DCFC Bermuda Triangle: Massachusetts I-91 Exit 43 (Greenfield)

[Zcd1]

And finally, the best for last.
In terms of entertainment value.
Or at least, analytical intrigue potential?

Route 2 further west of Greenfield is known as the Mohawk Trail, full of absurd tourist traps, now mostly gone, abandoned, decaying, etc. But when I often drove there in the late 80s for my college ski team, it was still in its heyday.

Perhaps the most prominent was the Big Indian Shop, complete with a … big Indian.

Here he is:

… or rather, was, since after about half-a-century, it was neither standing up well to the weather or to the changing political winds.

Of course, once the new owners found some business willing to cart the thing away, after enduring criticism from all the cultural warriors, now the new owners endured criticism from all the locals who missed their favorite local landmark – damned if you do, damned if you don’t!

When I was driving by there this ski season, I caught some object there that look like … EV chargers? I pulled over into the renamed Native and Himalayan Views shop.

Yep, definitely EV chargers! Everything was ready to go, complete with good signage, etc.

Except they were not working yet:

https://www.plugshare.com/location/722964

Hmm.

Called the network operator. Which actually answered my call. (Another attempt later on that ski season to reach ViaLynk resulted in being placed on hold, then reaching … an answering service? Which took my phone number yet never called. I tried again a couple hours later with exactly the same results.)

Service ticked showed everything ready to go on their end back in August 2024.

Hmm.

Called the landowner, which is an underground utility contractor.
Nope, they’re not the landowner: they own only a sliver of that corner, and hence the big sign there advertises their own company, just down a side street.
(Apparently nobody wants to pay them anymore to have to sign advertise anyone or anything else, as I recall from the past.)

Emailed Native and Himalayan Views. Never heard back. Called the phone number, but wasn’t encouraged by the recording which just a generic prerecorded greeting, not their own. Plus I was pretty sure they were closed at that time of year.

Hmm.

Given the odd location, and the most likely limited resources of Himalayan and Native Views, some sort of state funding had to be involved.

Emailed the Massachusetts Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs at the address prominently listed on the Contact Us section.

Never heard back.

Hmm.

Emailed the Deputy Communications Director at her prominently listed email address.

Never heard back.

Hmm.

Meanwhile, summer tourist trap season had arrived, so called Native and Himalayan Views again. Still the generic greeting. I didn’t leave a message, but, wow, they called me back!

The only thing they knew is that they are not the station owner.

So who is the station owner?
“Don’t know!”
When will it be working?
“Don’t know!”

Definitely some ESL issues going on here, but the bottomline was … Don’t know!

Checked the website again for the Massachusetts Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs.

A website was now listed for the Director of Communications. Tried that. And … received a reply!

With the email address for the “EV charging team” at the electric utility.

Maybe I’ll receive a reply? Go EV charging team, you can do it!

Your apparent morbid fascination with random semi/non-functional DCFC stations is sort of……fascinating? ??

I’ll add that I’m happy to have very rarely needed non-Tesla DCFCharging…or maybe I’d be just as fascinated…

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[Jonathan S.]

Your apparent morbid fascination with random semi/non-functional DCFC stations is sort of……fascinating? ??

I’ll add that I’m happy to have very rarely needed non-Tesla DCFCharging…or maybe I’d be just as fascinated…

Guilty as charged!

Even aside from the personal need (which is fortunately quite rare), I am astonished from a public policy perspective that so many government initiatives have fared so poorly. Even the responses from VT, MA, and U.S. government agencies have been distressing (when they do respond).

I appreciate that DCFC equipment is complex and inherently prone to outages. Even the Tesla app sometimes shows out-of-order posts / pedestals. But the networks that are plagued by handshake problems are so perplexing …

Makes me think back as a kid to how supermarkets didn’t accept credit cards. Now I don’t even show my credit card, and instead use my phone. We economists were taught about the importance of transaction costs, yet in so many areas of commerce, those costs have greatly diminished. Now for DCFC we often have transaction costs in terms of significant time sinks and sanity hits!

 

[Voltaire]

I've really been enjoying these entertaining tales of our current charging infrastructure, especially as a fellow New Englander. Good travel writing is worth a detour.

