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Electrify America general discussion
- Thread starter Mockingbird
- Start date
srs5694
Active Member
I like the solar caonpy. That'd be really helpful where I most often drive on road trips (New England, New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio). The lack of protection from rain and snow at most locations is one of my biggest gripes with DC fast charging today. This is especially true of finicky CCS/CHAdeMO stations, where you might have to stand around for several minutes while the machine authorizes payment, negotiates with the car, fails once or twice, and you repeat the process before getting a good charging session.
It looks like this site will be better for EVs that are towing trailers, too, even if that means the trailer will block one stall.
Every length of that extension cord, including the too-expensive-to-be-practical Supercharger version, is marked as out of stock.
As to whether it would work with the CCS adapter, my prediction is that it would. It's just passing through the pins. I doubt if it would be secure, though -- the extension cord would be locked to the car, but it looks like the only thing locking the adapter to the extension cord is a simple physical latch on the extension cord. Most CCS stations enable shutting down the charge with a physical or touch-screen button with no authentication required, so a thief could do that and then walk off with the CCS adapter.
There's also the question of whether it's electrically safe. I know that the J1772 standard imposes lengths on the cables, but I don't know if those are arbitrary or based on some real engineering or safety standard. If the latter, I'd expect similar safety limits on Tesla's Level 2 equipment. DC fast charging requires handling much more current, so getting that right is even more important. Overall, I'd be very reluctant to use one of those, at least absent an engineering analysis by somebody I trusted or endorsement by multiple companies involved in DC fast charging (EA, EVgo, Tesla, etc.).
masotime
Member
Yes the length makes me feel uncomfortable. It confuses me that 14ft is the "supercharger" version - to me that is a non-trivial length to extend for that much power flowing (250kW+) through the circuit - the added resistance will, if nothing else, waste power due to unwanted heating.
I wouldn't mind some extension - I think 3ft is enough to overcome most positioning problems due to placement of the chargers - but anything more than that feels dubious to me in terms of safety.
I wonder what the EA rates will be like under Siemens.
I do love free unlimited supercharging. From my 5,300 mile road trip last month…
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What do you mean "under Siemens"? I thought they just invested in EA, not that they took over or will have any control.
Siemens is a relatively small player (at least in the US).
By buying a stake in Electrify America, Siemens has instant access to the largest public charging network.
It wouldn't surprise me one bit if Electrify America is testing Siemens equipment right now.
insideevs.com
By buying a stake in Electrify America, Siemens has instant access to the largest public charging network.
It wouldn't surprise me one bit if Electrify America is testing Siemens equipment right now.
Siemens Launches 96% Efficient Sicharge D Fast Charger
Siemens introduces a new Sicharge D fast charger, marketing it as one of the most efficient DC charger on the market. The peak efficiency is 96%.
insideevs.com
Exelion
Member
Could it be possible this station is a new Siemens charger install?
Earlier picture from someone else’s post of Baker CA EA station…..
Earlier picture from someone else’s post of Baker CA EA station…..
Unfortunately, reliability is, to me, infinitely more important than being 3 minutes faster under some nominal condition.
If I need to charge, my priorities are:
1) I need to be able to charge. This is 100% essential. After this everything else is just nice-to-have.
2) I look for one in a convenient location (EA, for me, is actually better than Tesla in this regards most of the time)
3)I look for the place with something I need to do while charging (restroom, eating, shopping. sleeping, recreation, etc)
4) I look for faster charging rate (if that even matters given 2) and 3) above. I seldom even worry about V2 vs V3 for this matter. Also keep in mind that EA takes well more than 5 minutes to get the charging session going on average and, until they support my car (the most common EV in the USA), I only get about 47 KW.
5) I look for the cheapest
I'll waste more than 3 minutes just getting the EA machine to work, if it even does given that 1) => reliability.
EA seldom fits the bill for 1)
Now, instead of trolling this site by bullying folks sharing what EA should do, you should be prioritizing getting your act together to make your network work. I'd be more than happy to use EA as much or more than Superchargers if would do the basic job.
That is a good question.
Someone needs to take a photo of that silver sticker on the side of the charger.
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Well how about that, BTCPower figured out how to make a 500 amp charger!
Hopefully, these will be more reliable than the Francis BTCPower chargers.
Apples to Apples comparison
There are over 1200 Supercharger stations in the US. But, I can't seem to find an count of how many individual charging units.
There are more than 730 Electrify America Stations in the US, and over 2,438 individual charging units.
The biggest issue with Electrify America is the lack of chargers per location, and the second issue is they don't have the same speed. Like one stall will be rated for higher charging speed than the other. It's kind of a mess, and I wish they'd simply things a bit. Like a V3 Supercharger location is really simple.
The biggest issue the Supercharger network has is the number of cars sold per charger. So having 8+ stalls at a V3 location might seem really good you end up having to wait to charge.
I'd put reliability of charging as #2 on my list of priorities where #1 is having an EV with the range necessary to avoid having to stop to charge.
The rest of the list matches pretty well with my priorities
Range - The range of my R1T has been surprisingly good. For example I left my house with 100% charge, and arrived in Portland with 132 miles of range left. This meant I didn't even bother stopping to charge. I charged the next day for a trip to the coast, and then charged in Salem for the trip home. In Salem I charged to 85% and then traveled 245 miles home where I arrived with 10% of my charge left. There are some caveats in that the truck has the 21" All-Seasons with the Aero covers on, and it was in conserve mode during these journeys. There isn't much elevation charge and the speed was mostly 70 to 75mph with only a few stop and go areas. On the way home it was raining, but not majorly. I don't know what Winter will bring, but it's nice having a real world range of 250 miles without having to charge beyond 90% or drive slow.
Reliability - I've only charged at an Electrify America station a handful of times since getting my Rivian, but I've always been able to charge at the expected charge rate for the charger/state-of-charge. That being said there were numerous glitches. My very first time at a station I couldn't get the credit card thing to accept my credit card. I called them up, and after a couple of minutes they concluded it was broken so they had me use the app. Using the app worked great, and from then on I used that. The second location I used everything worked fine, but the 3rd location had a broken display. I assumed it would come on when I plugged in, but nothing. Oops. I had to move my car to a different charging stall. The EA app did seem glitchy the 3rd time where it wasn't showing charge rates during the charge like it had previously done.
This is the best data I have, which might be a few days old:
North America: 16,094 stalls
Europe: 9,181 stalls
Asia Pacific: 7,718 stalls
Good point. However, this thread is about EA. It's hardly fair to blame them for vehicle battery range.
There are plenty of things, of course, to blame them for. In this regard, it would be that they only support the charging standard developed by and supported by the part of the industry that prefers to kill EVs instead of trying to make them viable to replace ICE.
That is a problem that Tesla itself created.
In Europe, you rarely hear about this issue because Tesla drivers can charge anywhere.
Thanks!
Of course, with Tesla's growth, a few days can be significant
Also, though, many of those are urban ones for which we have little use but, perhaps the distribution of road-trip -vs- urban might be similar to CCS/EA deployments so maybe that doesn't matter.
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