Electrify America general discussion

[mociaf9]

Replying to/continuing a discussion about EA pricing from a thread where it's off topic:

...
But right accross the street less than 100 yards away there are 4 Electrify America DC stations that charge .32/min for > 90 kW and .16 for < 90.
Not knowing exactly what the charge curve is going to look like I can't predict exactly what the price difference is going to be but it's safe to say the EA stations will be much less. For a $4 monthly fee you can drop those rates to .24 and .12.

...

One interesting option is what to do in Erie PA. Tesla is .35/kWh but EA (according to their web site) is by the minute at .32/.16 or .24/.12 just like the Tomah structure. ...

There's some debate about exactly how EA pricing tiers actually work and I've never seen it cleared up to my satisfaction. But basically, it's not clear that they work like Tesla's tiers do, where you will pay each tier's price as your charging slows down into that tier, i.e. for the time that you're charging 100kW-180kW you pay that rate and once your charging power drops below 100kW you pay the next lower rate, etc. I believe that for EA you pay whichever rate corresponds to the maximum power drawn during the charging session, i.e. if your car charges over 90kW for any of the session you pay the top rate for the full session. The other interpretation of EA's statements that I've seen is that regardless of what power is actually output, if your car is capable of charging at the higher power, then you'll pay the top rate. I personally don't see how that last possibility is a reasonable choice for EA to have made, but neither am I willing to give them any benefit of the doubt.

So, not knowing exactly how their rate structure works, it's hard to give direct comparisons. But I'll list the charging power you need to be above for the EA rate to be cheaper than Tesla's $0.35/kWh. If it's dynamic pricing tiers based on actual charging power, then you only need to pay attention to the bottom tier because parity for the higher tier occurs below 90kW.

EA Price Tier​	Charging Power at which it has price parity to Tesla's $0.35/kWh​
$0.32/min​	55kW​
$0.16/min​	28kW​
Pass+: $0.24/min​	41kW​
Pass+: $0.12/min​	21kW​

If you're interested, the formula to figure this out for any combination of pricing when you're comparing a per minute to a per kWh price is:

(per-minute price / per-kWh price) * 60 = Charging power that gives price parity (in kW)

This is not actually helpful in solving this mystery (mainly because our ID.4 is on a 3-year free charging plan, so I don't have actual billing information with dollars charged to help figure it out--maybe someone else can provide that?), but here is a sample "invoice" that shows some data from a charging session:

View attachment 814966

So they do go to the trouble of listing the "Max. charging speed". Although that number is BS, for several reasons. In this particular session, it listed it as 153.8 kW, but in most of the other sessions it listed it as 175 kW, yet the vehicle actually only has a max charging speed of 125 kW, so I find it strange that the car would report a max speed of 175 kW. It doesn't really matter since the tier appears to switch at 90kW, so whether it's 125, 153.8, or 175 wouldn't make a difference anyway.

View attachment 814972

Here is another snippet from the app which gives slightly more information than the website does, and does appear to strengthen the case that EA does in fact set the tier at the beginning of the session and it remains fixed for the duration:

View attachment 814971

It seems like their approach is to divide the EV community into two groups: Bolts, i3s & Older LEAFs, Hyundais and Kias vs. all other EVs, and the concept of tiered per minute pricing isn't really tiered at all.

Thanks, that definitely clears up any uncertainty about whether EA uses dynamic pricing tiers throughout a session, with a very straightforward answer of no, they don't.

For my remaining pricing tier categorization uncertainty, the problematic, ambiguous bit is the parenthetical that says, "which your vehicle communicates to the charger at the beginning of your charging session." The question is whether that is referring to the maximum that the vehicle can accept at that moment, i.e. given its starting SOC, battery temp, available electrical power of the charging station, and any other relevant factors OR whether it means the theoretical maximum as set by the manufacturer of the car?

In practice this question boils down to: If I show up with an EV that is capable of charging at over 90 kW under the right conditions, but my starting SOC is high enough (or my battery is cold enough; or the charging equipment isn't working totally right; etc.) such that the max charge rate I actually get in that session is only 80 kW, which price tier am I paying? Is it the lower tier because the most my car could accept was 80 kW or is it the higher tier because my car happens to be of a type which is capable of charging faster than 90 kW?

 

[RTPEV]

For my remaining pricing tier categorization uncertainty, the problematic, ambiguous bit is the parenthetical that says, "which your vehicle communicates to the charger at the beginning of your charging session." The question is whether that is referring to the maximum that the vehicle can accept at that moment, i.e. given its starting SOC, battery temp, available electrical power of the charging station, and any other relevant factors OR whether it means the theoretical maximum as set by the manufacturer of the car?

