The state of the CCS charging network in USA is disappointing

[fastwheels]

Drove from TC to home today in my Polestar. Left the campsite with 68% charge. No issues using the EA station in Cadillac and again at Bay City. Might have been able to completely skip the second stop in the Rivian, not sure. The Polestar's efficiency with the tent on the roof is probably slightly worse than the Rivian with the tent over the bed, and the battery is >40% smaller. It was super windy today in a bad way though.

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We you up for the Iceman?

I stopped in to watch the pro men's finish and hang out with some friends, wasn't there very long. I had hoped to make it up for the sno-cone race so my son could watch, but we didn't get there in time. Parking being the shit show that it is... Muddy parking lot at Racho would have been a lot nicer to have the Rivian for.

We camped in bay city Friday night and TC Saturday. The wind the whole weekend was ridiculous. Went up through grayling to check out the RAN site and then up to Gaylord for the EA charger, even though it was a bit out of the way. My Polestar has free charging on EA for another 11 months.

 

[fastwheels]

I stopped in to watch the pro men's finish and hang out with some friends, wasn't there very long. I had hoped to make it up for the sno-cone race so my son could watch, but we didn't get there in time. Parking being the shit show that it is... Muddy parking lot at Racho would have been a lot nicer to have the Rivian for.

We camped in bay city Friday night and TC Saturday. The wind the whole weekend was ridiculous. Went up through grayling to check out the RAN site and then up to Gaylord for the EA charger, even though it was a bit out of the way. My Polestar has free charging on EA for another 11 months.

It was super windy here in TC - tent camping would have been really interesting!

Would have liked you to say there was progress on the RAN charger in Grayling...

 

[Jabbahop]

I got to test out the EA network and the Barstow RAN chargers on a recent trip from the Bay Area to Utah and back. Some random lessons & thoughts:

- EA chargers are hit or miss (more miss this hit). Read Plugshare reviews to try and target ones that have recent good reviews.

- Example: EA Lost Hills on I-5 in the central valley had one charger outputting ~65kw, another just 7kw. The last two were dead. We were lucky to arrive with all empty and happened upon the 65kw one on the third try. We watched 6 other EV drivers arrive, confirmed their problems and debated who would best get the 65kw charger once we left.

- OTOH: The Las Vegas Outlet chargers are all new single-headed 350kW and working. A popular spot, but with 6 working at full power, we only saw one EV driver wait for a few minutes

- The RAN chargers worked OK: 200kW on our 1st charge, but when heading home we found three were dead (not sure if they were on the 1st charge). Also combined with a gaggle of Rivian employees returning to the Bay Area from an offsite at Zion - we had to wait for one of the working three to free up. When we plugged in, we only got 100kW. I suspect (but don't know) the RANs are shared power - as when one of the other employee Rivians unplugged, we jumped to 150kW.

- Our worst experience was at the EA station in Washington (St. George), UT. We arrived as an R1T full of those employees were starting a charge. They then walked off for breakfast, while we tried the three other chargers. 2 were dead, one was outputting ~14kw. So we trickled our battery up while debating whether to move to a 60kW chargepoint down the road - or wait to get enough change to get to the Mesquite EA station (which also had bad plugshare reviews). Their R1T then stopped charging at 85% with no sight of them (hello, charging etiquette?) We took a picture of the screen showing charging stopped, parked funny to get the cable to reach, then unplugged them. They were understanding, and we then got a good charge rate to fill up for the leg to Vegas. Over an hour experience.

- One 'win' for us was that on the way home and charging at the Barstow RAN, the navigation system wanted us to stop at the bad Lost Hills station again. We assumed all these employee Rivians would be heading there, so we stopped short and filled up in Bakersfield. That then let us skip a fill-up at Harris Ranch - where we heard from a Mach-E driver at Panoche was filled with Rivian employee trucks w/ several waiting.

So I keep telling people that a key part of the 'Adventure' of owning an R1T is this charging. Just do the research, be flexible, and go with the flow when you do encounter issues.

I can’t believe how bad the St. George/Washington EA chargers are. Broken, slow and hard to park to reach the cables. Fortunately I live here so can charge @ home but for others that are travelling to Zion or through UT - avoid if you can!

 

[Dark-Fx]

It was super windy here in TC - tent camping would have been really interesting!

Would have liked you to say there was progress on the RAN charger in Grayling...

It is slowly being reclaimed by nature, does that count?

 

[2025R1S]

EA Lansing station is down to a single, inconsistent, station.

New stations cannot come fast enough.

 

[2025R1S]

Looks like I got my wish. Does anyone know what would be involved in replacing the CCS port with the NACS port?

Will we have to wait for third parties to manufacture conversion kits?

The way I read Tesla's NACS announcement; soon as I slap a NACS port on my R1T, I can go charge at any supercharger...

 

[VSG]

The way I read Tesla's NACS announcement; soon as I slap a NACS port on my R1T, I can go charge at any supercharger...

If that's what they meant to say, they would have said it explicitly rather than requiring people to interpret their press release. And they would have announced that they're selling an (expensive) adapter because literally no other company has the ability to make one.

