I’m dreading my trip through Quartzsite next month… Access to NACS adapters can’t come sooner for that site. Last time we were there all three working chargers were stuck at 30k kWh and a dealer was blocking all of the chargers in Blythe
It's not up to me. I live in a high rise building with an idiotic HOA. Like I mentioned in a different post, cost is not a factor here cause it's only $48/ month to charge. It's just not convenient anymore due to a rapid increase in #of EVs with an infrastructure that's not keeping up in big cities.
I know this past weekend was a long holiday weekend and I had trouble finding a few as well. On the bright side I’ve seen a few being built in the Seattle metropolitan area!I’ve only ever charged a handful of times with Electrify America, but I’ve been keeping my eye on how full the stations get since I got my Mach-E in February 2021. It seems the EA stations are consistently full now, at least in Southern California.
Are people seeing this across the country? In 2021, it was always a ghost town. The most common setup I would see when I would go by a station in 2021 was 0 cars charging. Now, seemingly every location is always full. I know the EA app now shows when all charging locations are taken, but in practice, even this is not fully accurate because many locations say 1 of X spots are open and it’s not true - maybe someone is in the process of coming or going or it’s a bug. If it doesn’t at least say 2 of X spots are free, it usually means full.
Anyway, since my free charging credits are likely to expire in February, I’ve been trying to squeeze in charges at EA whenever I am low and have an opportunity, but all nearby locations are consistently full. Here is what the LA area looked like earlier today and again, it doesn’t even show the true extent of the full locations as many places that say 1/X really have a multi-vehicle line.
The silver lining is I think this must bode well for EA’s survival. What are people seeing across the country?
In April of this year, I was on a roadtrip in an I-Pace, passing through Bend, OR. On that Sunday afternoon in late April, I was the sole guy charging at the only EA station in Central Oregon.
I'm both excited and discouraged... the V3 Super Charger cables are too short to accommodate a MME when you park as you are supposed to. You end up taking two spaces to reach the plug... During peak times like holiday weekends this is going to be a disaster.
My wife and I own a condo that is considering installing a L2 charger. It's in Colorado, and there are a long list of state and local regulations that our association has to be compliant with. I'm not on the board, but am leading the group working toward the decision. Trust me, there are a lot of questions and concerns, the first that needs to be dealt with is can the building electrical supply handle it and who pays the upfront cost.
Those can both be true AND there can be insufficient infrastructure.
So we've been working it for a while now. My wife is on the board and is a popular member. She has gotten the project approved twice, but a couple of fringe members always find ways to derail it afterwards. The city of Chicago is very supportive: commits to issuing permits within 24 hours, passed a Right to Charge in 2018 that applies to new construction, and is considering expanding it to existing buildings. We have a local electrical company that is reasonable pricewise and has a lot of experience doing commercial and residential installations. We already decided to go with Tesla for Business and install a universal unit (NACS with a built-in J1772 adapter). We are stuck on insurance-related issues, given we want to install the charger in a car washing stall (the only space in the building not owned by a resident). But the HOA doesn't understand that NEMA 3 enclosures are water resistant. We try to assume that the HOA has good intentions, but their actions indicate otherwise. So we'll see what happens.
Definitely I blame the government. Just one post before yours proves I am right:
Get rid of the artificial road blocks (such as expensive environmental regulations) and entrepreneurs left and right (pun intended) will be building charging capacity. Oh, well. One can dream.
