Dr. G7

You lead a charmed life. And for the rest of us folks:


Who said electricity and water don't mix?



When one is 15% and drives to the next non functioning EA station

CodyBigdog

Maybe?

But I’ve seen plenty of non-working EA chargers. So then I move to one that’s working. Easy-Peasy. Most EA stations I’ve been to have (at least) 6 charging stalls…of which 1-2 are not operational, leaving 4-5 (at least) charging stalls that are. I get by.

Oh, and never, ever, over the past 16 month, been to an EA where ALL, or even more than half of the chargers, were not working.

whiz944

LOL! One of the closest DC fast charging sites to my house has three EA chargers (5 CCS + 1 CHAdeMO hoses) and 12 Superchargers. A few months ago, some Tesla driving friends of mine were driving through town and we met over there. Every CCS hose said "Unavailable" on the screen. Ironically only the lone CHAdeMO seemed to be working. The 12 Supercharger stalls? All working perfectly with cars constantly coming and going. At times, all 12 stalls were full.

Couple months ago, I traveled to Los Angeles - stopping at Harris Ranch on the return trip. Harris Ranch is a fairly key location on I-5 midway between the Bay Area and LA. There are four EA stalls, and 98 (!) Supercharger stalls. All four EAs were full, and a line waiting. Plenty of space for Teslas. A Cybertruck even showed up while I was charging. Wasn't even a holiday weekend.

CodyBigdog

I grew up in SoCal (San Diego/Coronado). Went to Cal. Very familiar.

It’s no surprise that there are far fewer non-Tesla charging stations, such as from EA in Ca. Most EV’s in California are Teslas. The cult mentality in California is strong. So it’s a simple question of supply and demand.

Oh, and YouTube is full of nightmarish, long waits at Tesla chargers. Just wait until Musk fully opens up to the non-believers. That should be a real chit-show. Hope so. But knowing Musk likes to hype things, and then not deliver, or deliver years after the fact, I wouldn’t hold my breadth waiting for Musk to open up Tesla chargers to the masses.





But I’m not here to exchange antidotal stories. But to tell you my experiences….outside of California.

Here is an EA charging station on the heavily traveled I95 from DC, Baltimore, Philly, NYC and Boston. Note, 8 DC fast charging stations (16 access points). I use this charging stop quite often on trips to Philly and/ or Boston. Never had an issue, and never had to wait. Ever. Guess everybody else is over using Tesla chargers?? 😱 😂. Except, of course, the guy using the EA charging station to charge up his Tesla.

https://pluginsites.org/abingdon-md-...rging-station/

My local EA charging station is smaller, with only 4 DC fast charging stations, and 8 access points. It gets 4 (out of 5) stars in reviews. To be clear, EA does have issues with inoperative chargers, but as I mentioned, never seen more than 1-2 that were out. But maybe I live a charmed life?

Finally, if you find the charging situation where you live, to be intolerable, suggest you sell your Taycan and join the Musk cult. Maybe trade in your beautiful Taycan for some CyberJunk? I’m a firm believer that people should be happy.

ipse dixit

Truth be told if you own an EV you should be charging at home at least 95% of the time.

The times you have to use an EA charger or a Tesla SC should be the utmost of exceptions, and never the norm.

So all of this pissing match over EA operability and NACS adoption is really just academic for the vast majority of EV owners. Y'know, owners who generally drive less than 100 miles daily, and only road trip their EVs (if ever) a handful of times a year.

VintageRacer

This is not a proper sentence,

You are tagged.

kort677

way back when musk invited any and all EV makers to use his network, for a price of course. so your theory that musk would not be open to allowing other cars to use his network has no legs

daveo4porsche

congestion is not the same an unreliable

Superchargers may be congested, but they routinely work with a very very high degree or reliability

EA has a reliability problem in that you can never trust if the stations will be operational

let's not confuse the two issues

d00d

I developed an aversion to being stuck in tunnel traffic, so no longer drive south through Boston, my trip is now 18 miles longer placing it just out of range in low 30 F ambient.
So far I haven't had to wait for one of the four EA slots at Seabrook, it's been close, but the eight Superchargers are always underutilized.
If they renovated these V3 Superchargers to Magic Dock I'd be limited to 50 kW as I don't have the 400 V converter, V4 would be fine, something to think about in two years.

