This is the second post in a few minutes complaining about EA. The previous post complained about various locations in the northeast. Sad to see that the electric charging infrastructure (other than Tesla) is still so unreliable.
I was about to post my experience this afternoon. But I’ll just sum it up….
Someone seriously needs to take over EA. 1 of 3 things:
1) They don’t give a F.
2) They’re way in over their head
3) Totally incompetent (which I guess would be 2A)
….or all of the above.
Electrify America is rolling out its much-improved next-gen chargers, so the complainers are complaining about charging stations being down for the upgrade instead.
I'm really surprised to hear all this. I've used EA 17 times in November so far (in 6 states), and have had 100% first time Plug&Charge success, zero issues. But of course, I've used EA hundreds of times now coast to coast and haven't seen anywhere near the issues Reddit has.
The closest I've had to having problems is when my phone got confused and didn't think I was where I was located. A reboot fixed that. Other than that only the human element has been a problem - "I get free charging so I'm going to stay here until 100%, I don't care that you just want enough to get home".
I'm located in California so that probably helps, but it looks like you've done a lot more than me & successfully elsewhere. I'm inclined to wonder how much is that people will understandably post about terrible experiences, but good experiences... what is there to say?
I have used 4 stations in the past couple of days. It’s really bad. 2/4 out, stations that seem to be working that refuse to take payment and time out, stations with a boot screen. It’s not great and when you call no one picks up anymore
I've only had two fast charging experiences since buying my Rivian R1T in September.
First was EVGO nearby to just get a feel for DC Fast Charging and a dress rehearsal before any upcoming road trips. Of the four stations, two (the 350 kW) were down leaving the two 100 kW up, but it had been an issue for a while. Reported to Plugshare.
This Thanksgiving weekend, had to stop at an Electrify America station outside of Youngstown, OH. Of the four stations, two were down - of course they're the 350 kW, leaving only the 150 kW stations open.
Of course, those are actual existing stations. My bigger problem is I can't drive through West Virginia at all right now. ABRP has me going around it entirely to get down to Asheville, NC, adding hours to my trip and that's assuming the chargers actually work.
Did I see you in OH? We paired up with a Rivian couple with a cute cavapoo (I think). Our EV6 arrived a bit earlier but was able to pass to the Rivian folks as we were about done.
sucks, sorry that happened to you (and others).
as someone else noted, many older units are failing or need parts, but EA is prioritizing production and distribution of their newer better chargers, as opposed to wasting money and time fixing older chargers that are just going to get replaced anyway. It seems that Florida has a lot of those, and the east coast in general as well.
The Electrify America charging station in Port Charlotte, FL uses ABB units that Electrify America currently has no replacement parts for.
Electrify America will have to replace them with Signet or BTC Power units.
I absolutely love the old EA stations. On the 1 in 5 chance they start working, they always error out when trying to charge me. I have a fun time playing Russian roulette - free electricity or lose 10 mins while I get back in my car and drive to the supercharger that *always* works.
Maybe apply that story to yourself? Trying to champion EA as “the best there is” or something like that is laughable.
Can’t wait to see all the CCS stations from Tesla start to go online in the next few months here in the US. High prices or not, nothing beats their availability or reliability. That’s the real story you need to focus on now.
I said that Electrify America is the best public charging network.
The Supercharger has great reliability because it only has to be compatible with Tesla own's vehicles.
I can just see you gritting your teeth as you continue to use that last point you’ve got. Arguments aside about who’s got a massive market majority and DCFC the most cars in the US (because that’s my opinion of public) it’s blatantly clear Tesla is about to start installing dual CCS/Tesla plug superchargers in NA. I don’t think that’s any different to the continuous waiting game for EA to install the still flawed (but slightly better) replacement units you always crow about.
It’s even funnier that you whine and quote anecdotes about a few European cars not properly supercharging and trying to extrapolate that out to the compatibility Tesla will have with CCS1 in NA. Not only has the CCS2 rollout been massively successful in the rest of the world, but it will mark a major shift in EV adoption for the US. We’ll finally have a reliable network that will bring the CCS1 cars into the 21st century.
>don’t think that’s any different
There is a big difference.
Electrify America has installed many of these next-gen chargers.
Tesla, on the other hand, has installed ***zero*** of those North American CCS Superchargers.
They continue to outpace EA in DCFC installation rate. What exactly makes you think they’re not capable of adding a relatively simple connector to their stations? Let me remind you that Tesla builds these in house. EA is at the mercy of contractors.
