Wife bought an id.4 a few weeks ago so I joined a few facebook id.4 centered groups. Many users are complaining about the electrify america (ea) chargers being down or faulty (id.4 owners get 3 years of free charging at the ea “pumps”)
I’ve noticed an up-tick in the number of users who have stated that they’ve seen a bunch of teslas using the ea chargers even when the tesla chargers are open and in the same lot. I wonder what that’s all about (I’ve yet to encounter that myself).
The id.4 is pretty neat (cross-shopped the ionic 5) but the retro futuristic look didn’t appeal to the wife (her car, her choice). I think my biggest gripe with the id.4 is the lack of physical buttons. Most things are changed via touch screen and I loathe hunting in menus to change the aircon or do something else as easy.
I’m a car guy who loves his ICE cars (I have 3 and a truck). I’ll still be driving an ICE car even if gas costs $10/gallon (I’m in norcal so not that far off). I like speed and I’m okay paying a premium for that.
That said, I really like the almost instantaneous get-up-and-go of an EV. The tech still has a long way to go until it’s for the masses (and price needs to come WAY WAY down before it’s widely adopted).
The Ioniq 5 is vastly superior to anything that Tesla is doing at the moment - cheaper, great looking, and it has knobs where you should have knobs. If only I had a garage…
Electrify America has CHAdeMO throughout their…what is the collective term for charge stations? Fleet? Anyway EA has CHAdeMO all over the place because that was part of VW’s settlement agreement.
Either things changed fast with J1772-CCS deployment, or LA is pretty sparse compared to the Bay Area in terms of chargers. Looks like deployment has changed:
Which is absolutely not to say there is great coverage everywhere (I don’t think EA has a single charger in my new state, there are some L3 chargers though).
In the USA you need a $250 adaptor to do that, which I think has only been available for a month and a half. So it could be you are seeing people that bought one and are testing it out. Alternately while Tesla may have more superchargers then EA has locations, some of the locations near you may just plain be better locations for the people that are using it.
In the EU I think all Teslas use CCS, so it could be better prices, or locations. Also I think Tesla’s super charger network is either not as well built out, but unless “EA” is something other then Electrify America you probably aren’t in the EU!
My Bolt is a lease and the Ioniq 5 is the leading contender for a replacement. Some of it will depend on how well the Bolt handles the VT winter. If FWD and snow tires is good enough I’m a little less excited by the Ioniq (it is RWD which I’m not excited about, but has an AWD option, if I’m going to “need” AWD the Ioniq is the current top of my list, if all I need is FWD I have a lot of options, and the Ioniq isn’t at the top). Also I don’t think I’m anywhere near any fast chargers that would really make the Ioniq sing (as in “maybe none in this state”). That might be short sighted if I decide to drive to MD or something though.
Hyundai & Ford also have a EA cross promotion (and maybe GM), I guess EA is giving car makers a decent deal on promo codes. I may not really like EA, but it seems like a good deal to get consumers use to using your product.
Yah that’s definitely better than it was in 2018, so good news there. I suspect they are adding additional adapters to existing fast chargers or something.
It’s worth noting, though, that those maps always look more impressive than the reality on the ground (as I’m sure you know). Even in 2018, my area of LA showed a dozen CHAdeMO chargers. When you actually start looking for them though, you find they’ll are:
Not actually there, since those apps’ databases are riddled with errors
Inside the lot of a Japanese car dealership and thus not accessible
Broken
Not a dedicated charger, but part of a multi-purpose one that will be in use as a level 2 by a BMW i3 for 14 hours because they forgot about it
Inside a corporate parking garage and thus not publicly accessible
Requires some obscure charging network account that I don’t have
Really far away (that map you showed covers about four hours of driving edge to edge )
The public charging networks are missing all the things that gas pumps have right now:
Everywhere and always available
Always publicly accessible at all hours
Payment by any credit card, no account required
All pumps compatible with all cars
Of course it’s an unfair comparison because gas pump networks and standards have been developed for a hundred years to get to this point. When my dad’s family got their first car, you had to buy gasoline in cans at the drug store and carry it around. ICE cars sucked in those days because gas was hard to get and you had to plan carefully every time you went somewhere. We’re kinda there with EVs right now, but at least you can charge at home!
