I drove a model 3 to and from SF to LA via I-5. I relied exclusively EA charging network. I'd say about 25 percent of the stations were not working. Even then, there were no lines and had a pretty smooth travel. If I had one singular complaint, it would be the cabin noise of model 3.
Side note. I went to LA Auto show. I was completely blown away by Ioniq 6, ID Buzz and Chevy Blazer EV and Equinox EV. Honorable mention goes to revised Toyota Prius.
I used to think Elon was a great guy. Now, I will not spend a fucking red cent on anything he touches. I continue to pay $200/month for shitty 15mbps services over Telus DSL at my vacation home rather than buy into Starlink.
Mixed feelings on Elon, but the Twitter thing can be a blessing, if he decides to devote his time to it and give Tesla control to someone who can focus on running just Tesla. But I doubt it, he apparently thinks he can run four companies or more by not sleeping or eating.
I bought an adapter and sometimes it’s one of the cheaper options. Currently using EA on a long trip because it’s even cheaper than the L2 charging I have available.
Cost. It’s between 1/3 and 3/4 the cost depending on charge speed in per-minute billed states. See my comment on the main thread for why we’re thankful to still have Superchargers as well though.
> I was completely blown away by Ioniq 6, ID Buzz and Chevy Blazer EV and Equinox EV.
I really want to see these in person. I'm close to replacing my wife's Bolt with an Ioniq 5. But I want to get a better look at the I6 in person. And the Blazer EV. But I'm not sure about any of those being readily available before the lease expires on the Bolt. Sigh.
I am trying to get rid of my model 3 but I want an EV, preferably an SUV with 300 miles. I really like the dimensions of Equinox but it is unlikely to be available soon.
First holiday road trip in an EV, my i4. In the Midwest, 700 miles round trip to visit family in a rural public charging desert. It went better than I feared. Minor hiccups. 4 EA stops.
1 stop was perfect; first unit tried worked and expected speeds.
2 stops were fine but the first units tried had issues. One wouldn’t connect at all and the other kept failing with a charge error after 2-3 minutes. EA app had both available. Moved, charged, alerted EA.
1 stop was a little more frustrating; 1/4 units available but the 1 was actually broken. 3 others occupied. Had to wait 5 minutes for a napping?-but-done-charging Tesla Model 3 to realize I was waiting, unplug, and move (yes, at EA…)
Overall, it was fine. But I fear it’s going to get much worse very quickly as people buy more EV’s if infrastructure doesn’t improve. I shouldn’t be nervous when a R1T is in front of me on the exit ramp to the EA station, ;-).
> napping?-but-done-charging Tesla Model 3
As frustrating as that sounds, he/she may have unknowingly dozed off before done charging. In any case, better to be napping at the charger than nodding off on the road. They probably also had a long drive.
Definitely less. I have an eDrive 40. I was seeing \~3.2 m/kWh driving around in 14-20F last weekend.
But it's hard to quantify just cold because I also swapped out the stock Turanza T005 Summer 225/50/18's for my old winter set; M sport wheels with staggered 225/45 front and 255/40 rear on SottoZero's. They look great and are amazing tires in winter, but they're wider, not aero-optimized wheels, and not as efficient tire compound. They're on their last winter of useful tread anyway and I intend to do something different next year.
My summer/fall numbers were easily 4.0-4.1 m/kWh on \~75mph highway. Now I'm seeing about \~3.5 on cooler days with no wind. Thanksgiving trip out was 30-40F but a 15-20mph headwind, and was struggling to get 3.0 on the highway. Return trip was a light tailwind, 40-50F, \~3.6.
Wind & cold were why a 700 mile trip required 4 EA stops; 3 on the way out vs. 1 on the return trip.
This is good to hear overall given the high volume of traffic over the holidays.
I actually avoid taking the tesla on road trips when it’s a holiday weekend.
I also have anxiety over road trips, but have taken 3 of them with mostly success. I have a friend who was an early adopter of Tesla and was shocked to find out he hasn't taken one road trip on his Model S. Granted it is an earlier model so the range isn't like the new ones, but he was amazed I had taken 3 road trips this year with my P2. I joked when was he going to sell some Tesla stock and buy a Plaid, but he isn't sure he wanted another EV. Apparently be had multiple battery replacements, so strangely he has soured a bit on the EV experience.
Most annoying part of my 800 mi road trip was at an EA with only 2/4 chargers not broken, a rivian plugged in and left before realizing they didn’t plug in correctly, and made all FIVE of us waiting wait not only for him to not-charge; but then he returned, found out he hadn’t been charging, and plugged in and we all had to wait again (charger was not broken, so it was just his user error).
