Road Stories (Charging #'s)

590 Views 3 Replies 4 Participants Last post by DallasEV, 1 mo ago

dcrafton309

Discussion Starter · 2 mo ago

Charger #1 EVGO to 98% in 59 minutes. Drove 150 miles, charge down to 20%. Drove 2 more miles to AmpUp, #2 Level 1 charger, with an estimated charge time of 14 hours and minutes. Nope. Drove 10 miles to a Nissan dealer. #3 Level 2 charger. Charge time 6 hrs. We had a show to go to, so we charged for almost 2 hours 37%. Drove to concert #4 Level 1 charger in the parking lot. 4 hours later we are back to 41%. 15 miles to Hotel. 37#. There was supposed to be an EVGo on the toll road. It has been broken for months. (not counting that one) #5 We drove to a posted charging location, a dealership on a Sunday, the lot was locked up, could not get in. #6 Some office building level 2 charger. Friends picked us up, ate lunch, and hung out for almost 3 hr. 57% So we have 150 miles home. Nissan Connect instructed us to stop halfway for a refill. #7 turned out to be another car dealer with an open lot. The charger, I think was a DC Fast charge but it was in a constant state of a reboot or something. (broken) #8 Walmart lot Electrify America. DC Fast charge. They had 3 stations, 1 broke the other 2 we needed to call the number and the girl boot them. (we met a lot of nice people that needed their cars charged) 25 minutes and a 57% charge, we were homebound. (Indianapolis and Northern Indiana) The infrastructure is not in place yet, be careful out there.

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atreis

· #2 · 2 mo ago

A couple tools that could help:

ABRP (abetterrouteplanner.com) - Really good for planning routes with charge stops. Enter your make and model car and it will filter to the right kind of chargers (DCFC with CCS). But don't take it's word for it completely.

PlugShare - EV Charging Station Map - Find a place to charge (plugshare.com) - Will show you (nearly) all chargers in an area. You can filter to just the kind that you want (CCS, in this case). Find a charger nearby, or find the one recommended by ABRP and check the recent checkins to see whether or not it's working and how fast it is. This will help you to filter out the ones that are broken.

Also, generally speaking I prefer charge locations with more than one charger because then there's a better chance there will be one working. Using this approach before I leave I've been able to have successful long distance trips from my starting point near Dayton, OH and without wasting time checking out Level 1 or 2 chargers.

BTW, the center display widget that will help with locating nearby chargers can also be filtered by type, but still use plugshare.com to check to make sure they're working.

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EzeMe2

· #3 · 1 mo ago

If you live and drive on the east coast don't rely on EVGO when taking a road trip. EVGo sites seem to have about ½ as many stations as Electrify America, for example. Plus the way EVgo counts what's at a site is funky math. My reference is the PlugShare App. At a WaWa station in Richmond VA on Brook Rd only 2 vehicles can charge simultaneously. Yet it says there are 5 stations (2 CHAdeMO, 2 CCS/SAe and 1 Tesla). That's the total of plugs available but only 2 vehicles can use them simultaneously. All 2 were in use. So I drive on to a nearby Walmart SuperCenter, also on Brook Rd, and it really has 9 stations that 9 vehicles can charge at simultaneously.
So EVGO is painting a picture that's not quite true, IMHO.

There were 3 of the EA stations in use when I arrive. I connect, pay with a charge card, get me a banana from WalMart and use their loo and I'm on my way in 25 minutes. I was less than 100 miles from home and just needed enough of a charge to limp home. I had also bookmarked the EA station in my PlusShare App, as my Plan B.

Lesson Learned: When trip planning, don't depend solely on EVGo places because they are free to us for year 1. Have a plan B in place at least for each "must stop". A plan C would be good too.

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DallasEV

· #4 · 1 mo ago

EzeMe2 said:
If you live and drive on the east coast don't rely on EVGO when taking a road trip. EVGo sites seem to have about ½ as many stations as Electrify America, for example. Plus the way EVgo counts what's at a site is funky math. My

Yeah, I'm really disappointed in EVGo. A couple chargers in big metro areas, and no way to get between them. At least here in Texas we have a few. I'm disappointed Nissan didn't partner with Electrify America, which seems to be the second best option outside of SC's. But since EA is with VW it makes sense, even if not driver friendly. Still makes the EVGo charging kinda worthless for me.

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