Share Your Charging Horror Stories

[Longhorngirl]

For those of y‘all who are already EV owners, do y’all have any EV charging horror stories(ICE cars parked at charging station, EV fully charged but still parked at charger, chargers not working and have to move car multiple times to find working charger) If so, please share. I will be a first time EV owner and am interested in hearing of everyone‘s experience. I know that most of us will be charging at home, but I am wondering how stressed I need to be for long trips.

I personally have seen ICE cars parked at charging stations. It seems like this is getting to be a problem in China and Tesla has started deploying floor locking devices. Is this something we need in the US?

https://electrek.co/2021/12/09/tesla-system-prevent-gas-cars-iceing-superchargers-integrates-app/

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[SolartoEV]

I live in a town with 1 gas station, its a Mobil. The next town is 8 minutes away. They also have one gas station, it's a 7/11. The Mobil gas station is usually about 8 cents more ( currently $3.58 ). The 7/11 pumps a gallon at a timed rate of 38 seconds. I have a 24 gallon tank. So is it worth 14 minutes of my time to save $2?

 

[SeaGeo]

Honestly, my only "bad" stories are pretty game.
Over Thanksgiving an EA station at a walmart near my was entirely blocked by customers with ICE vehicles. I chased (politely) one off, and then another EV owner came by and needed the charger while the rest of the chargers were used up. I was opportunity charging so I unplugged for them, and by the time I circled one of the ICE vehicles left.

I've seen tesla's pull up and sit at CCS chargers frequently. Honestly, tesla owners are more likely to "ice" you than ICE owners in my experience.

And level 2 chargers seem to work like... 75% of the time, and 50% of the time that they do, they are like 3.4kw chargers or something that's borderline useless.

 

[RideAlong]

Punks think it funny to decouple the charging cable in public lots -_-

 

[ja_kub_sz]

Yes, yes and yes!

So....

November 24th 2015 I'm commuting from Iowa to Illinois, and it's cold and snowy.

I start my day full charge in my Tesla Model S (275 miles) from Dubuque at the hotel charging station. Then off West Union Iowa. It's an 81 mile drive, but probably lost 135 miles, because it was so cold and high speed driving. So I'm heading in for my work day not worried because there's a level two charger outside the West Union Court House. I get there and to my surprise it's out of order and not working.

It's really cold and about 3pm when I get out of work, and I have about 130 miles range (about 85 real world) and my Tesla tells me I don't have enough juice to get to Davenport IA (150 miles) for the supercharger. Cherry Valley Mall IL supercharger is even further away (180 miles) so my only option is to head north!

So I drove 85 miles through northern Iowa, with no 4G, so no Tesla GPS maps, no T-Mobile cell phone coverage either, and it's so cold my car is telling me to reduce speed and turn off the heat to make it to my destination. So I have to turn off my heat just simply to make it to the La Crosse WI supercharger (traveling through Iowa and Minnesota to get there). I'm navigating old school, by map in hand on back country roads the whole time.

I make it to La Crosse on electron dust... Plug in and eat at BW²... Sleep in my car till fully charged and then I'm off. Only problem is I'm 260 miles away from home, so still can't make it there without more stops. As I head off to Madison WI to hit their supercharger, I get pulled over by a Wisconsin cop, because he never saw a Tesla before. Funny, none the less he was really impressed, but now make it to Madison (145 miles, but again drained like 200 miles). So need another near full charge to make it the last 130 miles home.

So I was able to roll into a bar to have a black out Wednesday drink (+4-7 more drinks) with my brother after driving a total of 360 miles taking 9 hours and traveling through 4 states for what otherwise should've been a 230 mile drive through 2 states taking me 4.5 hours.

It was a hard lesson learned, but it was kinda funny all in all. Especially when my brother got thrown out of the bar and almost beaten up by an angry mob, diving into my speeding Tesla with it's passenger door open as I drove the last 10 miles to get home.

Battery left with about 55 miles I think... Give or take?

 

[Dark-Fx]

I once had to move to a different charger at an EA station, the horror! Another time the only charger was ICEd, decided to chance it, ended up getting home with 3% battery left.

 

[bd5400]

Vet your electrician when installing a home charger. I went with an electrician recommended by my real estate agent and he installed our Tesla wall charger soon after I purchased the house. Everything fine for over a year and then one day we get a notification that charging is interrupted and we can't get the car to charge anymore. Open up the charger and the wires inside are charred and melted.

It's possible that the wires were not tightened correctly when the charger was installed, leading to a failure over time and then a short. Thankfully it didn't start a fire, but the charger was toast and had to be replaced by Tesla. I'm strongly considering having a heat alarm installed in the garage since you can't really use smoke detectors in a garage.

