EA (Electrify America) Sucks - that is all

[DerekS]

Yesterday I used an EA charging station for the first time in a long while. It was near Waco TX where all stations were the updated 350 versions. All appeared to be functional based on looking at their screens. There was a Lucid charging and one other vehicle departed as I was pulling in. Plug and charge worked great and the charging rate started around 168kW (35% battery at start) and slowly tapered down from there (unplugged at 85%). Total time was 20 minutes. Another good EA experience for me.

I'm looking forward to trying that one on my next Austin trip.

I think they are now balanced - all capable of 350kW - so we no longer get a Bolt or Mach E ruining our charge.

Sponsored

 

[whitex]

I just completed 3500 miles coast to coast, almost entirely on EA DC charging (I had a couple of hotels with destination AC charging). While there were individual bad or limited stations, and on a couple of occasions I had to re-plug (same or different station) to establish a session, it never stranded me or even had me worry about it. Got different speeds, with 253KW being the highest I recall. All but a couple locations had working 350KW capable stations.

Also worth noting, this was on a brand new car, picked it from the dealer and started the road trip (will write up a trip report probably next weekend). It was worried EA would not work when just delivered, so I activated the charging subscription almost a month earlier on My Porsche (I linked my car to my account as soon as I got the VIN from TYD HTML). My reasoning was that maybe EA needs to propagate this information through their databases, so even though technically I lost a month of free charging, since my subscription started while the car was on the boat, I knew I needed it right away so it was a worth while gamble - I activated it in January, picked up the car in February. I have no idea if that helped, but plug-and-charge worked since day one for me.

 

[Hirschaj]

I had another great experience at EA yesterday, this time in Round Rock TX. This was also a site that consisted of all balanced 350kW charging stations. I pulled up, plugged the car in, charged to 85%, I unplugged and left. Did I just get lucky this weekend or is EA improving?

We still need waaay more charging stations though. Planning trips into South and West Texas can really suck depending on destination.

 

[DerekS]

I had another great experience at EA yesterday, this time in Round Rock TX. This was also a site that consisted of all balanced 350kW charging stations. I pulled up, plugged the car in, charged to 85%, I unplugged and left. Did I just get lucky this weekend or is EA improving?

We still need waaay more charging stations though. Planning trips into South and West Texas can really suck depending on destination.

That's exciting to hear RoundRock has the updated stations now! It was always a pretty good charge site already.

I hear you on south texas, twice I've had to skip Boxstoberfest because I wasn't confident in charging. I might YOLO it this year anyway

 

[thecoloradokid]

I had another great experience at EA yesterday, this time in Round Rock TX. This was also a site that consisted of all balanced 350kW charging stations. I pulled up, plugged the car in, charged to 85%, I unplugged and left. Did I just get lucky this weekend or is EA improving?

We still need waaay more charging stations though. Planning trips into South and West Texas can really suck depending on destination.

I just finished a round trip Denver to Houston run in my Ford F-150 lighting. I charged multiple times at the Electrify America chargers in Denton, Ennis, and Huntsville, and had no issues. Only the Ennis location has the new BTC chargers installed and they were flawless. Since Denton is a larger EA site right off of I-35, I am not sure why those have not been upgraded?

When I add this Houston run to the round trip Denver to Scottsdale trip I did in the middle of January in CT4s, I have done almost 4,000 miles of driving in six states and used 18 different Electrify America chargers. I never had a single issue charging.

Electrify America is not perfect, since I did see the occasional charging cabinets along both routes that were non-functional, but I think EA is a lot more reliable than most of the super negative individuals claim.

 

[DerekS]

Electrify America is not perfect, since I did see the occasional charging cabinets along both routes that were non-function, but I think EA is a lot more reliable than most of the super negative individuals claim.

I would agree with that. I've never been stranded by EA.

