Charging Anxiety Article

[Genghis]

True Misery Is Combining America’s Woefully Inadequate EV Infrastructure With A $2,000 Electric Car - The Autopian

I could almost hear the mosquitos slurping my blood as I sat stranded at a horribly slow charging station in the parking lot of the LA County Sheriff’s Department Crescenta Valley office. I’d flown too close to the sun with my $2000 Nissan Leaf — a vehicle that, due largely to poor battery...

www.theautopian.com

This article pretty much sums about charging anxiety. My real world story,I was about 50 miles from home and my SOC was at 9%. I looked for the nearest charging charging station which was 10 miles away in heavy traffic. I immediately turned off any extraneous battery draw (i.e. AC, entertainment, phone charging, etc). Then my questions in my head while driving in this traffic to the exit I needed to take were around once I get there, how many working stations are there, what's the charging speed of the working stations, and can I connect and charge without any issues? I've never been nervous about owning the car before but this was the one time that my anxiety level was at all time high.

It all ended well as I got to the station with 6% SOC charge, had to wait 25 min in line, and connected and drew at 98 on a 150 station. I charged to 40% to get home so it worked out but watching SOC% drop 1% sitting in traffic waiting for that exit was nerve wracking.

TLDR: car I love, charging network/infrastructure creates anxiety

 

[kerplunk]

100%. Not sure who first started talking about range vs. Charging anxiety but they are right.

Is the station working? Are there stalls open? How big is the line? Is me on every road trip. Having to plan on ABRP and Plugshare like I'm doing a flightplan is more than I expected tbh.

The big worry for me now is worrying that the one station within range is working because I don't have enough juice to get to the next nearest.

When I'm in an area I'm not familiar with I generally start looking at 30%

 

[scal_air]

Yeah, why wait? After 20% SOC, I'd be stopping at the nearest charger when I'm on a road trip. Afterall, it's not like you can pour in a gallon of electricity to get back on the road!

 

[Genghis]

Yeah, why wait? After 20% SOC, I'd be stopping at the nearest charger when I'm on a road trip. Afterall, it's not like you can pour in a gallon of electricity to get back on the road!

When I was heading home at 50% or so, I was confident that I was going to be home fine but due to traffic and other conditions when I saw single digits for the first time,, it kind of freaked me out. Wasn't a planned cross country trip - SD to LA but caught in heavy traffic.

 

[skywaterbanjo]

I start looking at 40% because, out west, the chargers are few and far between, not to mention, as others have, rolling the dice whether or not the stations will be working. Not quite like stopping at a gas station and topping off.

 

[Cosmo Cruz]

I start looking at 40% because, out west, the chargers are few and far between, not to mention, as others have, rolling the dice whether or not the stations will be working. Not quite like stopping at a gas station and topping off.

this guy doesn't get it ... a NYT reporter who doesn't seem to be well-informed:
NYT Range Anxiety

 

[joec]

I start looking at 40% because, out west, the chargers are few and far between, not to mention, as others have, rolling the dice whether or not the stations will be working. Not quite like stopping at a gas station and topping off.

I start looking before I leave the house. That way, I never get anxious.

Most of this charging and range anxiety can be significantly reduced (not eliminated, of course) by doing a bit of pre-trip planning. Have a plan. Have a backup plan. Enjoy the drive.

Treating charging stations like gas stations is a recipe for disaster.

Apps like PlugShare make this trivial. Never takes me more than 10 minutes to map out my charging strategy, even for very long trips.

 

[PompousAss]

I start looking before I leave the house. That way, I never get anxious.

Planning doesn't necessarily relieve anxiety, as my trip from DFW to Lubbock on Sunday demonstrates.

There is exactly one CCS level 3 charger in Wichita Falls. EV Connect wasn't cooperating. Had there not been a working 20 kW CCS charger nearby, I'd have had to turn around and go back. As it was, I sat for two hours until the car dropped the charging rate below 20.

I reached Lubbock at 19 percent SOC, so stopping was absolutely necessary.

 

[Cosmo Cruz]

on our last "off the reservation" trip the wife finally "got it".

"So for you the whole thing is the drive, not the destination?"

yes.

 

[Cosmo Cruz]

There is exactly one CCS level 3 charger in Wichita Falls.

