Just Charged at a Electrify America for the first time......Not Impressed

[ElectricWolff]

I just took my new model Y long range for a pretty long day trip and ended up in Chattanooga with about 20% SOC. Wasn't going to be able to get back to Knoxville on that, but I figured that it was also a perfect opportunity to try out the new CCS to Tesla adapter that I had purchased. I went to electrify America, and told my wife we would just try it out so that if we ever needed to use it on a trip we would at least know how. I was also relatively close to two Tesla superchargers, so if it didn't work I could at least get enough charge to get back home easily. Found the electrify America chargers in a Walmart parking lot. The first charger I pulled up to did not work. I plugged in the adapter to the cable, and then plugged it into my car. The charger told me to insert my credit card because it has a chip. It then told me to remove my card and swipe it. It then told me to insert my card because I have chip, and then it told me to remove my card and swipe it. At this point I was very frustrated. Ended up moving my car to another charging slot, and this one worked. It was 150 k charger so I figured I'd get a pretty spiffy charge to get home (I really didn't need much, and there was no one else parked on the other side of me). We ended up getting 90K charge speed. After we got home this evening I looked at my credit card, and it appears that there has been a $50 hold placed by electrify America for the transaction. I have to say, being able to drive up to a Tesla supercharger and just plug it in, have it charge and only charge me for the electricity I get is so much nicer. I truly don't think I'm going to be seeking out electrify America unless I really really need to.

 

[Mateo83]

Sounds like a typical EA experience. I feel bad for non-Tesla drivers that are forced to deal with this.

 

[jcanoe]

The hold on your CC is not a problem/concern; will be removed once the actual charging session amount posts.

 

[fiehlsport]

The 90kW charging rate may have been due to your car's state of charge, battery temp, etc. The Supercharger may have delivered the same rate - just because a station is 150kW/250kW/350kW does not always guarantee that's what your car will achieve. But it's definitely possible it was the EA station being finicky as well if the vehicle could have accepted more.

 

[hmadsen]

The hold on your CC is not a problem/concern; will be removed once the actual charging session amount posts.

Depending on how much money you actually have, this might be a problem.

Imagine going on a longer drive, and charging multiple times, every time it reserves 50 USD, that it might take a week before it "returns" the 50 USD minus what the actual charge was.

Here in Denmark at petrol stations, some debit cards have a reservation of what would be 75 USD, which becomes a problem for a young person that owns a moped that only takes 1-2 gallons of petrol and maybe needs to be refueled 2 times a week. Young people also tend to have less money on their account so having 150 USD always being held back is pretty bad.

From what i understand the petrol stations makes a reservation on the money to make sure you have enough money to actually pay, but with today, everything being online i dont understand why they can not just make the terminal ask if there is X amount of money on the card and then a little later when the charging stops, then just request the actual amount.

Yes, there is a small risk that someone starts a charge and then goes and empties their card in a store, before the charge is done, but honestly, the risk is low, and if they do, just block the card from ever being able to be used to pay at the chargers again.

 

[tangible1]

Depending on how much money you actually have, this might be a problem.

Imagine going on a longer drive, and charging multiple times, every time it reserves 50 USD, that it might take a week before it "returns" the 50 USD minus what the actual charge was.

Here in Denmark at petrol stations, some debit cards have a reservation of what would be 75 USD, which becomes a problem for a young person that owns a moped that only takes 1-2 gallons of petrol and maybe needs to be refueled 2 times a week. Young people also tend to have less money on their account so having 150 USD always being held back is pretty bad.

From what i understand the petrol stations makes a reservation on the money to make sure you have enough money to actually pay, but with today, everything being online i dont understand why they can not just make the terminal ask if there is X amount of money on the card and then a little later when the charging stops, then just request the actual amount.

Yes, there is a small risk that someone starts a charge and then goes and empties their card in a store, before the charge is done, but honestly, the risk is low, and if they do, just block the card from ever being able to be used to pay at the chargers again.

the banking system works by payment and settlement systems that are not entirely efficient.
Worldwide, the SWIFT system provides a primary vehicle to manage transfers, but doesn't itself do settlements. Settlements rely on banks, etc. (see SWIFT on wikipedia)
Banks and credit card accounts and debit accounts and physical checks and merchant accounts all have to be balanced and transactions settled based on law, and also time.
For example, in the US the Federal Reserve demands 2 days to manage transfers. Banks and others make that 'float' less visible to parties' transactions, but it's the bottom line.

That is one reason why PayPal, Square, and other entities have earned their place in the financial landscape - by hiding the horse manure from the public.

 

[hmadsen]

the banking system works by payment and settlement systems that are not entirely efficient.
Worldwide, the SWIFT system provides a primary vehicle to manage transfers, but doesn't itself do settlements. Settlements rely on banks, etc. (see SWIFT on wikipedia)
Banks and credit card accounts and debit accounts and physical checks and merchant accounts all have to be balanced and transactions settled based on law, and also time.
For example, in the US the Federal Reserve demands 2 days to manage transfers. Banks and others make that 'float' less visible to parties' transactions, but it's the bottom line.

