I've tried plug and charge 4 times at two different stations and never gotten it to work. I had some extra time today so called customer care and the explanation I got was that it was station dependent.
Take this entire post for whatever it's worth. I'm just passing along what I was told. I'm somewhat skeptical of it.
His explanation was that some stations separated out the chargers while others did not. So at certain stations, to make sure the correct charger was giving away the free juice to the correct car, you needed the extra step of activating EA on the Lucid App and telling them which charger you were using.
I likened this explanation to some charging locations having a shared meter while others did not. So at some stations, you have to specify the charger ID.
I specifically asked him about the plug and charge toggle that has been mentioned on here. He looked at my account and said everything was set up correctly but that if I was being asked to authenticate at that station, I would always be asked to authenticate at that station. I think this has already been debunked here as people have had varying experiences at the same station.
For the record, it's always worked once I authenticate through the app. I only have one station around me. I've got a few trips coming up and will try again at some other stations.
While I was there, a service guy was there working on the station. I've been to this station a few times over the past few days and usually 4 of the 8 chargers are working. Today, I plugged into one of the two 350kw chargers that hasn't been working and it worked well after I authenticated. Got up to about 200kw which was awesome for me.
Spent most of my time talking to him. He's a subcontractor for EA. Couple of interesting bits of info from him.
1. Their contract says they have to respond within 4 hours of getting a ticket. They have the same contract with EVGo. His observation is EVGo gets the tickets in more quickly so they fix those slightly faster. He specifically said, if EA has a multi charger facility and a few are down, they don't immediately open a ticket.
2. He said EA uses equipment from 3 different companies and they vary in quality. I think he said ABB (not sure) and Signet and I didn't hear the third. He said the ABB seemed to be worse. Of course that's the one by me.
3. 4th gen equipment being installed now seemed to be better.
4. He's an electrician and he said very rarely was the problem electrical. It was usually software related. Either the unit being down b/c of the software or the unit wouldn't connect to a certain kind of care.
5. Hardest thing to troubleshoot was the car connection. Said he'd been called out to a station that wasn't working and he'd see two cars charge no problem and then the third wouldn't. Or vice versa.
6. They have 3 different groups working on it and no one communicates with each other. Subs like him. People from the manufacturer (ABB or Signet), and then EA people. He thinks that's part of the mess. He was actually called out to fix the charger I was using today. He was told ABB had been out there earlier and he assumed they must have fixed it but of course, no one bothered telling his company. Figured while he was there, he'd work on the other 3 but was waiting for them to generate a ticket.
It's no wonder it's such a mess if you've got 3 groups all driving around doing different things to the same equipment.