"As Wichita falls, so falls Wichita Falls".
I love Oliver Platt

and all of Harold Ramis' films

it's quite a merry Christmas film. Good for the whole family /s.

 

[PompousAss]

Lucky you, I guess.

My cars need to be both fun and utilitarian.

 

[PompousAss]

What's a snow car? Does it make snow?

 

[stratus]

I start looking before I leave the house. That way, I never get anxious.

Most of this charging and range anxiety can be significantly reduced (not eliminated, of course) by doing a bit of pre-trip planning. Have a plan. Have a backup plan. Enjoy the drive.

Treating charging stations like gas stations is a recipe for disaster.

Apps like PlugShare make this trivial. Never takes me more than 10 minutes to map out my charging strategy, even for very long trips.

I am looking forward to the day when chargers will be so ubiquitous that an app will not be necessary .

 

[joec]

I am looking forward to the day when chargers will be so ubiquitous that an app will not be necessary .

Yeah. We don’t need charging stations to ever be as plentiful as gas stations are now. The business model will never work out for that.

But what I look forward to is 90% of people charging at home 95% of the time. And then enough working stations to cover road trippers on every major and minor highway across the country. Every 100-150 miles or so. And several L2 chargers at every hotel. That’s a lot more than we have now. But nothing compared to gas stations.

The key word is “working” of course.

 

[Cosmo Cruz]

What's a snow car? Does it make snow?

I grew up in NH. I remember the Nor' Easter of 1958. We lived in an 18th century rural farmhouse with a dirt cellar. I remember mom used the cast iron kettle and hook over the fireplace to heat my baby brother's bottle. We had no power for three days, and only then because our next door neighbor, a dairy farmer (about a mile down the dirt road) drove up in his John Deere tractor with a generator.
I was never so scared when mom opened the front door and the snow was all the way up and over, leaving an impression of the door. In the back yard, facing South, grass was showing. That my friends, is a Nor' Easter.

It was March so it melted quickly, filling the dirt basement all the way up to the kitchen floor. I remember it in minute detail. Terrified.

So I go back there to visit every year. We go drifting. The dairy farmers of New Hampshire never throw anything away. The night pasture was full of junked vehicles: fire engines, trucks, farm equipment, all sorts. They would take anything from anyone. Yes they had several CATs ... I remember when they got the D9 which they used to build a runway for the Piper Cub. I don't think anyone had a valid pilots license but "Live, Freeze, and Die" is the motto on the NH plates. I learned to fly there ... was about 6 when the flying farmer took me for my first flight. My dad was pissed. Yes I became a pilot. No choice.

OK....you get the scene. Drifting is when you go out to the night pasture with a battery and snow chains, find a car that looks like it will start, put in the battery and gas in the tank, coax it to start with ether, and head out across the fields to the road, looking for places where the snow has blown across the road making a deep snow drift. You rev up and blast thru as far as you can, then bail out with silage shovels and pieces of roof tin to dig the car out. Repeat. Snow comes at you from every direction: roof, floor, the hole where the rear window used to be.... It helps if you are already in an alternate state of consciousness, but most NH rural folk are.

Typically 4 or 5 people in the vehicle...sometimes more. Murph liked to surf the roof. There is no safety inspection in NH. The car was unusually light because of the rust...not much flooring. Our favorite drift car was a Plymouth Valiant with the slant 6. It was so rusted it made it easy to push, but you had to make sure you were pushing on metal... not as easy as it sounds.

That's a "drift" car for rural New England folk. Almost everyone has a winter beater in the barn...or the night pasture.

The Chevy Chevette has a perfect 50/50 weight balance. Mine was a 4-spd 2-door. With snow tires it was unstoppable, and because it was so light it was easy to push. In all my life I have never owned a more perfect car to take skiing.

 

[Cosmo Cruz]

Sorry, I should have posted this on the off topic forum... my bad.

 

[Genghis]

Sorry, I should have posted this on the off topic forum... my bad.

Cool story and I get it as I grew up in a rural community in Idaho. Our thing though was 3 and 4 wheelers but like you described, I had friends who saw abandoned cars in bad snow seasons as a challenge. They would fix them up, have fun with them, and then enter them into to annual demolition derby to put them out for good. Good times.

