tl;dr: These stations are for ~90kWh CCS EVs. And they’re very much at the “our company’s first attempt at doing this” stage.
Current owner of a 2016 Model X and a 2019 I-PACE chiming in.
Wow, so much hate here for these EA charging stations.
In the first place, my own experience with Tesla superchargers hasn't been exactly great. When I took my Model X on a road trip during a hot July (80-90F), I had one SC in Superior, Montana entirely fail on me. I got something like, "Sorry, can't charge now." Support said it wasn't my car. Limped on to the next SC, which only gave me about 45kW max. But it wasn't just that SC; it was every SC across east Washington, Idaho, Montana, and Utah. Once in a while when there happened to be another Tesla at the station, the driver would ask me if I was getting low charge numbers too. Another one of the few times I went to a SC was coming back from the solar eclipse in northern Oregon. There was a ridiculous line to use the Centralia, Washington SC. But that was an exceptional event, and I imagine the gas stations were pretty clogged up too. I guess what few experiences I've had with SC stations have sort of biased me, and I'm sure it's not the common experience among Tesla owners.
I've taken the I-PACE to an EA station in North Bend, Washington a couple of times. The first time, I plugged in at station -02. I had to nose up all the way to the wheel stop for the cable to reach, and then I had to muscle the nozzle at what felt like a 90-degree angle from what I felt the cable wanted to be at. I was a little nervous about whether that hard pull at an angle might somehow damage the charge port on my car. Anyway, I had no clue what to do next. My car had the notification, "Initialising." All the user interfaces on the car, including the voice giving the turn-by-turn directions, are delightfully British. There was this weird animation on the card reader (which had its own separate small color LCD screen) that seemed to be beckoning me to push some button or tap something on the bigger touchscreen.
I felt like an idiot tapping around and pushing buttons, to no avail. Then I just tried sticking my card in the reader. Something changed for a minute, but the touchscreen just stayed where it was. That's when I called support.
Apparently what was supposed to happen was that the station would detect that I plugged in my car and change to another screen telling me how much I’d be paying and to swipe or insert my card. The station never detected that I plugged in my car. If the station doesn’t detect that you’ve plugged in your car, it just sits there with a blank screen, leaving you wondering what on earth is going on.
The rep rebooted the station remotely. Since I’m a Linux hacker, I was delighted to see all the boot time messages about the WiFi network device, the AutoSSH2 tunnel with a reverse shell, and so forth. I wondered just how secure the whole thing is. It took a while to finish booting. I swear that machine was slower than whatever’s in my 2016 Model X. Anyway, it didn’t work after rebooting. The rep advised me to move to another station.
I went to station -04, which was the other 350kW CCS charger. Things went much better there. The station instantly detected that I’d plugged in, told me I’d be charged $1.00 and then $.30 per minute, and asked me to use the payment thingy with that small color LCD screen. It was cycling through a bunch of screens, including the inexplicable one showing animations of fingers pushing mystery buttons, and then one of the screens showed the Google Pay logo. I excitedly unlocked my phone and held it up to the screen, and nothing happened. Okay, so maybe not.
Anyway, I slid my chip-and-PIN card into the bottom of the reader, my bank alerted me that a $50 hold had been put on my account, and we were in business. I was already at 80%, so I pulled 30kW for a few minutes before I unplugged and went home to do something more interesting with my life.
I visited again a week later, this time after I had let the battery run down through the week. I was at 27% when I arrived at the charger. I went straight for station -04 again and plugged in. Again, it worked right away. Charged from 27% to 72% (about 35kW) in half an hour. My card got charged about $10. That gives me a little less than 100 miles of range, given how I drive. If I accelerated slower and lowered my top speed to 55mph, I figure I’d probably get more like 110 miles out of 35kW.
Jaguar is being conservative with the rate they're letting the first generation I-PACEs charge at too. Mine's currently capped at 80kW, although I've read somewhere that I can bring it in to the service center and get an update to raise the cap to 100kW. Since I didn’t drop below 80kW until 50%, I figure I’d do better (22 or 23 minutes?) if I rolled in with 10% and charged to 60% with 100kW charging unlocked. I figure I’d only pay about $8 for that.
When charging starts, the station prompts you for your phone number so they can text you before they start charging you idle fees. I started tapping in my phone number, but nothing happened. After 5 seconds (I’m not exaggerating), the number I typed showed up on the screen. I quickly typed out the rest of my number (with no feedback as I tapped away), and about 7 seconds later, it suddenly all appeared on the screen. The animation on the charging level indicator bar struggled to updated smoothly.
In total, it feels to me like the EA station was rushed to market under some insane deadline. Most of the problems would have been found and fixed if there had been a proper Alpha/Beta/GA release cadence. Instead I feel like I’m getting an “Alpha” experience when I use the stations. I feel I can rely on station -04 at North Bend to keep me going eastbound toward Cle Elum (60 miles away) or Ellensburg (80 miles away), which both have CCS chargers. But just barely.
But who am I kidding? Tesla is still footing the bill when I charge my 2016 Model X, so that’s what I’ll use for my (very) occasional road trips. I just gotta make sure it isn’t 90 degrees outside.
