Inside Scoop from Electrify America Tech

[CinVinman]

I was visiting my local EA fast (lol) charger and a couple of the stations were being worked on. I plugged in and pulled the usual 90-95k kW from the 350 charger. I went over to talk to the Tech who was there and he said a couple things that were eye-opening.

He said he worked for the Korean company that supplied the charging units to EA. He said there were a total of FOUR (4)!!! employees covering the entire US for maintaining their network of chargers. I asked three times, still hard to believe.

He also showed me how he accessed the status of the station as a whole (security code was needed) and it showed that well over half of whatever the big units are behind the fence were inoperable. He said those 4 folks had to come out and replace them.

I am still in disbelief.

Of course, I also can't believe this Lucid owner pulled in and literally stopped my session so he could plug in. I thought that he must be a newbie, but no, he owned the car for over a year. I don't know about the rest of you, but when I first bought the car in 2020, I would never see anyone at the charging stations. Now, there is at least one person there every time I charge up.

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[ciaranob]

I was visiting my local EA fast (lol) charger and a couple of the stations were being worked on. I plugged in and pulled the usual 90-95k kW from the 350 charger. I went over to talk to the Tech who was there and he said a couple things that were eye-opening.

He said he worked for the Korean company that supplied the charging units to EA. He said there were a total of FOUR (4)!!! employees covering the entire US for maintaining their network of chargers. I asked three times, still hard to believe.

He also showed me how he accessed the status of the station as a whole (security code was needed) and it showed that well over half of whatever the big units are behind the fence were inoperable. He said those 4 folks had to come out and replace them.

I am still in disbelief.

Of course, I also can't believe this Lucid owner pulled in and literally stopped my session so he could plug in. I thought that he must be a newbie, but no, he owned the car for over a year. I don't know about the rest of you, but when I first bought the car in 2020, I would never see anyone at the charging stations. Now, there is at least one person there every time I charge up.

Interesting but not sure I believe that all service in the entire US is down to 4 individuals!
I saw servicing being performed at two separate EA stations by 3rd party service techs in 2022 (I posted pics in my Texas hill country trip report) in San Antonio and Columbus,TX, so perhaps he meant these chaps oversee 3rd party service companies to do the actual maintenance - but still sounds weird!

Here are the pics from https://www.taycanforum.com/forum/t...rk-and-mini-trip-report-to-hill-country.9783/

San Antonio, TX:

And this chap, an engineer servicing a unit near Columbus, TX who was driving a new Mustang E - was at the 350 kWh pump despite only being able to use 150 kWh!!
But he did move off when I asked if I could access it

Columbus/Alleyton TX

 

[kort]

Of course, I also can't believe this Lucid owner pulled in and literally stopped my session so he could plug in.

how did he stop your charge?

 

[CinVinman]

how did he stop your charge?

I am not 100% sure as I don't visit those stations much but I believe there is a menu key to stop charging on the screen.

 

[npx]

I am not 100% sure as I don't visit those stations much but I believe there is a menu key to stop charging on the screen.

what a cunt

 

[Archimedes]

He can stop the charge at the charger, but he still shouldn’t be able to unplug the charger from the car without the key.

BTW, there is no way the entire Electrify America charging network is maintained by four people. It’s physically impossible.

 

[Vercingetorix]

Maybe he only worked on the Signet chargers?

 

[xyeahtony]

He said he worked for the Korean company that supplied the charging units to EA. He said there were a total of FOUR (4)!!! employees covering the entire US for maintaining their network of chargers. I asked three times, still hard to believe.

Not saying you're wrong, but i wonder if that tech realizes that EA sources chargers from 4 different companies. Maybe only 4 techs can service that particular brand of charger, but i'm sure they have techs for the other bands. ABB, Signet, BTC & Efacec. Signet is the korean manufacturer, so maybe they only have 4 techs? still hard to believe.

 

[WasserGKuehlt]

Of course, I also can't believe this Lucid owner pulled in and literally stopped my session so he could plug in. I thought that he must be a newbie, but no, he owned the car for over a year.

And you stopped his session, in turn, right? How else will the assholes understand?

Last week I went to an EA charger in Leavenworth, WA. 2x150kW, both available, both saying “running with reduced power”. 2x350kW, each supplying energy to a Bolt EV, respectively. The Bolts were drawing 22kW. I plugged in into one of the 150 stations, and managed to charge at a bit over 100kW.

But it got me thinking about the importance of charging etiquette. I do get that chargers are a scarce commodity, and so “first come, first served” applies well and fully. You wouldn’t begrudge, for instance, a camper with a smaller tent being first and taking a larger site than perhaps they needed, so why would I begrudge those Bolt people their poor awareness of the laws of electricity, or of the technical details of their car?

On the other side, though, I just don’t see how EV ownership can ever be truly widespread without raising that awareness - have the masses know basic facts about electricity, which is more than ICE demanded.

As an aside, this 350kW station had two ports but only allowed one session at a time. I tried to “nudge” the clueless Bolt owner into a conversation by attempting to share their station, but it’s as if it were inert (the station, that is): plugging in was a no-op, and I figure that, if I had stopped their session, I’d have been able to take over the station. This is very uncool, and a major design flaw IMO.

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