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Current state of charging infrastructure (particularly Electrify America)
Hi all, potentially looking to get into a Taycan Turbo soon, so I've been reading about others' experiences, particularly with regard to public charging. Several people have mentioned that Electrify America's 270kW charging stations can be unreliable (out of order, showing error codes or otherwise refusing to charge the car for whatever reason). Does anyone have a better sense for how widespread these issues are? I'm located in the Bay Area and EA's online map shows their stations sprinkled quite heavily across the west coast, but that's obviously not helpful if it's commonly the case that I arrive at one and it doesn't work.
Beyond that, do any owners have insight or experience to share regarding Taycan-compatible charging infrastructure in general? As far as I understand, Electrify America's stations are the only ones that provide Level 3 charging for the Taycan, or is that not accurate? What about Level 2 charging stations- how quickly can they replenish the Taycan batteries? Are they frequently occupied when you arrive at them, or have long wait times to use them?
Level 3 charging is _any_ fast DC charging - these range from 25 kW to 350 kW - most are 50 kW if you’re lucky - a few are 150 kW - most of EA’s sites have some 350 kW chargers…
the state of most DC fast charging stations vary widely by network (charge point, EVGo, Electrify america, others…) and location - the best source of information about the state of these chargers can be found on plugshare.com with their rating 1-10 (10 being very reliable - 1 not so much) - my personal experience with non-Tesla fast charging infrastructure is that it’s quality is unreliable and you can not rely on it - recently in the past two weeks I failed to successfully charge a taycan at 3 separate chargers - watsonville, san jose x 2 - your experience will be different that mine, but it is true the experience will vary widely and that’s the rub - you can’t predict if any particular fast charging station will be reliable enough to depend on. Less than two miles from my home a brand new 4 stall EA charging station has two “broken” chargers that have been that way since opening 3 months ago - EA says they know about it -but there is no ETA for when they will be repaired, the other two functional stations have never successfully accepted my payment method, your experience may differ
a few months ago I used the EA chargers in willows, CA - there are 4 stalls there, 2 150 kW stalls, and 2 350 KW stalls - at the time only 2 of the stalls worked, the two 150 kW stalls, but I had to call customer service to activate the chargers since the credit card readers were broken - it only took 12 minutes on the phone to start the charging system, so I could charge for an additional 30 minutes…42 minutes over all - about 50% of the time dealing with customer service.
the current plugshare.com rating of this particluar charger in willows, ca is 5.1 - a very low score with multiple EV owner’s reporting problems - this may not be your experience, and it may not be representative of all chargers, but in 7 years of driving EV’s I’ve never had a good experience with a non-Tesla fast charging network/station - but I’ve also not sampled every charger out there...
at the moment all one can say is that your experience will be ‘mixed’ but probably get better over time.
the good news is there is rarely a line at these stations since: a) they rarely work, b) there aren’t that many non-Tesla cars on the road, c) most people charge at home and dont use public charing infrastructure because you only need it if you’re road tripping.
public L2 chargers are 240 volts and most are 30 amps - which translates to 6 kW - L2 charging is slow…but they tend to be plentiful and reliable - it would take more than 12 hours to charge a taycan from 5% battery at most public L2 stations - these are used for overnight charging at hotels while you sleep, or simply “some juice” while shopping - public L2 charging stations are not a strategy for happy EV ownership if you value your time.
this doesn’t stop me from plugging my EV to one of the many L2 chargers at Valley Fair mall in San Jose and charging for 1-3 hours while my wife and I shop or hit the food court - this type of charging is good for 5-30% of your larger 90 kWh batteries…depengin on how long your parked. It’s the some charging is better than no charging plan and use a charger if you can, but it’s really not necessary - since I’ll just charge the car that night at home for 1/3rd the cost.
the best way to use an EV is to charge it everynight in your garage by installing an L2 charger in your garage and charging the car over night like your cell phone so it’s full every morning - given the taycan’s ample 240 mile range in normal use you’re therefore rarely need to use _ANY_ public charging infrastructure for your daily needs.
public charging infrastructure is like eating out - it’s more expensive than eating at home.
fast L3 charging is used during road trips to allow you to drive the car beyond it’s single charge range for a mild impact of 20-40 minutes charging time - this translates to approximately 500-550 miles in a single day for 1 fast charging stop.
daily usage doesn’t need any public charging if you install an L2 charger at your home.