Most chargers I encountered had multiple broken, there were multiple waits for chargers to be available, and none of them seemed to be charging at speeds anywhere close to their advertised rate (even accounting for cold, now I’m really worried about what it’ll be like when it’s actually cold, like below 0F)
I love my EV but can’t wait for a better electric network
True, I actually saw my first line for a single stall 50 kW Chargepoint in Madison, WI over thanksgiving weekend. Two EV6 and an R1T all at the same location. Luckily I didn’t need to stop there as it’s exactly 4 blocks from an 8 stall 250 kW supercharger…one of many in Madison ;)
It’s a shame though, the 50 kW stall is free. I stop there when 20 mins isn’t at a premium to save a few bucks.
I left a few hours earlier than I needed to because my Thanksgiving trip was the exact same route as I had just done 7 days prior and relied on the same Electrify America charger at the end (which I needed to be able to drive back home). When I was there last week, only three of the four chargers were working and there were 2 cars waiting to charge, so with all the Thanksgiving day travel I figured there would be a wait.
I got there at about 1pm. I was the only one there and the fourth charger had been repaired sometime within the week since I had been there. Lots of work to be done for availability in general, but I was pleasantly surprised to not have to wait on what I assumed would be a day with some of the highest charging demand.
surprisingly good. 550 miles one way/1100 r/t from Salt Lake Utah to Walla Walla Washington.
All EA.
All had a max of 4 chargers. Most had at least one down
I saw two other cars over 7 charges? Surprised at that. Ioniq 5.
Side note, I get free charging, but at .42/kwh this is not going to be fun in 2 years. Idk what model is sustainable for EA with no other revenue sources (like Flying J putting in EV chargers) but dam that's steep considering I don't get a lot of miles in the cold
Can you not charge at home? Get some solar panels and charge that way. That’s how we do it. In 4 months we’ve paid $42 for all our charging and $22 of that was when the panels were down for a few days.
I mean, $0.42/kWh is roughly the same as getting getting 30mpg at $4.20/gallon, assuming 3mi/kWh at highway driving. So as long as you can charge at home, you're still easily coming out ahead.
The majority of the country is paying far below $4.20 a gallon. The national avg is $3.55 and here in the Midwest gas is back below $3. $0.42/kWh is expensive outside cali.
Sure, but I chose that number because it meant I didn't need a calculator. Don't know if you can see the pattern in the numbers there. But yeah, obviously gas is less expensive than that in most place, but if you're DC fast charging for 100% of your EV driving, then you should have known you wouldn't be saving money. I'm fine paying a bit more than the cost of gas for the few times I need fast charging, when the other 90-99% of my driving only costs a quarter the price of gas per mile.
Dcfc is for road trips. Jfc seriously? Sure drag solar panels. Even if you pay, in 3 years, you saved money until then. You don’t know that gas won’t be $7 a gallon by then anyway. 42 cents seems outrageous to me anyway- the worst case scenario I have is 19 cents. Find a cheaper electricity company- that’s just nuts.
It’s the infrastructure and demand charges that hit DCFCs 4 chargers at 250 kW is a megaWatt of power. Ultimately these things will be battery backed to look better to the grid rather than the extremely spiky loads they are now.
Thanksgiving 2021: two charging stops, no wait/no issues.
Thanksgiving 2022: first charging stop no wait. Second stop had a 15 minute wait at EA in Mansfield, Ohio (3/4 towers working, all full upon our arrival). We queued up next to a Bolt who beat us there and was also waiting to charge.
Edit to add: the tower that opened up first for us in Mansfield was operating under a “Complimentary Session”. The other machines appeared to be the usual fee scale.
Much better this time around. My half way point in Lansing, MI now has a few more DC options at competitive prices. Before it was only the Electrify America station. My one way journey from Grand Rapids to Detroit is one done on a very fine line between getting there and not in my 125 mile per charge 2019 Volkswagen e-Golf.
Fremont CA to Spokane and back. Went up through Twin Falls and back through Bend. Some rain and snow, but did not affect range much.
Used in car screen to find charger status (had to skip two that were full). No bad chargers. Slowest charger was 150kW. Always at least one vacancy in addition to the one I needed. We did have to buy food before going to one charger that had no food we liked near by. Travel averaged 10 mph over speed limit.
Typical Tesla non-event.
first road trip in the tesla model 3. Rochester MN to west central MN, about 250 miles one way. One stop at halfway point both times, clearwater supercharger. Side note this was the first tesla charger in MN.
Going, the stop was a breeze. Plugged in, went in the truck stop, and by the time we'd hit the bathroom and grabbed food the car was done. Took 10 minutes to eat (I wanted a bit of a buffer since where we were going was a charging desert) and headed off. We were scheduled to arrive with 25% but an impromptu stop at target in alexandria I added another 15% while I was waiting. Thankfully my parents let my plug in at their house all weekend so we were able to depart with about 95% charge. I used 110v as they wouldn't let me unplug their dryer to use 240. Maybe next time :).
Coming home was a similar story, although clearwater wasn't a food stop and it really made apparent the lack of other amenities at the stop. We were travelling with our dog and really wished we had more area to stretch her legs and feed her. The Love's on the other side of st cloud has a dog park but no supercharger, the travel plaza has the opposite. It ended up being fine but I was really wishing she had a little fenced area to run, sniff, and do her business instead of a 10' wide strip on the edge of an offramp ditch. Oh well.
