EA charging issues
- Thread starter Okie
- Start date
chipcaldwell
Member
Quick advice. Call EA at least 150 miles BEFORE the station. Ask "For each charger how long ago was it used?" Frequently drive from Lake City FL to Atlanta. There are only 2 stations on the way. On one trip neither EA stations had ANY working chargers. Lucid had to tow me to the nearest reported EA station in a Walmart. When we got there the Walmart was under construction and the EA not operating. You don't want to hear the end of the story, bit short story is EA rep said, "I'm so sorry."
- Joined
- Jan 3, 2022
- Messages
- 3,269
- Location
- Santa Clara County, CA
- Cars
- Air GT, XC40 P8 EV
- Referral Code
- 3OKY7YGA
It's incredible to me that EA does not seem to have a backend process that periodically polls charging stations for non-response, or non-use, and alerts CS and a service team.
- Joined
- Mar 22, 2022
- Messages
- 3,305
- Cars
- Air GT Black/Tahoe/19"
I’ve encountered an EA mobile test team. Basically they watch customers succeed or fail and discuss with CS what happened. The impression I get is that they have no idea how to fix these rampant issues and the only solution thus far has been to replace other units with the Siemens ones which seem more reliable thus far.
Hopefully, with the $5 billion federal investment in charging stations included in the new Infrastructure legislation, there will be required reliability standards. Also, I don’t think it is unreasonable for companies receiving this assistance be required to provide timely information on a single site notifying the public of unworkable stations.
- Joined
- Mar 22, 2022
- Messages
- 3,305
- Cars
- Air GT Black/Tahoe/19"
Yeah there are reliability requirements, I think it’s 90% up time?
Princess Susan
Member
- Joined
- Oct 16, 2022
- Messages
- 33
- Cars
- Lucid Air Touring
Last time I looked, there are no EA stations in WV and limited ones in VA outside of the DC area. I have read the one near Roanoke Virginia, which is the closest one to where we live rarely has the fast charge unit working.
- Joined
- Jan 3, 2022
- Messages
- 3,269
- Location
- Santa Clara County, CA
- Cars
- Air GT, XC40 P8 EV
- Referral Code
- 3OKY7YGA
There's considerable back-and-forth going on about how the reliability figure should be calculated. Charging provider organizations want a wide variety of exceptions:
Last edited:
EVGo is trying to say that being down 100% of the time is ok.
- Joined
- Jan 3, 2022
- Messages
- 3,269
- Location
- Santa Clara County, CA
- Cars
- Air GT, XC40 P8 EV
- Referral Code
- 3OKY7YGA
My position (me speaking into a vacuum) is that time-to-repair is under the CPO's control, so other than a grid failure, any outage should count as "down". Charger siting also drives some of this - cable and screen vandalism in a dim parking lot behind a Dollar Tree vs in a well-lit, busy place.
- Joined
- Mar 22, 2022
- Messages
- 3,305
- Cars
- Air GT Black/Tahoe/19"
Is there anywhere in Europe where the charging situation is a total nightmare and everyone is waiting in line for the one working station out of 4 that’s going to only deliver 1/2 the power it’s rated for? No. And they get subsidies, so if subsidies are gonna be given then Europe/Scandinavia is proof it can be done just fine and these companies here are only being babies about it because it’s the US and they can get away with it. I’ve met MANY EV owners who absolutely love their car but regret getting it because whenever they try to go on a trip it takes them hours longer than it should because of bad charging infrastructure. And for those who don’t have home chargers (apartment/condo dwellers), they have even less incentive to sign up for the guaranteed headache the US has made the EV charging experience.
- Joined
- Jan 4, 2022
- Messages
- 2,463
- Location
- Santa Clarita, CA
- Cars
- 2023 Lucid Air GT
- Referral Code
- AWNJLGKT
You know what's funny about this? If you look at a majority of the chargers deployed in Europe, they're ABB. Yet, EA blamed ABB for their woes, switched to Signet then blamed them for their woes and how now gone with someone new. I'll reserve judgement on these new chargers until I use them but I do suspect that in 6 to 12 months we'll see similar issues to ABB and Signet and EA playing the blame game once again. It's a VW trait to blame the hardware for poor software and infrastructure design. Time will tell.......
I just finished charging at a EA station near Phoenix (Anthem) that I had charged at a month ago and was greeted by 3 new 350 EA chargers. They all had one charging cord per station. Labeled “ItalDesign… very clean and having one cable, I’m sure that no one will be pulling up thinking that they could charge using the second cable. In Flagstaff yesterday there was a technician working on 2 350 chargers, so as I see it the glass is half full and filling up. I’m looking forward to the network improvements…. Maybe the partnership with Siemens will help?
- Joined
- Jan 3, 2022
- Messages
- 3,269
- Location
- Santa Clara County, CA
- Cars
- Air GT, XC40 P8 EV
- Referral Code
- 3OKY7YGA
Those are the newest version 350kW units. EA is replacing problematic changing stations with these rather than trying to repair them.
- Joined
- Mar 22, 2022
- Messages
- 3,305
- Cars
- Air GT Black/Tahoe/19"
Yeah those are what went in at the Albany EA site. I didn’t notice the metal poles next to it and dinged my door hard when I opened my door, but luckily it didn’t make a dent! Thus far at least these stations seemed reliable to me. Worked the first try and didn’t see anyone leaving after trying and failing to charge. I think these are the ones Kyle got 351kw on when nobody else was using the site near him?
Yea 2 of these stations gave authentication errors yesterday in Kettleman City, 3rd times a charm...also took 4 plug and unplugs to get it working.
- Joined
- Jan 3, 2022
- Messages
- 3,269
- Location
- Santa Clara County, CA
- Cars
- Air GT, XC40 P8 EV
- Referral Code
- 3OKY7YGA
We're in for another year of pain if the new units didn't just work.
- Joined
- Dec 7, 2021
- Messages
- 1,541
- Cars
- Dream Edition P 21"
- DE Number
- 337
I went to my usual local EA 150Kw station earlier this afternoon. I did precondition but the unit was only delivering 45Kw. Another person had just left in frustration for the same reason. I called the EA number and reported the unit and they said they already had two other complaints on this location. So I moved to another local 150Kw station about 3 miles away and this time I was getting well over 150Kw for quite a while. Charged from 20% to 84% in 35 minutes (just under 300 miles).
Did you have to wait in line to charge? On Saturday around 1:30 PM there were 6 EVs lined up.
No, this was on Monday around 12pm. Only 6 chargers were taken
Similar threads