That is one reason why PayPal, Square, and other entities have earned their place in the financial landscape - by hiding the horse manure from the public.

This is also why i really hate the fact that banks in "my" country are really hellbent on getting rid of out national credit cards, replacing them with Visa and Mastercards.

The reason they want to do this is because there are laws governing how much money they can ask for transactions on the national credit card, but not on the others.

The reason i really hate this is, it is not very easy to keep track of how much money is left in my account, when there is up to 7 days of respit from the day of purchase to the day it is shown on my banking app.

If/when i use the national card, it is shown on my banking app 2 seconds after i finishe the payment.

Sometimes i can see the payments in a tab called "Coming" for days, until they are "transferred" to the actual balance of the account when using google pay which if memory serves, is mastercard.

 

[tangible1]

This is also why i really hate the fact that banks in "my" country are really hellbent on getting rid of out national credit cards, replacing them with Visa and Mastercards.

The reason they want to do this is because there are laws governing how much money they can ask for transactions on the national credit card, but not on the others.

The reason i really hate this is, it is not very easy to keep track of how much money is left in my account, when there is up to 7 days of respit from the day of purchase to the day it is shown on my banking app.

If/when i use the national card, it is shown on my banking app 2 seconds after i finishe the payment.

Sometimes i can see the payments in a tab called "Coming" for days, until they are "transferred" to the actual balance of the account when using google pay which if memory serves, is mastercard.

NEVER use a 'debit' card. Which is what your 'National Card' appears to be.
it entirely favors the banks, which debit your funds account but have X days to cover, and use that float time to generate interest income (the simple description)

In the US, not only is the above true, but the banks add a fee per transaction in many cases.

 

[804son]

One thing to be aware of is that the Tesla will only precondition the battery if you set a "Supercharger" as a destination in the navigation. If you didn't have the Tesla supercharger set in the Nav, it definitely could have slowed down your EA charge rate. That being said, EA is simply awful....

 

[Brolan]

When you swipe your credit card for fuel or the like the terminal requests an authorization or “auth” transaction with the highest estimation of the pending charge. If it gets the auth it will allow the transaction to proceed and you can get your fuel, electricity, etc. Once the transaction is over the terminal is supposed to use the auth number to apply the actual charge to your account and release the auth amount. Until it does the auth amount is withheld from your credit balance. Sometimes this process can be delayed. Often because something looks off about the transaction and if that happens it gets routed to an error queue where a person has to look at it and decide what needs to be done. I did software development on these systems years ago and they are terrible.

 

[Mrbrock]

preloading the EA app with a credit card will solve the hold problem.

 

[dm121721]

I had pretty much the same experience at an EA charger.

I bought the Tesla CCS adaptor just because I make an occasional trip to an area where Tesla SCs are rather far apart. After it arrived I decided I needed to test it out so I went to a nearby EA charger that just happens to be located near a Tesla SC. Tesla SC at one end of a parking lot, EA SC at the other end of the same lot.

So I backed into a stall, opened the car's charge port, plugged the adapter into the port, plugged the charger cable into the adaptor and then tried to get my charge card accepted by the pump. Couldnt do it. The display kept saying to cancel the session and start over. There were two card readers on the pump. One was a card tap reader, the other a magnetic stripe reader. Evidently the tap reader was for EA members only, the magnetic reader was for charge cards but that wasnt made very clear.

After about 20 minutes, and several session cancellations, I finally figured out that things had to be done in the correct sequence.
1. Remove charger cable from dock.
2. plug adapter onto cable.
3. plug cable w/adapter into car
4. Finally, swipe the charge card.

Any deviation from that process resulted in a non-session. The charger's UI could stand to be drastically improved. Especially the tiny screen in bright sunlight that you had to bend down and shade with your hand to read.

Finally it started charging. I put in a couple bucks of charge and unplugged. I then drove to the other side of the parking lot, plugged into the Tesla SC and within seconds was charging the car.

I stopped charging at the Tesla SC and drove back across the parking lot to try the EA charger again. This time it took only a few minutes to initiate a charge session after a few credit card mis-swipes. I added a few dollars of charge, cancelled the session and left.

Its been a couple weeks since I did that experiment and EA still hasnt charged my CC for the couple dollars of charge I added. The Tesla SC session showed up on the CC right away.

I can really appreciate now why people complain about non-Tesla chargers.

 

[ElectricWolff]

I was just telling my wife how people feel about the CCS chargers. I read where rivian has opened up five or six charging stations on the Blue Ridge Parkway. I got real excited about that, because we love to drive up there in the mountains. Come to find out that only rivian is allowed to use these chargers. Even though they are CCS, you can't use them if you're not a Rivian owner. That seems kind of crappy to me. If Rivian owners are allowed to use all other chargers, (including Tesla with an adapter), how can rivian disallow use of everybody else on their chargers. What's the point?

