New EA Chargers Are Failing in the Cold - Fixed!!?

[Budman]

There is a huge amount of crowd sourced data available on PlugShare. If somebody could access that, it would provide some actual data on which networks are the most reliable and trends over time/seasons. I did an informal manual search of stations across northern MN and WI. Saw reports of reduced speed in this recent cold snap but no noticeable increase in out of order units. No EA here……just slow 50 kw chargers.

PlugShare people, f you are reading could you make this happen?

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[SlaterGS]

That is a fair and well written opinion. I personally never argued that EA is as reliable as the SC network, it's clearly not based on what I have read but I wouldn't know that.

I am just arguing that it's not as bad as you all make it out to be and with some research is completely reliable in my experience. Clearly though you and a couple others start with trolling comments and then decide to pepper in some personal experience that is not nearly as bad as you originally claimed.

You seem to have no issue calling out people for their anecdotal experience while using yours as justification for why EA is great.
EA is great and EA sucks can both exist in the same conversation and it is foolish to sit on either side thinking that the other cannot be true when they both are.

Look at it like an ISP or cellphone company...
AT&T coverage in my area is non-existent, but my buddy that lives a state away gets perfect service. It doesn't make sense for him to tell me to get AT&T because it works great for him. No, it's unfortunately very regional.
I'm going to stand with AT&T sucks and would never recommend if you plan to move to my area, but if it works where you are at then go for it. All my experiences are negative but that does not mean it can't also be good for someone.

I am happy EA works for you and yes the trolls exist, but experiences based on location may look completely different and we should be able to talk about that.

 

[jjswan33]

You seem to have no issue calling out people for their anecdotal experience while using yours as justification for why EA is great.
EA is great and EA sucks can both exist in the same conversation and it is foolish to sit on either side thinking that the other cannot be true when they both are.

Look at it like an ISP or cellphone company...
AT&T coverage in my area is non-existent, but my buddy that lives a state away gets perfect service. It doesn't make sense for him to tell me to get AT&T because it works great for him. No, it's unfortunately very regional.
I'm going to stand with AT&T sucks and would never recommend if you plan to move to my area, but if it works where you are at then go for it. All my experiences are negative but that does not mean it can't also be good for someone.

I am happy EA works for you and yes the trolls exist, but experiences based on location may look completely different and we should be able to talk about that.

I never said EA is great, I said it is fine/ok and I said I was very grateful we have it. You should go back and read the original comments I posted on, they didn’t even include anecdotal evidence of issues, just EA bashing for the fun of it.

For example comments like road tripping on CCS is impossible, it’s not. In fact most of the complaints are of the variety 2/4 chargers were down so I had to wait, it just sounds liking whining to me.

Edit: Spelling

 

[Dark-Fx]

I agree here, seems to me the path to profitability for EV charging is for the electric companies to be building the charging stations.

At the prices we pay for electricity in SoCal and how relatively cheap charging is, it would take years just to recover the cost to build the station Never mind to start making a profit. Seems like cutting out the middle man for the electricity would help there.

There is a huge amount of crowd sourced data available on PlugShare. If somebody could access that, it would provide some actual data on which networks are the most reliable and trends over time/seasons. I did an informal manual search of stations across northern MN and WI. Saw reports of reduced speed in this recent cold snap but no noticeable increase in out of order units. No EA here……just slow 50 kw chargers.

PlugShare people, f you are reading could you make this happen?

Unless people are better about describing their charging session and behavior before arrival, the data about how slow it is will be nearly useless if it's cold out. The Bolt EV will peg under 20kW in near zero F and below weather, since the battery heater takes too long to put enough energy into the pack. There's no avoiding it because there isn't a way to force the car to heat up the pack besides while it's actively charging. Other vehicles are going to have similar problems with cold soaked batteries.

Without being presented diagnostic information from the charger itself, it's pretty hard to know why your charging session fails. I spoke with an on-site technician for EA one time at a station that was having issues. He was able to see why sessions were getting cancelled after a short period of time, and it had something to do with that specific station having issues relaying payment information in a timely manner to their backend system. Not information you the user is privy to.

 

[SlaterGS]

I never said EA is great, I said it is fine/ok and I said I was very grateful we have it. You should go back and read the original comments I posted on, they didn’t even include anecdotal evidence of issues, just EA bashing for the fun of it.

For example comments like road tripping on CCS is impossible, it’s not. In fact most of the complains are of the variety 2/4 chargers were down so I had to wait, it just sounds liking whining to me.

This is not the first thread you've came to the defense of EA, so I am taking in to account a larger body of work ?‍

Very few people are EA bashing for fun. There is legitimate problems to many EV drivers and you need to get over that. We all are pushing for better infrastructure.

Also, road trip through WV and tell me how it goes. Impossible? No. Practical and reasonable? Also no.
Don't worry about me though I'll just keep "whining" because my last trip planned out through PS took 13hrs instead of 7hrs because of EA problems.

 

[moosehead]

While my eyes bleed trying to watch any of the movie length OSS videos, Kyle obviously has tremendous experience with EV's. Given that, for him to put this forth and literally conclude that no one should buy CCS rigs until the infrastructure is improved is pretty significant. A bit hysterical, but significant.

Since this is all anecdotal, I suspect the bulk of CCS drivers have experienced at one point or more that pucker factor I can't get my vehicle charged EA sucks gonna miss my world saving meeting range anxiety constipation. The result is many stay closer to our home L2 chargers or keep an ICE in the household.

On the other end of the spectrum, @jjswan33 has no less influence as one of the lead Rivian mileage drivers venturing far and wide and OR despite nascent CCS charging. He's the objective for all of us and for the industry, which will sell way more EV's when the net gets better dialed.

