Nearly got stranded due to crappy EA charging ststem

[Fedex77]

Convinced my wife we should take the Taycan on a north-south CA road trip. Spent the night in Morrow Bay with 25% charge, heading to Santa Barbara. Figured we’d stop at Pismo to charge. Only problem is that none of the chargers work there. Had to L2 charge to get enough juice to make it to the next L3 charger. Ended up missing lunch reservations and wasting hours. Why are Tesla chargers all functional but EA can’t get their act together?

Sponsored

 

[kort]

EA can be a shit show. and getting stuck doing a slow charge to be able to get to another fast charger is a real downer and doesn't do much for helping the move towards EVs as newbies hear horror stories like this.

I have encountered non functioning chargers and have been fortunate to have been able to find close by (45 miles) alternatives.

do you use the plugshare app? if no, you should.
I also have chargepoint and evgo, and other local based aps on my phone.
in addition a better route planner is easy to use and I plot out all my out of range trips on it.

 

[Fedex77]

I have a backup account at ChargePoint but they don’t seem to have many L3 chargers. I should try ABRP - does it integrate with your cars current SoC/range?

 

[Fedex77]

Also doesn’t help when the 1 working EA charger is occupied by the many Rivian trucks that are now out there.

 

[slothinker]

There are EA chargers in Santa Maria, CA which I hope you found (and I hope they worked). I toyed around w/ the idea of filming a couple of hours at the Pismo EA station ... just one problem after another for folks driving up in all kinds of electric vehicles. Meanwhile the 15-20 Tesla bays a stone's throw away are usually mostly empty. I wrote EA a couple of months ago mentioning that San Luis Obispo had one of the highest %-ages of EA vehicles vs. gas-powered vehicles in the world yet EA has no current plans to install EA stations in the city itself. They do project adding stations in Morro Bay at some point.

 

[outie]

It does suck when that happens. I have started using the EA app which shows more accurate information on the charging stations. The PCM and Porsche app have been very flaky recently and the availability info is totally wrong, at least around where I live in SoCal.

The Rivians? I have bad news for you, since Tesla released the CCS adapter, I saw 2 Teslas + my own Tesla using the EA chargers the other day out of the 6 chargers at the local mall, when there's a Tesla Supercharger in the same mall!

 

[Fedex77]

It does suck when that happens. I have started using the EA app which shows more accurate information on the charging stations. The PCM and Porsche app have been very flaky recently and the availability info is totally wrong, at least around where I live in SoCal.

The Rivians? I have bad news for you, since Tesla released the CCS adapter, I saw 2 Teslas + my own Tesla using the EA chargers the other day out of the 6 chargers at the local mall, when there's a Tesla Supercharger in the same mall!

is EA cheaper? I hope we can eventually use Tesla’s charging system as well.

 

[Fedex77]

There are EA chargers in Santa Maria, CA which I hope you found (and I hope they worked). I toyed around w/ the idea of filming a couple of hours at the Pismo EA station ... just one problem after another for folks driving up in all kinds of electric vehicles. Meanwhile the 15-20 Tesla bays a stone's throw away are usually mostly empty. I wrote EA a couple of months ago mentioning that San Luis Obispo had one of the highest %-ages of EA vehicles vs. gas-powered vehicles in the world yet EA has no current plans to install EA stations in the city itself. They do project adding stations in Morro Bay at some point.

Yes all the Pismo locals told me how the chargers haven’t worked for weeks. I told the EA rep that but he seemed to feel that there was some parts shortage to repair the units and since they aren’t talking to the EA network, they can’t tell Porsche cars not to navigate there. If I knew they weren’t working I would have found a way to get to Santa Maria or went back to Paso Robles to get a full charge.

We spent the night in morrow bay and realized that EA planned to put in a charger there, too bad it wasn’t there for us.

 

[outie]

is EA cheaper? I hope we can eventually use Tesla’s charging system as well.

I think EA could be cheaper at different times/days, I am not sure. On top of that, some EA chargers have been giving free sessions since September, and I guess some Tesla drivers know about that.

 

[ejcintr]

EA can be a shit show. and getting stuck doing a slow charge to be able to get to another fast charger is a real downer and doesn't do much for helping the move towards EVs as newbies hear horror stories like this.

I have encountered non functioning chargers and have been fortunate to have been able to find close by (45 miles) alternatives.

do you use the plugshare app? if no, you should.
I also have chargepoint and evgo, and other local based aps on my phone.
in addition a better route planner is easy to use and I plot out all my out of range trips on it.

I always check plugshare prior to making a trip- for instance this is the report on EA Pismo- 6.2 - which means to me - avoid..... also I read the prior weeks checkins to identify if a particular charger seems to be having issues- can (but not always) avoid problems when pulling in and choosing the 'right charger"...

 

[slothinker]

I always check plugshare prior to making a trip- for instance this is the report on EA Pismo- 6.2 - which means to me - avoid..... also I read the prior weeks checkins to identify if a particular charger seems to be having issues- can (but not always) avoid problems when pulling in and choosing the 'right charger"...

No way to run a railroad.

 

[ejcintr]

No way to run a railroad.

I just took a look at plugshare- EA Central Coast looks like a warzone.. everything under partial repair or inoperable....

 

[slothinker]

I'm thinking EA isn't particularly serious about providing adequate charging services through their stations for the ever-increasing number of electric vehicles. If I'm not mistaken, VW undertook EA as part of its settlement after being found cheating on diesel mileage some years ago. That's not exactly a visionary business plan ... more like a way to get their fine reduced and/or allowed them to continue marketing in the U.S. w/out interruption.

They may be losing money on every charge-up which certainly would leave them not too adverse to being unreliable, undependable and, ultimately, unsuccessful and out of the charging business.

 

[submatrix]

As others mentioned, definitely download/check PlugShare next time. I took a look at Pismo Beach and it has a super low rating and every recent comment talks about having trouble charging. It's definitely a life saver to check the status before hitting a station so you know what to expect.

Honestly though, the EA charging situation in California is getting worse over time, especially with more and more EVs on the road. I just completed a norcal-socal trip myself this past weekend and had to skip Harris Ranch (along I-5) because 2 of the stations were broken and others were taken. Luckily I had enough juice to make it to the next stop so I didn't waste more than 5 minutes, but it's starting to make me seriously consider limiting my road trips until Tesla opens up their network so charger anxiety doesn't have to be a thing.

 

[ElGordo]

EA desperately needs a class action lawsuit as they can't keep pretending to be in business if chargers go unfixed for 5-6 months (!!!) and climbing as I have seen in certain locations.

yet they have the ballz to put out marketing hype that they are changing the labels to reflect HyperFast, UltraFast, etc

I may make up my own labels- HyperBroken, UltraBroken and start sticking them up

I don't know how they continue to benefit from OUR tax dollars to build new stations when they can't maintain what they have in place...

It's simply LAME

Sponsored