Plug & Charge Fail and the 80% Cliff is Real

[Tim_C]

I've been meaning to look and see how long the minimum membership is for. Like, are we locking into $48 for the year, or can we just pay the $4 for the 1 or 2 months we're traveling in?

I don't have any personal experience with the EA membership levels, but this is posted in the Electrify America FAQ:

How do I switch from one membership type to another?​

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In the app, go to “Plan details” and follow the prompts to upgrade to Pass+ or to change plan types.​

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Please note that a request to change from Pass+ to Pass membership will go into effect on the first day of the next billing cycle, which coincides with the monthly anniversary of your sign-up date.​

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[agoldman]

Remember we're on the bleeding edge here. Probably only a handful of real customers have tried Plug & Charge with their own money. Some of this will take some evolution over the first few months I'm afraid. The real question is how responsive Ford is at fixing these issues.

And explaining the best way to utilize this service. Seems like some basic unanswered questions in this thread that should already be part of the delivery speech by the dealer.

 

[sockmeister]

This seems like exactly the sort of candidate for someone to tweet @ JimFarley over to bring it up. Though, I'm sure they're aware of the issues and they'll improve over time. But it doesn't hurt to raise the concern while we're still in the early adopters phase.

 

[wareagle1440]

Pretty disappointing. I really thought we'd get the $0.31/kWh rate as part of the "Ford Pass Charging Network" subscription. I'm struggling then to think what's worth paying for the "FordPass Charging Network" subscription after the free trial.

Is there anywhere in the FordPass app to link an Electrify America plan? Maybe if you have a Pass+ membership you can link it into your FordPass membership?

I'm just struggling to think why Ford thinks we don't want the EA member price.

The EA membership costs extra money. Anyone can sign up for free and be a member, aka create a profile, and get the 43 cent rate. Ford Pass is essentially supposed to prevent you from creating a separate profile and and having a separate app. For whatever reason it didn’t work. If you want the 31 cents per kWh then sign up at around $4 a month or sign up if you know you’re going on a road trip. I think you can drop the $4 monthly membership fee at any time. That $4 would have saved him $3 net had he done that. I agree it is confusing and again yet another example of Ford communication but I’m used to reading PR BS and figured the vagueness meant access only.

 

[dbsb3233]

The EA membership costs extra money. Anyone can sign up for free and be a member, aka create a profile, and get the 43 cent rate. Ford Pass is essentially supposed to prevent you from creating a separate profile and and having a separate app. For whatever reason it didn’t work. If you want the 31 cents per kWh then sign up at around $4 a month or sign up if you know you’re going on a road trip. I think you can drop the $4 monthly membership fee at any time. That $4 would have saved him $3 net had he done that. I agree it is confusing and again yet another example of Ford communication but I’m used to reading PR BS and figured the vagueness meant access only.

And it's still unclear whether FordPass members are supposed to get the 43c rate or the 31c rate. Or even some new negotiated rate.

 

[OldEVGuy]

When Tom used the Plug & Charge, it worked well. He didn’t say he needed to do anything to set it up first.

 

[wareagle1440]

And it's still unclear whether FordPass members are supposed to get the 43c rate or the 31c rate. Or even some new negotiated rate.

I’ve always understood it as the 43 cent rate. Ford is only providing 250 kWh free. They’ve never said it provided you a membership and neither has EA BTW. If nothing is there to indicate you get a discounted rate, fair assumption is you get the higher rate. And that makes sense when you look at how Ford has framed this the entire time, basically that FordPass will gray you access to all these chargers and you can pay through your FordPass app. I went ahead and downloaded every app I’ll need. The vaguer an entity is on details, the worse the outcome for the user.

 

[BadgerGreg]

As I'm not expecting to take delivery of my MME until early April, I'm hoping that some of these issues will be ironed out a bit in the next two months. At the very least, it would be good for the Ford Pass system to be optimized to the point where the vehicles are easily recognized and payment is automatic.

As far as a reliable charging infrastructure is concerned, I expect that will take a while longer. Given that Ford, GM, BMW, VW/Audi/Porsche, Mercedes, Jaguar, Volvo, and Hyundai all have a vested interest in reliable BEV charging, I expect there will be some real money invested during the next 12-18 months. It won't happen overnight, but I think we'll see some real progress by this summer/fall.

