Will EA be the death of EVs?

[Bobby]

Had another attempt to charge at EA today both in Rancho Bernardo and Carmel Mountain. For various reasons could not charge at either location: charger not working, car not recognized, and other error messages I don't remember at this time. I bought this car with the intention on going on multiple road trips but this is the last car that I would take on a trip in which I was not able to get back home on one charge. The lack of ability to charge consistently at EA is appalling. So any planned road trips will be done with my Model X as much as I hate to drive that car. Elon if you are listening, hurry up and make your superchargers available to all. I would also suggest that the only way that EA gets government money is to show that there chargers work at least 90-95 % of the time.

I’ve had good luck with the Rancho Penasquitos/Carmel Mountain EA station.

 

[t12g]

The title of this thread is "Will EA be the death of EVs?" I don't think it's just EA. It's all non-Tesla chargers. If this keeps happening to me, making me add 2 hours on to a 5.5 hour drive, I'm done with EVs until this gets fixed.

Too bad because I love the car.

Couldn't agree more. Coming from Tesla supercharger, everything else is a major downgrade right now. It might be some people's idea of fun, but doing extensive planning for road trips is not my cup of tea. I just want to get in the car and start driving; I don't want to figure out a plan B and plan C in anticipation of the volatile charging situation.

 

[skywaterbanjo]

How timely...so, the non-Tesla network sucks and now, we're not supposed to charge at home.

https://www.thebrighterside.news/po...ng-at-home-is-wrong-stanford-researchers-find

 

[MorganB]

I've charged 5 times at EA, two different locations. Twice it self authenticated, twice I authenticated through the app and once when I didn't know authenticating through the app was a thing I had issues and had to change chargers and then figured out that I needed to use the Lucid app to authenticate. All in all it's been an acceptable experience.

 

[Snafu]

I've tried 7 different EA chargers so far (5 in NH, 1 in ME and 1 in CT), and so far all but one of those in NH worked perfectly (maybe not always the fastest or throttled). I always check the ratings on PlugShare, and so far the only one which didn't work every time was rated at 7.4 - even one rated 9 did work, so I have been using that as my cut-off for which chargers to rely on if planning a longer (or cold weather) trip. Not a guarantee, but it's worked for me so far. I also look to see if another Lucid had successfully charged at the station.

 

[linnea1]

Had another attempt to charge at EA today both in Rancho Bernardo and Carmel Mountain. For various reasons could not charge at either location: charger not working, car not recognized, and other error messages I don't remember at this time. I bought this car with the intention on going on multiple road trips but this is the last car that I would take on a trip in which I was not able to get back home on one charge. The lack of ability to charge consistently at EA is appalling. So any planned road trips will be done with my Model X as much as I hate to drive that car. Elon if you are listening, hurry up and make your superchargers available to all. I would also suggest that the only way that EA gets government money is to show that there chargers work at least 90-95 % of the time.

Fully agree with your last sentence!

 

[AmyS]

I decided against taking the Lucid on my current trip from Charlotte to New Orleans based mostly on the worry over charger availability. My wife wanted to stop in Laurel, MS which determined our route.

We took the Alpha Stelvio she has as a rental while her GLS 450 is being repaired after hitting a deer.

I think the Lucid would have actually packed better and been more comfortable, but the charging network on the route as well as in New Orleans did not give me a good feeling.

Similar situation for us, I refused to drive my new Lucid from Wisconsin to Texas for Easter trip and insisted we book flights instead. My experiences at public charging stations has been horrible across the country, but the experiences do differ by location significantly. For example, northern Wisconsin chargers are few and far between with most of them not functioning. Other states I worry about my safety and safety of the kids when we are pulling in late at night and chargers are located in dark areas next to dumpsters. I know there are plans to improve the infrastructure across America, but that will take a long time and a significant investment. With so many new EV cars on the market, this is going to get worse before it improves.

 

[mardin]

OK, just a bit of an exaggeration, but...

My wife and I took a ride out to East Brunswick, NJ, to visit her sister, about 110 miles from us. Coming back, although I could have easily made it on my i4's initial charge, I decided to try an EA station very close to my wife's sister's house. The experience here was not unlike our experience on Thanksgiving day, with multiple inoperative EA chargers.

Two drivers, who absolutely needed a charge, were beyond furious. One driver had a similar story to one I heard on Thanksgiving day. This was his third EA charger location in NJ he had tried. At the other two, one location was totally inoperative and the other had only 2 of 8 units working, with both functioning units occupied. He told me he regretted buying an EV. This is an absolutely dismal state of affairs for this horrid network of chargers.

I haven't really experienced this on Long Island, but it seems New Jersey is an entirely different story. As I always do when I encounter a bad charger, I called EA to report it as a courtesy to the next driver that might use this location. The agent told me they had the infamous 'trouble ticket' out on the two chargers I tried and it would be tended to shortly. Right.

