Another bad EA charger

[GDN]

Very sad to see this still happening every day. When will Farley and EA step up. They are his partner. This is the media BS they want to tout and feed everyone that is one of the best parts about buying a Ford EV - their (lack of) charging network. it is not hard to respond to broken stations. It's truly they just don't care and don't want to.

Sponsored

 

[RickLightning]

Very sad to see this still happening every day. When will Farley and EA step up. They are his partner. This is the media BS they want to tout and feed everyone that is one of the best parts about buying a Ford EV - their (lack of) charging network. it is not hard to respond to broken stations. It's truly they just don't care and don't want to.

I'm not going to defend EA, but...

- You can see issues with stations on PlugShare. Pulling up Loveland, CO shows issues going back months. No reason to rely on it. There is another EA location 19.4 miles away. If you don't check locations on PlugShare before heading to them, that's on you.

- EA, just like everyone else, has staffing issues and supply chain issues. We have no visibility to whether they can't get parts, don't have repair personnel (I know that they use subcontractors at least partly), or have a huge backlog. Or, just don't care. We're blind to the issues.

- We used EA in 2021, and then in 2022 visited the same locations across multiple states, and found significant improvement at those locations.

- The more a station is used, the more issues it has, in part because people abuse equipment.

Different issue entirely, but near us they modified the road and are installing new signals and crossing lights. The lights and signals have been in process for close to a year, maybe more. Every few months another truck shows up. Clearly supply chain issues.

 

[Kev12345]

Tesla opening up the superchargers to all EV's is the best thing that ever happened to the lightning!

 

[GDN]

I'm not going to defend EA, but...

- You can see issues with stations on PlugShare. Pulling up Loveland, CO shows issues going back months. No reason to rely on it. There is another EA location 19.4 miles away. If you don't check locations on PlugShare before heading to them, that's on you.

- EA, just like everyone else, has staffing issues and supply chain issues. We have no visibility to whether they can't get parts, don't have repair personnel (I know that they use subcontractors at least partly), or have a huge backlog. Or, just don't care. We're blind to the issues.

- We used EA in 2021, and then in 2022 visited the same locations across multiple states, and found significant improvement at those locations.

- The more a station is used, the more issues it has, in part because people abuse equipment.

Different issue entirely, but near us they modified the road and are installing new signals and crossing lights. The lights and signals have been in process for close to a year, maybe more. Every few months another truck shows up. Clearly supply chain issues.

I've read your posts and know you have had good luck and likely never been stranded, but with the MachE, the Lightning, the Polestar, a couple of VW models, etc on the road, there is no excuse of any kind any longer for this kind of issue with a charging station.

Farley wants to tout it as a huge bonus, he needs to step it up. Either help them keep it up or pay Elon and walk away from the government / VW disaster that is EA (this would be his smarter move.)

You go visit the Supercharger network and show me how many chargers are down at once. You'll struggle to find just a handful of chargers - usually one pedestal out of 10 to 12 across the WHOLE network.

You tell me where the worker shortage is on the Tesla SC support team? Tell me where the excuses are for not monitoring a SC, like they don't monitor an EA station.

You are making excuses for them and poor ones. I'm OK with anyone that wants to tell of their good experiences, but when someone points out something that isn't working and hasn't been for some time per your own research, but yet blatantly ignored by EA, then you are no longer helping, just concealing the problem.

 

[beatle]

Glad that people with a bigger audience are calling out bad charging experiences as they see them. Sad that they have to do it at all.

I've been tracking an EA station on I-81 (Brugh's Mill Country store) since before I got my truck. It has been down to a single station since May. May! That's 3 months! Staunton has the next closest 120+kw station and it's 67 miles away. EA has actually made the situation worse by falsely claiming back on July 1st that the only broken station is the CHAdeMO station.

To say "just check ahead of time" and "people abuse the equipment" like they're excuses for equipment to stay broken for months is silly and anti-consumer.

