The next question becomes how much is it going to cost you. You will have to create an account and how much will they charge for creating an account? How much are they going to pre-draw from your credit card?
You were doing great up until the last sentence. EA has 2 types of sites: highway and community (or urban). Highway site stalls are all 150 kW or above. Community site stalls originally included 3 or more 50 kW along with a single 240V level 2 charging post. A year or two ago they switched plans to use 150 kW stalls instead of 50 kW and to typically have more like 6 stalls rather than 3. These community sites are present in around a dozen metro areas (I’ve forgotten the exact number) including many outside of California. In order for a car to support the ISO Plug&Charge capability it needs not just additional software but also some added crypto hardware to hold the public keys and certificates used during authentication. CCS uses the same basic communication protocols as the Internet (TCP/IP). The data is physically carried over a pin in the CCS plug. Roughly speaking, the car initiates an SSL/TLS encrypted and authenticated session with the charger much like browsers connect with TLS for https URLs. Once there is a secure connection the car and charger then exchange more keys to authenticate the billing. When you use Plug&Charge your charging account is not with the charger company (EA etc.) but with a single entity that you choose to do your charge billing. Car companies want to do this for you so Porsche, VW, Mercedes etc. will offer this in order to keep you loyal and connected with their future marketing. You will also likely be able to choose other charging providers (ChargePoint, EA, will likely do this). You will be able to drive up to any Plug&Charge site and plug in. Your single billing provider will handle the transaction and you will be whatever the local charger pricing is. You could also potentially have additional billing accounts that provide cheaper fees at some branded sites etc. such as a subscription style account. The mechanism is intended to be flexible and not lock you in to one provider, as I understand it.
There are some folks that will NEVER buy a Tesla. They can't handle the rapid improvements and changes that happen with the updates. They need to have what they bought and have it not change. Change is hard for some folks, maybe many folks. Since Tesla supercharging is propietary, all of the other brands, VW, Audi, Porsche, Volvo, Rivian, Lucid have jumped onto the CCS/CHAdeMo standards. I suspect with Europe going CCS, that may eventually win the majority. As you may have seen recently, USA is not a united country. Different strokes for different folks, even if it makes no sense.
Pretty sure their question was strictly in the context of Tesla owners, i.e. why would US Tesla owners need it when there are cheap superchargers everywhere. It's very clear that drivers of other cars definitely need CCS/CHAdeMO DCFC.
OMG. Boise to Winnemucca: no Supercharger. Boise to Bend, Oregon: no Supercharger. And those just happen to be two directions of highly traveled routes out of the city I live in. This assuming that all routes are covered by Superchargers is just not accurate.
Yeah, I wasn't agreeing with the premise of the underlying question, just clarifying and restating it for Puma2020. There are clearly a few areas of the US without supercharger coverage of even major regional routes. That said, from an Australian's perspective, like the original commenter's, the limitations and gaps of the supercharger network in the US likely seem pretty damn small.
I haven't followed Taycan as I have no interest but I glanced at Porsche Car Configurator - Porsche USA and tried to build and even for the 4S model, I noticed under E-Mobility: No wonder I see check-ins on Plugshare on EA stations by Taycan drivers, including a Bolt driver I know who told me he was getting a Taycan. Gotta love the suspicions that a bunch of us had about VW's clever move to allow the dieselgate $ to benefit themselves since VW now owns Porsche.
The way in which the use of some Dieselgate funds to build out EA network benefits VW always struck me as a bit ironic - that the punishment is actually intertwining us more deeply and inextricably with VW. However, it didn’t bother me too much because I’ve always felt the legal theory that consumers have suffered a loss because of the emissions testing cheats or that states even suffered a loss was shaky and indirect at best - so the state-by-state settlements seemed inappropriate and excessive to me. It still strikes me a bit odd that, excluding the Tesla supercharger network, our biggest and fastest-growing DC fast-charging network is being built out by a foreign company. I don’t know if enough people realize that this is going to constitute critical infrastructure sometime very soon. It may take longer in the US than elsewhere (a lot more people, a lot more infrastructure, and a strong car culture that seems very different from anywhere else), but control of that infrastructure would give the controlling entity a strangle-hold on us.