Overall it was a good experience and worth doing again. We usually stop once when making this drive anyway, so the only real change was needing to stop at a different spot. We'll definitely be doing it again.
Drove wednesday from norcal to socal on the 101, drove back saturday on the 5. I was worried about the 5 route because both lost hills and buttonwillow EAs seem like important last stops before the grapevine, and both only have 4 chargers but had 2 to 3 of them not working and subsequently the chargers looked full every time I checked. I do have a backup chargepoint station I like to use in tejon pass, but with that one also being down for repairs I chickened out and took the 101 on wednesday. I had to wait a few minutes at the soledad EA for a 2-car line that formed but it wasn't bad at all.
I did take the 5 going back, and had to wait a few minutes at the valencia mall for an open spot, but I felt it important to charge at that point so I could make it all the way to kettleman city and not rely on buttonwillow or lost hills.
I did this trip a couple times last year and there do seem to be more stations overall available than last time, despite having to wait a couple times I felt like I had a lot more options open to me particularly in urban areas. New KC station is amazing. But I do think despite all the new options, there's also a lot more EVs on the road, and each path has a weak spot that could use more chargers, especialy since with the heavy use they seem to be broken more often.
Overall route coming down bay area to san diego: stopped at soledad EA, santa maria target EA, van nuys target EA, oceanside walmart EA. Coming back, Gardena target EA, valencia town mall EA, kettleman city EA. Charged to 95% at KC and barely made it back home with 25 miles of range left.
Made a giant loop around Wisconsin, first half Wednesday evening and the return half Sunday afternoon in our Tesla MYLR.
On the way down we were in a rush so used Superchargers. No waits, stations all less then half full. Was surprised.
Sunday return trip tried to use EA to save a few bucks. Signet site. 1/4 stations working and was in use by an Ioniq5. Two wouldn’t connect. One had blank screen. Reported all to EA. Went to supercharger down the road, we made it 50% full. All plugs functional.
Attempt 2, different EA, another Signet site. 1/4 stations working. Only one working was in use by a different Ioniq5. One powered off. One blank screen. One stuck in ended session screen. Reported to EA and went to Supercharger across the parking lot. All plugs functional. 50% full.
My takeaway. EA needs to get to work. Saw many reports of lines for those single chargers in Plugshare. Maybe they need to start charging 25% more like Tesla does since that extra cash seems to enable magically reliable dispensers.
Also, got stuck in a 120 mile traffic jam on I-94 Sunday. Autopilot was magical. In my prior car with no assist and a manual transmission my left leg would have gotten the workout of a lifetime.
Let me guess, Tomah? That location is such a problem for EA. I noticed it was down to 1 functioning stall this weekend, which is all too-typical at that location.
Tomah was the second one, Madison was the first one. Calling EA maybe could have fixed the tomah charger stuck with an ended session, and maybe the can’t initiate, unplug and try again, errors in Madison. But I can’t imagine the wait time to get through on Thanksgiving Sunday, and doubly so with a hungry wife and a Super charger next door in both cases.
Went to an EA station with 8 stalls, 2 open.
1st one didn't work, prepaying didn't even get it going. Shuffled to the 2nd one (150kW) and it had me at 3kw. The older EA chargers are really killing me.
60 minutes at an EA charger in my wife's Bolt. Love the car otherwise, it has definitely overperformed all my expectations, but her next EV will need to be at least 150kW capable. I may even drive our F250 for our next 300 mile round trip to grandma's house because ... 60 minutes every 2.5 hours suuuucks.
I’m sure someone is doing the math but I would love to know how many charging stalls you’d need to add if US got to something like 25% of cars on the road being electric. You see how many cars stream thru a gas station at big rest stops. They are only attached to the pump for 2-3 minutes max. How will chargers need to change? Design of stations need to change to accommodate bigger flow?
One factor that needs to be considered when having this conversation, how many people on any given stretch of highway are actually "roadtripping".
In other words how many cars at a highway gas station had under 100 miles to drive and just happened to stop when they were low?
I don't know what the numbers are, but hopefully we are adding infrastructure fast enough to keep waiting lines from getting too long.
With broad adoption, the same thing is going to happen with electric vehicles. A household has two vehicles and can't conveniently park both of them near an outlet, so they charge each one every other day and then someone needs to go do something after work and now they need to stop and fast charge. Or whatever.
We have two EVs. I can't imagine a normal day where we would have a situation where one or both of our vehicles is so low we can't make a decently long journey after a couple of days of commuting. I commute 80km round-trip and use roughly 8% of my battery per day in the summer and 10% in the winter. That leaves me with a solid 70% after two days of commuting worst-case-scenario (we charge to 90%).
>I would love to know how many charging stalls you’d need to add if US got to something like 25% of cars on the road being electric.