Current owner of a 2016 Model X and a 2019 I-PACE chiming in.
Wow, so much hate here for these EA charging stations.
In the first place, my own experience with Tesla superchargers hasn't been exactly great. When I took my Model X on a road trip during a hot July (80-90F), I had one SC in Superior, Montana entirely fail on me. I got something like, "Sorry, can't charge now." Support said it wasn't my car. Limped on to the next SC, which only gave me about 45kW max. But it wasn't just that SC; it was every SC across east Washington, Idaho, Montana, and Utah. Once in a while when there happened to be another Tesla at the station, the driver would ask me if I was getting low charge numbers too. Another one of the few times I went to a SC was coming back from the solar eclipse in northern Oregon. There was a ridiculous line to use the Centralia, Washington SC. But that was an exceptional event, and I imagine the gas stations were pretty clogged up too. I guess what few experiences I've had with SC stations have sort of biased me, and I'm sure it's not the common experience among Tesla owners.
I've taken the I-PACE to an EA station in North Bend, Washington a couple of times. The first time, I plugged in at station -02. I had to nose up all the way to the wheel stop for the cable to reach, and then I had to muscle the nozzle at what felt like a 90-degree angle from what I felt the cable wanted to be at. I was a little nervous about whether that hard pull at an angle might somehow damage the charge port on my car. Anyway, I had no clue what to do next. My car had the notification, "Initialising." All the user interfaces on the car, including the voice giving the turn-by-turn directions, are delightfully British. There was this weird animation on the card reader (which had its own separate small color LCD screen) that seemed to be beckoning me to push some button or tap something on the bigger touchscreen.
I felt like an idiot tapping around and pushing buttons, to no avail. Then I just tried sticking my card in the reader. Something changed for a minute, but the touchscreen just stayed where it was. That's when I called support.
Apparently what was supposed to happen was that the station would detect that I plugged in my car and change to another screen telling me how much I’d be paying and to swipe or insert my card. The station never detected that I plugged in my car. If the station doesn’t detect that you’ve plugged in your car, it just sits there with a blank screen, leaving you wondering what on earth is going on.
The rep rebooted the station remotely. Since I’m a Linux hacker, I was delighted to see all the boot time messages about the WiFi network device, the AutoSSH2 tunnel with a reverse shell, and so forth. I wondered just how secure the whole thing is. It took a while to finish booting. I swear that machine was slower than whatever’s in my 2016 Model X. Anyway, it didn’t work after rebooting. The rep advised me to move to another station.
I went to station -04, which was the other 350kW CCS charger. Things went much better there. The station instantly detected that I’d plugged in, told me I’d be charged $1.00 and then $.30 per minute, and asked me to use the payment thingy with that small color LCD screen. It was cycling through a bunch of screens, including the inexplicable one showing animations of fingers pushing mystery buttons, and then one of the screens showed the Google Pay logo. I excitedly unlocked my phone and held it up to the screen, and nothing happened. Okay, so maybe not.
Anyway, I slid my chip-and-PIN card into the bottom of the reader, my bank alerted me that a $50 hold had been put on my account, and we were in business. I was already at 80%, so I pulled 30kW for a few minutes before I unplugged and went home to do something more interesting with my life.
I visited again a week later, this time after I had let the battery run down through the week. I was at 27% when I arrived at the charger. I went straight for station -04 again and plugged in. Again, it worked right away. Charged from 27% to 72% (about 35kW) in half an hour. My card got charged about $10. That gives me a little less than 100 miles of range, given how I drive. If I accelerated slower and lowered my top speed to 55mph, I figure I’d probably get more like 110 miles out of 35kW.
Jaguar is being conservative with the rate they're letting the first generation I-PACEs charge at too. Mine's currently capped at 80kW, although I've read somewhere that I can bring it in to the service center and get an update to raise the cap to 100kW. Since I didn’t drop below 80kW until 50%, I figure I’d do better (22 or 23 minutes?) if I rolled in with 10% and charged to 60% with 100kW charging unlocked. I figure I’d only pay about $8 for that.
When charging starts, the station prompts you for your phone number so they can text you before they start charging you idle fees. I started tapping in my phone number, but nothing happened. After 5 seconds (I’m not exaggerating), the number I typed showed up on the screen. I quickly typed out the rest of my number (with no feedback as I tapped away), and about 7 seconds later, it suddenly all appeared on the screen. The animation on the charging level indicator bar struggled to updated smoothly.
In total, it feels to me like the EA station was rushed to market under some insane deadline. Most of the problems would have been found and fixed if there had been a proper Alpha/Beta/GA release cadence. Instead I feel like I’m getting an “Alpha” experience when I use the stations. I feel I can rely on station -04 at North Bend to keep me going eastbound toward Cle Elum (60 miles away) or Ellensburg (80 miles away), which both have CCS chargers. But just barely.
But who am I kidding? Tesla is still footing the bill when I charge my 2016 Model X, so that’s what I’ll use for my (very) occasional road trips. I just gotta make sure it isn’t 90 degrees outside.