 

[Jonathan S.]

^ These tales are indeed entertaining -- just so long as the tales are not experienced first-hand!

 

[Zcd1]

Guilty as charged!

Even aside from the personal need (which is fortunately quite rare), I am astonished from a public policy perspective that so many government initiatives have fared so poorly. Even the responses from VT, MA, and U.S. government agencies have been distressing (when they do respond).

I appreciate that DCFC equipment is complex and inherently prone to outages. Even the Tesla app sometimes shows out-of-order posts / pedestals. But the networks that are plagued by handshake problems are so perplexing …

Makes me think back as a kid to how supermarkets didn’t accept credit cards. Now I don’t even show my credit card, and instead use my phone. We economists were taught about the importance of transaction costs, yet in so many areas of commerce, those costs have greatly diminished. Now for DCFC we often have transaction costs in terms of significant time sinks and sanity hits!

I don’t think DCFC equipment is necessarily inherently unreliable. In 7+ years of driving Teslas, I’ve never actually encountered a non-functional Supercharger that wasn’t physically damaged.

It seems to me that the unreliability is tied to those stations’ fundamental design, rather than DCFC technology itself.

Tesla seems to have kept “KISS” in mind when designing Superchargers.

Other network operators notsomuch.

 

[Jonathan S.]

^ Okay, how about let's change that to ... DCFC equipment is complex, requires periodic maintenance, and will become unreliable if not designed with reliability in mind?

Good point about how those posts / pedestals reported in the app as out of order might have suffered external damage. I saw one such damaged post/pedestal. Clearly a vehicle had bashed into it. (Oddly enough, it was the only post/pedestal that lacked a bollard.) Was a great opportunity to see what inside: almost nothing! Everything else is in the shared power cabinets.

Interesting website here:
https://socalevsp.com/service/tesla-supercharger-maintenance-repairs/

IIRC, Tesla addresses the problem of cable degradation simply by replacing cables after a certain set interval. The used cables are even available on eBay:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/354950700199
(No, they're not stolen cables, since they have all the internal connections. I'm not sure though what they could be used for, but must be something valuable, since the prices are not cheap.)

Meanwhile, Western Mass in general just seems to be cursed for DCFC.
A station opened last month at the Town Clerk's office right at the exit we take from the Mass Pike, so would be perfectly if running low and not sure if we can make the final 18 miles to home.
Except:
https://www.plugshare.com/location/730187
"4 Police & police officer personal vehicles (all ICE) were parked in the spots even though there were plenty of open spaces."

 

[Jonathan S.]

So regarding this Station of Mystery:
https://www.plugshare.com/location/722964
... the utility's "EV Project Manager" called me this morning.
We talked for ten minutes.

I had been given his contact information by the state gov't Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs (after my third attempt to get a response from the state gov't, going all the way back to March).

This was after contacting the site/land owner, who had no idea about the station, other than how the trinket shop is not the station owner.

And this was after contacting the network operator during the winter, who though the site work had been completed (but for the utility hookup) back in August 2024.

The utility's EV Project Manager has no information, but agrees with me that several aspects of this mystery station are ... mysterious. He asked me lots of questions (which of course I couldn't answer -- no, I don't have the most recent work order number!) and will do some add'l research then get back to me.

 

[Jonathan S.]

And your update from the People's Republic of Massachusetts:

1. Over a year after the completion of its construction, the Station of Mystery is still not operational.
2. Over three years after federal approval of the state's NEVI plan, not a single site has been selected.
3. Almost two months after I first contacted the state DOT Chief *COMMUNICATIONS* Officer (2023 salary = $168,185.30), I still have not received a substantive answer to my inquiry regarding the NEVI status (which I determined from a national website).
4. What could be the most flawed ever DCFC station in the state is now under construction.

I came upon item #4 by chance since it's in the parking lot where my daughter and I often play tennis.
This is such a killer combination:

1. CCS1 DCFC
2. Massachusetts publicly funded EV charging
3. Town of Amherst
4. Amherst-Pelham Regional District
5. Amherst Regional Middle School

Now granted, might be irrelevant that the physical site is at the Middle School, and the school district might have nothing to do with it.
But the Middle School is always so messed up that when our daughter was in 7th grade there, it was the subject of a New Yorker article:
https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-education/the-meltdown-at-a-middle-school-in-a-liberal-town
Unfortunately that article has since retreated behind a paywall.

