Los Angeles to San Diego and back, great until we needed to charge

[astronut325]

So this past weekend we took a brief trip from Los Angeles to San Diego. It's approximately 120-130ish miles of travel. I had charged the Mach-E to 90%. GOM showed 300+ miles. Great. My family and I hop in, put on good music and head to San Diego. We get there without issue and have a great day. We drove around to other places and still had plenty of charge left. However, at the end of the day it was apparent I needed a charge as I only had 100 miles of range and I have a 130 mile trip back home. So I punch in my home address into the Mach-E navigation and it points out that I need to charge and there is an EA station just 10 minutes away.

We navigate to the nearest EA station. Completely full, with one car already in line waiting to charge. I open the EA app on my phone and see there is another EA station about 15 minutes away. So I drive to the next EA station. One stall available, plug in, pay and we're charging. Awesome. 20 minutes pass and I notice we've barely added 6ish miles. I look on the EA screen and it says it's charging at 12KWh. I once again open the EA app and see there is another station about 30 minutes away from my current location, thankfully it was on the way home.

I make it to the third EA station:
Charging stall 1: Fails to connect/charge
Charging stall 2: Fails to connect/charge
Charging stall 3: In use by another vehicle
Charging stall 4: Connects and charges. Charged for 15 minutes. Wife angry and kids cranky.

Got home.

I'm seriously rethinking my Mach-E purchase due to the charging network. What should have been a 20 minute stop to charge for 15 minutes turned into almost 1 and a half hour endeavor. My family refuses to do any more long trips on the Mach-E.

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[Parasmoney]

That's very unfortunate. So far I have charged at EA three times. One was to just go test out the charging process before heading on a 200 mile trip. But all the times, I was never successful at getting charging started on the first attempt. Luckily for me, there were never other cars taking up spots. Two out of three times I had to move my car. The third time I had to replug the cable a few times. It does make me nervous to think that I could be in the same position as you.

 

[Neil4Real]

Yeah, just the name of the game, for now, unfortunately. People love to say Tesla's network is the bee's knees, but you'd have just run into the same scenario as your first stop, except a much longer line to charge. I'd have probably just waited there instead of driving all over.

I'd just try and stay at a hotel with a charger and hope it is free when I get there. If staying at an AIRBNB or similar, your mobile charger level 1 charging will still get you decent enough range overnight to make your trip back home.

 

[krafty81]

Did you call EA customer service? I have heard they are pretty good and can even do resets for you.

 

[MachEMaster]

They call them EC (Electrify Canada) up here, but I avoid these chargers if at all possible. Are there any other options around California?

 

[astronut325]

That's very unfortunate. So far I have charged at EA three times. One was to just go test out the charging process before heading on a 200 mile trip. But all the times, I was never successful at getting charging started on the first attempt. Luckily for me, there were never other cars taking up spots. Two out of three times I had to move my car. The third time I had to replug the cable a few times. It does make me nervous to think that I could be in the same position as you.

I didn't state it in the original post. I did disconnect, reconnect a few times before moving onto another stall/station every single time.

Yeah, just the name of the game, for now, unfortunately. People love to say Tesla's network is the bee's knees, but you'd have just run into the same scenario as your first stop, except a much longer line to charge. I'd have probably just waited there instead of driving all over.

I'd just try and stay at a hotel with a charger and hope it is free when I get there. If staying at an AIRBNB or similar, your mobile charger level 1 charging will still get you decent enough range overnight to make your trip back home.

Yeah, if we end up doing longer trips then I'll plan on staying at a place that can provide overnight charging. This was just a day trip. For 130 miles, I'm not sure booking an overnight stay is worth it.

Did you call EA customer service? I have heard they are pretty good and can even do resets for you.

I did not. I saw the EA help number posted on every stall. I just figured I'll be dealing with some automated help line. I didn't realize they have human support. I'll try that next time.

 

[astronut325]

They call them EC (Electrify Canada) up here, but I avoid these chargers if at all possible. Are there any other options around California?

I checked PlugShare after I got home and there are plenty of other chargers such as ChargePoint and EVGO. However, all of them topped out at 50-60KWh rates. EA was the only one offering 100+ KWh rate.

 

[mkhuffman]

We took my MME on vacation last week. We had to drive from the Outer Banks of NC, to Roanoke VA which is a six hour drive. We stopped in Raleigh at a EA charger with only 9% battery charge remaining. I needed at least 80% to get the rest of the way to Roanoke. Luckily there was one pump available. One was broken, and the others full of other cars. So just one car away from having to wait.

The charger was a 150 kW, but barely got above 80 kW the entire time. It took 50 minutes. We could have easily frittered away a 20 minute stop, even a 30 minute one. But 50 minutes bordered on painful.

Traveling with a BEV where DCFCing is required is a high risk endeavor, especially when the wife is involved. I can deal with some inconvenience when on my own, but that quickly becomes very painful if she is with me. And I don't blame her. Waiting like that is not pleasant when you have another three hour drive ahead.

 

[ShaggySS]

I totally get the cranky kids and angry wife. I can picture that now.

Everyone seems to have different experiences. I have used EA 4 times (4 different stations), never for a trip, more\less to see what that experience was like, and each time the car charged without issues. I did use one that was only charging at 40 but I was just testing so not a big deal.

I did read EA is going to start checking\testing their station so this could be good news. Maybe the fancy new stickers will help also.

 

[astronut325]

I should file a complaint to EA.

 

[Bonehead]

I did the same LA > SD and back a few weeks ago and had a similar experience trying to charge on the way back at the Irvine Spectrum mall at about the halfway mark. Out of the 9 or so EA stations, only 3 were working. The other thing that was frustrating was another EV owner there waiting to charge told me she's at that location all the time, and the chargers are always malfunctioning.

It also pisses me off that you can't see from a distance when the station is not functioning - instead of something like an all red screen with large type saying it's out of order, the "out of order" normal sized type is one of several alternating displays, so you wind up pulling into the spot and having to back out again, potentially missing out on one of the few available working chargers.

 

[4sallypat]

Did you call EA customer service? I have heard they are pretty good and can even do resets for you.

^^^^ This...

I visited a 6 station EA and 2 were stuck on a screen from a previous user with 4 chargers were being used.

At the malfunctioning charger, I called EA and got connected almost immediately to an agent.

She was able to reboot both chargers within a few minutes and I was able to charge.

 

[Logal727]

Have you tried a new family?

 

[1969Camaro]

It's way more stressful then it should be. In a few years hopefully the charging infrastructure will improve. Every gas station should have a charging terminal. But keep in mind auto manufacture's are going to cranking out 100's of thousands of EV's a year its going to take a lot of effort to improve the situation.

 

[HuntingPudel]

Have you tried a new family?

I’m sure he’s tried rebooting them. ??

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