Electrify America stations are regularly full now - is EA finally making money?

[dbsb3233]

Those can both be true AND there can be insufficient infrastructure.

These are transition issues. Blame the free market, blame government. Your call.

One day it'll all be fine. But that day isn't today.

Can't really blame the free market until DCFC equipment/install/maint costs come way down and/or DCFC revenues go way up.

The free market thrives off profit incentive. But when there's no profit (or even worse, a big money pit), there's no free market solution. Becomes a game of subsidies.

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[DYohn]

I was just looking at the I5 station north of LA and Quartzsite, AZ east of San Diego. There are up to 3 1/2 hour waits for an open charging stall. Yeah, it is a busy travel day but that is ridiculous. It seems that EA's pace of adding new stations has slowed significantly and I haven't heard of them expanding any stations.

Quartzsite is almost always full, and last time I was there 2 of the 4 EA chargers were being repaired and not available. The food in the truck stop sucks, but at least there is a place to sit and wait if you buy something.

 

[Fremont Kid]

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.

Costs are not the issue. Who pays the costs when are the issues. Consider all government environmental regulations as placing the costs up front (when) upon the companies (who). Some or all of the costs will be passed on to us as consumers, but not to us plus additional costs as taxes to clean environmental damage. As a comparison, I've seen so much ground contamination caused by underground gasoline tanks. I admit that I am not aware of the electrical charger environmental regulations, but I'm willing to accept these costs as part of owning a BEV.

 

[lwilliams0514]

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?

I was at the Westfield Culver City mall location on almost 0% charge yesterday. The stations are reporting full because EA is getting better at marking chargers down when they are not working but not getting better at fixing them. There were 5 working chargers out of 12!

I imagine any profits they are making are being ate up by constant repairs needed on their equipment.

 

[kennan]

I stopped at my usual Chicago EA station Monday evening. I've never had to wait there once before. This time I waited in line for four hours to charge, mostly behind a bunch of Bolts who were very sure that they absolutely had to charge to 100%. Couldn't've even left and made it to another station with the battery I had left--even earned my first turtle badge about 2.5 hours into my wait--so I was stranded with my cat in below-freezing weather without enough power to heat the cabin. It's a good thing the car holds heat pretty well. Absolute nightmare trip.

 

[silverelan]

Quartzsite is almost always full, and last time I was there 2 of the 4 EA chargers were being repaired and not available. The food in the truck stop sucks, but at least there is a place to sit and wait if you buy something.

Quartzsite is proof that EA has zero profit motivation or is incompetently run. Maybe both.

A profit hunter would jack up the price per kWh during congestion periods. They’d also recognize that demand outstrips supply and take steps to remedy the situation. EA does neither.

 

[Space_Pony]

Quartzsite is proof that EA has zero profit motivation or is incompetently run. Maybe both.

A profit hunter would jack up the price per kWh during congestion periods. They’d also recognize that demand outstrips supply and take steps to remedy the situation. EA does neither.

So I guess they could price gouge and still have poorly maintained chargers.

 

[Billyk24]

Quartzsite is proof that EA has zero profit motivation or is incompetently run. Maybe both.

A profit hunter would jack up the price per kWh during congestion periods. They’d also recognize that demand outstrips supply and take steps to remedy the situation. EA does neither.

No one is asking if there are long......delays on obtaining transformers. If so, that is part of the issue.

 

[RickMachE]

No one is asking if there are long......delays on obtaining transformers. If so, that is part of the issue.

EA has publicly stated exactly what the issues are. One problem is that no one pays attention. Another problem is that no one takes the time to see if there are contractual reasons why EA does or doesn't do something, like expand a location.

It’s widely believed that a lack of technicians is the root cause, Lambkin said. But it’s usually a component problem, he said.

“There’s a lot of different components in the system to deliver the power safely,” according to Lambkin.

“Weather affects components. Hot day, cold day. A lot of different things are involved in the power and delivery pathway. And not all the time do those things go right.”

EA is now on its fourth generation of chargers and the older chargers — which many charging sites still have — don’t hold up under heavy user loads, Lambkin said.

...

“Utilization increases have been tremendous for us,” Lambkin told me. “We had 5.2 million sessions last year, up from 1.4 million in 2021.”

“There is exceptionally high utilization especially in places like California. And there are things like heat that contribute to premature failures,” he said.

Getting the necessary parts is both the challenge as well as the cause of issues, as described above.

“We...need the parts. If you look at the history of scaling up this new technology in the market. First, you have to get access to the equipment. You have to buy as much as you can as fast as you can and certify. You need to scale it up. You need to make sure you have the technicians available. Then make sure the technicians are all trained.”

“Now we’re at the point that we need to make sure there are enough parts available. And that those parts are properly tested, certified, and available to dispatch in quantities to ensure that we’re keeping the equipment at its optimal level,” he said.

