Joesancle's avatar
Jun 21

Charleston SC Vacationing Experience

I have done a number of road trips now in my 2021 Model 3. Primarily road-tripping up and down the east coast. For each road trip, I have at least ensured the route I took had a minimum amount of super chargers to get from one destination to the next. This hasn't been an issue, and it was not an issue when I traveled from NC to Charleston, SC. The new issue I ran into was utilizing super chargers for the days after I arrived.

Charleston is popular vacation destination. It has many activities for both men and women. Boating, Fishing, Golfing, historical sites, great restaurants, water sports, and more. Walking downtown has delights both morning and night. It was a great trip and I hope to revisit in the near future.

Day to day, we primarily drove to a destination, such as downtown, and parked in a garage for the day. When it came time to charge, it initially appeared there were numerous options. Issue was most of these options were "destination" chargers. Meaning they could charge your Tesla, but it would take possibly 5+ hours to complete a full charge. Super chargers on the other hand take less than thirty minutes.

After further investigating, I was surprised to discover only two super charger locations in Charleston. Both not near prime locations but on the outskirts. This meant driving to a location just to charge that I would not have driven to otherwise since, for vacation interests, there was not much to offer. Nevertheless, on the last day of our trip, we drove to one of the two charging locations. It was located in a small plaza that had a pizza restaurant. The parking lot was littered with Teslas! All 8 charging spots were full, and surrounding them were another 6 Teslas waiting to charge! I spoke to one driver and he said he was waiting already for twenty minutes, and no one had established an official queue. With the design of the lot, and with the eight spots being four and four mirrored, it was not obvious who had proper claim to what. Looking back at the map, the other super charger was ten minutes away at a mall, so I took my chances and drove to the other location.

Arriving here it was also packed! It was twelve spots, but four were out of order! Luckily, since this was a huge lot and the charging spots were all in a line, a natural queue formed. From entering this queue to acquiring a spot took about twenty minutes. But in total, me driving out of my way to the first charging, then to the next, then waiting, then charging, it took around two hours! Safe to say it was my least pleasant super charging experience.

I was surprised Charleston did not have many super chargers. Maybe Tesla is looking to make more in the area, or they think destination chargers are sufficient. For people road tripping, destination chargers are not really a viable option. With the city being as popular as it is, it really needs more options. If you plan on driving to Charleston for vacation, I would highly recommend a gas vehicle, despite current gas prices.

Jun 21, 2026
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Replies (4)
TeslaFan01 avatar
· Jun 21

It has always amazed me that Tesla  never defined a queuing system for the chargers.   Now that so many other brands have access to the supercharger network crowding could become a problem.

alsancle avatar
· Jun 21

Tesla is building more superchargers every day.  But also there are more EVs eligible to charge as @TeslaFan01 noted.

I assume this was end of the day Sunday when everybody was thinking the same thing?  Maybe you needed to go over in the morning?

prewarnut avatar
· Jun 21

I was down there for a decade and recently moved back to the northeast so know the area well. SC in some ways is like Texas: they don't bend much to outside influences. There are a bunch of Teslas in Charleston but they are generally run locally (people charge at work and again at home). You won't see many on I-26, I-77 or I-95. There's just not a huge incentive for purposes of long-distance assistance. Our friend elected to use a Tesla as a company car for a few years (just switched back to internal combustion) as there's no way she was going to make a 5 1/2 hour trip to the mountains of NC with it and and bank on charging-up in Rock Hill (if a spot would even be free) and not turn that into a 6 to 7 hour trip. A lot of people have second homes to get out of the humidity... The vehicle of choice is a white Silverado or Tahoe. Gas is also cheaper as well as insurance and taxes so very few care about fuel costs there. That's the current state.

EVFan3939 avatar
· Jul 19

Charleston is a high traffic area for the Tesla demographic but the surrounding towns not so much.  So the end of the weekend you got a perfect storm.  Next time go off hours to fully recharge before leaving.