CodyBigdog

Sure it does. It Musk receives significant push-back from existing and future Tesla owners, I’m sure he will moderate or change his position. Why wouldn’t he? One of the strongest selling points of the Tesla brand is having your own, exclusive, network of chargers. As tesla continues to lose market share, and other brands gain a footing, by opening up his chargers to these other brands, he’s undercutting a sales and marketing advantage. In the meantime, Musk making this gesture gives him more exposure…which he craves.

But believe what you want. I really don’t care.

CodyBigdog

You state the obvious, and I’m NOT confusing anything. . Of course congestion is not the same as reliability, or the lack thereof. Although if you have a high percentage of chargers that aren’t working, that will contribute to “congestion”. 🤔

According to JD Powers, about 1 in every 5 people charging at a “public” charging station had some issue…unless you live in San Francisco area, where it’;s “worse” (interesting, wonder why?). But I’ve been saying this on other EV forums - I believe that the ultimate customer charging experience, will mirror what we all know and expect, to have the same experience as when filling up at a gas station…reliable, quick, safe and convenient.

https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a4...ons-problems/#

“Most public chargers work most of the time—but to get broad public adoption, EV charging has to be at least as reliable and pleasant as, say, gas stations. Not a very high bar, right? Today, electric vehicles are largely fine; it’s the charging networks that will make or break them.A J.D. Power report this past May quantified the problem: “Through the end of Q1 2023, 20.8 percent of EV drivers using public charging stations experienced charging failures or equipment malfunctions that left them unable to charge their vehicles.” The numbers were worse in a study of EV chargers in the San Francisco Bay Area last year that found almost one-quarter of them didn’t work due to “unresponsive or unavailable screens, payment system failures, charge initiation failures, network failures, or broken connectors.”

Now a new study offers national data pinpointing the specific reasons for public charging station failures. It’s part of a broader white paper released today, Electrification 2030, that assesses pivotal issues affecting both EV adoption and home electrification by 2030. The study was produced by the Electrification Institute, recently established by Qmerit, a company that installs EV charging stations, solar panels, heat pumps, and storage batteries for consumers.

Based on network data monitored across the United States this year, the most common reasons for failed EV charging sessions are problems with:

• station connectivity: 55 percent
• internal station faults or errors: 38 percent
• charging connector or cable: 4 percent
• credit-card reader: 1 percent
• display screen: 1 percent

So, the biggest issue is “connectivity”, which is more than half the issues. And according to the C&D article:

CONNECTIVITY: The data suggests that more than half all charging failures come from a station not being able to connect to its network for authentication. Because most EV charging networks use cellular links in their stations, they’re subject to the cell-service vagaries we’ve all suffered.

So, if I believe this, the chargers, themselves aren’t actually broken, and could deliver electricity tio the EV, if they could authenticate the user? That doesn’t help the person trying to charge, but it does provide some insight into the biggest issue many are having. It’s worth noting that in the JD Powers survey/study, Tesla’s chargers scored a 734, while everybody else scored 558. All out of a possible 1,000 points. So, while Tesla chargers are measurably better (at least in the authentication process), they are far from perfect. IMO, the reliability needed from the EV community should be what people expect when they go to a gas station to fill upo their ICE car…ie, can’t remember the last time I went to a gas station and couldn’t fill up?

As a side note, I travel a lot in Europe, and recently rented an EV in the UK. I noticed that many Shell and BP gas stations ALSO had charging stations in the same location as the gas pumps and convenience store. It had much of the same feel as when i go to a gas station at home…and, co-locating the charging stations in a busy gas station will help to reduce vandalism, have a safer and cleaner environment…than what you have in the US, presently.

ipse dixit

But you're not really saying anything different than @daveo4porsche .