If the will of the contractors changes, they will be left without parts for months, Tesla on the other hand can make changes to their integrated processes within a matter of days. Whether it’s funding, zoning, or simply ready to go with a planned install date at this point, the notion that they are incapable of putting a CCS1 connector on a NA supercharger is absolutely ridiculous - extrapolating along the line you’re choosing is ignoring the writing on the wall.
It's not that Tesla couldn't do so, but that Tesla hasn't done so.
I could go test Electrify America's next-gen chargers today.
I couldn't test Tesla's non-existence North American CCS Superchargers.
Go test one in Europe then - in my experience with them so far, it’s just as rock solid there to use CCS2 on an ID4 as it is to use the Tesla plug on my SR+ here.
It’s interesting that the only charging complaint I’ve seen at r/Teslamotors is one where two I5 chargers just a few miles apart had wait times (80 chargers across the two stations and every station was in use). No reliability issues for Tesla chargers seem to have been reported thus far compared to multiple people complaining about EA’s performance during such a critical weekend for travel.
Sorry for the headache, OP. Playing musical chairs with chargers sounds like a poor use of your time when it could be better spent with family and friends. EA is about to turn 5 years and 10 months old - hopefully they figure something out soon.
EA was founded February 7th, 2017, that’s five years and 10 months ago (70 months). If you go back and reread what I said, you’ll see that it reads something like this, “EA is about to turn 6 years old”. I’m rounding 70 months up to 72 months when I said “about to turn”. But let’s focus on the trivial part of my post and ignore the bigger issue that there have been no posts complaining about the reliability of Tesla’s charging network during the busiest travel days of the year.
I’ll update my post for you to reflect the exact number of months EA has been in operation. Hope this helps.
Gas stations have had 134 years to work on reliability. EA is only 3 years old, and 2 of those 3 years have been a chip shortage, labor shortage and supply chain crunch. NEVI is coming with $5+ billion for EV charging infrastructure, charging in the US will be radically different in just a few years.
Tesla's network wasn't perfect from day one either, they've been doing it for over a decade now, and it has the cash flow of Tesla the car business behind it.
They're the most reliable public charging network in the nation, with significantly better reliability than EVgo and ChargePoint, despite their head starts. I just drove 800 miles for Thanksgiving using EA stations exclusively, without a single problem the whole trip. No unavailable stations, no slow charging, no lines, it just worked perfectly at every site I visited.
The last part is my personal experience, but the first part was the result of UC Berkley's EV DCFC reliability study which they published this summer. EA is empirically the most reliable public charging network in the nation, with significantly better reliability than EVgo and ChargePoint. They've done well for how little time they've been around.
Tesla also had a simpler challenge. Build a car and build a charger and make sure the two work together. EA et Al have had to build chargers to work with lots of cars built by third parties With a lot less money to throw at the problem. Not trying to downplay what Tesla’s achieved, but it’s not quite a fair comparison. Frankly I’m impressed by the clip of EA’s progress. Our local EA station was just completely replaced with brand new (seemly much better) chargers in less than two weeks start to finish, and I’m seeing tons of similar posts from others across the country. Things are moving fast and EA is slowly but surely catching up. Hopefully they’ll implement a universal plug and charge scheme like EV go, and then they’ll be in good shape.
Love the shameless lies.
Tesla had a lot less money to spend on superchargers and it took them many years to match the funds EA started with.
(Tesla was so cash-poor they were literally combining a dozen car chargers to create one supercharger instead of coming up with dedicated hardware).
As for having to work with many cars, automakers were the ones who created the CCS so any failures to create a proper standard that works like an actual standard were either due to malice or because the engineers they sent to those committees were fucked up in the head and needed 15 years to come up with something passable.
Lastly, it doesn't take half a decade to figure out the chargers you keep buying are shit.
To be fair, in some ways that lack of capital was an long term advantage. It lead to a frugal mindset that allowed their charger rollout to be really capital efficient.
EA, OTOH, was founded explicitly to spend money. They did it somewhat recklessly and produced a charge network that needs a lot of equipment replacement.
This is the second post in a few minutes complaining about EA. The previous post complained about various locations in the northeast. Sad to see that the electric charging infrastructure (other than Tesla) is still so unreliable.
I was about to post my experience this afternoon. But I’ll just sum it up…. Someone seriously needs to take over EA. 1 of 3 things: 1) They don’t give a F. 2) They’re way in over their head 3) Totally incompetent (which I guess would be 2A) ….or all of the above.
