “Despite repeated discussion and warnings, EVTEC continues to use a damaged and dismantled Tesla DC adapter for a charging service they promote. The misuse of our logo and reference to Supercharging is misleading the public and implies Tesla supports these chargers. In fact, Tesla had no involvement in the development of this charging system and has not tested or authorized its safety for use with Tesla vehicles.”


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