In practice this question boils down to: If I show up with an EV that is capable of charging at over 90 kW under the right conditions, but my starting SOC is high enough (or my battery is cold enough; or the charging equipment isn't working totally right; etc.) such that the max charge rate I actually get in that session is only 80 kW, which price tier am I paying? Is it the lower tier because the most my car could accept was 80 kW or is it the higher tier because my car happens to be of a type which is capable of charging faster than 90 kW?

Yes. This whole thing really has me curious now (and possibly going off-topic, but there may be some bearing to the current discussion as it relates to how EA communicates to vehicles)

If I look back in my app, almost all of the charging sessions reported max charging speed of 175 kW (question: why is the ID.4 reporting 175 kW capability? Is the current 125 kW, and future 135 kW only soft limits, and eventually they may open it up to 175 kW? but even in that case, why not report the current limit?)

Two of the sessions reported the same 153.8 kW max, which is an odd coincidence. Both were at moderately low SOC (36% and 21%) and after driving several hours in summer weather, so not like a pre-conditioning issue.

One of the sessions reported a max 28.9kW. This was at a station we were having an issue with, and maybe this explains it! In 9 minutes we only received 3kWh of energy (we switched to another station once one opened up).

On another pair of charges (outbound and inbound), on the outbound side it reported a max rate of 47.1kW, but our starting SOC was 76%, so this seems feasible. On the inbound trip though, with 34% SOC and having driven quite some distance that day, it reported 96.4kW.

I just tallied up all of our sessions so I could see if a pattern developed, and I'm not really seeing one. I got a max charge rate of 175 kW from a starting SOC of anywhere between 25% and 61%. During a test charge just after we got the car, we went to our local station with 41% SOC and got a max of 32kW on one station, and then 63.1kW after switching to another.

I'm thinking maybe some of the hardware in use does effectively communicate the vehicle's max requested charge rate, some reflect the limit of the station (the 153.8kW entries and the ones we had trouble with), and some just default to 175kW. I do remember seeing the screen of some of the units state the power being requested by the car, which I thought was a great feature, but they said all said 175kW so I immediately wrote it off as BS.

 

[FlatSix911]

Study finds more than a quarter of charging stations were nonfunctional

A new study found that more than one out of four public charging stations in the Bay Area were nonfunctional...

electrek.co

"The results were disappointing. According to the study, more than a fourth of all chargers were found to be nonfunctional when tested:
Overall, 72.5% of the 657 EVSEs were functional. The cable was too short to reach the EV inlet for 4.9% of the EVSEs. Causes of 22.7% of EVSEs that were non-functioning were unresponsive or unavailable screens, payment system failures, charge initiation failures, network failures, or broken connectors.

The study also questions the reported uptime by charging network operators: A random evaluation of 10% of the EVSEs, approximately 8 days after the first evaluation, demonstrated no overall change in functionality. This level of functionality appears to conflict with the 95 to 98% uptime reported by the EV service providers (EVSPs) who operate the EV charging stations.

The study decided to exclude Tesla vehicles since they are not considered “public chargers” since they only work with Tesla vehicles. However, they did cite another survey about Tesla Superchargers: In the same survey, only 4% of Tesla owners reported a major difficulty with the Tesla closed DCFC system.
This appears to be better than the chargers tested in the study, which were primarily operated by EVgo and Electrify America.

In short, the study concludes that there’s plenty of room for improvement: The findings suggest a need for shared, precise definitions of and calculations for reliability, uptime, downtime, and excluded time, as applied to open public DCFCs, with verification by third-party evaluation."

 

[Mockingbird]

Study finds more than a quarter of charging stations were nonfunctional

A new study found that more than one out of four public charging stations in the Bay Area were nonfunctional...

electrek.co

"The results were disappointing. According to the study, more than a fourth of all chargers were found to be nonfunctional when tested:
Overall, 72.5% of the 657 EVSEs were functional. The cable was too short to reach the EV inlet for 4.9% of the EVSEs. Causes of 22.7% of EVSEs that were non-functioning were unresponsive or unavailable screens, payment system failures, charge initiation failures, network failures, or broken connectors.

The study also questions the reported uptime by charging network operators: A random evaluation of 10% of the EVSEs, approximately 8 days after the first evaluation, demonstrated no overall change in functionality. This level of functionality appears to conflict with the 95 to 98% uptime reported by the EV service providers (EVSPs) who operate the EV charging stations.