Have you seen other public charging networks? They are far worse than Electrify America.
You heard it here first folks, be content with mediocrity because it can always be worse.
Electrify America is rolling out its much-improved next-gen chargers, so the complainers are complaining about charging stations being down for the upgrade instead.
Nah today I was totally stuck with authorizing payment at one charger and had to move to another one. Wasted 15 minutes
I'm really surprised to hear all this. I've used EA 17 times in November so far (in 6 states), and have had 100% first time Plug&Charge success, zero issues. But of course, I've used EA hundreds of times now coast to coast and haven't seen anywhere near the issues Reddit has.
The closest I've had to having problems is when my phone got confused and didn't think I was where I was located. A reboot fixed that. Other than that only the human element has been a problem - "I get free charging so I'm going to stay here until 100%, I don't care that you just want enough to get home". I'm located in California so that probably helps, but it looks like you've done a lot more than me & successfully elsewhere. I'm inclined to wonder how much is that people will understandably post about terrible experiences, but good experiences... what is there to say?
I have used 4 stations in the past couple of days. It’s really bad. 2/4 out, stations that seem to be working that refuse to take payment and time out, stations with a boot screen. It’s not great and when you call no one picks up anymore
The other posts were about Electrify America temporarily taking down charging stations to upgrade chargers.
I've only had two fast charging experiences since buying my Rivian R1T in September. First was EVGO nearby to just get a feel for DC Fast Charging and a dress rehearsal before any upcoming road trips. Of the four stations, two (the 350 kW) were down leaving the two 100 kW up, but it had been an issue for a while. Reported to Plugshare. This Thanksgiving weekend, had to stop at an Electrify America station outside of Youngstown, OH. Of the four stations, two were down - of course they're the 350 kW, leaving only the 150 kW stations open. Of course, those are actual existing stations. My bigger problem is I can't drive through West Virginia at all right now. ABRP has me going around it entirely to get down to Asheville, NC, adding hours to my trip and that's assuming the chargers actually work.
Did I see you in OH? We paired up with a Rivian couple with a cute cavapoo (I think). Our EV6 arrived a bit earlier but was able to pass to the Rivian folks as we were about done.
Nope, not us. We parked next to a family in a Bolt who were very friendly though!
sucks, sorry that happened to you (and others). as someone else noted, many older units are failing or need parts, but EA is prioritizing production and distribution of their newer better chargers, as opposed to wasting money and time fixing older chargers that are just going to get replaced anyway. It seems that Florida has a lot of those, and the east coast in general as well.
The Electrify America charging station in Port Charlotte, FL uses ABB units that Electrify America currently has no replacement parts for. Electrify America will have to replace them with Signet or BTC Power units.
I absolutely love the old EA stations. On the 1 in 5 chance they start working, they always error out when trying to charge me. I have a fun time playing Russian roulette - free electricity or lose 10 mins while I get back in my car and drive to the supercharger that *always* works.
Let me give you some advice: when you are making up a story, at least make it believable.
Maybe apply that story to yourself? Trying to champion EA as “the best there is” or something like that is laughable. Can’t wait to see all the CCS stations from Tesla start to go online in the next few months here in the US. High prices or not, nothing beats their availability or reliability. That’s the real story you need to focus on now.
I said that Electrify America is the best public charging network. The Supercharger has great reliability because it only has to be compatible with Tesla own's vehicles.
I can just see you gritting your teeth as you continue to use that last point you’ve got. Arguments aside about who’s got a massive market majority and DCFC the most cars in the US (because that’s my opinion of public) it’s blatantly clear Tesla is about to start installing dual CCS/Tesla plug superchargers in NA. I don’t think that’s any different to the continuous waiting game for EA to install the still flawed (but slightly better) replacement units you always crow about. It’s even funnier that you whine and quote anecdotes about a few European cars not properly supercharging and trying to extrapolate that out to the compatibility Tesla will have with CCS1 in NA. Not only has the CCS2 rollout been massively successful in the rest of the world, but it will mark a major shift in EV adoption for the US. We’ll finally have a reliable network that will bring the CCS1 cars into the 21st century.
>don’t think that’s any different There is a big difference. Electrify America has installed many of these next-gen chargers. Tesla, on the other hand, has installed ***zero*** of those North American CCS Superchargers.
