Electrify America Issues

[DirtyPop]

Geez, I would be happy to pay if I could find an EA charger that actually works. My local station with 4 units has at least two down all the time. They also have derated the chargers from a crappy 150kWh to 50kWh. What a joke.
I don't know about other folks but in the Northeast, the charging experience has deteriorated greatly since I purchased my Taycan in 5/21. Truth is - this car cannot be road tripped (unless you have much time to waste), thankfully I don't rely on it for road trips. If I downsize my current stable, no EV is in my future that is for certain.

I’m in the Bay Area and all EA stations have at least 50% of them down all the time. When I’m finally able to connect it has been charging around 40-50kWh. I got my GTS in 4/22 and the EA chargers worked great then. Now it is a terrible, terrible experience. I charge at home mostly now which totally negates the free 3 years of charging. My guess is EA will be out of business within a few years. They don’t care that we can’t charge because it is better for them when nothing works. They don’t have to pay for electricity. They probably already got paid the grant for the 3 years of charging for all of these EVs, so EA prefers we don’t charge.
I charged at Tesla the other day just to see how the experience was everything worked flawlessly. If Tesla opens up a bunch of their stations for non Tesla EVs EA will be toast. It’s so frustrating.

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[Jonathan S.]

^ EA can’t go out of business until it has spent the legally required $2b in officially defined Creditable Costs. What happens after that is unclear, although I suspect their stations will be sold off to other networks for a small fraction of that $2b. As for what is happening now, unfortunately the situation is the same for me now in the Northeast as it is for you in CA. Fortunately I’m also keeping a household ICE. And the EA frustrations during my big road trip this past week were significantly offset by the other aspects of my new-to-me 4CT. If you want to read more EA horror stories, then I highly recommend the EA FB Group, which also has some EA apologists for unintended comic relief.

 

[Jonathan S.]

Geez, I would be happy to pay if I could find an EA charger that actually works. My local station with 4 units has at least two down all the time. They also have derated the chargers from a crappy 150kWh to 50kWh. What a joke.
I don't know about other folks but in the Northeast, the charging experience has deteriorated greatly since I purchased my Taycan in 5/21. Truth is - this car cannot be road tripped (unless you have much time to waste), thankfully I don't rely on it for road trips. If I downsize my current stable, no EV is in my future that is for certain.

Curious which EA stations you have visited in the NE? Alas my experience with EA deterioration is similar to yours. But the Manchester NH station is now functional! Also the new Merrimack NH station was apparently installed already dysfunctional this month which thereby disproves any theory that high usage is the sole problem (not that this would help even if true).

 

[WattTurbo]

I’m in the Bay Area and all EA stations have at least 50% of them down all the time. When I’m finally able to connect it has been charging around 40-50kWh. I got my GTS in 4/22 and the EA chargers worked great then. Now it is a terrible, terrible experience.

This is exactly the same as my experience here in Houston. I too got mine in 4/22, and back then EA always worked, and when others complained about EA I was like "hmmm why do they think EA is so bad when it always worked for me?". I was able to charge at any time I wanted, and there'd be just one other car charging along side me. Now, all 4 stations are tied up pretty much from 6AM until midnight. And, just until recently, all chargers near my house maxed out at 50 kW, and half of them would be unavailable. For the time being though, the stations have been fixed, but lets see for how long.

 

[Archimedes]

Been saying this for a decade: if you can’t charge at home, don’t buy an EV yet. It’s not rocket science.

I have to say, I find it funny when people who spent $150k on a car, and another $5-6k getting it bubble wrapped, complain about not getting a few hundred dollars of free charging.

 

[DirtyPop]

Been saying this for a decade: if you can’t charge at home, don’t buy an EV yet. It’s not rocket science.

I have to say, I find it funny when people who spent $150k on a car, and another $5-6k getting it bubble wrapped, complain about not getting a few hundred dollars of free charging.

I could give two shits about the free charging. For me it is about principle. EA is supposed to work, it used to. Now it is trash. We can’t charge at every Tesla supercharging station yet so it makes road tripping kind of a pain in the ass. After spending $150,000 on the car and $2500 getting it “bubble wrapped” it shouldn’t be a headache to drive it 400 miles.

 

[gtm]

I have to say, I find it funny when people who spent $150k on a car, and another $5-6k getting it bubble wrapped, complain about not getting a few hundred dollars of free charging.

It is not even remotely related to getting "free" charging. Actually it's not free, it's prepaid charging. The problem is reliable charging. I just drove the Blue Ridge Parkway which has no EV charging. Any charging requires overnight level 2 or leaving the Parkway. Leave the highway and find out that the supposed 350 kW charger is nerfed to 100 kW with only two of the towers operating. Hardly ideal. So it's not the "free" it's the ability to count on getting a charge.

 

[FlyingPoint]

Curious which EA stations you have visited in the NE? Alas my experience with EA deterioration is similar to yours. But the Manchester NH station is now functional! Also the new Merrimack NH station was apparently installed already dysfunctional this month which thereby disproves any theory that high usage is the sole problem (not that this would help even if true).