My wife, who had always been a strong advocate of having 1 EV and one ICE vehicle, turned to me while I was being connected to the EA agent and said, "This is precisely why I don't want two EVs". Who can argue with that logic? Given the circumstances of our last 2 visits to NJ EA chargers, certainly not me.

It seems to me the network is actually deteriorating and not improving. Perhaps I'm wrong. However if these kinds of charging experiences get around, it will have a sobering effect on EV sales. I might think twice or three times taking a trip from NY to Florida. I used to think it would be a piece of cake given all the EA chargers off of i95, but now I wonder.

On YouTube, search Cannonball Lucid and watch 3 hr video clearly demonstrating how Electrify America sank their carefully played cross country time race. Electrify America is beyond recovery!

 

[Bunnylebowski]

Depending on the region I’d recommend EVGo over EA. I say that while also believing a bad EVGo charger likely fried some hardware in my Lucid requiring repairs (although it could have been the EA signet unit doing the YoYo after the EVGo charger failed). Overall I’ve found EVGo to be much more likely to be successful on the first plug in attempt, and lately they seem to get closer to advertised speeds if conditions are right, but sometimes EA pulls it off also. The largest concern is how helpless the EA staff seem whenever I’ve had to call them, and then how seriously long it takes before a defective station gets serviced and back online (more like months than weeks!). While they’re polite and professional, they seem to have very little control over malfunctioning stations beyond either rebooting them or initiating a free session for you. I’ve never had to call EVGo support, by comparison, while without exaggerating I’ve had to call EA a minimum of 10 times, probably more. I was in LA recently and was unable to charge on EA first try 100% of the time at 4 locations, including one site that an EA rep directed me to after the other one had 2/4 stations down and a long wait, and it seemed EA themselves didn’t actually know their own site was offline, proven by their own post on PlugShare saying it was only one ChadEmo dispenser that was down, when in fact it was that dispenser and another CCS dispenser that were down leaving only one operation stall.

I’m not trying to spread doom, and if you stick religiously with PlugShare you’ll find somewhere to charge. I’ve done many road trips in the Lucid using a mix of EA, EVGo, Chargepoint and destination L2/L1 charging. On @OutofSpecDave road trip I think he successfully charged at every stop, which was great, but the fact that so much time was wasted trying different chargers and throttled speed and YoYo speeds very much slowed things down.

 

[hmp10]

After picking up our Zenith Red Lucid DE yesterday from having it wrapped, we stopped at a local eatery. When we went back out to the car a gentleman was standing by it and asked if we'd like to see another like it. We followed him to the back of the parking lot where his Zenith Red Grand Touring was parked. Of course, we started trading stories, all of which revolved around how much we like our cars. (This guy had owned a Ferrari and was astounded to find that his GT was quicker.) He said the only thing about the car that had annoyed him was the initial software but that UX 2.0 had largely mooted those issues (as it has with us). Finally, he asked what we thought about Electrify America. That was a very different conversation, with us both trading stories about the nightmares we've encountered there. Like us, he had never been unable to charge but, like us, he had had too many charging stops that took 1-2 hours due to inoperative stations, failures to initialize, premature terminations of charging sessions, and time spent wrangling with EA on the phone.

. . . it seemed EA themselves didn’t actually know their own site was offline . . . .

I've had this same experience the one time I experimented with ChargePoint. I didn't need a charge but had some time on my hands while waiting in a cell phone lot for an arriving flight, so I thought I'd try another charger service. I checked the Nav system to find a ChargePoint station just a few miles away. It said the station was occupied, but I figured maybe it would be free once I arrived. It was. The first problem was that the cable was not long enough to reach the Lucid charge port unless I straddled two spaces to put the port directly in front of the cable. I did that and then went through the rigamarole of loading the app and setting up an account. After all this was done, I tried to initiate the charge session. After several failed attempts and a long hold, I finally got a ChargePoint rep on the line. She spent about 15 minutes taking me through all kinds of trouble shooting routines. Finally, I asked her if she couldn't just initiate the session from her end. She said she could. After a few seconds of silence, she said she had to talk with her supervisor. After another hold, she came back on line to tell me that the station was out of service. I've never tried ChargePoint again.

Outside of Tesla's Supercharger network, we are in the Dark Ages in this country with EV roadside charging, and the anti-EV movement is beginning to draw new breath in certain quarters in this country. It has already shown up as line items in some recent political campaign speeches. So expect growing attempts in the U.S. to stall or even derail the plans for advancement that are already in the works.

 

[Bunnylebowski]

I continue to be amazed by the anti-EV hysteria in this country. When I was charging at the desert hills EA in Cabazon some jerk drove by and yelled “nice golf cart”, he actually yelled it twice because me and the other person who was getting into their Chevy bolt were confused. It was kind of an embarrassing one man protest. But yeah, as usual angry cave man scared, maybe angry cave man need to yell or maybe shoot something to make angry cave man feel less scared.