The study decided to exclude Tesla vehicles since they are not considered “public chargers” since they only work with Tesla vehicles. However, they did cite another survey about Tesla Superchargers: In the same survey, only 4% of Tesla owners reported a major difficulty with the Tesla closed DCFC system.
This appears to be better than the chargers tested in the study, which were primarily operated by EVgo and Electrify America.

In short, the study concludes that there’s plenty of room for improvement: The findings suggest a need for shared, precise definitions of and calculations for reliability, uptime, downtime, and excluded time, as applied to open public DCFCs, with verification by third-party evaluation."

The study is flawed.

It was already discussed over a month ago in the 'CCS adapter for North America' thread.

 

[lynyrdM]

Study finds more than a quarter of charging stations were nonfunctional

A new study found that more than one out of four public charging stations in the Bay Area were nonfunctional...

electrek.co

"The results were disappointing. According to the study, more than a fourth of all chargers were found to be nonfunctional when tested:
Overall, 72.5% of the 657 EVSEs were functional. The cable was too short to reach the EV inlet for 4.9% of the EVSEs. Causes of 22.7% of EVSEs that were non-functioning were unresponsive or unavailable screens, payment system failures, charge initiation failures, network failures, or broken connectors.

The study also questions the reported uptime by charging network operators: A random evaluation of 10% of the EVSEs, approximately 8 days after the first evaluation, demonstrated no overall change in functionality. This level of functionality appears to conflict with the 95 to 98% uptime reported by the EV service providers (EVSPs) who operate the EV charging stations.

The study decided to exclude Tesla vehicles since they are not considered “public chargers” since they only work with Tesla vehicles. However, they did cite another survey about Tesla Superchargers: In the same survey, only 4% of Tesla owners reported a major difficulty with the Tesla closed DCFC system.
This appears to be better than the chargers tested in the study, which were primarily operated by EVgo and Electrify America.

In short, the study concludes that there’s plenty of room for improvement: The findings suggest a need for shared, precise definitions of and calculations for reliability, uptime, downtime, and excluded time, as applied to open public DCFCs, with verification by third-party evaluation."

Honestly I’m surprised it isn’t worse. In Oklahoma we have probably around 60% up time with our DC fast chargers. Francis has had to build many more chargers as redundant back-ups to make up for the lack of reliability with BTCPower chargers.

It’s shameful that these CCS Charger manufacturers think that kind of reliability is acceptable and I’m glad EA is avoiding BTCPower chargers with their new builds.

 

[threeputts]

I tested the adapter this morning at a 350 kw EA charger in Woodbury MN. In summary it started at 6%, maxed out at 181 kW then at 24% charge it suddenly dropped to 1 kW.

I think I’ll just be sticking to Tesla superchargers wherever I can on road trips for now. The potential to save a couple bucks each time isn’t worth it.

 

[avs007]

I tested the adapter this morning at a 350 kw EA charger in Woodbury MN. In summary it started at 6%, maxed out at 181 kW then at 24% charge it suddenly dropped to 1 kW.

I think I’ll just be sticking to Tesla superchargers wherever I can on road trips for now. The potential to save a couple bucks each time isn’t worth it.

That's what my wife said whenever she saw me switching CCS handles, or switching stalls.... The number of busted CCS chargers I encountered while testing CCS on our last roadtrip was pretty shocking... On a side note note, it was way more than a couple bucks savings for me tho, when I was in California... I was saving > $11 each time. It adds up, when all the superchargers around you are up to 58 cents kWh.

 

[Mockingbird]

I tested the adapter this morning at a 350 kw EA charger in Woodbury MN. In summary it started at 6%, maxed out at 181 kW then at 24% charge it suddenly dropped to 1 kW.

I think I’ll just be sticking to Tesla superchargers wherever I can on road trips for now. The potential to save a couple bucks each time isn’t worth it.

If it went from 181 kW to 1 kW, it's probably a communication issue.

That said, it does show the growing pains of having an open system and having to support pretty much every BEVs out there.

That is in contrast to a closed system, like the one Tesla has, and having to only support one's own BEVs.

 

[jbarnum]

I tested the adapter this morning at a 350 kw EA charger in Woodbury MN. In summary it started at 6%, maxed out at 181 kW then at 24% charge it suddenly dropped to 1 kW.

I think I’ll just be sticking to Tesla superchargers wherever I can on road trips for now. The potential to save a couple bucks each time isn’t worth it.

I used the same station last week (at Wal-Mart?) and it worked flawlessly delivering 39kWh with a max rate of 179kW. CCS adapter on 2022 MYLR.