EA’s charging infrastructure is the _ONLY_ chargers that can charge at more than 150 kW - upto the taycan’s maximum rate of 270 kW - however not all EA stations are exclusively this fast, and not all EA sites have any 350 kW chargers, some sites are 150 kW only, large EA sites are 8 stalls, most are 4 stalls.
all EV’s maximum charge rate depends on a lot of factors, battery state, temperature, other cars charging at the same time, and the capacity of the charger you’re attempting to use...assuming that you’ll alway get the fastest rate possible is a difficult bet to pull off for ANY EV.
my advice is don’t plan to use public charging infrastructure except for occassional road trips, even then you’ll only need 2 stops a day at most - and the other 98% of your time and miles driven will be charged overnight in your garage where it’s cheap, reliable, and very convenient for your daily driving needs.
Last edited by daveo4porsche; 05-28-2020 at 03:25 AM.
I just now randomly sampled 10 EA charging stations via plugshare.com app
tracy, ca - walmart - 9.0 rating
medford, or, walmart - 8.0 rating
paso robles, ca - bank of america - 4.4 rating
moreno valley, ca - wallmart - 6.3 rating
pheonix, az, central mills, 7.7 rating
lynnwood, wa, target - 7.7 rating
renton, wa, target - 10.0 rating
valdosta, ga - 6.4 rating
wake forest, nc, - wallmart - 6.9 rating
kanas city, mo - wallmart - 6.4 rating
there is a random sample of 10 of 300+ EA stations and plugshare.com crowd sourced reports of reliablity - take it for what it is - random data that is crowd sourced.
based on the data above it’s hard to conclude EA is realible - but also the numbers are cumulative over time - so early problems with a lot of failures could still be pulling down the average months later - I use both the over all number, and recent checkins - if there are recent check’ins - (past 2 weeks or days) where other EV owners have reported successful charging sessions then I’m willing to conclude the charger will probably work for me when I show up - if there are a lot of recent problems and few if any successful checkins - I think it would be fool hardy to conclude that charging site will work for your needs…if there have been no recent checkins (30 days or more) then I would humbly suggest we have _NO_ data, and you may want to contact customer support for the given network and ask if they have any recent successful charging sessions on record…let’s take the paso robles station as an example:
EA posted it’s been “fixed” on May 24th - but there have been no checkin’s since that date confirming a successful session from plug-share users - the latest data we have from someone actually trying ot use the station is - both Chademo and CCS were not working as of May 13th, EA acknowledged the problem on May 17th, and claim it’s been fixed on May 24th - this is indicative of one of the major problems with the fast charging network provodiers - they seem to think it’s ok for their stations to be dysfunctional for days or weeks or months - it took EA 7 days to restore functionality - not bad in the over scheme of things, but a real bummer if that was the station you had planned to use to complete your trip to/from northern/southern california - and showing up with 5% battery at this site and finding it broken will harsh your EV buzz - as there are few alternatives in the area…
The quality of superchargers is really the biggest problem with non-Tesla EVs right now. The map of the infrastructure in the US is not bad and getting better, but the quality is very very poor.
Electrify America has managed to install an extremely glitchy system on their machines. You should plan on adding 10-15 minutes per stop just to get the charge going and anticipate a rate no higher than 140. So my method for planning stop times is to calculate distance from & back to route, add 15 minutes, and then calculate the charge I need at a rate of 140. You'll find most charging stops add 45 minutes to an hour. Once in a while you'll get a quick stop that lines up perfectly but the vast majority are going to be 45+ minutes and that should be the expectation.
Keep in mind when using Plugshare that it shows you reviews/scores based primarily on the smaller charging stations you don't want to use, and not reviews based on the 150kw+ chargers which see very infrequent use right now & very often are in bad order.