 

[Hirschaj]

I'm on Spring Break with the family in Florida and I had my first really bad EA experience yesterday. I'm using a rented Audi e-tron SUV and needed to drive across South Florida (starting up in St Pete area, headed south) from Naples over to Fort Lauderdale. My plan was to hit the EA station just east of Naples and charge to 80% to get me to another EA station in North Miami close to where I was headed. Well, the EA station in Naples was full when I got there. It had 4 charging points and 2 of them were plugged in and going super slow according to the car owners. The other 2 charge points had cars parked at them with the owners on the phone with EA trying to get them to start working.

So I checked plugshare and there was another DC charging station really close by at a Comfort Inn but when I got there it was completely down and being worked on. The tech said it was going to be a long wait until they got it fixed. So I had to backtrack about 20 minutes into Naples to a Genesis dealership that had 2 ChargePoint 62.5 units and thankfully only 1 of them was in use when I got there. The unit I plugged into worked great, delivering it's max charge rate the whole time. I charged for about 30 minutes to get enough electricity with some buffer to get me across alligator alley. The nice part was that the dealership had a nice lounge with free water and coffee (along with clean restrooms).

In total I think I lost ~1 hour due to the faulty EA station. Not terrible but definitely a frustrating experience. I did expect to hit some poorly functioning EA stations on this trip given that most bad reports seem to come from folks on the east and west coasts of the US.

I have visited 3 other EA stations on this same trip have worked well and charge the Audi at about 150kW.

tl;dr - I lost about 1 hour on a trip across South Florida due to a faulty EA station while on spring break vacation. A Genesis dealership with 62.5 kW charging saved the day. 3 other EA charging stations I've used on this trip worked great.

 

[submatrix]

I'm on Spring Break with the family in Florida and I had my first really bad EA experience yesterday. I'm using a rented Audi e-tron SUV and needed to drive across South Florida (starting up in St Pete area, headed south) from Naples over to Fort Lauderdale. My plan was to hit the EA station just east of Naples and charge to 80% to get me to another EA station in North Miami close to where I was headed. Well, the EA station in Naples was full when I got there. It had 4 charging points and 2 of them were plugged in and going super slow according to the car owners. The other 2 charge points had cars parked at them with the owners on the phone with EA trying to get them to start working.

So I checked plugshare and there was another DC charging station really close by at a Comfort Inn but when I got there it was completely down and being worked on. The tech said it was going to be a long wait until they got it fixed. So I had to backtrack about 20 minutes into Naples to a Genesis dealership that had 2 ChargePoint 62.5 units and thankfully only 1 of them was in use when I got there. The unit I plugged into worked great, delivering it's max charge rate the whole time. I charged for about 30 minutes to get enough electricity with some buffer to get me across alligator alley. The nice part was that the dealership had a nice lounge with free water and coffee (along with clean restrooms).

In total I think I lost ~1 hour due to the faulty EA station. Not terrible but definitely a frustrating experience. I did expect to hit some poorly functioning EA stations on this trip given that most bad reports seem to come from folks on the east and west coasts of the US.

I have visited 3 other EA stations on this same trip have worked well and charge the Audi at about 150kW.

tl;dr - I lost about 1 hour on a trip across South Florida due to a faulty EA station while on spring break vacation. A Genesis dealership with 62.5 kW charging saved the day. 3 other EA charging stations I've used on this trip worked great.

Sorry to hear you experienced that. Does the Genesis dealership offer free charging to everyone/anyone?

 

[Hirschaj]

Sorry to hear you experienced that. Does the Genesis dealership offer free charging to everyone/anyone?

The charge at the Genesis dealership was a paid charge through ChargePoint. It was more expensive than EA but it actually worked!