 

[STS-134]

That's what my wife said whenever she saw me switching CCS handles, or switching stalls.... The number of busted CCS chargers I encountered while testing CCS on our last roadtrip was pretty shocking... On a side note note, it was way more than a couple bucks savings for me tho, when I was in California... I was saving > $11 each time. It adds up, when all the superchargers around you are up to 58 cents kWh.

Literally the FIRST CCS charger I plugged into, didn't start charging. I tried once, I tried twice, three times. Nope. Guy in the VW ID.4 was charging next to me and as he was leaving, he tells me "I never have luck with that charger, try this one". Yep, that was the issue.

Interestingly, I have not yet had a CHAdeMO EA charger fail to start, and I've used those about 6-10 times. But I'm sure it happens.

 

[RTPEV]

The study is flawed.

It was already discussed over a month ago in the 'CCS adapter for North America' thread.

I would say the study has a flaw (perhaps), not that it was flawed. There is still some valid points to be taken from the study.

The main flaw that has been acknowledged, and I believe was the topic of debate in the other thread, was the cables not reaching the vehicle. You (@Mockingbird) had claimed then that if you read the study that 1/4 of the EA failures were due to this. I did look at the study and it looks to me like it was 7.1%:

Granted, it's still the highest of any of the other failure mechanisms, and while you did make the argument that it is possibly user-error (not pulling into the stall correctly) and used some pictures to illustrate, I will point out that I've seen some very odd station sitings that could present a problem for some vehicles.

Nonetheless, I don't think it's reasonable to call the entire report flawed because of this. There are still serious problems with these networks that should be addressed.

And the study didn't even take into account delivered power level:

My experience at both Tesla and non-Tesla charging stations is that this is a very big problem. One difficulty with this problem is that it could be something as simple as battery SOC or temperature, but many times it is a problem with the charging station equipment.

 

[mociaf9]

One difficulty with this problem is that it could be something as simple as battery SOC or temperature, but many times it is a problem with the charging station equipment.

In a study of DCFC performance, it's going to be very difficult to control for variable charge rates caused by the car instead of the charging equipment unless they are using some 3rd party app/tech that reads the vehicle side information from the OBD2 port, like Scan My Tesla. They'd need to see battery temps and charging power requests coming from the BMS to the DCFC to know whether the output is optimal. I don't know whether such apps are available for non-Tesla EVs yet, though I assume there are some out there for some makes/models and for the rest of the market people are working on putting them together before too long.

 

[RTPEV]

In a study of DCFC performance, it's going to be very difficult to control for variable charge rates caused by the car instead of the charging equipment unless they are using some 3rd party app/tech that reads the vehicle side information from the OBD2 port, like Scan My Tesla. They'd need to see battery temps and charging power requests coming from the BMS to the DCFC to know whether the output is optimal. I don't know whether such apps are available for non-Tesla EVs yet, though I assume there are some out there for some makes/models and for the rest of the market people are working on putting them together before too long.

Yes, I understand that doing such a survey would be difficult, although since the current (power) requests are part of the communications protocol from vehicle to charger, it doesn't seem out of the question that eventually an in-line connector of some kind could be used for testing purposes that intercepted communications between the two. Even better would be a diagnostic capability on the charging station itself that included a display of requested current from the vehicle. I've even seen this displayed on the charge screen of a charging station (which I thought was an excellent idea) so it was clear whether it was the car or the charging station limiting the charge rate. I think the bigger challenge would be always arriving at the charging station with a car with a low SOC and pre-conditioned battery.

 

[Mockingbird]

I would say the study has a flaw (perhaps), not that it was flawed. There is still some valid points to be taken from the study.

The main flaw that has been acknowledged, and I believe was the topic of debate in the other thread, was the cables not reaching the vehicle. You (@Mockingbird) had claimed then that if you read the study that 1/4 of the EA failures were due to this. I did look at the study and it looks to me like it was 7.1%:

View attachment 818815

Granted, it's still the highest of any of the other failure mechanisms, and while you did make the argument that it is possibly user-error (not pulling into the stall correctly) and used some pictures to illustrate, I will point out that I've seen some very odd station sitings that could present a problem for some vehicles.

Nonetheless, I don't think it's reasonable to call the entire report flawed because of this. There are still serious problems with these networks that should be addressed.

And the study didn't even take into account delivered power level:
View attachment 818816

My experience at both Tesla and non-Tesla charging stations is that this is a very big problem. One difficulty with this problem is that it could be something as simple as battery SOC or temperature, but many times it is a problem with the charging station equipment.

