Electrify America general discussion

[Jeff N]

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.

The Bolt issue with liquid-cooled cables is easily worked around by supporting it with your hand for a few seconds during charging initiation and plug-to-inlet locking but, of course, owners have to know about it. The “1-800” support operators at Electrify America are well aware of the issue.

 

[Earl]

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.

Clearly, our resident EA apologist and troll with fictitious name from fictitious location wants to try to sweep all issues with EA under the rug - if he/she/it can't bury them completely.
I hope EA gets better, and indications are it may be. However, it clearly lacks a lot and is arguably more of an impairment to EV adoption than an asset.
I wish EA would spend more $ fixing their network and less for paying shills to pollute this forum with their own self-serving BS.
If the the mocking-one just said, "yes, we suck because we don't know what we're doing but we're trying and slowly improving", it would make me a lot happier with them.

 

[miimura]

How about "the credit card terminal vendor we chose sux. We have no recourse with that vendor and we don't want to pay to rip and replace all the credit card terminals across the whole network with a more reliable one."

 

[lynyrdM]

They’re certainly not perfect but for me as a guy who has a CCS1 adapter, I just have to open the app, select the charger, swipe to start, connect the adapter to the cable then plug in.

That process takes me all of minute or less. Yes it should be more standardized and not require an app. I agree, the credit card readers are trash but I have high hopes that will all get fixed with the Infrastructure bill build out. Even today, if you plan just a little bit and get the apps / RFID cards for networks you might use, it’s not bad today.

The stipulations for those infrastructure bill funds address most of these issues. Disparate apps aren’t allowed (one app for whole network), memberships aren’t allowed, pricing has to be clear and credit card readers must be the default payment method.

 

[RTPEV]

Yes, I am a customer of EA myself (my wife drives an ID4). I have personally experienced both the good and bad of the network. And while I think some negative characterizations of the network are unfairly cherry picked (Zac & Jesse from Now You Know for example have given it no love), it's also not perfect either. Trying to dismiss any negative reports is not helpful. Acknowledge that there are problems and always work to improve. This applies to ANY network, even Tesla.

As for the credit card readers, I do wonder if having them sit out in the heat might be causing some kind of issue...maybe not, but lack of a canopy over charging stations seems to be the Achilles Heel of charging station screens, so maybe credit card readers as well?

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

The Bolt issue with liquid-cooled cables is easily worked around by supporting it with your hand for a few seconds during charging initiation and plug-to-inlet locking but, of course, owners have to know about it. The “1-800” support operators at Electrify America are well aware of the issue.

The weight problem is not just a Bolt problem. Bjørn Nyland has dealt with it on multiple EVs at Ionity.

The lesson was learned in the plug design for the Megawatt Charging System.

 

[avs007]

The weight problem is not just a Bolt problem. Bjørn Nyland has dealt with it on multiple EVs at Ionity.

The lesson was learned in the plug design for the Megawatt Charging System.

I certainly found that even with the CCS1 Tesla Adapter, it is easier to unplug the thing if you support the cable with your hand, and use two hands to remove the adapter. It seems the weight of the cable puts pressure on the tesla connector, making it bind in the charge port if you try to remove it one handed like you would with a supercharger.

 

[Mockingbird]

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

1. The study is about the reliability of charging stations, not the reliability of the vehicle. A problematic vehicle like the Chevy Bolt should have never been used for testing.

2. The study is double counting the problem. One solution is to only test the cable closest to the vehicle.

3. The Tesla Supercharger doesn't have a credit card reader on site.

 

[Mockingbird]

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.

I guess if it is to be a more apples-to-apples comparison of Electrify America and Supercharger (which isn't the way this "survey" is set up), then only vehicles with Plug and Charge set up would be tested.

 

[Mockingbird]

The Bolt issue with liquid-cooled cables is easily worked around by supporting it with your hand for a few seconds during charging initiation and plug-to-inlet locking but, of course, owners have to know about it. The “1-800” support operators at Electrify America are well aware of the issue.

...but do the testers in the "survey" know that?

From the lack of mention in the "survey", I think not.

 

[Mockingbird]

The weight problem is not just a Bolt problem. Bjørn Nyland has dealt with it on multiple EVs at Ionity.

The lesson was learned in the plug design for the Megawatt Charging System.

It's a problem with the Chevy Bolt and the BMW i3.

 

[Mockingbird]

How about "the credit card terminal vendor we chose sux. We have no recourse with that vendor and we don't want to pay to rip and replace all the credit card terminals across the whole network with a more reliable one."

The on-site credit card readers are awful.

Electrify America should remove all of them.

...but the Biden administration is going the other way and wants all public chargers to have on-site credit card readers.

 

[FlatSix911]

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.

TLDR: Bottom line 26.1% of the charging stations in the study could not supply power - 19% were non-functioning and 7.1% were design failures.

A shocking statistic by any measure.

 

[Mockingbird]

TLDR: Bottom line 26.1% of the charging stations in the study could not supply power - 19% were non-functioning and 7.1% were design failures.

A shocking statistic by any measure.

Next up, park a Tesla head-in at a Supercharger.

Bottom line: Supercharger could not supply power.

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

The on-site credit card readers are awful.

Electrify America should remove all of them.

...but the Biden administration is going the other way and wants all public chargers to have on-site credit card readers.

I've never had a problem with a credit card reader at a gas pump.

Must be electrical interference or something.

 

[FlatSix911]

Next up, park a Tesla head-in at a Supercharger.

Bottom line: Supercharger could not supply power.

Complete nonsense... you continue to embarrass yourself and yet you keep digging.
The EA charging network has some serious issues related to reliability and maintenance.

 

[MP3Mike]

Next up, park a Tesla head-in at a Supercharger.

Bottom line: Supercharger could not supply power.

Of course from the study they oriented the car optimally, and the cable still couldn't reach:

The EVs tested were driven into the parking space either forward or backward during testing to position the EV inlet as close as possible to the charging kiosk.

It wasn't limited to EA, but they were the primary offenders:

This design failure was recorded at a ChargePoint station (1), EVgo stations (4), and Electrify America stations (27).

And there was one other oddity:

At 3 EVSEs the space was too small to safely back into.

I'm not sure I understand that one...

 

[srs5694]

And there was one other oddity:

At 3 EVSEs the space was too small to safely back into.

I'm not sure I understand that one...

I'm speculating here, but maybe the charging spot was sized for subcompact/compact cars only, or maybe even for motorcycles, and they tested that site using a larger vehicle...? Certainly I've seen compact/subcompact-only parking in some parking garages, so this wouldn't be impossible. Harley-Davidson dealers have also begun installing EV charging, so it's conceivable that some of these would be designed for motorcycles, with scant attention paid to the needs of cars, especially larger ones.

 

[MP3Mike]

I'm speculating here, but maybe the charging spot was sized for subcompact/compact cars only, or maybe even for motorcycles, and they tested that site using a larger vehicle...? Certainly I've seen compact/subcompact-only parking in some parking garages, so this wouldn't be impossible. Harley-Davidson dealers have also begun installing EV charging, so it's conceivable that some of these would be designed for motorcycles, with scant attention paid to the needs of cars, especially larger ones.

But they only specify that they couldn't back in. So I assume that means they were comfortable pulling in.

 

[avs007]

I've never had a problem with a credit card reader at a gas pump.

Must be electrical interference or something.

I have. The Chevron near me uses a satellite uplink, so frequently stops working when it rains heavily. A lot of the EA ones use cellular uplinks. I remember on an out of spec video Kyle mentioned that the EA locations that he had the most issues with were the same locations where he had spotty cell signal on his phone.