True, but the EA investments are only one part of the legal settlement. It was a way of encouraging VW to follow an aggressive EV business model. And it worked. VW’s main punitive damages involve the $~1.9 billion payment into the environmental trust fund for the states over which VW has no control. Also, the recall and repurchase of large numbers of cars they sold with defective emissions. I’ve lost track of the current over-all estimate of settlement costs in the US alone but it is several times larger than the $1 billion that they are forced to invest via Electrify America.
Yes, and the Model S 60 only had 208 rated miles when brand new. My 2014 S 85 only just barely holds 250 rated miles at 100%. That stretch is still a nail biter for some of the newer big battery cars that aren't 400 rated miles of range. I fully know that there are other countries like Canada and Australia that have it way harder, but I was pointing out how flippantly saying all the U.S. is done is kinda wrong when I still use our Honda Civic for some of these trips.
Try it with a head wind, snow or worse, both. I recently did Louisville, KY to Mount Vernon, IL - only 200 miles but had a 20 MPH head wind with 50 MPH gusts. I drafted a semi at 60 MPH for half of it and arrived with 6% after departing with 98% in a long range Model 3 (284 miles current rated range at 100%).
EA charging rates start at 0.31 cents per kW in the 23 states that allow them to charge per kW. This includes the rate for the CCS chargers up to 350kW. A membership fee is required but with some car companies this fee does not exist. Plug and charge capabilities with no need for credit card use exists with some car companies. A few car companies include three years of free and unlimited EA charging. A non-membership charging rate of 0.43 cents per kW is the other price in these states. As for black holes in the charging network, there are Zero-yes zero-superchargers in the UP of Michigan. One can not drive from the bridge at the UP entrance across the UP, thru northern Wisconsin to Duluth, Minnesota because there is no Superchargers in the northern portion of Wisconsin to allow such.
In the bolded parts, you meant kWh. kWh are units of energy. kW are units of power. If you don't understand the difference, please see Near Turtle to cells balanced: 20.8 kW with 2015 Leaf with 24 kW battery: Low kW? As expected? Battery losing capacity? - My Nissan Leaf Forum, for example. Two of these "few car companies" I think you're referring to are Porsche (owned by VW) and VW. And, EA is owned and funded by VW of America, as penance for dieselgate. Gotta love it that VW was allowed to spend $2 billion of their own money as punishment that lets them benefit their own vehicles.
Ford, Hyundai/Kia, Volvo, Lucid Air all have plug and charge deals with EA. Ford provides 250kWh of free EA charging. Lucid Air and VW ID4 owners receive three years of free charging. Ford provides three years of free EA membership fees.
AFAIK, Ford isn't shipping any EVs in the US at the moment, as that stopped years ago when the gen 2 FFE was discontinued. (Yes, I know Mach-E is coming.) I'm aware of the 250 kWh of included charging for the (not shipping yet) Mach-E but not sure what that "three years of free EA membership fees" means. EA doesn't charge any membership fees unless you pay for Pass+. Is that what they're providing? (I have "free" EA membership as I'm not paying them anything. ) As for HyunKia, they do? There was Electrify America Offers Kia Select Plan To Reconcile Kia Pricing Issue and Electrify America's 'Hyundai Select Plan' Addresses Pricing Issue since drivers of their vehicles got TOTALLY screwed by the former per minute pricing and were being charged 69 or 50 cents per minute (1 to 125 kW tier) when in reality, their charging rate was under 70 kW to no more than 73 kW, depending on the car. In reality, they should've been charged 25 or 18 cents/minute so HyunKia drivers with affected vehicles avoided EA like the plague until the above plan came out. Per Pricing and Plans for EV Charging | Electrify America, HyunKia's plans seem gone. AFAIK, there are no Volvo-branded EVs shipping in the US yet. Lucid is also shipping nothing in the US, so far.
Ford's Mach E has been in production since October. Models are at select dealerships for customer viewing and inspection. Customer vehicles have started production this past week with arrival at dealerships in the next two weeks.