Whether you define reliability as operability or connectivity (or "authenticibility"?), EA chargers are less reliable than their SC counterparts. It's undeniable.

Congestion is a separate issue (and even here SC are leaps and bounds ahead of EA stations). And if wanted to be cynical and a ***** about it, I could say that EA stations are not as congested because people know they are not reliable. But, ahem, I won't go there. Low hanging fruit.

CodyBigdog

To the contrary, I’m saying a lot of different things.

The “authenticity” issue is very revealing to me, and I thought C&D did a great job in trying to provide more details into what the issues are. Since more than 50% of the issues with EA are related to not being able to authenticate a user, i.e, a coms issue, I suspect this is a software, and not a hardware issue that could be easily resolved. As most complaints with EV’s are in fact, software related, I think thre bugs should be worked out in due time? We’ll see? Better that, than being a hardware related issue, and having to wait for parts.

Yes, the JD Powers numbers show that there is a reliability difference. Again, only 1 in 5 users reported having an issue. I’ve said a number of times that my own experience with EA, both on the road, and at home - I’ve never seen more than 1 or 2 chargers that are inoperative….and also never had to wait, or was turned away because all the chargers were broken. Never happened to me, and apparently, to most users. So, for me, the ONLY reliability criteria is - when I drive up at some EA charging station to charge, am I able to find an available charging station that is working? It’s a yes, or no question for me, and really don’t give a f*ck if some of the charging ports are not working, so long as the one I need is. …and the answer for me, has always been yes.

That does NOT mean that I may pull up and the first charging stall I pull into has a charger that is not working…so I go to the next.

Disagree, congestion is NOT a separate issue. Congestion at charging stations is a function of many variables. Not least of which include the number of EV’s that need to be re-charged at any given time during the day, and the number of functional charging ports. In most of the country, the number of EV’s in search of a charging station is much lower than it is in California….and even if a certain % of the charging ports at a charging station are not working, the question of whether or not I will be able to charge without delay, will depend on how many other EV’s I am competing against, to find that open and working charging port. In Maryland, and in many other Mid-Atlantic states, it’s less of an issue, even when there are a few non-functional charging port.

whiz944

In 5.5 years and 81k miles of Tesla driving, much of it on road trips, I've never had an authentication problem with Superchargers. I've seen a couple of stalls down due to a bent guide pin in the connector. Once a bank of four V3 stalls was down. A couple times a non-functioning stall. That is visiting ~20 states from the west coast to east coast, and visiting somewhere well over 200 different sites. It is the gold standard. I don't even think about them being unavailable. I do discriminate in favor of the newer V3 Superchargers instead of the older V2 though.

Getting back to @daveo4porsche 's original post, I WANT VAG/Porsche to adopt NACS - like most other manufacturers have already committed to doing. While my next car purchase will be a Model Y for wifey, the one after that will be up for grabs. If VAG/Porsche are not supporting NACS by then, it will be a significant check mark against them during the decision making process. As for access to Superchargers, why wouldn't Porsche want their owners to be able to use the gold standard in charging systems?

But don't get me wrong. I also WANT EA, EVgo, Chargepoint and the others to expand and reliably serve their customers. That includes me because I've occasionally needed to use non-Tesla charging stations as well. I shake my head in dismay at some of the dumb stuff they do. When you hear about stations that have been down for literally months, and there is one very near my house, it doesn't inspire confidence. When you see a mere four stalls at a key location like Harris Ranch or Quartzite Arizona, it doesn't inspire confidence. Always check plugshare reviews before depending on one to be working.

Scrappy1972

I agree with this.

Just purchased my first EV (Tesla) and can’t see myself going back to an ICE or hybrid vehicle as my daily driver. Threw a deposit down on an Cybertruck also. Other brands including Porsche were never really a consideration for me since in my mind, at least for now, EV = Tesla.