Did a landlord of a supercharging station in Beaver, Utah, cover the superchargers in brown bags in July 2022 after electric car maker Tesla Motors Inc. did not pay rent? No, that's not true: The supercharging stations in Beaver, Utah, are open as of this writing and this video is "old and untrue," according to a manager at the Chevron station who spoke to Lead Stories by phone. This video claim first surfaced in 2019.
The claim appeared in a video post on Facebook on July 21, 2022, under the title "ELECTRIC CARS?? Think again!!"
The video opens with a person off-screen pointing out several superchargers covered in bags with a sign with red lettering that says,
OUT OF
SERVICE
CALL TESLA
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Wed Aug 31 17:13:06 2022 UTC)
At the 0:45 mark in the video, an unidentified man says:
Sounds like Beaver, Utah, could use some rent being paid cause, coming from Salt Lake City going to St. George, Utah -- or coming the other way -- this is one of the only supercharger stations. And it's already limited to six or seven of them, and now they're getting brown bagged.
This explicitly claims that the stations were about to close down at that time, and any reasonable viewer would take from that that they were completely shut down by the time they watched the video. But that's not true.
The same video was posted by the account @what'sinside on July 9, 2019, with the warning to Tesla owners that they might not be able to charge their cars while driving through southern Utah.
The same account posted another video, on September 28, 2019, saying the issue was resolved and more Tesla superchargers were on the way.
The Tesla supercharging stations are at a Beaver Valley Chevron in Beaver, Utah. On August 30, 2022, Lead Stories spoke to the manager, Troy, who would only give his first name. He said the video was about from five years ago and that "it's old and untrue."
He also said:
That's all gone under the bridge and there is no problem with Tesla.
Troy asked that all further questions be directed to Tesla.
As of this writing, Tesla has not responded to multiple requests for comment.
On the Tesla website, this link says at the time of writing that at the Beaver Chevron station there are "24 Superchargers, available 24/7, up to 250kW."