 

[ElectricWolff]

I just took my new model Y long range for a pretty long day trip and ended up in Chattanooga with about 20% SOC. Wasn't going to be able to get back to Knoxville on that, but I figured that it was also a perfect opportunity to try out the new CCS to Tesla adapter that I had purchased. I went to electrify America, and told my wife we would just try it out so that if we ever needed to use it on a trip we would at least know how. I was also relatively close to two Tesla superchargers, so if it didn't work I could at least get enough charge to get back home easily. Found the electrify America chargers in a Walmart parking lot. The first charger I pulled up to did not work. I plugged in the adapter to the cable, and then plugged it into my car. The charger told me to insert my credit card because it has a chip. It then told me to remove my card and swipe it. It then told me to insert my card because I have chip, and then it told me to remove my card and swipe it. At this point I was very frustrated. Ended up moving my car to another charging slot, and this one worked. It was 150 k charger so I figured I'd get a pretty spiffy charge to get home (I really didn't need much, and there was no one else parked on the other side of me). We ended up getting 90K charge speed. After we got home this evening I looked at my credit card, and it appears that there has been a $50 hold placed by electrify America for the transaction. I have to say, being able to drive up to a Tesla supercharger and just plug it in, have it charge and only charge me for the electricity I get is so much nicer. I truly don't think I'm going to be seeking out electrify America unless I really really need to.

Update: Hold gone, and $5.27 charge applied. Still never going to stop there again

 

[tradosaurus]

As a GM Bolt owner I feel your pain. We used the EA charges a few times when I first owned the Bolt. After that I refused to take it beyond the range of the car (160 mile round trip). I always charge my Bolt at home.
Now with my new Model Y I don't worry about trips or range anxiety.

 

[Mateo83]

EA is definitely losing more customers than gaining, which is crazy with the EV demand.

 

[kpanda17]

VW CEO just bragged that new EA installs are amazing
They must not monitor old installs

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

My EA experiences, but note
1) I have a Kona so I try to use 150kW chargers at locations with 350kW so I can't vouch for the 350kW
2) I use the app, not a card. Being CCS I installed ChargePoint, EVGo and ElectrifyAmerica apps pretty much as soon as I knew I was buying the car

2021
West Lebanon, NH: I messed up misidentifying a charger, changed, and was trying to use a 150kW that, to be fair, was obviously hanging Called customer service, they rebooted it (looked like Linux or BSD) and they gave me a free session so I was able to have a good lunch without concern for charging speed. (Incidentally an ID.4 owner was on the phone to support when we arrived).

2023
Scranton, PA, Sheetz - had to cross busy downtown to get to it and back to the highway, but it worked fine. However, there was a lady there who called support while we were charging. NFC to start charging.
State College, PA, Sheetz - easy off I-99, worked fine. NFC to start charging.
State College, PA, Sheetz - started charging, wasn't getting max, thought it could be battery temperature so we went and had lunch, came back and I plugged into the other 150kW and it gave me my appropriate max; other people noted problems with the 350kW chargers. NFC to start charging.
Scranton, PA, Sheetz - not as busy as first time, worked fine. NFC to start charging.
Manchester, CT, Walmart - 1 of 4 not working, 3 busy, had to wait a few minutes for a spot. Had to use app to start charging.
Kittery, ME, Premium Outlets - all 4 (150kW only) occupied, had to wait maybe 10 minutes for a spot, charged a bit below normal max; stupid really, I should have checked my SoC before I got off the highway as I really had enough to make it to the ChargePoints at Kennebunk Service Plaza. Had to use app to start charging.

We also charged at another Sheetz west of Pittsburgh near the airport. That has 3 EVGo chargers, but the higher power charger wasn't working,, so I had to wait a few minutes until one of two Bolts charging was done. I had to hit the button on the charger to stop it because the app thought I'd stopped charging, even though my car was still charging.

So, something of a mixed bag, but I have always been able to charge, even if after a wait, but I'd probably have felt my experience was worse had I a newer, faster charging EV.

I do think that NEVI is going to _really_ helpful. More high-power locations, locations closer to exits, 97%+ uptime requirement, and more density should improve the CCS experience.

PS My wife now doesn't ever want to charge at another Sheetz. They all look the same.

 

[Mrbrock]

I was just telling my wife how people feel about the CCS chargers. I read where rivian has opened up five or six charging stations on the Blue Ridge Parkway. I got real excited about that, because we love to drive up there in the mountains. Come to find out that only rivian is allowed to use these chargers. Even though they are CCS, you can't use them if you're not a Rivian owner. That seems kind of crappy to me. If Rivian owners are allowed to use all other chargers, (including Tesla with an adapter), how can rivian disallow use of everybody else on their chargers. What's the point?

Rivian will probably open these up once there is a unified standard and they have more options. They just want their RAN L3 to be a selling point for their vehicles which is their right since they invested the money to install the chargers. Keep in mind, EA is a penalty for Dieselgate so other than installing stations, they probably don't see the penalty as requiring them to maintain them.

 

[ElectricWolff]

Rivian will probably open these up once there is a unified standard and they have more options. They just want their RAN L3 to be a selling point for their vehicles which is their right since they invested the money to install the chargers. Keep in mind, EA is a penalty for Dieselgate so other than installing stations, they probably don't see the penalty as requiring them to maintain them.

Very good point