Electrify America interview addressing concerns

[a76marine]

One of the YouTube channels I follow (Mach E Vlog) did an interview recently with Electrify America's Robert Barrosa (Senior Director of Sales, Business Development and Marketing). He addressed many of the complaints and concerns we all have and shared a relatively strong outlook for improving going forward.

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[Sgt Beavis]

It’s nice to see they are addressing a lot of their problems. It’s just a matter of time. Unfortunately the longer they take, the more tarnished their reputation.

That said, I’ve seen EA to a lot of work in the Denver area to improve charging. The chargers near my house have all been repaired or upgraded recently.

 

[Donald Stanfield]

It’s just going to take more users. There’s no point in keeping chargers working if you don’t have the number of people charging to pay for the employees required to maintain them.

The more people charging the more money they make which means more staff for fixing and installing chargers. It’s a problem unique to EV’s since no one not going on a long trip is required to use a DC station. So it is going to take substantially more EV’s on the road to justify infrastructure than it would ICE vehicles.

 

[Dark-Fx]

Wonder what they are doing with all the old hardware. Keeping it as spares?

 

[Riviot]

A lot of good your investments and "latest hardware" do to folks already burned on road trips with a sour taste.

4 months later and Ritzville, WA, still only has one normally functioning charger.

 

[jbronkoR1T]

I've been thinking a lot about this and I wonder how the vectors will intersect. You can dramatically increase AND UPGRADE existing charger base and that would go a long way. But I wonder how that will compare to what may be a 5x of # of electric vehicles out there in a pretty short time. Your point about only needing it on road trips is key, and it must be a very hard challenge to calculate how many you would want to have at peak times vs. their going unused 70% of the time during non-peak times and out of the way places. It's a tough problem but perhaps another important variable will be lower costs of charging equipment (making it an easier ROI) as well as businesses subsidizing them b/c of increased foot traffic and green halo. I haven't been in an Ikea in 20 years. but I would go in one while waiting to charge my truck, of course.

 

[kylealden]

It’s just going to take more users. There’s no point in keeping chargers working if you don’t have the number of people charging to pay for the employees required to maintain them.

The more people charging the more money they make which means more staff for fixing and installing chargers. It’s a problem unique to EV’s since no one not going on a long trip is required to use a DC station. So it is going to take substantially more EV’s on the road to justify infrastructure than it would ICE vehicles.

Over the last couple months and several road trips, at least during daytime hours, I don't think I've seen a single EA station that wasn't busy, and more often than not I see cars turned away (or I turn away myself) because there are multiple cars waiting and multiple stations offline. Demand is already higher than supply at peak hours in many areas.

(By contrast, most PNW Superchargers are mostly empty most of the time.)

 

[VenturaLuke]

Good interview. New EV owner with probably a dumb question - I visited an EA charger the other day in Los Alamos CA that had 3 stations with 2 cables per station but only 3 parking spaces (1 for each station). I noticed in the app that only 1 cable per charger can be used at a time. Why is this? Why cant they both be used?

 

[Scoiatael]

I'll believe it when I see it. Stations I check between Southern and Northern CA have had half the stations down for well over a month now. Still plenty of slow charging issues across multiple car manufacturers as well.

 

[jjswan33]

Personally I am grateful that we have EA. If we had to rely on the alternative there would be no road tripping a CCS car. Can we just be happy that they are trying to improve their network?

 

[nukem384]

Good interview. New EV owner with probably a dumb question - I visited an EA charger the other day in Los Alamos CA that had 3 stations with 2 cables per station but only 3 parking spaces (1 for each station). I noticed in the app that only 1 cable per charger can be used at a time. Why is this? Why cant they both be used?

The stall is only able to power 150kW or 350kW, whichever it is. But not 2x that at the same time. I believe there are two plugs because some have a split CHAdeMO and CCS. The others that are both CCS, have no idea, maybe for length because all EVs charge port aren't in the same place?

 

[2Labs]

Good interview. New EV owner with probably a dumb question - I visited an EA charger the other day in Los Alamos CA that had 3 stations with 2 cables per station but only 3 parking spaces (1 for each station). I noticed in the app that only 1 cable per charger can be used at a time. Why is this? Why cant they both be used?

They probably have two different type of connectors for each station. A CCS connector or a CHAdeMO.

 

[jjswan33]

They probably have two different type of connectors for each station. A CCS connector or a CHAdeMO.

Usually only 1 of 4 stations will have a CHAdeMO handle. I guess with known cable cooling issues having redundancy is not a terrible idea.

 

[NC-Rivian]

Personal experience: the Williamsburg, KY, EA charge site is very popular due to spacing on the N/S I-75 corridor. Charger #2 is broken, and I have to wait for an open charger *EVERY TIME I STOP*. I call EA every time and ask them to reboot #2 and they say that they can't because maintenance is on the way. *EVERY TIME*

 

[formula22]

Personally I am grateful that we have EA. If we had to rely on the alternative there would be no road tripping a CCS car. Can we just be happy that they are trying to improve their network?

couldn‘t agree more. Just got back from our first Denver to St Louis roadtrip and only EA made this possible. Until Telsa opens their network, EA is the solution. Other fast charge networks are just too slow for a large battery pack.

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