 

[hmp10]

I continue to be amazed by the anti-EV hysteria in this country. When I was charging at the desert hills EA in Cabazon some jerk drove by and yelled “nice golf cart”, he actually yelled it twice because me and the other person who was getting into their Chevy bolt were confused. It was kind of an embarrassing one man protest. But yeah, as usual angry cave man scared, maybe angry cave man need to yell or maybe shoot something to make angry cave man feel less scared.

Expect more of this in the coming months.

After several years of strongly supporting the expansion of EV infrastructure in Florida, Ron DeSantis has read the new political winds and reversed course. He gave a speech early this month in which he tried to stoke fears of losing your ICE vehicle by invoking fears of losing your guns:

"You go and use too much gas, they’re going to stop it. They’re not going to honor the transaction because you’ve already bought more than what they think. You wanna go buy a rifle, they’re going to say no, you have too many, too many of those, you can’t do it."

The federal debt limit bill that just passed the House, for all the ballyhoo about determination to cut expenditures, restored the funding to biofuel and ethanol subsidies while cutting funding for EV-related expenditures.

A move is afoot in Michigan to block the building of two EV battery plants, one by Gotion (a Chinese company, which might pose legitimate issues) but the other by Ford (based on absurd claims of public safety concerns). This in a state that has been reeling for years from the loss of ICE vehicle manufacturing.

Wyoming proposed a ban, admittedly mostly symbolic, on EV sales in that state by 2035.

EVs are being tested and primed to fill the fury gap left by the retreat of Covid safety protocols from the headlines.

 

[JJ_5]

I continue to be amazed by the anti-EV hysteria in this country. When I was charging at the desert hills EA in Cabazon some jerk drove by and yelled “nice golf cart”, he actually yelled it twice because me and the other person who was getting into their Chevy bolt were confused. It was kind of an embarrassing one man protest. But yeah, as usual angry cave man scared, maybe angry cave man need to yell or maybe shoot something to make angry cave man feel less scared

I was listening to a Science Friday program on EVs last year. Several people called in and were critical of the vehicles. It was surprising how uninformed they were. One person stated that the problem with EVs is that you have to spend as much time charging as you do driving.

 

[joec]

I, too, fear it’s going to get much worse before it gets better, culturally. But manufacturers have made their plans. EVs are coming, whether these Neanderthals want them or not.

Politicians will use it as a tool to stoke up the last remaining remnants of their base, but it will be in vain. Follow the money. We’re watching the dying breaths of a group of morons who should have died out long ago. Good riddance.

 

[joec]

What was it Steve Jobs once said about people railing against technological progress?

Time has a way of taking care of these things for us.

 

[Tesla2.0]

I continue to be amazed by the anti-EV hysteria in this country. When I was charging at the desert hills EA in Cabazon some jerk drove by and yelled “nice golf cart”, he actually yelled it twice because me and the other person who was getting into their Chevy bolt were confused. It was kind of an embarrassing one man protest. But yeah, as usual angry cave man scared, maybe angry cave man need to yell or maybe shoot something to make angry cave man feel less scared.

Fear of change and unable to adapt.

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This woman is probably pissed off at bots taking over jobs.

 

[Bunnylebowski]

I, too, fear it’s going to get much worse before it gets better, culturally. But manufacturers have made their plans. EVs are coming, whether these Neanderthals want them or not.

Politicians will use it as a tool to stoke up the last remaining remnants of their base, but it will be in vain. Follow the money. We’re watching the dying breaths of a group of morons who should have died out long ago. Good riddance.

This is what confuses me, like why wouldn’t they want a fast as hell smooth driving low maintenance car they can just plug in at home? It’s super convenient.

 

[Sandvinsd]

I was listening to a Science Friday program on EVs last year. Several people called in and were critical of the vehicles. It was surprising how uninformed they were. One person stated that the problem with EVs is that you have to spend as much time charging as you do driving.

Actually, if I were to take a trip in our Leaf, that statement would be true. And each charging session would take longer due to the battery temperature.

 

[stratus]

Unsurprisingly , the EV has turned into a political symbol and one that cause absolute rage in a certain subset of the population. The phenomenon is consistent with other rage instigators in this country, like science in general. We live in a country where a huge portion of the population considers ignorance a source of pride and knowledge is” woke” , whatever the hell that word means. It’s disheartening, to say the least.
I get dirty looks, aggressive driving encounters and smoke blown in my face very frequently here, just because I chose to purchase and drive a really fun machine.
I can’t wait to cut my grass with my new EGO mower and see my neighbors get irritated because it’s so quiet.

 

[Adnillien]

I am afraid this thread is veering into politics, please bring it back to EA so that we do not have to delete posts and lock the thread.