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Electrify America general discussion
- Thread starter Mockingbird
- Start date
masotime
Member
Which gaps are you looking to fill? As in, which route are you referring to that lacks superchargers? Asking because I’m curious to know - I’ve seen a few in US-50 in Nevada, southern Colorado and in the reservations in Arizona.
They are replacing all chargers at a site except for the one with a ChaDeMo plug.
Another one is the West side of Pudget Sound in WA. From before Tacoma all the way to Sequim, there are no SC but 3 separate EA sites. Don’t know what Tesla is thinking as there is plenty of traffic and Tesla’s there.
RichAZ/CapeCod
Member
Mas, there's one spot in Show Low AZ that only has an EA site. It's a popular summertime destination as the place sits around 10,000' above SL. Now, the pregnant question is, would you trust it to get you back to where you came from?!?!
Rich
That isn't good news. That likely means they are upgrading less than 100 sites. (Replacing 3, or more, chargers per site.) Or about 10% of their sites.
Though maybe they will be able to harvest some good parts from the chargers they replace to get other sites up and running again.
Yes I forgot about that one. The 101 doesn't have any superchargers until you get to the Strait.
I read it as "they are replacing all chargers at all sites except for the charger at that site that has a CHAdeMO plug." Not sure if I read it correctly but does that change your numbers?
From Kyle's video he said the charger manufacturer said the v1 CCS cables were not serviceable. He mentioned the main advantage of the v2 cables was that the sensors in the handle were serviceable.
That quote wasn't from EA, at least that I could find. Who knows if it is accurate.
They said that they are installing 300+ chargers:
They have 800+ sites and 3,500+ chargers. So no, unless you can link to something that they have said that says otherwise. Of course that only says through the end of the year, so maybe they have plans for next year, which I haven't seen them mention.
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I will say that the EA chargers are much easier to use when they are in free-vend mode. I managed to pickup some free charging while I was out shopping today. (I saved ~$2.50 in charging at home.) I didn't need to charge, but I hardly ever see this site in use. (There was a Leaf charging on the Level 2 stall.)
Not off to a good start with their new next generation chargers:
Did they not test it when they installed it, or has it already failed?
Did they not test it when they installed it, or has it already failed?
No worries, they have 2 billion dollars that needs to be spent.
VW's $2 billion penalty for diesel scam, Electrify America, builds electric charging network across US to boost EV market
Funded by $2 billion from Volkswagen's diesel emissions settlement, Electrify America wants to have hundreds of stations and nearly 2,000 chargers in place by the end of this year.
www.cnbc.com
There is a really obvious one, and it continually bothers me because it's right near me, but even objectively, it is several years overdue, because there is no decent alternative route. Anything else adds 3-4 hours to the drive. If anyone is needing to drive between the San Francisco Bay area and Boise, ID, there is one route that everyone takes. You drive I-80 East from California into Nevada, past Reno, until you get to Winnemucca. And then you turn onto U.S. federal highway 95 to drive North up to Boise. That gap from Winnemucca to Boise is over 250 miles! It has two sites with CCS and CHAdeMO, but either or both are frequently broken. There is no Supercharger at all, and not even any pin on Tesla's future maps showing they plan to put one there.
I had some time to kill so I stopped by an EA site to watch some Netflix... Neither cable on the first stall I tried worked. The first cable I tried on the next stall, also, didn't work, but the second cable on that stall worked. Well, at least for a while. The charging stopped every ~7 minutes, and I would have to re-hook to the stall. But hey, it was still in free-vend mode, so at least it didn't cost me anything.
I was 3% from finishing my planned charge when a F-150 Lightning pulled in, and as they parked my charging stopped again. I let them know my experience and wished them good luck as I left.
I was 3% from finishing my planned charge when a F-150 Lightning pulled in, and as they parked my charging stopped again. I let them know my experience and wished them good luck as I left.
RichAZ/CapeCod
Member
There is a reason we drive two Teslas in my household...
Rich
bradtem
Robocar consultant
Yup, that's one of the gaps. I have driven it in ICE. In my Tesla I would probably pause for an hour at the RV park if I had to going north because the CCS was down.
Now, in general, I think it's fine to fill gaps with CCS as long as they are reliable. I would rather Tesla put new chargers on routes where there is nothing. Or failing that, one of the CCS/CdM networks. Most effort seems to be going into charging on interstates and in cities, and yes, that's where the most volume of cars will be found, but that's not the only factor to consider. To me, I like there to be no compromises to owning an EV, and the dead zones in the map are high on the list of compromises. Get rid of more of those zones and you start telling EV buyers, "You can go (almost) everywhere" rather than "As long as you stick to the main roads, road trips are not a problem." The latter was a great first effort, but unless those stations are getting lines, let's get those unusual roads. It doesn't have to be 8-plexes. It can even be just a 2-plex of 50kw. It can even, in some cases, be a station with a built in battery that can only charge a few cars/day (though in that case you want to reserve it, this is definitely not a first choice but it's workable if you have a place where you can't pull 100kw.)
But I hope for the day when there's no good road trip I can't take without much thought, including the side trips. Much more than I long for drives on the interstate. Or even enabling those who can't charge at home to charge in cities. I feel for them, but the right answer is to get more L2 charging in rental housing lots and offices. Not more EV poor imitations of gas stations.
Perversely, on these road trip routes, you have to space them a bit closer. If I am just charging down the interstate, I can have them 200 miles apart. On a wander in rural country, I want to be able to backtrack and take side roads.
Two of my top ones are the route through the national parks in Utah, which is perhaps the best drive in the lower 48. No fast charging on it. The icefields parkway, which is perhaps the best in the continent, could still use more though they just added a supercharger in Jasper. A lot of national parks need more, like Crater Lake and others one could name. Those would not actually be low volume use if they were there. Indeed, since people stop for a while at national parks, having lots of ports with lower wattage is actually the best plan, since when you stop there for 4 hours you can't go to move your car.
I posted some comments of free EA juice still going on tonight (9/18) at CCS Adapter for North America.
The times I took advantage of, including tonight, I had no expected stoppages. I charged longer than 7 minutes.
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