 

[daveo4EV]

The charge at the Genesis dealership was a paid charge through ChargePoint. It was more expensive than EA but it actually worked!

charging costs are nearly irrelevant to me - when i’m fast charging i’m paying for time savings not kwh’s - which is why when EA doesn’t work or is slow or i have to sit on hold for longer than my anticipated charge session i get very frustrated

 

[_Brian_]

Experienced today what I think is a true representation of Electrify America's values as they relate to customer experience. My closest EA charging station is located at EA headquarter office in Reston, VA. When I arrived today, 2 of the 4 chargers (all 350 KwH) were out of service and the other 2 occupied. The is the location were EA does a lot of testing and research. I have had many discussions with their engineers while charging previously. One would think that this would be a showcase location, but alas, not the case. The last time I was there, 1 charger was out of service. I asked the engineers why EA tolerates chargers not being available at their headquarters, their response was that EA does not maintain or repair chargers. whenever they are notified of a faulty charger, they raise a repair ticker for a contractor to schedule a repair. I think as long as they use this service/maintenance model, EA will never gain true creditability with customers.

 

[bsclywilly]

I had a wonderful experience at an EA station in Auburn, CA yesterday heading to Tahoe from the Bay! Plug and charge worked great, I was at a low SoC and 90+F battery temp. Started charging right away at around 230kW. Great!

But… earlier that day I failed to charge at 2 EA stations and the third was maxed out at 72kW when I needed about 60% charge to get to my destination, moved on, but not after trying a couple other plugs/stations. Such a waste of time. Added 1.5h trying different plugs, initiating unsuccessfully with app, on the phone with EA. They do seem to be a bit faster with initiating remote charges but one of the stations in Roseville Galleria couldn’t even be reached with their customer service. Another station earlier in the day had to be reset before it would work. Moving around plugs at these problematic stations I also encountered broken handles and latches rendering the charger useless. The sight of other users on the phone troubleshooting their charger is a familiar one these days. I even notice some people pulling up to stations and immediately getting on their phone which might just be a smart tactic. This trip was not this difficult 6-12months ago.

I charge at home and work most of the time but I expect these chargers to work if I’m headed out of town.

 

[xyeahtony]

I think as long as they use this service/maintenance model, EA will never gain true creditability with customers.

EA only exists because of a punishment to their founding company. Not a good foundation to start a business on. Hopefully the desire to turn a profit now that Tesla is competing will force them to try just a tad bit harder. As we've seen in europe, it is very possible to build a functioning and reliable CCS network.

 

[whitex]

EA only exists because of a punishment to their founding company. Not a good foundation to start a business on. Hopefully the desire to turn a profit now that Tesla is competing will force them to try just a tad bit harder. As we've seen in europe, it is very possible to build a functioning and reliable CCS network.

EA is a sad collaboration of many companies. Too many cooks in the kitchen. Nothing beats a smart dictator with a strong vision, who makes unilateral decisions, as long as the dictator is right most of the time. Design by committee typically yields sub-par compromise solutions. EA was funded by VW, they should have developed a proper charging network for VW and then allows others to use it, not invite everyone to the design table. Tesla did it, now everyone is begging or even strong-arming them to allow others to use it.

As a side note, I heard Tesla gave up some government incentives in California over a requirement that all stations must have screens and accept credit cards. So no sharing at those stations, due to government now stepping up to the design table, thinking they know better (or perhaps being bribed by whatever payment companies they required Tesla to incorporate).
https://electrek.co/2023/03/14/tesl...ing-superchargers-payment-system-integration/
It does make me think, many governments in North America require users to have phones to collect benefits, prove vaccinations, etc. And yet, they will try to force car charging companies to not require apps. What's next, require accepting payment in coins and paper bills?

 

[xyeahtony]

It does make me think, many governments in North America require users to have phones to collect benefits, prove vaccinations, etc. And yet, they will try to force car charging companies to not require apps. What's next, require accepting payment in coins and paper bills?

Not trying to be political but its because Biden is super old and probably can't use a smartphone so he doesn't expect his peers to be able to use one either, hence the card reader requirement. lol.

But no in all seriousness, its because of the accessibility issue. its silly but i guess theres a sizable portion of people who don't own smartphones or can't figure it out.

Sponsored