Tesla chargers at WinCo in Wenatchee are up and running

It was several weeks ago on a Sunday morning that I noticed Tesla superchargers being installed at WinCo in Wenatchee. I got excited about this because it just made me feel like, OK, Wenatchee is on the map just a little bit more. 

There was a fence around the area where the work was being done, and it made me curious how long it was going to take before the charges are actually connected and available for use. 

Photo by Dave Keefer

Tesla Chargers are now in service. 

Over the last several weeks I've been checking my Tesla charger app to see if they were going to be included as available chargers and every week, I'm disappointed. Until last weekend. Last weekend I opened up my Tesla charger app, centered it on Wenatchee, and there they are, open for business. 

Now it's time to try them out. 

I normally do all my charging at home; it's much cheaper and much more convenient. But I still have to try these chargers out because, well, that's what I do. So even though the day was predicted to have a high temperature of 102°. I decided to try out the Tesla chargers at WinCo in Wenatchee and here are the results. 

Photo by Dave Keefer

So, I drive a Kia, in order to use the Tesla charger, I need to use an adapter which I have. The other thing I was curious about regarding the installation of these new Tesla chargers is that the old-style Tesla chargers are right-handed. That means you back your car in, and it plugs into the right rear fender. My car is left-handed, so I have to plug into the left rear Fender. 

That causes a problem with Tesla chargers because I wind up having to use the wrong parking space in order to plug in my car. Tesla car owners just hate that. 

Photo by Dave Keefer

Tesla fixed the problem. 

Surprise, surprise, the engineers at Tesla are not stupid and they fixed the problem. They installed the charging stand in the middle of the parking space and extended the length of the cable so it could reach either side of the car. 

The Tesla charging network is probably the most reliable charging network in the United States. If you're driving a Tesla. You just plug it in and forget it. If you're not driving a Tesla, you need a Tesla app. But once that app is installed and running. Again. You pretty much just plug it in and forget it.  

OK, you have to open the app, and you tell it what charger you want to use, but once that's done, you plug in your car, you hit "start charge" on your app and that's it. 

Photo by Dave Keefer

While I was there, three other vehicles were also charging, all of them Tesla's. (No surprise there). And yes, it was quite hot. I don't know what the high temperature was like. The sun was shining on that side of the car where I was plugged in and so when it was time to unplug, my adapter was extremely hot. Maybe they should have made it out of white plastic. 

Normally, the only time I ever use a Level 3 charger is when I'm on a road trip, but as I said before, I had to try this out just to see how well it worked. The results were more than satisfactory.  

Photo by Dave Keefer

Driving an electric car in the Wenatchee Valley has just been made a tiny bit easier.