The ones that come to mind are:
1. Fort Lee NJ - 4 stations. I have visited this site at least 30 times in the last year. Average up percentage was 50%. In addition, they were derated from 150kWh to 50 kWh. What is really stupid in that these stations are used by ride share drivers going and coming from NYC. There should be at least 8 stations, not 4 and certainly not derated. Totally unusable due to slow charging and high cue times.

2. Garden State Plaza, NJ - Impossible to charge without an hour wait time. Rarely is the station 100% up.

3. Riverside Square Mall (Simon Properties) - Brand new facility with 4 stations co-located right next to a 10 station Tesla Super Charger. No plug and Play. Every use requires an hour on the phone getting refunded.

Manorville, LI - Fairly new 4 station unit with two 350kWh chargers. Used them 4 0r 5 times, and never received more than 160 KWh.

 

[Archimedes]

It is not even remotely related to getting "free" charging. Actually it's not free, it's prepaid charging. The problem is reliable charging. I just drove the Blue Ridge Parkway which has no EV charging.

And the lack of reliable public charging infrastructure was a secret when you bought your car?

 

[gtm]

And the lack of reliable public charging infrastructure was a secret when you bought your car?

The public charging infrastructure was no surprise, in fact it was expected. I've been driving an EV for years and was quite familiar with EA and the associated problems.

The section of your post that I commented on was the part about people buying expensive cars objecting to paying for charging. Paying for a charge while road tripping isn't/shouldn't be an issue for anyone driving a Porsche. It's not knowing what the status of the chargers will be upon arrival. PlugShare helps but that isn't an answer to reliable charging hardware.

 

[daveo4EV]

I suspected it would not be as good as supercharging - I just never expected how bad they could make it - Supercharging is pretty painless and reliable - EA has achieved a whole new level of incompetence…

 

[DerekS]

I suspected it would not be as good as supercharging - I just never expected how bad they could make it - Supercharging is pretty painless and reliable - EA has achieved a whole new level of incompetence…

I wonder if it's EA's fault, or the charger manufacturers (who rely on Microsoft Windows in some cases!)

 

[daveo4EV]

I wonder if it's EA's fault, or the charger manufacturers (who rely on Microsoft Windows in some cases!)

it's 100% EA's fault in that they choose to accept lengthy outages and not provide timely repairs/support for their sites - I honestly believe it's cheaper for them to leave the sites offline/broken than it is to fix them and lower's monthly operating costs in that their electricity bills are lower…

they are a sham service and have no intention of providing reliable service at their locations - they can't even tell if their stations are online/offline and often times the customer support rep has no idea what the state of a given stall is

they lack any indication that they are interested in anything beyond "installing" a site - as to if it actually works - that's entirely besides the point.

 

[Scandinavian]

they are a shame service and have no itention of providing reliable service at their locations - they can't even tell if their stations are online/offline and often times the customer support rep has no idea what the state of a given stall is

It is sad to read stories about EA here. Very frustrating for all of you in the US.
Luckily here in Europe there is starting to build up some healthy competition from different networks! In France, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark and Norway at least, the development and experience as a user is very good.

Is there no way to get EA attention by writing to them with all the negative experience? Or do they just ignore any letters, Mail etc etc? You also have a number of You tubers like out of spec etc that could help to try to get a response from them? Or is that all just in vain? Terrible to read about all these issues.

 

[daveo4EV]

It is sad to read stories about EA here. Very frustrating for all of you in the US.
Luckily here in Europe there is starting to build up some healthy competition from different networks! In France, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark and Norway at least, the development and experience as a user is very good.

Is there no way to get EA attention by writing to them with all the negative experience? Or do they just ignore any letters, Mail etc etc? You also have a number of You tubers like out of spec etc that could help to try to get a response from them? Or is that all just in vain? Terrible to read about all these issues.

all indications are that while they do not know the precise status of any given station at any specific time - they do seem to have awareness about the general trend of their service and it's abysmal reputation and reliability record - in speaking with service tech and customer support people - they seem to feel there is a lack of urgency on mgmt.'s part to actually resolve the issues - they are in fact prioritizing commissioning of new sites vs. repairing old sites when there is a conflict with service technicians…

it's goes to the legal agreement foundation of their business which measure monies spent to build/install sites, but lacks any metrics for actual site operation - they are mandated by the legal agreement also for a certain amount of "communcation/advertisement" while their allocated budget for "operations/maintenance" is $0 - once a site is installed and commissioned EA has "done their job" and meets the terms of the legal agreement - for them to spend money on repairs would take money away from the mandated install/communication's expenditures…

it's a glorious sh*t show with no end in sight

and as I've stated before it must be really really really bad for Ford/GM to have abondoned them an gone begging to Elon for supercharger access…the subtext in that one move speaks volumes about EA

I've experience European fast charging the past couple of summers - it's great - and I'm jealous.

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