Electrify America experience

[ejcintr]

I want to sue Porsche and EA.

EA for not maintaining any standard of maintenance or support

Porsche for an extra year of free charging

please contact me if you are a lawyer with class action experience as I have documented every charge since owning my CT4's almost two years now.

btw EA just let their US support staff go last month as a cost savings measure so your calls now go to.....

A. Philippines
B. India
C. My 83 year old mother

answer is A

It ensures more epic suckiness

Well that sucks (moving to phillipines)... EA support once you got a hold of them... was not bad e.g. they tried to solve the issue... I have not charged at an EA station in a while - how has the phillipines support staff been working so far?

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[ElGordo]

All that free charging going to waste as I have been driving my Rivian on long distance trips now despite LOVING my CT4's.

Mostly to avoid EA deprecated service along the entire north east corridor that's gotten progressively WORSE.

Our tax dollars at work funding mediocrity...

free isn't free if you are spending 40 extra minutes at a site trying to get enough charge when every 350 actually only does 50-100 in reality. (And that's at below 20% state of charge for those who may want to ask)

EA is why Tesla will be a huge success as paying out right for 20 minute charging beats free for an hour plus...

 

[Archimedes]

What? 40 extra minutes charging at 100kwh? I can go from 20-85% in about 30 minutes at 100kwh.

Please show your math…

 

[Jonathan S.]

[...] Our tax dollars at work funding mediocrity... [...]

EA's $2b represents our tax $ only in the sense that if VAG had balked at any kind of supplemental environmental project / environmentally beneficial expenditure / whatever they're called these days (I haven't worked on that subject for several years), then most likely the cash penalty would have been higher, and the U.S. Treasury would have been that much more flush, so perhaps our taxes would be lower -- or something like that, depending on your views of the opportunity cost and/or fungibility of funds.

But otherwise, yes, EA seems to be going from bad to worse in the Northeast.
Although I see that two stations in north metro Boston are being replaced entirely. So perhaps this will be like my alcoholic friend who finally hit rock bottom and then rebounded significantly to be better off than previously.

 

[Jonathan S.]

[...] please contact me if you are a lawyer with class action experience as I have documented every charge since owning my CT4's almost two years now. [...]

I am an economist who works for lawyers on various types of cases, including two class action lawsuits at the moment.
(And of course I too document all my DCFC charges.)
But I can't think of any grounds for a lawsuit. (Even though I would love to perform calculations for the damages suffered by EV drivers as a class from EA's subpar reliability.)

I have reviewed (although admittedly only briefly):

• the consent decree, i.e., official VAG lawsuit settlement that put into place EA for spending $2b on charging infrastructure and related EV initiatives
• 30-month investment plans, i.e., how EA is going to spend the $2b
• quarterly report, i.e., how EA has been spending the $2b, how much kWh has been delivered, and the % utilization at EA locations which of course is meaninglessly low since it includes the wee hours of the morning

Links below.
As far as I can tell, EA is in compliance with the consent decree.
https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2016-10/documents/amended20lpartial-cd.pdf
https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/resources/documents/zev-investment-plans
https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/resources/documents/electrify-america-reports

 

[gtm]

free isn't free

That's what really hurts. There is no way included charging was free. We paid for it when we purchased the car. It's right there on the Monroney sticker as a line item.

"3 Years of 30 min DC Charging Sessions w/ Electrify America".

Doesn't say a thing about sessions being successful or at the expected charge rate. But the crappy equipment almost always guarantees that I'll need at least 30 minutes, so Porsche is living up to that part of the sale. Apparently the Taycan attracted a lot of first time Porsche buyers. Porsche is killing any chance of selling those people another Porsche. At least in my case, unless they fix things quickly. Like getting access to the Tesla network. I road trip frequently and while the car is a superb ride the EA network ruins it.

 

[Tooney]

My call to EA today while I was charging was answered by US-based rep.

 

[SergeyIndy]

Super excited to report that a new EA station finally opened in our very popular area, at a very convenient crossroads point. I did not believe this would ever happen, thinking no way they are opening more, although it was as Coming Soon for at least a year I noted. I wonder how many can report of being aware of a Coming Soon EA station and then it became real. Now I am thinking, well great, I have 2 of them near my home about 10 min away, one to the East and the other to the West, and I do not even need them, plus my dealer is 10 min away having 2 fast ones, and a fast EVGo also 10 min where the roads fork down above the word Carmel. This is a good problem to have as negative news keep coming about lack of charge points and yes we need more to make longer trips less stressful, but glad to see Coming Soons become Real. However, we have so many EVs now around and while most of them I am sure charge at home, the new EA station was instantly 3/6 in use around 5pm.

 

[ciaranob]

I was glad to see that the got another Station up and running last month or so with 4 x 350 kW chargers in Seguin TX (another coming nearby in New Braunfels soon) - provides a nice addl option when traveling along the I10 corridor between Houston and San Antonio.

 

[Capt Mike]

Everytime I tried EA the charing the experience was not seamless. On average I have to spend an hour to get someone on the phone to unlock the Charger because I get a „payment failed“ message using Plug‘n Charge. Sometimes it asks me to pay myself at the stall. And twice in over a 100 tries it actually worked as expected. Why this inconsistency is still a mystery. And I am starting to hate the gimmicky electric charge door, coz the time for it to close automatically coincides with the time the EA stall needs to recover for a retry.

Fastforward: In my frustration searching for a Community with similar problems I find a random guy on reddit that tells me that this area in the MyPorsche App is actually a hidden button (conveniently located unintuitively right next to an actual red button):

I have not tried yet if it improves my EA charging experience. Does it actually work or is the Kwallity consistent with the overall Software Situation?

My reaction to this was just:

Yes and don’t go to the map. Just go to the charger.

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