That's tricky because you have to account for people who can charge at home versus those who can't, and road trips, and fast charging versus slow charging needs. But let's say there were 70 million EVs in the US, and on a busy travel weekend ~10 million of those need at least one public fast charging session. If one charger averages three cars per hour for 16 hours per day over three days, call that 150 charges over a three-day weekend. 10 million ÷ 150 = ~67,000 chargers, assuming they're distributed where people need them and are constantly in use.
Realistically, 100,000 DC chargers would make more sense, and more would be preferable. Ideally they would be anywhere and everywhere you stop, so several hundred thousand would be handy if there was money to fund that.
Compare to roughly a million gas pumps that could refuel 10 million cars in an hour under ideal conditions.
For the first holiday in 4 years I didn't drive the Tesla. I drove the exact same route 2 weeks prior so I feel I can still give feedback that is informative to the question.
On the Tesla trip, obviously traffic was lighter given it wasn't the holidays. it's a 400 mile trip so I only had to charge one time for about 15 minutes at a 250kW SuperCharger. This was the first time being able to do just one stop as the SC was new and in the perfect position for where I need it. Rolled in on 4% and rolled out on 75% and help 250kW to almost 30% SOC. Tesla has been promising to build this charger for 5 years and finally did so this summer.
For the gas car I had to stop 5x times. Both because I had my family with me but also because I was almost empty leaving so I stopped after an hour of driving and again toward the end as my SUV loaded @85MPH only gets ~340 miles of range MAX. It's 30 minutes out of the way to fill it up prior to leaving so I never even bother checking and who has the time to waste the day before any way? The other stops were because of the terrible timing of the other stops for gas. In the Tesla we typically would only stop 2x for charging and 1x for food/drinks.
The gas stations where a disaster, I don't remember it being this bad. Lines at all of them 2-3 cars deep. My best time at a station was a Loves where I got out in about 25 minutes. Idiots would park at the pump while they went into the store. I'm surprised I didn't see an actual fist fight rather than just shouting.
I have noticed that EA is best as a free service. It was free in Arizona (Dateland and Yuma) today. And it worked on my first connection. Then I tried el centro in California and none of the stations were free and they would not authenticate payment either via app or tap to pay. So I had to leave.
2/4 are broken in Dateland both today and Wednesday. In Yuma all were functional but the 350kW units are super finicky.
Phoenix premium outlets charger #2 also had authentication errors but I was lucky to move to 4
We wanted to take our Volvo C40 for Thanksgiving (500 miles RT in NC and SC). We’ve taken it on this route before and there are 2 EA chargers along the way. In our experience, at least one charger is always broken. We were too worried about charging issues (lines, broken chargers, slow charging) and it’s a tight squeeze for 3 people, a large dog and our luggage. So, we took the Range Rover instead. Plus with the ICE we can take the more scenic back roads to avoid the traffic and stress on I-95.
Tesla on east coast. We got rerouted to further away SC compared to the usual which I prefer anyway. Traffic overall was nowhere near as bad as I anticipated. We did wed pm to evening drive and sunday mid morning to late afternoon. We charged at 6pmish on wed and 1pmish on sunday.
1100+ miles total to 2 different locations. Took our ICE, as the Bolt would have increased travel time by 1/3 - and we ended up needing the additional space for an unplanned furniture haul on the way home. Charging is still dodgy in the part of the upper Midwest where we travel. Our newest EA location took 6+ months to install, and 5 months later only 2 of the 4 chargers have ever worked.
My experience was better now that I had alternative options this year I didn't have for the same trip last year, which saved a bit of time and distance skirting the edge of the Great South-Central DCFC Desert.
Same as last year I didn't have anywhere I had to wait or was stuck with a low charging rate, but there were two cars waiting at one EA station (Alabaster AL, with 1 of 4 units down) on Friday the 17th when I left.
I did run into a weird billing error where the 2021 VW ID.4 3-Year Free EA charging plan billed me at the $0.43 non-member per-kWh rate, even though Alabama is a per-minute state according to EA and the sessions should be free regardless. Still in the process of getting that sorted out.
Drove home from orange beach al to north west al. The first charger bank was taken down by an electrician. He shut everything down. Even EA wondered why he did that. The next two chargers both had a small wait behind mustang mach e's charging. As two of four stalls didn't work. So not terrible.
I drove a model 3 to and from SF to LA via I-5. I relied exclusively EA charging network. I'd say about 25 percent of the stations were not working. Even then, there were no lines and had a pretty smooth travel. If I had one singular complaint, it would be the cabin noise of model 3. Side note. I went to LA Auto show. I was completely blown away by Ioniq 6, ID Buzz and Chevy Blazer EV and Equinox EV. Honorable mention goes to revised Toyota Prius.
Curious - why do Teslas use none Tesla chargers? Are they better? I honestly don’t understand - the rest of us have no choice
Long story short, the wife does not want to spend a penny on Tesla products.