+1 to @Budman, we could use some data here to press this further.

 

[Doug]

I have extremely limited experience with EA but when we first got our truck in southern MN we went to some friends house on a cold windy snowy day. It took double the range to get there(we were on trickle charge as we did not have our main home charger yet) so it was going to be close to get home on what we had left. I knew there was a brand new EA station in Worthington, MN so I was pretty confident. We were early so tried to charge and all the machines the credit card reader was not working so we gave up. Much later after the truck sat for many hours at 10 decrees with a -10 windchill we went back and used the app(being new EV owners we had not set it up yet until the cc did not work). Happily it worked right away but it did take a long time to charge because everything was cold. The truck and charger. If it had not worked we would have gotten home with about 6 miles of range left. Much to close in cold weather. We are hesitant to take the truck on a trip because of the charger anxiety. We have limited options in the midwest. One charger not working may mean we may not make it home again. I do think all brands need to work on reliability. I can figure the reduced range in winter. I cannot figure which chargers are going to work or not.

 

[jjswan33]

I have extremely limited experience with EA but when we first got our truck in southern MN we went to some friends house on a cold windy snowy day. It took double the range to get there(we were on trickle charge as we did not have our main home charger yet) so it was going to be close to get home on what we had left. I knew there was a brand new EA station in Worthington, MN so I was pretty confident. We were early so tried to charge and all the machines the credit card reader was not working so we gave up. Much later after the truck sat for many hours at 10 decrees with a -10 windchill we went back and used the app(being new EV owners we had not set it up yet until the cc did not work). Happily it worked right away but it did take a long time to charge because everything was cold. The truck and charger. If it had not worked we would have gotten home with about 6 miles of range left. Much to close in cold weather. We are hesitant to take the truck on a trip because of the charger anxiety. We have limited options in the midwest. One charger not working may mean we may not make it home again. I do think all brands need to work on reliability. I can figure the reduced range in winter. I cannot figure which chargers are going to work or not.

The CC readers on EA are not good, won't defend those at all. I have never used one but seen lots of people have problems. You would do better with the EA app or the EA mobile wallet token.

 

[Doug]

The CC readers on EA are not good, won't defend those at all. I have never used one but seen lots of people have problems. You would do better with the EA app or the EA mobile wallet token.

We do have the app now. That is what we will use in the future. We downloaded several apps for different chargers in our area as cc readers seem to not work very well in the cold.

 

[Ngkgb]

Let’s not forget one interesting tidbit from this video: gas was 2$/gallon where he was. Coming from SoCal, those are unheard of prices. Gonna make people think twice about getting an EV in such areas when gas is so cheap, especially if they watch this video.

 

[SANZC02]

We do have the app now. That is what we will use in the future. We downloaded several apps for different chargers in our area as cc readers seem to not work very well in the cold.

To be honest I would be extremely reluctant to use any CC reader outside in these virtually unmonitored locations even if they were reliable. There are a lot of clever unscrupulous people that setup readers to capture the data to clone the cards. Banks are getting better at protecting against this but still a real problem.

 

[Donald Stanfield]

This is why if the cybertruck was available today, I'd get it over the R1T. Not because I prefer the Tesla, I don't, but because my life would certainly be better. Tesla built out a network because they wanted a great experience for their owners (Rivian I'm sure wants that, but not able to). However EA was not built for customers, it was built as a punishment. It would be like expecting criminals to pick up trash on the side of the road as part of their sentence to do as good of a job as an environmentalist doing volunteer work... Sucks for us (non-Tesla people).

As an aside criminals do pick up trash here as a punishment and our roads are much cleaner than many of the areas where these so called environmentalists live. Just because it’s a punishment doesn’t mean it won’t be a quality job. In EA’s case it sure seems to but we don’t really know if it’s lack of effort or that having to communicate with many different manufacturers with different charging requirements is just that more technically difficult.

It’s hard to say Tesla’s would be any better if they were open to all.

 

[Donald Stanfield]

Let’s not forget one interesting tidbit from this video: gas was 2$/gallon where he was. Coming from SoCal, those are unheard of prices. Gonna make people think twice about getting an EV in such areas when gas is so cheap, especially if they watch this video.

Gas is under 3 a gallon here and my truck still costs pennies on the dollar compared to an ice vehicle. It’s my daily and it’s cost me 1200 so far since I’ve owned it when my much smaller Audi cost 3200 roughly for the same period of time.

 

[SANZC02]

Just a side note, just sitting here watching the news and a story came up where transformers blew up on utility poles in the extreme cold across the Midwest knocking out power to 750k customers, I guess it is not only these new EA chargers having an issue with this storm.

 

[Budman]

Unless people are better about describing their charging session and behavior before arrival, the data about how slow it is will be nearly useless if it's cold out. The Bolt EV will peg under 20kW in near zero F and below weather, since the battery heater takes too long to put enough energy into the pack. There's no avoiding it because there isn't a way to force the car to heat up the pack besides while it's actively charging. Other vehicles are going to have similar problems with cold soaked batteries.

Without being presented diagnostic information from the charger itself, it's pretty hard to know why your charging session fails. I spoke with an on-site technician for EA one time at a station that was having issues. He was able to see why sessions were getting cancelled after a short period of time, and it had something to do with that specific station having issues relaying payment information in a timely manner to their backend system. Not information you the user is privy to.

Fair enough points about quantifying charging speed. I was thinking more along the lines of a moving average of the Plugshare score by network, regionally, seasonally, etc. On average is the Chargepoint network more highly rated than the EA network for example?

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