If that is what they meant, the press release would NOT be about some new standard they are trying to make, it would be titled something like "Tesla opens Supercharger network to all“ and the mechanics of that wouldn't even be mentioned. If Elon gives away something, he makes sure everyone knows it.

You're just projecting your own hopes and dreams onto your reading.

 

[2025R1S]

I have more faith in getting access to the Supercharger network, than I do the CCS network ever holding a candle to the supercharger network.

Keep hope alive!

If that's what they meant to say, they would have said it explicitly rather than requiring people to interpret their press release. And they would have announced that they're selling an (expensive) adapter because literally no other company has the ability to make one.

If that is what they meant, the press release would NOT be about some new standard they are trying to make, it would be titled something like "Tesla opens Supercharger network to all“ and the mechanics of that wouldn't even be mentioned. If Elon gives away something, he makes sure everyone knows it.

You're just projecting your own hopes and dreams onto your reading.

 

[SANZC02]

Just saw this on REDDIT….. I guess the Superchargers are not completely immune to issues and the comments say they are brand new just upgraded units.

 

[Dark-Fx]

Just saw this on REDDIT….. I guess the Superchargers are not completely immune to issues and the comments say they are brand new just upgraded units.

Fake news. Supercharging stations never have issues. These are probably just a bunch of CCS EV drivers that rented Teslas for a fake news photo shoot.

 

[virgnia_rivian]

I’m no expert on the state of CCS chargers, but I just wanted to provide one user experience. We picked up our R1T from Normal, IL last Wednesday and then road tripped home to Virginia (DC area) We had no issues finding chargers.

We left Normal at 90% and first stopped at the Meijer in Fisher’s, IN at an EA station. Just off I-69/I-465. We picked this specific location because we were meeting a friend for dinner, so we grabbed food across the street while we charged for 45 min. Great charging setup with a good location to the side of the store so parking was easy.

Along I-70 there are plenty of places to stop, but we planned our stop for the night outside of Dayton, OH one exit away from another EA location at a Wal Mart. In the morning we pulled up the charger and then grabbed breakfast. 25 min charge.

Back on the road, and before leaving Ohio we stopped for a 10 minute charge near Cambridge. Another EA station. We were concerned about the weather heading into PA and wanted to stay at a higher state of charge in case we had to change plans.

South of Pittsburgh we stopped at an EA station at a Sheetz and grabbed lunch. 25 minute charge. Just enough time to eat and grab a coffee.

We then hit the PA turnpike. We added one more charge stop at an EA station at the Wal Mart in Hagerstown, MD mainly due to the fact the truck was telling us we’d have less than 10% when we got home. The mountains and the conditions were impacting range a bit. We averaged 1.97 mi/kw on this last leg. The chargers at this WalMart were the worst we encountered. Two stations didn’t work of the four. Plus their location in a busy parking lot right before Christmas was terrible.

That was our charging experience. The truck, ABRP, and EA all showed us many options for charging. We just picked these based on distance and where we wanted to stop. With the exception of Indy and Hagerstown, we were the only vehicle using the chargers at every other stop. We did not see many EV’s on the trip at all. In fact we saw (2) Rivian’s (1) Tesla and (1) Mercedes. That was it.

 

[brancky3]

I’m no expert on the state of CCS chargers, but I just wanted to provide one user experience. We picked up our R1T from Normal, IL last Wednesday and then road tripped home to Virginia (DC area) We had no issues finding chargers.

We left Normal at 90% and first stopped at the Meijer in Fisher’s, IN at an EA station. Just off I-69/I-465. We picked this specific location because we were meeting a friend for dinner, so we grabbed food across the street while we charged for 45 min. Great charging setup with a good location to the side of the store so parking was easy.

Along I-70 there are plenty of places to stop, but we planned our stop for the night outside of Dayton, OH one exit away from another EA location at a Wal Mart. In the morning we pulled up the charger and then grabbed breakfast. 25 min charge.

Back on the road, and before leaving Ohio we stopped for a 10 minute charge near Cambridge. Another EA station. We were concerned about the weather heading into PA and wanted to stay at a higher state of charge in case we had to change plans.

South of Pittsburgh we stopped at an EA station at a Sheetz and grabbed lunch. 25 minute charge. Just enough time to eat and grab a coffee.

We then hit the PA turnpike. We added one more charge stop at an EA station at the Wal Mart in Hagerstown, MD mainly due to the fact the truck was telling us we’d have less than 10% when we got home. The mountains and the conditions were impacting range a bit. We averaged 1.97 mi/kw on this last leg. The chargers at this WalMart were the worst we encountered. Two stations didn’t work of the four. Plus their location in a busy parking lot right before Christmas was terrible.

That was our charging experience. The truck, ABRP, and EA all showed us many options for charging. We just picked these based on distance and where we wanted to stop. With the exception of Indy and Hagerstown, we were the only vehicle using the chargers at every other stop. We did not see many EV’s on the trip at all. In fact we saw (2) Rivian’s (1) Tesla and (1) Mercedes. That was it.

With EA there needs to be a better way to know when one isn’t working. Sometimes the screen will say unavailable, but in my experience the screen will look normal but do absolutely nothing after you plug in. The whole station should turn red or something.

 

[2025R1S]

A recent post from Kyle. I know the experience all too well.

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