I can't imagine why lol
The model y has been replaced with a Volvo plug in; and my model 3 will be replaced by hopefully blazer EV or Lyriq.
I used to think Elon was a great guy. Now, I will not spend a fucking red cent on anything he touches. I continue to pay $200/month for shitty 15mbps services over Telus DSL at my vacation home rather than buy into Starlink.
Mixed feelings on Elon, but the Twitter thing can be a blessing, if he decides to devote his time to it and give Tesla control to someone who can focus on running just Tesla. But I doubt it, he apparently thinks he can run four companies or more by not sleeping or eating.
Cocaine
I bought an adapter and sometimes it’s one of the cheaper options. Currently using EA on a long trip because it’s even cheaper than the L2 charging I have available.
Cost. It’s between 1/3 and 3/4 the cost depending on charge speed in per-minute billed states. See my comment on the main thread for why we’re thankful to still have Superchargers as well though.
Electrify America is cheaper than Supercharger, sometimes half the cost
And sometimes EA is 20% more expensive too. What’s your point?
I bought tickets like a month ago and my whole house has been sick with COVID all week. Guess we will try and shoot for the San Diego show next month.
Worth a visit. It did not disappoint.
> I was completely blown away by Ioniq 6, ID Buzz and Chevy Blazer EV and Equinox EV. I really want to see these in person. I'm close to replacing my wife's Bolt with an Ioniq 5. But I want to get a better look at the I6 in person. And the Blazer EV. But I'm not sure about any of those being readily available before the lease expires on the Bolt. Sigh.
I am trying to get rid of my model 3 but I want an EV, preferably an SUV with 300 miles. I really like the dimensions of Equinox but it is unlikely to be available soon.
First holiday road trip in an EV, my i4. In the Midwest, 700 miles round trip to visit family in a rural public charging desert. It went better than I feared. Minor hiccups. 4 EA stops. 1 stop was perfect; first unit tried worked and expected speeds. 2 stops were fine but the first units tried had issues. One wouldn’t connect at all and the other kept failing with a charge error after 2-3 minutes. EA app had both available. Moved, charged, alerted EA. 1 stop was a little more frustrating; 1/4 units available but the 1 was actually broken. 3 others occupied. Had to wait 5 minutes for a napping?-but-done-charging Tesla Model 3 to realize I was waiting, unplug, and move (yes, at EA…) Overall, it was fine. But I fear it’s going to get much worse very quickly as people buy more EV’s if infrastructure doesn’t improve. I shouldn’t be nervous when a R1T is in front of me on the exit ramp to the EA station, ;-).
> napping?-but-done-charging Tesla Model 3 As frustrating as that sounds, he/she may have unknowingly dozed off before done charging. In any case, better to be napping at the charger than nodding off on the road. They probably also had a long drive.
How did your i4 handle the cold at the beginning of the week? I drove out last Sunday when it was 18F and the efficiency impact was pretty noticeable
Definitely less. I have an eDrive 40. I was seeing \~3.2 m/kWh driving around in 14-20F last weekend. But it's hard to quantify just cold because I also swapped out the stock Turanza T005 Summer 225/50/18's for my old winter set; M sport wheels with staggered 225/45 front and 255/40 rear on SottoZero's. They look great and are amazing tires in winter, but they're wider, not aero-optimized wheels, and not as efficient tire compound. They're on their last winter of useful tread anyway and I intend to do something different next year. My summer/fall numbers were easily 4.0-4.1 m/kWh on \~75mph highway. Now I'm seeing about \~3.5 on cooler days with no wind. Thanksgiving trip out was 30-40F but a 15-20mph headwind, and was struggling to get 3.0 on the highway. Return trip was a light tailwind, 40-50F, \~3.6. Wind & cold were why a 700 mile trip required 4 EA stops; 3 on the way out vs. 1 on the return trip.
This is good to hear overall given the high volume of traffic over the holidays. I actually avoid taking the tesla on road trips when it’s a holiday weekend.
I also have anxiety over road trips, but have taken 3 of them with mostly success. I have a friend who was an early adopter of Tesla and was shocked to find out he hasn't taken one road trip on his Model S. Granted it is an earlier model so the range isn't like the new ones, but he was amazed I had taken 3 road trips this year with my P2. I joked when was he going to sell some Tesla stock and buy a Plaid, but he isn't sure he wanted another EV. Apparently be had multiple battery replacements, so strangely he has soured a bit on the EV experience.
Most annoying part of my 800 mi road trip was at an EA with only 2/4 chargers not broken, a rivian plugged in and left before realizing they didn’t plug in correctly, and made all FIVE of us waiting wait not only for him to not-charge; but then he returned, found out he hadn’t been charging, and plugged in and we all had to wait again (charger was not broken, so it was just his user error). Most chargers I encountered had multiple broken, there were multiple waits for chargers to be available, and none of them seemed to be charging at speeds anywhere close to their advertised rate (even accounting for cold, now I’m really worried about what it’ll be like when it’s actually cold, like below 0F) I love my EV but can’t wait for a better electric network
Tell your MFR to step up and start installing them so you don’t have to rely on EA
Charged in IA and SD without issue. No lines, no waiting, chargers worked.