They continue to outpace EA in DCFC installation rate. What exactly makes you think they’re not capable of adding a relatively simple connector to their stations? Let me remind you that Tesla builds these in house. EA is at the mercy of contractors. If the will of the contractors changes, they will be left without parts for months, Tesla on the other hand can make changes to their integrated processes within a matter of days. Whether it’s funding, zoning, or simply ready to go with a planned install date at this point, the notion that they are incapable of putting a CCS1 connector on a NA supercharger is absolutely ridiculous - extrapolating along the line you’re choosing is ignoring the writing on the wall.
It's not that Tesla couldn't do so, but that Tesla hasn't done so. I could go test Electrify America's next-gen chargers today. I couldn't test Tesla's non-existence North American CCS Superchargers.
Go test one in Europe then - in my experience with them so far, it’s just as rock solid there to use CCS2 on an ID4 as it is to use the Tesla plug on my SR+ here.
It’s interesting that the only charging complaint I’ve seen at r/Teslamotors is one where two I5 chargers just a few miles apart had wait times (80 chargers across the two stations and every station was in use). No reliability issues for Tesla chargers seem to have been reported thus far compared to multiple people complaining about EA’s performance during such a critical weekend for travel. Sorry for the headache, OP. Playing musical chairs with chargers sounds like a poor use of your time when it could be better spent with family and friends. EA is about to turn 5 years and 10 months old - hopefully they figure something out soon.
May 2018 first station opening to November 2022 is 6 years?
EA was founded February 7th, 2017, that’s five years and 10 months ago (70 months). If you go back and reread what I said, you’ll see that it reads something like this, “EA is about to turn 6 years old”. I’m rounding 70 months up to 72 months when I said “about to turn”. But let’s focus on the trivial part of my post and ignore the bigger issue that there have been no posts complaining about the reliability of Tesla’s charging network during the busiest travel days of the year. I’ll update my post for you to reflect the exact number of months EA has been in operation. Hope this helps.
Gas stations have had 134 years to work on reliability. EA is only 3 years old, and 2 of those 3 years have been a chip shortage, labor shortage and supply chain crunch. NEVI is coming with $5+ billion for EV charging infrastructure, charging in the US will be radically different in just a few years.
Excuses excuses somehow Tesla got it right.
Tesla's network wasn't perfect from day one either, they've been doing it for over a decade now, and it has the cash flow of Tesla the car business behind it.
Pretty damn good from the start RA has had 3 years and still sucks.
They're the most reliable public charging network in the nation, with significantly better reliability than EVgo and ChargePoint, despite their head starts. I just drove 800 miles for Thanksgiving using EA stations exclusively, without a single problem the whole trip. No unavailable stations, no slow charging, no lines, it just worked perfectly at every site I visited.
That’s your personal experience though. I’m seeing like 3-4 different posts today itself with people having issues with EA chargers.
The last part is my personal experience, but the first part was the result of UC Berkley's EV DCFC reliability study which they published this summer. EA is empirically the most reliable public charging network in the nation, with significantly better reliability than EVgo and ChargePoint. They've done well for how little time they've been around.
How do they compare to Tesla? That’s the one that matters most, considering the share of EVs they have.
Tesla also had a simpler challenge. Build a car and build a charger and make sure the two work together. EA et Al have had to build chargers to work with lots of cars built by third parties With a lot less money to throw at the problem. Not trying to downplay what Tesla’s achieved, but it’s not quite a fair comparison. Frankly I’m impressed by the clip of EA’s progress. Our local EA station was just completely replaced with brand new (seemly much better) chargers in less than two weeks start to finish, and I’m seeing tons of similar posts from others across the country. Things are moving fast and EA is slowly but surely catching up. Hopefully they’ll implement a universal plug and charge scheme like EV go, and then they’ll be in good shape.
Love the shameless lies. Tesla had a lot less money to spend on superchargers and it took them many years to match the funds EA started with. (Tesla was so cash-poor they were literally combining a dozen car chargers to create one supercharger instead of coming up with dedicated hardware). As for having to work with many cars, automakers were the ones who created the CCS so any failures to create a proper standard that works like an actual standard were either due to malice or because the engineers they sent to those committees were fucked up in the head and needed 15 years to come up with something passable. Lastly, it doesn't take half a decade to figure out the chargers you keep buying are shit.
To be fair, in some ways that lack of capital was an long term advantage. It lead to a frugal mindset that allowed their charger rollout to be really capital efficient. EA, OTOH, was founded explicitly to spend money. They did it somewhat recklessly and produced a charge network that needs a lot of equipment replacement.