7.1/(7.1 +19.0) x 100

So, it wasn't 25% (1/4) of the time: it was even higher at 27.2% of the time.

That doesn't even account for other issues with this study.

1. Chevrolet Bolt has a known compatibility issue with the liquid-cooled cable that Electrify America uses and should never have been used for testing.

2. The charger is considered non-working if one of the two charger cables doesn't work even though only one cable is required.

3. Some testers never even tried the Electrify America app and only tried paying by credit cards.

 

[Earl]

paying by credit cards.

Credit cards should have worked as well. The penance did not guarantee that they had the opportunity to force people to agree to their EULA and allow them to be tracked.
One of the many things I dislike about EA beyond no working with credit cards is the lack of a fob. In cold or rain, one gets the pleasure of standing out getting wet or cold and trying to play with your phone. With others, just swipe your fob (with gloves on) and it starts.

 

[Mockingbird]

Credit cards should have worked as well. The penance did not guarantee that they had the opportunity to force people to agree to their EULA and allow them to be tracked.
One of the many things I dislike about EA beyond no working with credit cards is the lack of a fob. In cold or rain, one gets the pleasure of standing out getting wet or cold and trying to play with your phone. With others, just swipe your fob (with gloves on) and it starts.

Tesla Supercharger doesn't allow paying from credit cards and that isn't a problem.

 

[Earl]

Tesla Supercharger doesn't allow paying from credit cards and that isn't a problem.

True, Tesla Superchargers have no problems.
Plug in, charge. They work. They're fast. Easy. Nothing to juggle, not a card, not a fob, not an app, nothing, nada.

 

[Mockingbird]

True, Tesla Superchargers have no problems.
Plug in, charge. They work. They're fast. Easy. Nothing to juggle, not a card, not a fob, not an app, nothing, nada.

Electrify America has Plug and Charge.

 

[RTPEV]

7.1/(7.1 +19.0) x 100

So, it wasn't 25% (1/4) of the time: it was even higher at 27.2% of the time.

That doesn't even account for other issues with this study.

1. Chevrolet Bolt has a known compatibility issue with the liquid-cooled cable that Electrify America uses and should never have been used for testing.

2. The charger is considered non-working if one of the two charger cables doesn't work even though only one cable is required.

3. Some testers never even tried the Electrify America app and only tried paying by credit cards.

Okay, so I guess what you are saying is that 1/4 of the FAILS were due to the charge cord not reaching issues, not that 1/4 of the time the fail was caused by charge cord not reaching. Is that what you are saying?

I still think that there are some pretty horrible layouts of EA sites that do make make plugging in challenging. Which is kind of to be expected without standard charge inlet locations, although as I've said in the past, if charging stations were arranged using a gas station style island layout, probably all locations could be accommodated.

As to your specific issues with the studay:

1. So we are just going to hang poor Bolt drivers out to dry? Maybe the issue is not with the charging station but rather with the car, but an issue is an issue. That's going to come across as finger pointing. It needs to be addressed one way or another.

2. Okay, most of the time only one cable is required, unless of course you are at a site where you do actually need to use a specific cable. Again, seems like we are hanging certain vehicles out to dry here. I could be convinced that this kind of error should fall under the category of "cable won't reach", but if the test vehicle cannot reach the working cable, how are they to know whether that's the problem or not?

3. So again, we hang people out to dry that don't want to download an app and sign up for an account?

I think you missed the entire point I was making, and that is that there are several takeaways from the study. Is the study perfect? No. But don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Acknowledge the fact that there is still a pretty severe reliability problem with these networks.

Plugshare checkins may have a negative bias due to the fact that people might be more likely to report a failed charging session rather than a successful one, This charging station near me in particular: Sheetz | PlugShare has been going on about a month with mostly one out of the four chargers operational. That one has a 6.2 Plugscore. This one has a 4.8 Plugscore: Pleasant Valley Promenade | PlugShare

Not that Superchargers are perfect either, but this is the one example in my area that somewhat consistently reports trouble, and that is usually slow charging speeds: Rocky Mount Supercharger | PlugShare

 

[RTPEV]

Electrify America has Plug and Charge.

How many EA customers are able to use Plug & Charge?

How many Tesla customers are able to use the Supercharger equivalent?

What about the EA customers that can't use Plug & Charge? Are we hanging them out to dry?

You can't keep sweeping issues like credit card readers being broken under the rug. For many users, that is the only way, or the preferred way, they want to interact with the payment system.