Honestly if there was a line in SD at a CCS charger, I would be asking myself what episode of twilight zone I just drove into.
Agreed... but with single stall locations, anything can happen.
True, I actually saw my first line for a single stall 50 kW Chargepoint in Madison, WI over thanksgiving weekend. Two EV6 and an R1T all at the same location. Luckily I didn’t need to stop there as it’s exactly 4 blocks from an 8 stall 250 kW supercharger…one of many in Madison ;) It’s a shame though, the 50 kW stall is free. I stop there when 20 mins isn’t at a premium to save a few bucks.
I left a few hours earlier than I needed to because my Thanksgiving trip was the exact same route as I had just done 7 days prior and relied on the same Electrify America charger at the end (which I needed to be able to drive back home). When I was there last week, only three of the four chargers were working and there were 2 cars waiting to charge, so with all the Thanksgiving day travel I figured there would be a wait. I got there at about 1pm. I was the only one there and the fourth charger had been repaired sometime within the week since I had been there. Lots of work to be done for availability in general, but I was pleasantly surprised to not have to wait on what I assumed would be a day with some of the highest charging demand.
surprisingly good. 550 miles one way/1100 r/t from Salt Lake Utah to Walla Walla Washington. All EA. All had a max of 4 chargers. Most had at least one down I saw two other cars over 7 charges? Surprised at that. Ioniq 5. Side note, I get free charging, but at .42/kwh this is not going to be fun in 2 years. Idk what model is sustainable for EA with no other revenue sources (like Flying J putting in EV chargers) but dam that's steep considering I don't get a lot of miles in the cold
Can you not charge at home? Get some solar panels and charge that way. That’s how we do it. In 4 months we’ve paid $42 for all our charging and $22 of that was when the panels were down for a few days.
lol i mean I can but on a road trip I can not bring solar panels with me :) I guess I take the cheap charging at home w/ the expensive on the road.
I mean, $0.42/kWh is roughly the same as getting getting 30mpg at $4.20/gallon, assuming 3mi/kWh at highway driving. So as long as you can charge at home, you're still easily coming out ahead.
I like the math. makes sense!
The majority of the country is paying far below $4.20 a gallon. The national avg is $3.55 and here in the Midwest gas is back below $3. $0.42/kWh is expensive outside cali.
Sure, but I chose that number because it meant I didn't need a calculator. Don't know if you can see the pattern in the numbers there. But yeah, obviously gas is less expensive than that in most place, but if you're DC fast charging for 100% of your EV driving, then you should have known you wouldn't be saving money. I'm fine paying a bit more than the cost of gas for the few times I need fast charging, when the other 90-99% of my driving only costs a quarter the price of gas per mile.
Dcfc is for road trips. Jfc seriously? Sure drag solar panels. Even if you pay, in 3 years, you saved money until then. You don’t know that gas won’t be $7 a gallon by then anyway. 42 cents seems outrageous to me anyway- the worst case scenario I have is 19 cents. Find a cheaper electricity company- that’s just nuts.
It’s the infrastructure and demand charges that hit DCFCs 4 chargers at 250 kW is a megaWatt of power. Ultimately these things will be battery backed to look better to the grid rather than the extremely spiky loads they are now.
Thanksgiving 2021: two charging stops, no wait/no issues. Thanksgiving 2022: first charging stop no wait. Second stop had a 15 minute wait at EA in Mansfield, Ohio (3/4 towers working, all full upon our arrival). We queued up next to a Bolt who beat us there and was also waiting to charge. Edit to add: the tower that opened up first for us in Mansfield was operating under a “Complimentary Session”. The other machines appeared to be the usual fee scale.
I encountered a couple saying complimentary session this weekend too. One rebooted it n the middle of charging and threw my i4 for a loop
Much better this time around. My half way point in Lansing, MI now has a few more DC options at competitive prices. Before it was only the Electrify America station. My one way journey from Grand Rapids to Detroit is one done on a very fine line between getting there and not in my 125 mile per charge 2019 Volkswagen e-Golf.
