Visit to Electrify America - Wow

[skyak]

Dropped my kid off at a birthday party, noticed there was a Walmart w/ EA slots nearby, decided to try it out and burn some of my free allotment.
5x150kw chargers at the station, 2 of them were out of service, the next 2 would only charge @ 12 kw, the last one charged at 43 kw. I would like to take the truck out of the city some time but seems it’s still too risky.

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[thedadlegend]

Use PlugShare to check status, or post status. Personally I’ve had Ok experiences at EVGo and EA but neither were “great”. No problems receiving 120-140kwh tho.

 

[astricklin]

Did you call EA while you were there and report the issues?

 

[Replika]

Did you call EA while you were there and report the issues?

Shouldn’t they be monitoring this themselves? All chargers are internet connected. I just don’t see how this is the customer’s responsibility.

 

[intensifi]

what was the charge percentage of your truck at the time?

 

[skyak]

Did you call EA while you were there and report the issues?

there were messages on all of the screens saying out of service or reduced charging rates. So I figure EA was aware. Honestly I just feel sorry for anybody who needs to rely on these things.

 

[skyak]

what was the charge percentage of your truck at the time?

I went in at about 25%.

 

[skyak]

Dropped my kid off at a birthday party, noticed there was a Walmart w/ EA slots nearby, decided to try it out and burn some of my free allotment.
5x150kw chargers at the station, 2 of them were out of service, the next 2 would only charge @ 12 kw, the last one charged at 43 kw. I would like to take the truck out of the city some time but seems it’s still too risky.

EDIT: I just realized that the Out of Service charger and 12 KW were both just a single charger. I am dumb…I thought if there were 2 charge cords it meant 2 chargers. So there were actually 3 chargers, not 5. One out of service, one at 12kW, and one at 43 kW.

 

[astricklin]

there were messages on all of the screens saying out of service or reduced charging rates. So I figure EA was aware. Honestly I just feel sorry for anybody who needs to rely on these things.

Ya, but the squeaky wheel gets grease. I feel like if people aren't complaining to the company, what incentives do they have to actually fix them?
I've spent time working in customer technical support and I feel like if the phone call volume increases significantly, the higher ups are going to notice. Maybe they'll do something, maybe not.
Tesla has a lot more locations with a lot more cars on the road and certainly a lot higher utilization rates per charge station. They can manage to keep things running. These other companies can do it too, the customers just have to demand better. Hopefully soon we will see more competition on the ccs network and overall things will improve because there will be options.

 

[TaxmanHog]

I stopped at my favorite EA-Wrentham Mass, drove out w/o charging, will visit another time when it's NOT busy.

Found a C-MAX parked in stall 2 NOT CONNECTED
Found a VW parked in stall 4 connected & idling timer running.

The other two stalls were active with ~24% SOC's so it was going to be a while for them to reach 80%++

EA needs to penalize the free plan auto groups for idling too long, and common courtesy needs to be hammered into the heads of those ICING [hybrid] a spot.

 

[astricklin]

Shouldn’t they be monitoring this themselves? All chargers are internet connected. I just don’t see how this is the customer’s responsibility.

Sure, but obviously they aren't doing a good enough job right now. Maybe getting more complaints will motivate them to do better.

 

[RickLightning]

My take - if you're going to drive an EV, and you are going to use PlugShare to see if locations are working, then it's your responsibility to report your success, or failure, on PlugShare. I also do it on the EA app (you can also do it on FordPass).

 

[Joneii]

Tesla uses hardware that they designed and built knowing that it would make or break their entire endeavor. Electrify America originated as a punishment on VW for the DieselGate scandal before VW had fully committed to going electric. I feel like it was a half hearted attempt to comply with the settlement agreement that they now recognize could be worth something. Unfortunately the initial design and manufacturing of the hardware leaves a lot to be desired in the reliability category. It could be a while until we see Tesla-like charging infrastructure from anybody not Tesla.

 

[astricklin]

Tesla uses hardware that they designed and built knowing that it would make or break their entire endeavor. Electrify America originated as a punishment on VW for the DieselGate scandal before VW had fully committed to going electric. I feel like it was a half hearted attempt to comply with the settlement agreement that they now recognize could be worth something. Unfortunately the initial design and manufacturing of the hardware leaves a lot to be desired in the reliability category. It could be a while until we see Tesla-like charging infrastructure from anybody not Tesla.

I'm interested to see what some of the gas station chains do. They have an interest in keeping people at their location to visit the store. They are going to try to figure out how to make charging profitable as well.

 

[AZT9]

I stopped at my favorite EA-Wrentham Mass, drove out w/o charging, will visit another time when it's NOT busy.

Found a C-MAX parked in stall 2 NOT CONNECTED
Found a VW parked in stall 4 connected & idling timer running.

The other two stalls were active with ~24% SOC's so it was going to be a while for them to reach 80%++

EA needs to penalize the free plan auto groups for idling too long, and common courtesy needs to be hammered into the heads of those ICING [hybrid] a spot.

preach it tax man!! I have to rely on the DCFC network regularly with my
job and it is truly the ONLY reason I don’t 100% love my truck. (Im at 99.5% in love).

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