I personally don't mind an hour stop after 3 or 4 hours of driving but make sure to have proper expectations before deciding the Taycan works for you.
I personally don't mind an hour stop after 3 or 4 hours of driving but make sure to have proper expectations before deciding if any EVTaycan works for you.
the major thing here is - you don’t use public charging like you use gas stations with an EV - your usage patterns change and home charging is a game changer - 99% of EV miles will be daily and well with in the full range of a single charge on the battery - and then you charge over night in your garage.
buying an EV and planning to use public charging is not the common use case, it’s the un-common use case and only necessary when traveling great distances - which is less than 2% of people’s daily driving needs/habits...you will use fast charging infrequencly (2 or 3 times a year for road trips of 400+ miles)
I took a trip 18 months ago with my EV SUV - 1800’ish round trip - 7 days - 11 fast charging stops (average less than 2 a day and L2 charging overnight @ hotel) - I haven’t used a public charger L2/fast with that EV since that time - and 100% of the miles (10,000 since that trip) of them have been via home charging in my garage - so it’s good to understand what works and how well it works, but frankly you really really won’t need to interact with these systems very often and when you do know you’re going to need them plan ahead and do a little research - the situation is very fluid and changes weekly - there is no one correct answer - things are not perfect, but they are trending towards better, and over time all these kinks will get worked out…
but EA today isn’t great, the good news is you really don’t need it that often…or at all in most cases so it’s problems are not a reason to avoid an EV.
but if you must have highly avaialble, simple and highly reliable fast chargers - there is only _ONE_ EV vendor today with that charging network - and it’s not Porsche.
Dave covered most of it. Plan on charging at home overnight - like your cell phone. Use DC Fast Charging while on road trips.
A nuance is that the vast majority of CCS stations in North America are 400V. A much smaller subset of EA and perhaps others support 800V. So in the Taycan, there is a built-in DC-DC converter that converts 400V to 800V. The default converter is rated at 50 kW. This means that if you pull up to a 150 kW stall and plug in, you'll only charge at 1/3rd the max possible. (It is more nuanced than that, but in the interest of brevity...) There is an option for 150 kW 400V charging for just a few hundred dollars. If road trips are at all a concern, I'd suggest selecting the 150 kW option.
Most public L2 charging stations are 30 amp, and more than likely 208 volts (not 240 volts). So yes - around 6 kW. The Taycan large battery pack has about 83 kWh usable, so a 6 kW charging station would charge a Taycan from 0 to 100% in about 14 hours. At home if you install a full 50 amp (40 continuous) charging setup via a 14-50 or 6-50 receptacle, or hard-wired, EVSE that is almost 10 kW at 240 volts. So a 0 to 100% charge would take about 9 hours. If you use a 30 amp (24 continuous) 14-30 clothes dryer connection, it takes correspondingly longer. Of course the reality is that you'd never be at 0%. You only need to cover the number of miles you travel on an average day. If you only drive, say, 20 miles/day, and plugged in every night, you'd only be charging for an hour or less. In my case I only bother to charge once or maybe twice a week.
The few times we have used public L2 charging include:
1a) Late for something, the parking lot was full, but there were only EV charging spots open. I keep Chargepoint, Blink, and EVgo accounts active for such occasions.
1b) Parking lot busy and hard to find spots. (Daves example of Valley Fair mall is a good one.) Easy to find a EV spot.
2) Free charging, especially at workplaces. So if you are going to be there for an hour or more, why not?
This is *exactly* the kind of detailed info I was hoping to get, thanks so much for this, especially to you Dave!
Given that I have access to EV charging in my apartment complex's garage, I think at this point my biggest concern is the sort of "in-between" extended day trips, which I take on occasion. In other words, day-to-day local driving is fine given I'd be charging overnight at home, and long road trips are fine given I don't mind a 45 min to 1 hr break on long drives.