 

[RickLightning]

You are making excuses for them and poor ones. I'm OK with anyone that wants to tell of their good experiences, but when someone points out something that isn't working and hasn't been for some time per your own research, but yet blatantly ignored by EA, then you are no longer helping, just concealing the problem.

To say "just check ahead of time" and "people abuse the equipment" like they're excuses for equipment to stay broken for months is silly and anti-consumer.

I specifically said I wasn't defending EA. But since you don't know why a station is down, you can't just jump to a reason unless you have knowledge of the core problem. "Blatantly ignored by EA" is simply hyperbole without facts to back it up.

Does a company not give a crap if they can't get parts? I don't think so. Do I think Ford doesn't give a crap because they didn't put in a chip for a kick sensor? No.

Concealing a problem? How many chargers have you reported as down via both PlugShare and EA's apps? Can't be a fraction of what I have reported.

I couldn't give a rat's behind what Tesla has done, is doing, or will do. If they open their network to us, unless the price is competitive, I won't be using them unless I have no other options. But feel free to use it yourself.

To plan on using a location of any type without looking up the status with easily available resources isn't the brightest thing in the world. But if people don't want to be intelligent and avoid easily avoidable problems, then by all means head there right now.

 

[vandy1981]

You go visit the Supercharger network and show me how many chargers are down at once. You'll struggle to find just a handful of chargers - usually one pedestal out of 10 to 12 across the WHOLE network.

Tesla's network is much more reliable than EA at the moment but they also have a 6-year head start and are less subject to supply chain and labor shortages than EA. In spite of their current shortcomings, it's remarkable that they have singlehandedly made it possible to road trip a CCS vehicle across the USA. They need to get better, and I think things are going to improve dramatically if they're able to bring more charger development in house via the the Siemens investment. As it stands, I think EA is pretty great.

Some things to consider when comparing EA to Tesla:

• Tesla has been building Supercharger stations since 2012. EA has been doing it since 2018.
• Tesla builds its own stations and EA has to rely on three separate suppliers to source chargers and parts.
• Tesla has to support 4 models of cars that they build themselves. EA has to support over 20 models from multiple manufactures using two different fast charge standards.
• EA has additional failure points that can create issues including card readers and touch screens.

 

[beatle]

I specifically said I wasn't defending EA. But since you don't know why a station is down, you can't just jump to a reason unless you have knowledge of the core problem. "Blatantly ignored by EA" is simply hyperbole without facts to back it up.

Does a company not give a crap if they can't get parts? I don't think so. Do I think Ford doesn't give a crap because they didn't put in a chip for a kick sensor? No.

Concealing a problem? How many chargers have you reported as down via both PlugShare and EA's apps? Can't be a fraction of what I have reported.

I couldn't give a rat's behind what Tesla has done, is doing, or will do. If they open their network to us, unless the price is competitive, I won't be using them unless I have no other options. But feel free to use it yourself.

To plan on using a location of any type without looking up the status with easily available resources isn't the brightest thing in the world. But if people don't want to be intelligent and avoid easily avoidable problems, then by all means head there right now.

You don't care what Tesla is doing, but their SC reliability rating shows that all charging networks are not littered with failures, and that reliability is what all EV drivers deserve.

A little transparency on the part of the service provider would buy them a bit of goodwill these days, but they don't seem interested in doing that - either that or their problems are of their own making/neglect.

Maybe Ford should put in a warning to check PlugShare when the navigation system points them to a charging station.

 

[RickLightning]

Bye.

 

[GDN]

Sadly - you choose to ignore it, but this isn't an isolate case. It happens daily with EA. The network sucks and their support is abysmal overall. Accept it if you want, but there is better and there is no reason we can't compare it. I won't let up on the charging network or Ford for the shortcomings in the truck. Overall it is awesome, but now it is time to tweak the bugs out of it. We'll see if they listen.

This is worthy of its own thread, but I just hauled a large outdoor umbrella home from Costco, tailgate down, with it strapped in. Now just tell me when I put it in reverse Ford wants to show me the camera pointing at my bumper. They know the tailgate is down. In this case why don't you change the backup camera to the one from the overhead bed? It's jus simple. How much testing and though have they really put into this?

