Big slowdowns at electric vehicle chargers as Coachella crowd departs

PALM SPRINGS, Calif. (KESQ) – As festival goers depart the Coachella Valley, those who drove electric vehicles are looking for a charge.

Many of them, though, are being left disappointed on Monday, as the valley's electric vehicle charging infrastructure is strained by the swaths of people looking to top off.

News Channel 3 was in Palm Springs and saw lines of Teslas waiting in downtown for a limited number of Tesla Superchargers. Some of them were lucky and only waited 15 minutes, while others, who bunched up closer to noon, were likely to experience hour-long wait times.

Jack Schiavone, who came from Boston for Coachella and rented a Tesla for the trip, was one of the drivers waiting in line.

"The app usually tells you if there's available charging stations. I thought it would just route to somewhere it's available. But we got routed to the most popular one in town," he said as he sat in his Tesla with three of his friends, on the way back to the airport.

According to Google Maps, Superchargers across the valley were impacted by the rush. Both locations in Palm Springs and Indio showed very low availability at each station.

And for other EV chargers, like Electrifying America? There was more availability, albeit with slower charging times, but the ones News Channel 3 visited in Palm Springs about five minutes from downtown were closed for construction, despite being listed as "Open 24 Hours" by Google.

Still, Schiavone said it was an overall positive experience renting his Tesla for the festival. "It costs us, what, $30 to drive here from L.A. on electricity? [It] would have been three times more with gas."

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