It appears access to Tesla Superchargers may not be the panacea some hope in terms of curing charging woes.
After several years of haranguing by us friends who have EVs, a good friend finally relented and leased a Volvo XC30. Two days ago he took his first road trip in it and, unfortunately, his experience was not much different from ours in the early days of Air ownership and dealing with Electrify America.
Volvo is one of the "NACS Partner" brands to which Superchargers are now open, and he was planning to use them as his default choice for charging. Before taking his first road trip I urged him to use a local V3 Supercharger just to be sure he understood how everything worked. I had already walked him through why only some Superchargers can be used to charge NACS cars. He did so and had a seamless experience. Volvo is set up for "charge & plug" just as is the Lucid Gravity. He plugged in, and charging automatically commenced, linking to the credit card he had on file in his Volvo app. Easy peasy.
So Tuesday he headed across the state for an appointment with the German consulate in Miami. (He's applying for right-of-descent citizenship. Appointments are only available a few days a month and are hard to come by, so you don't want to miss one.) He left home with a two-and-a-half hour buffer on top of this travel time, as he was nervous about having to charge in Miami.
He planned a charge stop at a Supercharger in Davie which he had verified beforehand was a "NACS Partner" site. As he neared the charge location his nav system told him to use station 1 or 2. When he arrived, the stations were designated 1a, 1b, 1c, 1d, 2a, 2b, 2c, and 2d. Several were open, and he plugged into one. Nothing happened, so he tried to initiate the charge through his Volvo app. Nothing. He tried another station. Nothing. And a third. Still nothing. Now beginning to panic a bit, he looked up the next closest location which was at a casino in Hollywood with 24 stations. Off he went. Again, the first several stations he tried did not respond to the car's being plugged in or to initiation attempts through the app. He finally found a station that recognized the car and began to show activity. After a few seconds, though, he got a "Charge Failed" message.
Now in a full panic he looked up any charging service he could find and landed on some chargers at a 7/11 store. He got there, opened an account, put in his credit card information, and plugged in. He tried to initiate charging following the instructions at the station. And . . . nothing. At that point a lady pulled into the next station and got her charging started without a hitch. He asked her for help. He gave her his phone and watched as she did exactly what he had done to initiate charging. This time it worked, and he was finally able to charge.
He made it to the consulate with 15 minutes remaining of the two-and-a-half hours he had allowed.
He kept me on the phone today for an hour, during which time he reminded me several times who was the biggest advocate for his switching to an EV.