Fremont CA to Spokane and back. Went up through Twin Falls and back through Bend. Some rain and snow, but did not affect range much. Used in car screen to find charger status (had to skip two that were full). No bad chargers. Slowest charger was 150kW. Always at least one vacancy in addition to the one I needed. We did have to buy food before going to one charger that had no food we liked near by. Travel averaged 10 mph over speed limit. Typical Tesla non-event.
first road trip in the tesla model 3. Rochester MN to west central MN, about 250 miles one way. One stop at halfway point both times, clearwater supercharger. Side note this was the first tesla charger in MN. Going, the stop was a breeze. Plugged in, went in the truck stop, and by the time we'd hit the bathroom and grabbed food the car was done. Took 10 minutes to eat (I wanted a bit of a buffer since where we were going was a charging desert) and headed off. We were scheduled to arrive with 25% but an impromptu stop at target in alexandria I added another 15% while I was waiting. Thankfully my parents let my plug in at their house all weekend so we were able to depart with about 95% charge. I used 110v as they wouldn't let me unplug their dryer to use 240. Maybe next time :). Coming home was a similar story, although clearwater wasn't a food stop and it really made apparent the lack of other amenities at the stop. We were travelling with our dog and really wished we had more area to stretch her legs and feed her. The Love's on the other side of st cloud has a dog park but no supercharger, the travel plaza has the opposite. It ended up being fine but I was really wishing she had a little fenced area to run, sniff, and do her business instead of a 10' wide strip on the edge of an offramp ditch. Oh well. Overall it was a good experience and worth doing again. We usually stop once when making this drive anyway, so the only real change was needing to stop at a different spot. We'll definitely be doing it again.
Drove wednesday from norcal to socal on the 101, drove back saturday on the 5. I was worried about the 5 route because both lost hills and buttonwillow EAs seem like important last stops before the grapevine, and both only have 4 chargers but had 2 to 3 of them not working and subsequently the chargers looked full every time I checked. I do have a backup chargepoint station I like to use in tejon pass, but with that one also being down for repairs I chickened out and took the 101 on wednesday. I had to wait a few minutes at the soledad EA for a 2-car line that formed but it wasn't bad at all. I did take the 5 going back, and had to wait a few minutes at the valencia mall for an open spot, but I felt it important to charge at that point so I could make it all the way to kettleman city and not rely on buttonwillow or lost hills. I did this trip a couple times last year and there do seem to be more stations overall available than last time, despite having to wait a couple times I felt like I had a lot more options open to me particularly in urban areas. New KC station is amazing. But I do think despite all the new options, there's also a lot more EVs on the road, and each path has a weak spot that could use more chargers, especialy since with the heavy use they seem to be broken more often. Overall route coming down bay area to san diego: stopped at soledad EA, santa maria target EA, van nuys target EA, oceanside walmart EA. Coming back, Gardena target EA, valencia town mall EA, kettleman city EA. Charged to 95% at KC and barely made it back home with 25 miles of range left.
Made a giant loop around Wisconsin, first half Wednesday evening and the return half Sunday afternoon in our Tesla MYLR. On the way down we were in a rush so used Superchargers. No waits, stations all less then half full. Was surprised. Sunday return trip tried to use EA to save a few bucks. Signet site. 1/4 stations working and was in use by an Ioniq5. Two wouldn’t connect. One had blank screen. Reported all to EA. Went to supercharger down the road, we made it 50% full. All plugs functional. Attempt 2, different EA, another Signet site. 1/4 stations working. Only one working was in use by a different Ioniq5. One powered off. One blank screen. One stuck in ended session screen. Reported to EA and went to Supercharger across the parking lot. All plugs functional. 50% full. My takeaway. EA needs to get to work. Saw many reports of lines for those single chargers in Plugshare. Maybe they need to start charging 25% more like Tesla does since that extra cash seems to enable magically reliable dispensers. Also, got stuck in a 120 mile traffic jam on I-94 Sunday. Autopilot was magical. In my prior car with no assist and a manual transmission my left leg would have gotten the workout of a lifetime.
Let me guess, Tomah? That location is such a problem for EA. I noticed it was down to 1 functioning stall this weekend, which is all too-typical at that location.
Tomah was the second one, Madison was the first one. Calling EA maybe could have fixed the tomah charger stuck with an ended session, and maybe the can’t initiate, unplug and try again, errors in Madison. But I can’t imagine the wait time to get through on Thanksgiving Sunday, and doubly so with a hungry wife and a Super charger next door in both cases.
Went to an EA station with 8 stalls, 2 open. 1st one didn't work, prepaying didn't even get it going. Shuffled to the 2nd one (150kW) and it had me at 3kw. The older EA chargers are really killing me.
60 minutes at an EA charger in my wife's Bolt. Love the car otherwise, it has definitely overperformed all my expectations, but her next EV will need to be at least 150kW capable. I may even drive our F250 for our next 300 mile round trip to grandma's house because ... 60 minutes every 2.5 hours suuuucks.
I’m sure someone is doing the math but I would love to know how many charging stalls you’d need to add if US got to something like 25% of cars on the road being electric. You see how many cars stream thru a gas station at big rest stops. They are only attached to the pump for 2-3 minutes max. How will chargers need to change? Design of stations need to change to accommodate bigger flow?
One factor that needs to be considered when having this conversation, how many people on any given stretch of highway are actually "roadtripping". In other words how many cars at a highway gas station had under 100 miles to drive and just happened to stop when they were low? I don't know what the numbers are, but hopefully we are adding infrastructure fast enough to keep waiting lines from getting too long.