 

[MountainAir]

I just finished a week-long 1400 mile road trip through northern California with my family. We were randomly assigned an Ioniq 5 as our rental. My AGT is my first EV. I've owned it for about 2 months, and so far have only managed to put about 1100 miles total. My longest drives have been a couple of extended day trips. Haven't had to charge from on the road yet. Our California itinerary took us from the bay area down to Pinnacles, then up the coast through Eureka to Redwoods, then over to Lassen Volcanic with an overnight in Chester CA.

Between horror stories of bay area stations being overwhelmed, CCS stations being unreliable, knowing that there would be limited charging options further north, and that our Ioniq had a stated range of 270 miles, I was definitely feeling the charging anxiety! To make matters worse I had my family along, so they would get to experience all my learning pains, bumps in planning, waits at stations, or heaven forbid, running out of charge in the middle of nowhere. Still, having just sunk a significant investment into going electric, I figured it was time to take the plunge and let the chips fall.

Long story short, we never had any notable problems. I generally used EA, and was able to connect and fast charge very reliably (150kW+ on the 150s, and 250kW on the 350s). We used EVgo twice and had a couple of issues connecting with the app. I eventually just paid by swiping a card. There was only one time where the EA station was full (in Gilroy, around 6pm), but we just went to the EVgo in the same lot and charged a little more slowly while eating dinner. No problems.

The most anxiety-inducing leg was through Lassen. We topped off in Anderson, drove through the park to an overnight in in the small town of Chester, then back through the park before heading back down to the bay area the next day. The next fast charger in existence was in Chico. Total distance planned was ~250miles (assuming no back-tracking through the park!), with plenty of elevation ups and downs, vs. the range of 270. Lassen does have an L2 charger at the south visitor center. We ended up using that for a quick bump before leaving the park. It turned out to be unnecessary, but it gave us some much-appreciated margin.

For what it's worth, I've charged the AGT 3 times at EA and never had a single problem (always a station available, always connected on the first attempt).

I know this is a very limited sample set taken from some pretty progressive EV spots (CO and CA), but the experience so far has really mitigated my anxieties about road-tripping an EV - especially one with 470 miles of range. I can definitely see that the charging networks are under pressure with exploding EV sales, and certainly EA had some growing pains, but my personal experience has been very positive so far. I can't help but wonder if the seemingly endless articles about the woeful CCS network are more about media stirring up controversy or fanboys of that other EV brand that shall not be named pushing their preferences then by objective data.

It is obvious that the Supercharging Network is way out ahead in this game, and I would love for a single plug standard to simplify the whole situration. It's also clear that rural areas have a long way to go to build up any charging infrastructure at all. I'm certainly not going to argue that the electric revolution is complete, but at least for me, we're in a much better spot than most of what I read on the interwebs had led me to believe.

 

[RCLAUSSEN]

Planning doesn't necessarily relieve anxiety, as my trip from DFW to Lubbock on Sunday demonstrates.

There is exactly one CCS level 3 charger in Wichita Falls. EV Connect wasn't cooperating. Had there not been a working 20 kW CCS charger nearby, I'd have had to turn around and go back. As it was, I sat for two hours until the car dropped the charging rate below 20.

I reached Lubbock at 19 percent SOC, so stopping was absolutely necessary.

We're getting our new GT this week, we just came back from a trip to Albuquerque from Dallas and I looked at the route and thought...hmmm think we'll keep taking our gas SUV on long trips, infrastructure for EVS across highways seems it's just hit or miss, maybe in a few years will feel more confident but I'm afraid we're going to use our EV on short trips for a while. We take several long drives a year ...and not sure I want our furry child to get in that pretty Santa Cruz interior for a while either.

 

[Instinctive]

We're getting our new GT this week, we just came back from a trip to Albuquerque from Dallas and I looked at the route and thought...hmmm think we'll keep taking our gas SUV on long trips, infrastructure for EVS across highways seems it's just hit or miss, maybe in a few years will feel more confident but I'm afraid we're going to use our EV on short trips for a while. We take several long drives a year ...and not sure I want our furry child to get in that pretty Santa Cruz interior for a while either.

As someone for whom the AT will be my first EV and I have family in CO...trying to plot out ways to Southern CO made me feel very confident that we will continue to have an ICE car for quite some time. Dallas to Amarillo is just beyond range, and there's not really a charging option that reviews show as reliable in any way between here and there (see Wichita Falls story above!),

So my Air will be DFW and limited to trips to Austin or OKC for as far as I can see I think.