GE Wattstation app is total crap

[artsci]

I'm in NY City for the Thanskgiving holiday and need to charge my Model S. The garage where I'm parked has 2 GE wattstation chargers. I already had the smartphone Wattstation app on my iPhone, thinking it would be an advantage in these kinds of situations. Was I ever wrong. I've spent about four hours of precious holiday time with my family trying to get this app to turn on the Wattstation so I can charge my car. Nothing I do works. This app is the worst smartphone app I have ever encountered.

The fact that Tesla has no superchargers in Manhattan is also a disgrace. What are they thinking? One has to rely on commercial garages for charging and they know next to nothing about EVs and charging. The garage I'm in is one such example. Their chargers are impossible to make operational with the Wattstation app and they know nothing about the problem.

 

[Maximapolak]

Too congested in manhattan for Superchargers. Those things would run 24/7

 

[artsci]

Too congested in manhattan for Superchargers. Those things would run 24/7

How many Superchargers in LA? West coast bias.

 

[NikeWings]

How many Superchargers in LA? West coast bias.

Like Manhattan, the city of LA has zero SCs and relies on DCs and private charging stations with SCs located in the periphery. Using a 50 mile radius of the each city center, Manhattan SC access compares pretty good. A key difference however is that city living is denser in Manhattan while Los Angeles has a seemingly endless urban sprawl.

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[artsci]

Just figure out how to get this POS app working. Of course, the app FAQ reveals nothing of this:

1. For the app to work you have to have a password that it rates good or better on the security side.
2. The charger has to be plugged in first for the charging session to launch. If you plug it in after the code is accepted and you've done all of the setps to start it, forget it.
3. If the app is still running, the charging session will not start. In other words, until the app is turned off, the charging session fails to launch

I know this sounds utterly stupid, but that's the way it works. Obviously designed by morons.

As for LA chargers, when I drove to the west coast I charged in 3 or 4 different locations in LA, one near the SpaceX factory. Don't know if that technically was in the city proper, but it was certinaly a ton more easy to find superchargers in LA. In the five boroughs of NYC, there's only two superchargers, one in Brooklyn, the other near JFK airport, which might as well be in outer space for Manhattan visitors or residents. New Jersey is on another planet as far as New York is concerned.