The major weakness of the MME (and all non-Tesla EVs) -- reliable, robust charging network doesn't exist

[wrzi]

This goes for all non-Tesla EVs. You can make the best EV in the world, but it's near useless to take outside it's single-charge range if a reliable, robust charging network doesn't exist.

Being in NorCal with chargers located all over, my wife decided to take the MME from Sac to San Fran yesterday. She needed to stop on the way home last night - late night around 1AM. First stop in Vacaville had only 4 fast chargers (no stop on her route had more than 4), and when she showed up none were working.

Second stop, 1 wasn't working, the other one was charging at 6kW. The fact that neither the MME or FordPass app display the charging rate is another store altogether.

Third stop she was able to charge at 48kW long enough to get the range she needed to get home.

It goes without saying that we're taking the Tesla down to Anaheim this week. Many well-located charging stations with dozens of well-maintained chargers that will hit our 250kW max acceptance rate. She's already considering trading the MME for another Tesla.

Here's hoping the Inflation Reduction Act inflates the number of reliable chargers on the road. Until then, I can't wait for Tesla to open up the supercharger network.

https://www.forbes.com/wheels/news/tesla-opens-supercharger-network/

Tesla will open up its Supercharger network throughout the U.S. to owners of electric vehicles from other, non-Tesla manufacturers, the U.S. White House confirmed Friday. It’s a move that will provide thousands more places for motorists to plug in, while giving the Texas-based automaker access to infrastructure funds Congress last year approved to help build a nationwide public charging network.

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[dbsb3233]

https://www.forbes.com/wheels/news/tesla-opens-supercharger-network/

Tesla will open up its Supercharger network throughout the U.S. to owners of electric vehicles from other, non-Tesla manufacturers, the U.S. White House confirmed Friday. It’s a move that will provide thousands more places for motorists to plug in, while giving the Texas-based automaker access to infrastructure funds Congress last year approved to help build a nationwide public charging network.

Eventually. They've been saying that's their plan for some years now, but there's rarely any timeframe stated. Or what method they'll use (adapters or installing actual CCS handles/cables).

There was recent story that at some California stations (like Baker), they plan to install Magic Docks. That's a built-in adapter that's part of the charger. But even on that the completion date was stated as 2024. Hopefully more will get done before then, but it's still fuzzy.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Tesla...rger-locations-with-Magic-Docks.649468.0.html

 

[wkf94025]

Interesting thread. I charge with a mix of 110v at home (NEMA 14-50A coming) and a couple different EA stations near me. On average, I'd say 1 out of 4 EA stations are offline. Annoying. Occasionally EA Chargers at Stanford Shopping Center are fully busy, but yet to experience that anywhere else. If full, on average I'm waiting 20min for next slot to free up.

I often day trip over to the coast (55 miles each way) and have PV on the roof + Lithium storage at both properties. Starting to brainstorm on what it takes to "drive for free" using my existing PV + Lithium infrastructure.

Once a month I drive 200 miles to wake surf Lake Berryessa. I leave home near 100%, and on the way back use the EA station in Vacaville to top off for 20-30min while getting dinner across the street. Works fine for me, and very little range anxiety. Blue Cruise makes the I5/I80/US101 drive super easy, especially when drained from a sunny day on the water.

F*ck PG&E, BTW.

 

[jeffdawgfan]

We've been driving EV for about 7 years now. First a Leaf, then a Chevy Bolt, now a 21 MME. In all those years have only DCFC around a dozen times and all but one of those was on a trip to Disney World last year from Atlanta. Several of those stops were at EVgo and I agree, the networks can give a crap about doing maintenance on their chargers. All the other time we charge at home. With the price of of electrons going up by 5 cents a KWH over the past two years I am getting ready to install solar panels and go off the grid. We do 99% of our charging at home. Most of our trips are with the camper so I have to use truck for that. Until there are pull thru chargers towing with a EV truck is a no-starter.

The solution is simple enough to me. Have a two man team with equipment and parts be assigned a region and just travel around servicing and repairing your companies chargers. More chargers are working, more people use them, customer experience is better, and you make more money selling electrons. They just don't get it.

 

[sotek2345]

I can't go west from Binghamton unless I go to Buffalo. There is 1 charger out that direction but it rarely works. I had bad luck in Syracuse.

Seeing a lot of similar type comments. Maybe I just have really lucky routes. Albany to Pittsburg - no issues and multiple routes and charging options. Albany to Philly - same. Philly to Pittsburg - same. No issues driving north to Montreal or to the Thousand Islands. No issues from Albany to Portland Maine either. As far as New Hampshire goes (another post), We were able to get all the way from Portland to the Albany area on a single charge (off the highway - through southern NH and VT) so no real attempts there. We have also been out to Western Long Island as well as to Plattsburg, Cortland, and Elmira with no issues. Doing lots of college visits with the oldest child lately.

 

[e-pony]

This goes for all non-Tesla EVs. You can make the best EV in the world, but it's near useless to take outside it's single-charge range if a reliable, robust charging network doesn't exist.

Being in NorCal with chargers located all over, my wife decided to take the MME from Sac to San Fran yesterday. She needed to stop on the way home last night - late night around 1AM. First stop in Vacaville had only 4 fast chargers (no stop on her route had more than 4), and when she showed up none were working.

Second stop, 1 wasn't working, the other one was charging at 6kW. The fact that neither the MME or FordPass app display the charging rate is another store altogether.

Third stop she was able to charge at 48kW long enough to get the range she needed to get home.

It goes without saying that we're taking the Tesla down to Anaheim this week. Many well-located charging stations with dozens of well-maintained chargers that will hit our 250kW max acceptance rate. She's already considering trading the MME for another Tesla.

