Avoid road trips on the back end of a holiday weekend?

[KennyB123]

I took a 530 mile road trip from the Detroit, MI area to the DC Metro area yesterday. I needed to charge twice.

Before leaving my house, I double checked the status of my two charging stops. First stop - Electrify America on the Ohio Turnpike. Lo and behold, the entire site is down. No wait, all 3 sites along the Ohio Turnpike are down.

Panicking, I found an EVgo very close by. It was a Flying J gas station. Shows fully online all the way there, 4 open chargers. NONE WORK. Placed a call to EVgo customer service, she verifies they are not working, and she can't fix it remotely. I had to break the news to a nice lady in an Ioniq5, who was dealing with the exact same issues, just traveling in the opposite direction.

Thankfully, I had enough range to make it to the Cleveland area, and was able to charge at an EVgo / Ultium charger at another Flying J.

Next planned stop - Cranberry, PA outside of Pittsburgh. 3 of 4 are online. As I'm getting closer, a second charger goes offline. I'm watching the app as one opens up and immediately goes busy. I realize I'll be in a line if I go there.

Found an EVgo in McCandless in a shopping center. The two 350s are in use, the 100kw gives me 31. Thankfully, as I was going to plug in at a different 100, the 350 opened up.

If you've made it this far, here's my theory. On July 3rd and July 4th, the networks got HAMMERED, and between the holiday, the weekend, and a lack of technicians, they weren't able to bring all these chargers back online. Thoughts?

Oh, and I didn't mention the insane number of other EA locations that were partly down or fully down. So frustrating.

Of course, had I gotten my free Tesla DC adapter when I was supposed to, I wouldn't have had all these issues.

EDIT: Just noticed there was a 16 stall Tesla site in a perfect spot outside Pittsburgh, all with magic docks. FML. I'll use it on the way back.

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[MyJoule]

This, my friend, is the stuff that sets EV adoption back 20 years- If these charging providers don't get their act together soon, EV's will not make it- While we need more sites for long distance travel, the issue now seems to be the station operation more so than locations. Tesla helps, because they have so many more locations, and frankly, their equipment is more reliable at this time, at least. I'm about to leave on a 4 day 1650 mile trip with the Lighting, I could do it in 3 days, but decided to add a day just in case I encounter trouble. We're all set with a NACS adapter, so we should be able to use Tesla superchargers 100%, but I know where the EA and EVgo stations are along the way too. My biggest worry is taking two stalls to plug in. That won't be very popular with Tesla owners- and I guess I don't blame them. Luckily many of the locations we'll be using have more than 12 stalls. one even has 84 stalls. I hope we don't find that one full

 

[BedFullOfElectronZ]

Just got back today from a 350 mile 4th of July week journey to Lawrence, Kansas and then 350 miles back to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, with a couple of side trips from Lawrence to Kansas City thrown in. I had acquired an A2Z NACS adapter (as the Ford adapter may never show up at this rate), and had tried it out on a local Tesla Supercharger, so that all but guaranteed I didn't need to use it on our trip. (BTW, the only two Superchargers we came across during the trip when we needed a charge were not Level 3, and thus too old to connect with the Ford network, I guess. We tried, just as an experiment, but no luck.) Anyway, we ended up needing to charge twice each way because of the awkward placement of chargers, due to a sizable "charging desert" in southwest Iowa/northwest Missouri (to be frank, there's a lack of *many* things in southwest Iowa/northwest Missouri ). We charged at a nice Electrify America 350 kW unit near a Fareway grocery store in the Des Moines area, and topped off at a Chargepoint 125 kW charger near a Kum n Go in Bethany, Missouri (both were recommended by Apple Maps -- the Ford app gave an inferior alternative for the Des Moines area). We had no problem at either location. We saw decent usage at both locations while we were there (including my first in-person sighting of a Ford E Transit and Kia EV9), but no lines. We repeated the process in reverse on the return trip, as we were comfortable with the charging locations we used on the way to Kansas.

When we got to our hotel (the Oread Hotel in Lawrence, a very nice place), they had a 240V outlet in their parking garage available for free, which we made good use of a couple of times to charge to full overnight.