 

[r1t_kev]

After reading that story, I hope my mileage may vary ??

 

[staples]

Sometimes the price of electricity goes above 5¢/kWh and my home automation stops the charge. ?

 

[Craigins]

I read this on plugshare yesterday and it is my nightmare. I hope the RAN gets built out soon.

MattysID.4

Volkswagen ID.4 46 Kilowatts

Rolled up and there was TMY using the chademo plug. Unit stated that it was 100% charged no owner in sight. We level 2 charged for 35 mins and still no signs of the TMY owner anywhere. Finally maneuvered into place and plugged into the CCS on the same greenlots machine. Charged just fine, so word to the wise, you CAN have both CCS and Chademo plugged in at the same time, but it will only charge one at a time. Also to the TMY owner, very poor form plugging in then ghosting for > 1 hour leaving your vehicle blocking a machine. Especially on the only 50kwh DC fast charger in central Wisconsin ?

 

[OverZealous]

I'll try to remember the details, but we were on a family trip from Kentucky to Michigan in our Model S 85D. It was cold, but not horrible. We decided to gamble and use the Dayton supercharger. It's our least favorite, being so far out of the way, but in theory we can skip a charge if we get a good charge there while we eat.

We arrive lower than we usually like, only to find something like 4 of 6 chargers (I don't remember the exact number) out of order. Actually, it's a little worse than that. You can plug in a couple of the chargers, but it won't start charging.

We pull off to the side to wait for a spot to open up, and start talking to someone else there. Turns out it's a local, and he says that just a week before, a bunch of rednecks in oversized bro-dozers came over, blocked all the chargers, and then vandalized them. They literally ripped cables off, stomped ends into the dirt, etc. By the time the cops showed up, they had all driven off, of course.

This was before Tesla had anything telling you how many stations were functional, assuming it would even have known.

We haven't actually been back through Dayton since, but mainly because they've since opened up several chargers in much better locations for the drive.

Anyway, the EV-hate is still weirdly strong out there. I'll never get why (I have a few of them in my own "family", even).

Personally, I can't wait to out-drive, out-race, out-climb, and out-tow all of these soccer-dad wannabes. ?

 

[SeaGeo]

I read this on plugshare yesterday and it is my nightmare. I hope the RAN gets built out soon.

I'm telling you, the damn Tesla owners are worse than ICE drivers. lol. They've seen CCS charging spots empty so much, for so long, that they think they can park their with impunity.

 

[MadMac]

I’ve driven my Tesla Model 3 back and forth from DC to Florida a couple times. Once, with the family, I was charging enroute and there was an internet outage on the East Coast right at the moment my payment was going thru (I guess). Anyway, it locked up my account. Of course on a Sunday when reaching anyone at Tesla who could help was that much harder. I couldn’t get into the account even after resetting it etc. We drove on hoping it would fix itself by the next charger but it didn’t. My wife got to the point of booking a rental car “we’ll meet you in Florida, enjoy your great car” was what she said, if I remember right. In the end, I was able to get about two minutes of supercharge at a time before the system would stop the charger. I kept unplugging and replugging for about twenty minutes. And then, as if by miracle, the system caught up and unlocked my account and zap: full charge. All that said, it does point out the reliance on tech to all work all the time —but that’s everything really now isn’t it…?

 

[Longhorngirl]

Anyway, the EV-hate is still weirdly strong out there. I'll never get why (I have a few of them in my own "family", even).

I agree. There is a lot of EV hate. I have seen numerous videos posted by Tesla owners showing random people keying their cars for no reason whatsoever. Our Rivians are definitely going to stick out, and I expect it to attract the eye of a lot of EV haters. I am considering adding PPF in the hope that it will help protect my car from people looking to key my car.

 

[r1t_kev]

I’ve driven my Tesla Model 3 back and forth from DC to Florida a couple times. Once, with the family, I was charging enroute and there was an internet outage on the East Coast right at the moment my payment was going thru (I guess). Anyway, it locked up my account. Of course on a Sunday when reaching anyone at Tesla who could help was that much harder. I couldn’t get into the account even after resetting it etc. We drove on hoping it would fix itself by the next charger but it didn’t. My wife got to the point of booking a rental car “we’ll meet you in Florida, enjoy your great car” was what she said, if I remember right. In the end, I was able to get about two minutes of supercharge at a time before the system would stop the charger. I kept unplugging and replugging for about twenty minutes. And then, as if by miracle, the system caught up and unlocked my account and zap: full charge. All that said, it does point out the reliance on tech to all work all the time —but that’s everything really now isn’t it…?

I could see my better half having the same reaction. A car is a means of conveyance to her and technical issues with anything take her from zero to a hundred immediately. I can hear myself now: “Babe, we’re pioneers. This is part of the adventure!” ??

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