Sorry to be clear that was a list of CCS (for the Bolt you no longer have) locations.
I’ve only really fast charged under a dozen times, and have not personally experienced any of that. I do look at the PlugShare info on any charge site I plan to use because while I haven’t seen all of what you detail, I have at least seen some of it. PlugShare can filter out some of those things though.
For CCS one of the more common “oops” is “At a Harley Davidson lot, where you can get at it 24/7, but not really designed for cars to get at, you will need to hold the cable in place to provide strain relief” (and not that it matters for the Bolt those only provide ~50kW, basically almost the max for the Bolt but weak sauce for other cars…also the max for the HD Zero, but the battery pack on an electric bike is pretty small, 50kW will fill it pretty quick!)
Almost all the CHAdeMO chargers plugs I have seen are shared on a CCS (or a plain J1772). When I said EA has to provide CHAdeMO as far as I know they don’t need to be dedicated.
Oh! I haven’t seen those, although I have seen ChargePoint chargers in a corporate parking lot listed. I knew someone who use to park at them in Mountain View with his leaf and never got towed. He also got free charging (according to him he would have been willing to pay, and I believe him, I think he was at the edge of his range without a top up!).
Yeah, although most of them have a phone app and you can get an account set up, that does burn some time. Also a few need you to get a physical card although the only one I can think of at the moment is EVGo and they got rid of that requirement over a year ago (I think they even support “Charge N Go” on EVs that support it now, i.e. plug the EV into the charger and if you have the car associated with your account it starts charging, no credit card reader or charge fob or waving the phone in front of the charger needed – one of those Tesla features I envy while also realizing I wouldn’t actually pay extra for it!).
Well, yeah, out has Bakersfield on it after all. I didn’t really know what part of LA I should have zoomed in on! I’m not fishing for personal details, you can go to Plug Share’s website and get a map of whatever you like without telling me anything I really really don’t need to know.
Yes! Please see my “~4 out of 6 stalls at the one EA place I really really really needed to work being down” story as a prior reply!
I agree with all four, although I’ll not gas stations don’t universally have them all. Some have limited hours (especially in states that don’t allow unattended gas station use, or require full service pumps). A few gas stations are still cash only. More are “cash/debit (with fee)”. You are right that I sure haven’t seen “welcome to BrandNameYouHaveNeverSeenBefore we only accept payment in BrandBucks!” though.
Gas stations get away with having separate gasoline and diesel. Also pre-unleaded cars can have trouble engaging some pumps (and you need to add something to the gas if you want the car to work, or have altered the engine…I’m not a classic car guy, I don’t know the details!)
I agree, hopefully it takes far less then a hundred years for EVs to largely surmount those issues.
Yep, that takes a lot of the sting out of it.
I’m going to have some issues with driving to a adjacent state Friday and again Saturday though because I haven’t gotten a level 2 charger installed since moving (it is on my list, honest!). I can get there and back on one charge, and if I had 40A 240V circuit in the garage doing it again the next day would be fine too. As it is I’ll need to stop somewhere and get it mostly charged before going home because I’m only charging about 4 miles an hour.
The closest level 3 charger is actually maybe six miles from home, but I don’t know if it works, it is a blink charge, and their app is having issues so I can’t check it. PlugShare has some recent success and some recent failures. The closest level 2 is a few miles closer, but that’ll take quite a while to recharge at!
I really should have taken care of this a bit earlier. Ah well. At least the roof is getting replaced before winter, and snow tires are on. I could have left worse things until “just a little too late”!
)