Some great discussion though on-line regarding some of my favorite excerpts:

*****

“The left is eating its own all over the country—it’s not just Amherst.”



"Of course the left of Amherst aren't eating their own; they're vegan."

*****

"Dykes also allegedly told colleagues that one teacher was “practicing seances and witchcraft right in this school.” (Dykes denied making this charge against her colleague, adding, “If she practices witchcraft, that’s her prerogative.”)"



"As a Salem resident I would like to respectfully ask them to stay off our turf."
"Like they're misappropriating your culture?"
"Exactly. We own the patent on calling people we have personal problems with "witches"."

 

[Voltaire]

Huh. Applegreen Electric again.

When I was car shopping last year the salesman at the Lucid place was talking about new Applegreen chargers around New Haven CT, since I had mentioned that was a place I drive to fairly often. There are not many high-speed chargers around New Haven. Since then I've seen a few Applegreen chargers when passing through CT and NY, but they've all been 150kW stations, and they tend to be 4 plugs, so they're not exactly chargers I'd make a detour for. So I've never been to one, even though there is a small one just north of New Haven on Rt 15. My current favorite charger for that trip, though, is the big Mercedes Alpitronic installation in Vernon.

If you can stomach a lot of marketing text, it sounds like Applegreen have signed a pretty large contract for chargers in MA: https://www.applegreen.com/massachusetts/.

It's an Irish company; here's a little more info about the deal from there. No mention of NEVI funding for this batch, and this deal seems to have been signed around the end of July 2025.

 

[Flying ace]

Applegreen has been installing Alpitronic HYC 400s recently

 

[Jonathan S.]

Applegreen kicked out all the Tesla Superchargers at the New Jersey turnpike rest stops, as part of Applegreen's concession to run all the other aspects of the rest stops.
I don't know how well those Applegreen charging stations work at the NJ rest stops, since we were in our ICE this summer when passing through, but they were heavily advertised, both on the large LED signs spanning multiple lanes and within the rest stops.

Were Applegreen to take over the charging stations at the Mass Pike rest stops, definitely can't get any worse, since they are currently Autel chargers, 60kW if solo and otherwise a 40/20 split.

 

[Zcd1]

Saw this blurb today, thought it tangentially applied, at least, with one location in MA…

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1AZSwRmmAX/?mibextid=wwXIfr

Also, WTH is going on with those charger names?!?

 

[Tooney]

Even aside from the personal need (which is fortunately quite rare), I am astonished from a public policy perspective that so many government initiatives have fared so poorly. Even the responses from VT, MA, and U.S. government agencies have been distressing (when they do respond).

Astonished so many government initiatives have fared poorly?

 

[Jonathan S.]

Astonished so many government initiatives have fared poorly?

I sincerely would have thought that both federal and state governments would have been capable of paying private companies to build DCFC stations.
And NY has a good track record.
By contrast though, here are two VT stations, both with 1.0 PlugShare scores, both on the Blink network:

 

[Jonathan S.]

If you can stomach a lot of marketing text, it sounds like Applegreen have signed a pretty large contract for chargers in MA: https://www.applegreen.com/massachusetts/.

So much for that upgrade:
https://www.cbsnews.com/boston/news/applegreen-mass-highway-service-plaza-contract/

Meanwhile, the chargers are in place at the middle school:

The only identifier I could find was “Samwoo” on the plug.

The AI answer follows below, but when I split it into two words and added EV Charger to my search I found some relevant hits.

“"Samwoo" likely refers to the Sam Woo Restaurant chain, known for Hong Kong-style Chinese cuisine, especially its BBQ meats, with many locations in Southern California, Las Vegas, and Toronto. However, "Sam Woo" can also be a brand name for guitar parts (SAMWOO MANUFACTURING) or packaging machinery (Samwoo Automation). Another possibility is the historic San Francisco restaurant named Sam Wo (different spelling, single 'o'), famous for its late-night atmosphere and Beat Generation history. “

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