The EA experience is awful many times. That is a fact. 2022 sessions up 371%. Much of it their own doing by agreeing to free charging sessions.

But the issues are acknowledged by them, they just can't get on top of them.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/brooke...-vexing-ev-charging-problems/?sh=4bb1d4155951

 

[AhardFSU]

Rick I hear you, but it's on EA, EvGo and other chargepoint operators that don't make their equipment to find better, more reliable charging equipment.

 

[heisnuts]

Maybe I just missed it, but is there some reason why all the others can't copy what Tesla has done with their superchargers? The Tesla charging system has been proven to work and can be built out in scale so why can't someone like EA move over to that design when developing new equipment?

 

[dbsb3233]

Another complicating factor is remoteness. Most of the stations people care about are the travel routes outside of cities (like Quartzite or Green River). Qualified electricians are usually based in the cities, and in short supply. They spend most of their time just driving to get to/from a problem station. I've talked to a few of them at EA stations. They said it's usually an all-day job, sometimes even 2-day with a hotel stay, just to service one broken travel route station hundreds of miles away.

They're also 3rd party electricians. So EA is fighting with everyone else to schedule that work from them. They don't seem to have their own maintenance crews, which is a big part of the problem.

 

[kltye]

I stopped at my usual Chicago EA station Monday evening. I've never had to wait there once before. This time I waited in line for four hours to charge, mostly behind a bunch of Bolts who were very sure that they absolutely had to charge to 100%. Couldn't've even left and made it to another station with the battery I had left--even earned my first turtle badge about 2.5 hours into my wait--so I was stranded with my cat in below-freezing weather without enough power to heat the cabin. It's a good thing the car holds heat pretty well. Absolute nightmare trip.

This is becoming a huge problem. I don't understand the mentality of these Bolt drivers (it's almost always a Bolt) that want to charge to 100% at like 11kW. I suspect the Uber partnership in providing some kind of discounted rates for their drivers has something to do with this, along with the fact that if you're an Uber driver using a Bolt means you're not very bright to begin with.

I've also had a ton of Bolts pull up to 350kW chargers when 100kW ones were available at EVgo sites. Bolts are the bane of my existence in Chicago.

 

[RickMachE]

Another complicating factor is remoteness. Most of the stations people care about are the travel routes outside of cities (like Quartzite or Green River). Qualified electricians are usually based in the cities, and in short supply. They spend most of their time just driving to get to/from a problem station. I've talked to a few of them at EA stations. They said it's usually an all-day job, sometimes even 2-day with a hotel stay, just to service one broken travel route station hundreds of miles away.

They're also 3rd party electricians. So EA is fighting with everyone else to schedule that work from them. They don't seem to have their own maintenance crews, which is a big part of the problem.

Some are specialized. I talked to an ABB tech, who was fixing an EA location. He said it was an often-ignored location, and pointed out that the equipment was made in 2018, and many of the parts are hard to get. He only services ABB equipment, and is dispatched by ABB, who has to notified by EA that they have a repair needed. He said they (ABB) can see the issue, and often say to EA (hey, we can go service that unit), before they are notified to do so. He had been doing the job for 5 months. He said it was laborious, and that the equipment really should be decommissioned.

This is becoming a huge problem. I don't understand the mentality of these Bolt drivers (it's almost always a Bolt) that want to charge to 100% at like 11kW. I suspect the Uber partnership in providing some kind of discounted rates for their drivers has something to do with this, along with the fact that if you're an Uber driver using a Bolt means you're not very bright to begin with.

I've also had a ton of Bolts pull up to 350kW chargers when 100kW ones were available at EVgo sites. Bolts are the bane of my existence in Chicago.

It's quite easy to understand.

1) They're told to charge to 100% by salesman.

2) They're told to use the fastest chargers, or they believe as most do that "faster is better".

3) They aren't educated to understand that using anything over a 50kW charger is a waste of effort, and hurts others. Or they don't care.

 

[silverelan]

Maybe I just missed it, but is there some reason why all the others can't copy what Tesla has done with their superchargers? The Tesla charging system has been proven to work and can be built out in scale so why can't someone like EA move over to that design when developing new equipment?

Tesla uses Model 3/Y components in their V3 charging cabinets which keeps costs down and serviceability up. Combined with Tesla’s Supercharger factory in Buffalo cranking these things out in scale with some nifty pre-fabricated configurations for easy plug & play installations, Tesla has charging figured out. There’s literally nothing stopping EA from abandoning Signet and BTC and switching to Tesla V4 hardware.

EA and EVgo made strategic mistakes by not becoming their own supplier. I do not understand why VW (or Ford) didn’t just buy a DCFC equipment manufacturer or start their own production division. They’d have full control over design & costs, and like Tesla, be able to become a DCFC supplier to other CPOs.

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