But the trips that might be iffy are scenarios such as: it's a Saturday, we leave San Francisco in the morning and head up to Bodega Bay (~75 mi). We then make our way over to Napa/Sonoma (~50 mi) and then visit some wineries (another ~10-20 mi). Maybe then we head over to the East Bay or even San Jose for dinner (~50-80 mi). And then finally head back home to SF (~50 mi). On the safe side, that's about 260 mi total, which is right at the limit of a 100% full charge. However, the rub is that I'm not going to be driving a Taycan Turbo around in Range mode . I'm guessing that with spirited Sport Plus driving, I'd probably get about 150 mi of range out of a full charge? So it's those instances where I'd realistically need to charge up once at a public charger, and don't necessarily have the time (or desire) to wait at a gas station for an hour while it charges.
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But the trips that might be iffy are scenarios such as: it's a Saturday, we leave San Francisco in the morning and head up to Bodega Bay (~75 mi). We then make our way over to Napa/Sonoma (~50 mi) and then visit some wineries (another ~10-20 mi). Maybe then we head over to the East Bay or even San Jose for dinner (~50-80 mi). And then finally head back home to SF (~50 mi). On the safe side, that's about 260 mi total, which is right at the limit of a 100% full charge. However, the rub is that I'm not going to be driving a Taycan Turbo around in Range mode . I'm guessing that with spirited Sport Plus driving, I'd probably get about 150 mi of range out of a full charge? So it's those instances where I'd realistically need to charge up once at a public charger, and don't necessarily have the time (or desire) to wait at a gas station for an hour while it charges.
In your scenario, you don't need to "wait for an hour". All you need is enough charge to make it back to SF. Could be just a few minutes.
Then, several Napa Valley wineries have L2 free charging while you tour and visit the tasting room. So that can help mitigate things. Same with doing some L2 charging in one of the downtown San Jose parking garages while you eat dinner. (Carry a Chargepoint card.) Maybe you won't need a boost at a DCFC to make it back to SF at all.
overall there are enough chargers around the bay area that consulting plugshare for recent successful checkin's and being flexible about which site you plan to use will serve your well - you are very very unlikely to get "stranded" in the bay area, and even if you did a tow to a near by working charger would'be be horrible - the real problem with unreliable chargers comes say on the way to Salt Lake city via Reno - where there is only ONE charger site at it has to work - otherwise you're stuck with L2 charger _IF_ you're lucky…that's the problem with reliability - for weekend jaunts around the bay area there is enough choice and redundancy that you can drive around worry free…just check plugshare prior to leaving and have a few alternatives in mind…
I have a the same problem - but during Thanksgiving weeks - lots of back and forth between San Jose and SFO and over to santa cruz and back to san jose dealing with inlaws, kids, grocery store runs and what not - it's the one week a year that once or twice that week a solid 240 mile range isn't enough for a single day - I end up at a fast charger at one point twice that week and once the twice the following week as we unwind all that in reverse…but there are enough fast chargers around the bay area that it really doesn't matter which one I used and if some are full or dysfunctional you can drive to another one...
however if you are aboslouting relying the Willows, CA fast charger to make it to the oregon border (and that's kinds of it for that trip up hwy 5) you're kinda screwed if you get there and it's not working…no other choices.
That's a good point regarding just "topping up", I've been getting caught in the gasoline mindset of not stopping to "refuel" until I'm completely empty. It's funny you bring up the point about making it to the Oregon border, as we may be doing a road trip up to Seattle once shelter-in-place is further lifted. We'd probably stop in either Eugene, OR or Portland, OR and then do the remainder of the drive the next day. EA's website map shows chargers in Willows, CA (140 mi from SF), Anderson, CA (200 mi from SF) and beyond that Yreka, CA, before getting into Oregon. So it seems there are more options than just Willows if making the drive up I-5?
05-28-2020 | 01:58 AM
Current state of charging infrastructure (particularly Electrify America)
. I'm guessing that with spirited Sport Plus driving, I'd probably get about 150 mi of range out of a full charge? So it's those instances where I'd realistically need to charge up once at a public charger, and don't necessarily have the time (or desire) to wait at a gas station for an hour while it charges.