Wanted to start a new thread on EA. “EA is Enraging” is dated. Traveled I-95 and I-20 from Jersey to Atlanta the past two days. Used EA and had extremely good experiences. Whether I used 350 or 150 chargers I always started out with no less than 140 kw. Not once was the output machine limited. I didn’t experience plug and pay but neither did I stand there plugging and unplugging incessantly. EA has definitely upped their game. My stops: Stafford, VA; Rocky Mount, NC; Lumberton, NC; Grovetown, GA & Stockbridge, GA. Not every stop was a full charge. Avg 3.5 m/kw.
EA is Improving
- Thread starter JerseyStrong
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There have been some changes lately, including that EA's oversight body approved a substantial allocation of EA's funds for maintenance of existing charging installations. This was new.
On my way back from Indy after Thanksgiving, I ran into a technician at an EA stop. He was there to repair a station. He worked not for EA but for the charger manufacturer. However, the parts he had shipped ahead and had specifically noted were to be held had been sent back before he arrived. Ahhh, Murphy’s law!
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Here are the places I charged between Montreal DC and Fremont CA except 1 at home 73kwh l2 and 1 at chargepoint 40kwh. Not 1 failure. About 1190kwh EA.
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I agree, EA has definitely improved - with one caveat.
The "Signet Surge" is gone, and probably 75% of the time (for me, at least), everything works as it should - including plug and charge (although, compared with Tesla, it's still slow to authenticate). Maybe another 20% of the time I have to authenticate in the Lucid app. And the remaining 5% of the time, going on recent experience, there's been an authentication or charging speed issue. This, I think, is the right side of acceptable.
What's not acceptable, and is getting much worse, is the overcrowding. Bolts and Niros charging to 100%, non-existent queueing management, and poor driver education all contribute to this and are all eminently fixable. What's less fixable, at least in the short term, is that there just aren't enough chargers. Pulling into an EA station and having to wait 20-30 minutes before you can even plug in is a PITA on a road trip. And on more than one occasion the queueing situation has become a little fraught.
Maybe things will improve when more EVs are able to use NACS, maybe not. But roadtripping with EA is not fun.
The "Signet Surge" is gone, and probably 75% of the time (for me, at least), everything works as it should - including plug and charge (although, compared with Tesla, it's still slow to authenticate). Maybe another 20% of the time I have to authenticate in the Lucid app. And the remaining 5% of the time, going on recent experience, there's been an authentication or charging speed issue. This, I think, is the right side of acceptable.
What's not acceptable, and is getting much worse, is the overcrowding. Bolts and Niros charging to 100%, non-existent queueing management, and poor driver education all contribute to this and are all eminently fixable. What's less fixable, at least in the short term, is that there just aren't enough chargers. Pulling into an EA station and having to wait 20-30 minutes before you can even plug in is a PITA on a road trip. And on more than one occasion the queueing situation has become a little fraught.
Maybe things will improve when more EVs are able to use NACS, maybe not. But roadtripping with EA is not fun.
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I do not fault EA for lines unless the chargers are broken or derated in power output. Around AZ, most EA sites have both broken units and are derated in power so I do fault EA for the lines in those cases. Especially at sites that are critical for cross-country road trips. Based on what I see around AZ, I will not say that EA is improving.
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One positive thing: idle fees are coming for drivers who sit there past 10 minutes, now that most chargers work.
The Niro and Bolt on a 350 charging to 100% is a real problem though, and my solution historically has been simply to ask them to swap. Sometimes they say yes, sometimes they just bounce, and nobody has told me to F off yet, so I’d say that’s a fairly positive rate.
About 3 weeks ago I traveled to Vegas from LA. I used EA once each way and it was flawless. PnC worked great and each time I used a 350 kW charger peaking around 215 kW. This was my first time DC fast charging since April. Definitely a small sample size but on this one road trip EA was great.
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My local EA has 4 chargers. It's been full with a que non-stop since before Halloween. You can't charge there without a line until well after midnight.
We have at least three more DCFC stations coming this year two EA and they can't get here fast enough.
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My belief is that we need 5X more charging stations with a 10X lower failure rate, more than we need a 2x improvement in battery performance. And it's more easily achieved.
We also need idle fees to occur on an time scale that increases over time and an increase in cost per kW if charging past 80%. I feel for the cars that have only 250 miles of EPA range and need to get extra juice, but the time that it takes to get to that point just shows that those batteries are just too small. Increasing the last 20% costs will make consumers demand longer range in EVs.
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EV range is limited by current battery technology driving the cost and size of the vehicle.
Yes. And increasing the charging cost of that last 20% will change consumer behavior as well as consumer demand to improve the range in future cars. Battery costs will decrease over time.
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I think that will happen in 5 years because by then the so called free charging will end as well as we will have choices other than EA between cities and for local charging we may have more public l2 chargers for those in apartments. By then battery prices will fall. That is important because behind every ea dcfc there is a Tesla battery pack. That plus solar combination will happen. I am optimistic.
Well, at my local station it definitely is not. Pulled up to a location at a crowded Walmart, app said 3 of 4 are working. One is essentially unusable due to shorter cable length (its an older combo CCS/Chademo unit), of the other 2 units, both were only charging vehicles at 10kw. One guy gave up, and I tried many times to get it to activate, called EA, and while on hold, someone pulled into the spot that was marked as not working and amazingly it was working at 50kw. After a half hour of waiting on hold, and trying multiple times with the agent they finally got it working but only at 10kw. Meanwhile, the person at the supposedly non-working charger left, I moved there and charged at about 55kw. Took me an hour to go from 15% to 80% - the charger did stop on its own once and I had to restart. Everyone there was commiserating on how bad this station is. And considering I'm in a very populated area, it is surprising that EA only has one station. This station constantly has one or more stations marked as not working, I don't see how EA will ever be able to meet reliability requirements if they accept NEVI funds.
Jonathan S.
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EA is always free to allocate additional funds for maintenance of existing installations.
For each 30-month investment cycle, EA has to provide plans (one for CA to CARB, and another for the other 49 states to U.S. EPA) toward meeting the consent decree requirement of spending the minimum $2b in officially termed creditable costs.
But nothing is stopping EA from spending more than $2b, whether on maintaining its existing installations, or anything else, whether EV-related or otherwise.
For the fourth and final investment cycle, to start in July (extending through December 2026), for the CA report (report for the other 49 states is still not public), EA did issue some major mea culpas on the reliability of its charging infrastructure and the need to replace much of its original charging infrastructure.
So at least EA has acknowledged its shortcomings (to some extent).
And many chargers were already being replaced this past year.
(Although I know of at least one brand new station where only four out of six chargers are ever fully functional...)
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The way I like to think about things like this is: 5-10 years from now, this will all be totally fixed or EA will be totally dead and acquired by someone else. I’m fine with either.
Am at EA at Walmart Columbia MD. Two chargers were off line. Called them in and within minutes both were up and running.