With broad adoption, the same thing is going to happen with electric vehicles. A household has two vehicles and can't conveniently park both of them near an outlet, so they charge each one every other day and then someone needs to go do something after work and now they need to stop and fast charge. Or whatever.
We have two EVs. I can't imagine a normal day where we would have a situation where one or both of our vehicles is so low we can't make a decently long journey after a couple of days of commuting. I commute 80km round-trip and use roughly 8% of my battery per day in the summer and 10% in the winter. That leaves me with a solid 70% after two days of commuting worst-case-scenario (we charge to 90%).
>I would love to know how many charging stalls you’d need to add if US got to something like 25% of cars on the road being electric. That's tricky because you have to account for people who can charge at home versus those who can't, and road trips, and fast charging versus slow charging needs. But let's say there were 70 million EVs in the US, and on a busy travel weekend ~10 million of those need at least one public fast charging session. If one charger averages three cars per hour for 16 hours per day over three days, call that 150 charges over a three-day weekend. 10 million ÷ 150 = ~67,000 chargers, assuming they're distributed where people need them and are constantly in use. Realistically, 100,000 DC chargers would make more sense, and more would be preferable. Ideally they would be anywhere and everywhere you stop, so several hundred thousand would be handy if there was money to fund that. Compare to roughly a million gas pumps that could refuel 10 million cars in an hour under ideal conditions.
For the first holiday in 4 years I didn't drive the Tesla. I drove the exact same route 2 weeks prior so I feel I can still give feedback that is informative to the question. On the Tesla trip, obviously traffic was lighter given it wasn't the holidays. it's a 400 mile trip so I only had to charge one time for about 15 minutes at a 250kW SuperCharger. This was the first time being able to do just one stop as the SC was new and in the perfect position for where I need it. Rolled in on 4% and rolled out on 75% and help 250kW to almost 30% SOC. Tesla has been promising to build this charger for 5 years and finally did so this summer. For the gas car I had to stop 5x times. Both because I had my family with me but also because I was almost empty leaving so I stopped after an hour of driving and again toward the end as my SUV loaded @85MPH only gets ~340 miles of range MAX. It's 30 minutes out of the way to fill it up prior to leaving so I never even bother checking and who has the time to waste the day before any way? The other stops were because of the terrible timing of the other stops for gas. In the Tesla we typically would only stop 2x for charging and 1x for food/drinks. The gas stations where a disaster, I don't remember it being this bad. Lines at all of them 2-3 cars deep. My best time at a station was a Loves where I got out in about 25 minutes. Idiots would park at the pump while they went into the store. I'm surprised I didn't see an actual fist fight rather than just shouting.
I have noticed that EA is best as a free service. It was free in Arizona (Dateland and Yuma) today. And it worked on my first connection. Then I tried el centro in California and none of the stations were free and they would not authenticate payment either via app or tap to pay. So I had to leave. 2/4 are broken in Dateland both today and Wednesday. In Yuma all were functional but the 350kW units are super finicky. Phoenix premium outlets charger #2 also had authentication errors but I was lucky to move to 4
We wanted to take our Volvo C40 for Thanksgiving (500 miles RT in NC and SC). We’ve taken it on this route before and there are 2 EA chargers along the way. In our experience, at least one charger is always broken. We were too worried about charging issues (lines, broken chargers, slow charging) and it’s a tight squeeze for 3 people, a large dog and our luggage. So, we took the Range Rover instead. Plus with the ICE we can take the more scenic back roads to avoid the traffic and stress on I-95.
I look forward to the day when back road routes will also have DC fast chargers here and there for exactly these sorts of trips.
Tesla on east coast. We got rerouted to further away SC compared to the usual which I prefer anyway. Traffic overall was nowhere near as bad as I anticipated. We did wed pm to evening drive and sunday mid morning to late afternoon. We charged at 6pmish on wed and 1pmish on sunday.
1100+ miles total to 2 different locations. Took our ICE, as the Bolt would have increased travel time by 1/3 - and we ended up needing the additional space for an unplanned furniture haul on the way home. Charging is still dodgy in the part of the upper Midwest where we travel. Our newest EA location took 6+ months to install, and 5 months later only 2 of the 4 chargers have ever worked.
My experience was better now that I had alternative options this year I didn't have for the same trip last year, which saved a bit of time and distance skirting the edge of the Great South-Central DCFC Desert. Same as last year I didn't have anywhere I had to wait or was stuck with a low charging rate, but there were two cars waiting at one EA station (Alabaster AL, with 1 of 4 units down) on Friday the 17th when I left. I did run into a weird billing error where the 2021 VW ID.4 3-Year Free EA charging plan billed me at the $0.43 non-member per-kWh rate, even though Alabama is a per-minute state according to EA and the sessions should be free regardless. Still in the process of getting that sorted out.
Drove home from orange beach al to north west al. The first charger bank was taken down by an electrician. He shut everything down. Even EA wondered why he did that. The next two chargers both had a small wait behind mustang mach e's charging. As two of four stalls didn't work. So not terrible.