I went to the trouble to document all this not to deny the point of the original post (we too have had bad experiences at CCS chargers), but to say that pleasant medium-distance EV trips are possible with the Lightning, and IMHO the truck is unsurpassed for highway cruising. We also saw direct evidence that EA is indeed upgrading its facilities. And having the NACS adapter provides extra peace of mind, even though we didn't end up using it on this trip. Happy EVing!

 

[hturnerfamily]

this busy, busy crazy travel weekend was not a great one for ANYBODY traveling, let alone EVs wanting Reliable, easy-to-find, and available DC Fast Charging...

unless...

you do like I did, both Friday midnight and Saturday midnight, driving OVERNIGHT dark hours 330 miles, both ways... NO PROBLEMS and NO ONE ELSE on the roadways.
It's obviously MUCH cooler, less traffic, less worries, less DC Fast Charging problems, etc., when you can plan it this way.

Tesla locations were never any problem. I didn't even CONSIDER the other charge providers.
My LECTRON adapter has worked perfectly.

and my thanks to SUNSTOP Truck Stop/Gas Stations who have embraced hosting Superchargers... all along I75 in Georgia and Florida, as well as the first Florida Turnpike Service Center.

One thing that comes to mind while traveling these roads is the way that Florida has designed it's Turnpike Service Centers - they are in the center.
This promotes easy on-and-off for traffic in either direction, and consolidates the services provided. It all makes SENSE, and takes up much less acreage and the need for the states to procure more land on the outside of the roadways... but, I digress.

I'd like to see I75 and all the interstates do this... it would allow for an easier method for DC Fast Charging providers to 'see the light' and move charging options to the center of the interstates at every Rest Stop or Service Center.
Why the states or national interstate system hasn't embraced this is beyond me, but apparently they don't want 'gas stations' within their rest stop locations, including EV 'fuel', I guess.
They'll sell you snack and drinks, but no fuel. They'll give you a restroom and a place to buy 'tickets', but no fuel. Strange. You'd think that'd be the PERFECT place for fuel and charging.
Some even give you a dump station for your RV, but, unfortunately, no fuel. Crazy.

 

[Runaway Tractor]

I don't think your experience would be any different on any other day, holiday or not. If you need to travel outside your normal daily routine of home area charging, you should be equipped and prepared to use Tesla's supercharger network. This is why I didn't trade my Tesla for the Lightning until Tesla and Ford finalized their agreement.

All the other networks are fewer, further between, and frequently broken. Always have been, and there is no reason to believe they won't continue to be for the foreseeable future. Relying on any non-tesla charging infrastructure for road trips is literally planning to fail.

 

[KennyB123]

I don't think your experience would be any different on any other day, holiday or not. If you need to travel outside your normal daily routine of home area charging, you should be equipped and prepared to use Tesla's supercharger network. This is why I didn't trade my Tesla for the Lightning until Tesla and Ford finalized their agreement.

All the other networks are fewer, further between, and frequently broken. Always have been, and there is no reason to believe they won't continue to be for the foreseeable future. Relying on any non-tesla charging infrastructure for road trips is literally planning to fail.

While you may be right, I've used the EA chargers along the Ohio Turnpike close to Indiana successfully about 8 times. They've never been fully down. For all 3 sites to be down, 150-200 miles apart in total, was pretty crazy.

 

[H8N-8NT-EZ]

I drove from NE Florida to south FL for the 4th of July weekend (about 550 miles round trip). There are plenty of options for charging along I-95 between EA, Tesla, FPL, and ChargePoint. The Tesla stations were full or nearly full which made finding two stalls to pull my truck into impossible without a wait. The infrastructure even with Tesla included still needs to increase to support the growth of EVs.

 

[adoublee]

While you may be right, I've used the EA chargers along the Ohio Turnpike close to Indiana successfully about 8 times. They've never been fully down. For all 3 sites to be down, 150-200 miles apart in total, was pretty crazy.

Sounds like a communications network problem. If they put a high value on customer experience, they would dispense freely during these times. They would also not consider stunted power output (supplies less than vehicles request, up to equipment rating) as “online”.

Just did a 1200 mile back end of holiday weekend trip with the free NACS adapter. No issues across 6 Tesla charging stops.

 

[FirstF150InCasco]

I took a 530 mile road trip from the Detroit, MI area to the DC Metro area yesterday. I needed to charge twice.

Before leaving my house, I double checked the status of my two charging stops. First stop - Electrify America on the Ohio Turnpike. Lo and behold, the entire site is down. No wait, all 3 sites along the Ohio Turnpike are down.