Here's hoping the Inflation Reduction Act inflates the number of reliable chargers on the road. Until then, I can't wait for Tesla to open up the supercharger network.

Also, a bit nervous to use super fast dc chargers given the potential link between fast charging and overheating the bad connector. Some say there is no link, others say there is. So stuck with 6-7 kwh until 32-48 replace them.

 

[AKgrampy]

Its a combination of the cost of a dedicated transformer, charge station hardware, and many utilities struggling to come up with a way to handle 150kw-600kw loads comin on and off line and manage the voltage on old powerlines and switching equipment. Most areas are in the process of developing EV charge station rateclass to lower or eliminate 'demand charges'.... but small rural utilities will struggle with load management without batteries to smooth the loads.

As an example, a rural utility just north of me does not have a 'EV charge station' rateclass. The have a general rateclass for anything pulling peak loads over 50kw at about $25/kw as a demand charge on top of energy cost per kwhr. So one L3 charge station, charging one or two cars a day might earn a couple hundred dollars of revenue per month, but face a $7000 demand charge with peak loads of 300kW (2x chargers)... that works out to a cost to owner around $1.50/kWhr just for the energy, not counting amortized cost of transformer and hardware.

It's going to be a while before rural business owners and utilities work out how to handle it. My bet is battery buffers so the Utility sees nice even 50kW loads, and charge stations can dispense gulps of energy at higher power if batteries can recover between charges.

As long as the capital costs, losses and maintenance costs are less than the demand charge they avoid. Drivers may just have to live with slower charging in rural areas versus fast charging.

 

[AKgrampy]

It won’t. Nothing addresses getting the tax incentive and then not investing in the continued and required maintenance. If you read the post, it wasn’t that there weren’t chargers, they just don’t work and aren’t maintained. The legislature should have included metrics and KPI requirements based on availability (e.g., how often does that shit work, average charge speed) and usage.

I am pretty sure it does have availability requirements.

 

[Panzer948]

I’ve read through the California and Minnesota plans (I’m originally from MN) and they are night and day. MN’s is an interstate highway only plan and CA‘s is very robust.

The states in between are kind of a crapshoot (e.g., Utah, Montana, Wyoming, Nevada) so I predict the infrastructure adventure will take a *minimum* of one year and more likely 2-3 years before competing networks are robust enough to make road trips super-easy to do.

Not holding my breath though.

That said, while Tesla’s are good and their charging infrastructure is a huge competitive advantage, they’ve becoming boring to me (I see dozens of them a day out here in CA) and it doesn’t help that Musk acts like a 12-year-old who ate too much sugar and I don’t trust him and thus Tesla (for cars…I do own two Tesla batteries for my solar).

I agree 100%. Tesla's are not for me. Luckily I will usually charge at home.

 

[Kamuelaflyer]

Disagree getting worst of both worlds. My daily drive is less than 50 miles. All electric. Having a vehicle with 400+ mile range is the ideal vehicle for mostly local driving and occasional long distance. But I guess some people aren't happy unless they are miserable.

If you’re driving with battery alone, you’re needlessly hauling around the mass and weight of an ICE engine. You also have the added complexity of two very different system of providing power plus the additional maintenance that an ICE engine requires. Is it worth it? Only you can answer that for yourself.

 

[jonkMACHE]

Eh, I think you just live in an area with poor EV support. In the northeast charging really hasn’t been much of an issue.

 

[minders]

Plugshare is just check-ins.

The charger's own network app sometimes gives real-time status. EA does that, or at least partially does that. Not always fully dependable though.

Perfect example of this... there is ONE location within an hour radius of me and it is in the parking lot of a Walmart that some teenage idiot decided to set on fire several months ago.
A day or two after picking up my MME (Oct 22nd), I checked the EA app and it said that location was available and to just talk to security to be let in since it's barricaded around the whole parking lot. Since it is only 15 minutes from my house I pulled up, talked to security, showed him the message in the app to let us in, and nope... refused! I had to call into EA and complain that they said it's available and security was refusing to let us in and that they needed to change the message in their app/site saying we could use it. It took them several days to actually bother to update it. Pretty annoying since I won't be able to use my free charging any time soon. We don't road trip much since hubby works for Delta. Wish Ford would let us pick between the free charging and extra rewards points. I feel like I'm losing out on this deal.

 

[nvabill]

If you're unhappy with the car because it doesn't meet your expectations, sell it and move on. Life is too short to deal with the nonsense of unrealistic or unmet expectations.

You are so right, I sold it today for a nice profit. The sad thing is I absolutely loved the car but the charging situation sucks! I admire you early adopters, I'm just not willing to be one.

 

[sloan1919]

You are so right, I sold it today for a nice profit. The sad thing is I absolutely loved the car but the charging situation sucks! I admire you early adopters, I'm just not willing to be one.

I’ve had mine for 4 months now and have never had to public charge. You live in an apartment or something? Drive from rural area to rural area?

 

[AhardFSU]

As others on here have said and as I’ve heard it said recently on the Insideevs Podcast, dc fast charging seems to vary by region. In Florida I seem to do very well with EvGo…..the autocharge is great. I’ve had bad luck with the EA station in north Tampa bc there is typically 2 charges that aren’t working at that location. Fortunately, I don’t have to charge there in order to make it home, but I want to use the free credits.

According to Kyle Conner and Tom M from Insideevs pod, the Signet charger tend be more reliable than the ABB charges, which is what EA installed. The new charges that EA is installing aren’t ABB and at the EVGO I use at Normandy station in Jacksonville, the charges are Signet.

i do use plugshare just to see what people have to say about stations along my route.

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