 

[BlueMach]

The EA membership costs extra money. Anyone can sign up for free and be a member, aka create a profile, and get the 43 cent rate. Ford Pass is essentially supposed to prevent you from creating a separate profile and and having a separate app. For whatever reason it didn’t work. If you want the 31 cents per kWh then sign up at around $4 a month or sign up if you know you’re going on a road trip. I think you can drop the $4 monthly membership fee at any time. That $4 would have saved him $3 net had he done that. I agree it is confusing and again yet another example of Ford communication but I’m used to reading PR BS and figured the vagueness meant access only.

The problem is I was assuming Plug&Charge would allow the lower rate if you are an EA member. If this experience is right, you have to turn Plug&Charge off to get the discount, which is why I was saying it seems to negate the perk of the Mach-E vs other CCS EVs.

I'm fine to pay the $4/mo to EA like I do now, I just want that $0.31/kWh rate I'm used to but via Plug&Charge.

 

[JamieGeek]

When Tom used the Plug & Charge, it worked well. He didn’t say he needed to do anything to set it up first.

This is likely because he got a test car from Ford that already had it setup.

 

[SnBGC]

Yeah it's not the end of the world to keep using the EA app, just a disappointment to not get to use Plug&Charge, which was honestly a huge selling point of this car. I'm just not willing to pay 40% more for the electricity to use Plug&Charge.

Really? Plug&Charge was a huge selling point for you? Interesting. I hadn't even considered that a plus or feature when I was choosing my next EV....

To be fair....
Maybe if @hybrid2bev had opened an EA account prior to signing up for FordPass then maybe it would have worked at intended? Free for now and pay at the lower membership rates when the free charging was depleted?

When we had our pre production Mach-E in October, the P&G feature did not work. I had to insert my charge card and pay the guest rates. If I remember correctly, the only price increase was the $1.00 session fee for not having an account. I dont remember a rate difference though. Maybe it is a state by state thing? I DCFC so infrequently that maybe they changed their rates and I just wasnt paying attention... ??

 

[BlueMach]

Really? Plug&Charge was a huge selling point for you? Interesting. I hadn't even considered that a plus or feature when I was choosing my next EV....

To be fair....
Maybe if @hybrid2bev had opened an EA account prior to signing up for FordPass then maybe it would have worked at intended? Free for now and pay at the lower membership rates when the free charging was depleted?

When we had our pre production Mach-E in October, the P&G feature did not work. I had to insert my charge card and pay the guest rates. If I remember correctly, the only price increase was the $1.00 session fee for not having an account. I dont remember a rate difference though. Maybe it is a state by state thing? I DCFC so infrequently that maybe they changed their rates and I just wasnt paying attention... ??

Correct. Plug&Charge is one of the major selling points of the Mustang Mach-E.

The membership rate is a big difference from the walk-up (or drive-up I guess lol) rate. That's a huge cost over the life of the car. I'm not OK with that, not at all.

I will not pay the $0.43/kWh rate. I have a EA Pass+ membership for a reason.

I consider not being able to use Plug&Charge at the $0.31/kWh rate a failure. Is it enough to get me to walk away from my order? Probably not on its own, but I hope we get a response from Ford on this very soon. It seems like a glaring omission, they had to have thought of that during development, right? They can't assume we all want to pay 40% more for our EA sessions.

 

[SnBGC]

And explaining the best way to utilize this service. Seems like some basic unanswered questions in this thread that should already be part of the delivery speech by the dealer.

Yeah. You would think so....
In reality, I had to show them how it worked. Several employees from the dealership piled into the Mach-E and followed me to the nearest station which was EvGo. My SOC was around 55% so I plugged in and started the session. It was like they were watching magic. Total amazement. First that It charged so fast (50kW) and secondly that there was a charging station so close by. They each had parked and driven right past that charger and never even noticed it existed.

Later on, when the MME was at a much lower SOC, we took it a little further away to an EA station and charged it there.

 

[silverelan]

Thanks @hybrid2bev for the charging report! Sounds like there's some early kinks to work out. There's got to be a team leader at Ford in charge of:

a) DCFC charging profile

So how do we let Ford know that owners want to see battery preconditioning, improved charging profile + time, and a bit better than AC charging speeds at 80%+?​

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b) FordPass/P&C/Electrify America

If the entire premise of FordPass is to seamlessly integrate P&C with member discounts for easy charging, then your experience was a failure. How can we give feedback to Ford to smooth this out?​

 

[BlueMach]

First that It charged so fast (50kW)

50 kW is hardly fast lol... their minds would explode if they watched a Taycan draw 270 kW I bet.

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