 

[vandy1981]

A little transparency on the part of the service provider would buy them a bit of goodwill these days, but they don't seem interested in doing that - either that or their problems are of their own making/neglect.

You just have to open the app to see which stations are broken. They've done interviews that have addressed their issues with charger repair (including this InsideEVs interview). I'm not sure what else they can do other than flagging broken stations in their app while they're waiting for parts.

They could call out individual suppliers for delayed shipments of new parts but I don't know how that would be productive.

 

[gorwell]

A few Broken EA chargers are still better than no EA chargers.

Things to note:

EAs only been around for 5 years. They've achieved a lot but still a long way to go to improve reliability. No one else is close to EA in the Public space. Tesla is a unique case, their systems are simpler, only need to work for one car, so less components to break.

COVID really messed up a lot of things and everyone is struggling for parts.

There's not a lot of money in charging right now, it's why no one else is near EA and the only reason EA is a thing is due to Dieselgate and VW funding its creation.

 

[VTbuckeye]

A few Broken EA chargers are still better than no EA chargers.

Things to note:

EAs only been around for 5 years. They've achieved a lot but still a long way to go to improve reliability. No one else is close to EA in the Public space. Tesla is a unique case, their systems are simpler, only need to work for one car, so less components to break.

COVID really messed up a lot of things and everyone is struggling for parts.

There's not a lot of money in charging right now, it's why no one else is near EA and the only reason EA is a thing is due to Dieselgate and VW funding its creation.

This!
Tesla supercharging started as a service, not a revenue generator. It was necessary to sell the cars and get widespread adoption. There is potential for $$ on charging, but all ice cars need gas on a regular basis. Many EVs will charge away from home very infrequently. The more charging in public, the more charging stations will be built. This is not just a chicken and egg problem, but it is even worse because of the nature of EV charging for most owners being at home most of the time and only needing public charging on longer trips. We have a 11 month old (today) 223 mile range EV. It has 8700 miles on the odometer, more than half of that since early May. We have DCFC zero times. Our bolt before that with 22k miles DCFC zero times. Are we part of the problem? Maybe, but with the money on the IRA, maybe the DCFC networks will get built out faster and be more durable/robust. Once we have the lightning there will likely be more DCFC, but my wife may still want to take the phev on long trips.

 

[GDN]

I hear what every one is saying and although I'm maybe a bit heavy in my replies, I know there are challenges, but how long do we truly have to live with them? I'm just saying that if Farley wants to keep talking about the network and wants to reap his part of the profit from making an EV, then maybe he could put some money into the support of the network that he wants to make a central part of his plan. No. it isn't cheap, no they aren't going to make a lot of money off of it. They have a team that was supposed to be out checking and reporting problems, but maybe they need some support Ford would want to make sure the network is usable when needed.

Does he really get a pass for making a pretty good truck, saying he is going to build 150K in the next year and not have a good guaranteed way to charge when you head out across the country.

 

[FlasherZ]

My experience:

Over the past couple of years, I've observed that roughly 25-35% of the stalls at EA chargers are inoperable, at the stations where I've stopped (Central MO, St. Louis area, Chicago area, corridor between them, and a few trips down to the southeast).

Other DCFC networks (aside from Tesla) have been the same (NC, VA). I've observed:

* Calling the toll free support number, only to reach someone who didn't understand what a fast charger is (!!)
* "We don't have that location"... well, your phone number was right there on it! No remote activation capable and screen dead on kiosk.
* Front desk at the state park: "oh, yeah, the cord's been missing off that thing for about 3 months now, we've called them 3 times"
* App required to start charger won't run on later Android versions
* Stations/kiosks limited to 30 kW even at 10% SOC
* All kiosks dead upon arrival with nothing other than L2 in range.

While I've encountered the occasional dead stall on Superchargers, only once (in 2014) did I experience a whole station down.

I'm sure it will get better, but this situation sure reminds me of the 2012-2014 era for Tesla drivers.

Sponsored