Panicking, I found an EVgo very close by. It was a Flying J gas station. Shows fully online all the way there, 4 open chargers. NONE WORK. Placed a call to EVgo customer service, she verifies they are not working, and she can't fix it remotely. I had to break the news to a nice lady in an Ioniq5, who was dealing with the exact same issues, just traveling in the opposite direction.

Thankfully, I had enough range to make it to the Cleveland area, and was able to charge at an EVgo / Ultium charger at another Flying J.

Next planned stop - Cranberry, PA outside of Pittsburgh. 3 of 4 are online. As I'm getting closer, a second charger goes offline. I'm watching the app as one opens up and immediately goes busy. I realize I'll be in a line if I go there.

Found an EVgo in McCandless in a shopping center. The two 350s are in use, the 100kw gives me 31. Thankfully, as I was going to plug in at a different 100, the 350 opened up.

If you've made it this far, here's my theory. On July 3rd and July 4th, the networks got HAMMERED, and between the holiday, the weekend, and a lack of technicians, they weren't able to bring all these chargers back online. Thoughts?

Oh, and I didn't mention the insane number of other EA locations that were partly down or fully down. So frustrating.

Of course, had I gotten my free Tesla DC adapter when I was supposed to, I wouldn't have had all these issues.

EDIT: Just noticed there was a 16 stall Tesla site in a perfect spot outside Pittsburgh, all with magic docks. FML. I'll use it on the way back.

EA (and all the other sites) suck. For two years, I stopped going on long trips until I got the Tesla adapter which works great. The only time I still go to an EA site is (a) when I'm not "counting on it" (i.e., when I just as easily could have charged at home) and (b) until I use up the large amount of free credit I got from Ford (due to a delay in getting ChargeStation Pro's in June 2022.)

 

[Dan C]

We came back on Saturday on I 80 in CA. The same ea charger that was charging me at 160 kwh on the previuos Sunday would only put out 36 kwh I waited for an opening and moved to a different charger and got 116 kwh. Btw it was 114 degrees outside.

 

[deserthi]

I live in San Antonio but was at an event in Houston 2.5 hours away. My event was ending at 5:30 pm and which point I hi-tailed it out of there just hours before the hurricane was supposed to hit. The traffic going west was very light but the traffic going to Houston, into the approaching storm was almost bumper to bumper. I could not understand this. I only charged on Tesla chargers which was cool because it was plug and play with my adapter. I didn't have to open an app and my receipt showed that I was paying 33 cents per Kwh. I was pleased and while in Houston the Tesla charger allowed me to charge to 100% for my drive back to San Antonio.

 

[On the Road with Ralph]

About this time last year, I wrote that 2023 was America's first EV road tripping summer and it wasn't a great experience. I've only gone on a couple short-ish trips this summer (250 miles each way), but by the looks of things, the situation is worse this year, infrastructure-wise.

It doesn't appear to me that the number of DCFC chargers THAT WORK has significantly increased since last summer, while the number of EVs has risen dramatically. I support the current administration's EV infrastructure program, but its weakness is that it relies on the states to implement it, and some states - for whatever the reasons - are taking forever to do so.

It is also annoying that in the cases where a site operator has received a subsidy of 80% or more to open a charging station, they don't hesitate to charge 60¢/kW or more for electricity that they may be buying for less than 12¢/kW.

Final gripe: When will public EV charging move beyond a few dispensers stuck out at the edge of a parking lot and start appearing more-often-than-not at travel centers with the same amenities that ICE drivers enjoy?

 

[Tony Burgh]

Made a large loop yesterday from Pittsburgh to MD & NoVa then home.
Charged at EA Hagerstown and EA Bedford. No waiting, no problems except getting sandwiches at Sheetz took forever.

 

[KennyB123]

Made a large loop yesterday from Pittsburgh to MD & NoVa then home.
Charged at EA Hagerstown and EA Bedford. No waiting, no problems except getting sandwiches at Sheetz took forever.

Nice, I topped up at Hagerstown.

 

[ddbrooke]

The Tesla 16 unit Magic Docks just off of the PA Turnpike in Harmarville is probably the one you were considering for your return trip. I live near it and pass it all the time. I've never seen more than 3 pedestals in use at one time.

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