EA Chargers Need Work

[ridgebackpilot]

My wife called today, having taken our 2022 MME Premium on a road trip in California. She stopped at an Electrify America charger but couldn't get it to work. She tried multiple stations, both plug & charge and initiating charge with the EA app. Nothing worked; the car either timed out or the stations wouldn't initiate the charging session.

She called me in frustration, blaming me for selling our Tesla to buy the MME. She never had any such trouble with Tesla Superchargers, which worked perfectly for her every time. Superchargers don't even have a screen; you just plug them in and they work. My wife was so frustrated today she threatened to go back to driving an ICE car.

Now I realize that Tesla charging isn't perfect, but Superchargers do seem to work better than EA stations, most of the time. My wife isn't known for her patience; she tends to give up on anything at the first sign of trouble. But her experience with EA has been terrible; problems at least half the times she's attempted to charge our MME.

Unless EA and the other charging companies up their games and make charging as easy as pulling into a gas station, I worry that the difficulty of charging will serve as a real barrier to the public's willingness to adopt EVs on a broad scale...

Curious what your experience has been with frustration at chargers?!

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[shadowsjc]

EA is miles better than the alternatives sadly (especially EV go). I had some issues early on with EA but lately it's been relatively good

 

[dbsb3233]

I've posted before that I figure I'm running about 70% on 1st attempts at EA stations, in nearly 100 chargers now. But I've never left an EA station without being able to get a charge.

For the other 30%, usually it's just a matter of moving to one of the other chargers. But rarely, I'll have to call EA for a remote start, or settle for a reduced 41kW.

There's definitely a learning curve for what to do when it fails first attempt. That will need to improve a lot. But we're used to it now, so it doesn't bother us much as long as we get a charge. Tesla has been at it longer, and only has to work with their own proprietary cars, so it's cleaner. CCS charging is tougher. It'll get there in time though.

 

[GaryCanmore]

Maybe a Map Issue??

On a recent trip between Vancouver BC and Canmore AB we had issues getting charges started at some Electrify Canada (EC) stations. FYI Electrify Canada is for all practical purposes the same company as Electrify America (EA) and uses the same phone support staff based in the US. At our first stop in Merritt BC I could not get a session started as my phone app did not seem to recognize where we were. It could see EC stations in other communities but the app didn't recognize that we were sitting in front of a charger in Merritt. I even tried using my credit card but the charger but the unit rejected my card. Oddly enough, when we used my wife's phone and EC app which is set up with identical sign-in credentials we got the session to start-up.

The charger in Salmon Arm, BC worked OK. In Revelstoke BC we had issues and neither of our phone apps could initiate a session. We had to talk to the EC help line and the nice lady there was able to help us initiate a session. Again, the problem seemed to be that the EC app could not locate us at the charger station in front of us.

In Golden, BC the EC charger started up on the first try without a hitch.

I am thinking that the issues have something to do with MME built-in navigation vs Apple-Car-Play nav and the maps set used on our phones. I.e. Google Maps vs Apple Maps, etc. I also, understand that Electrify America nows works with Apple-Car-Play. I haven't had the occasion to try EC since our trip or to experiment with combinations of navigation programs, or to use the EC app on Carplay so haven't been able to test this theory.

Has anybody else had these issues or knowledge of solutions?

 

[dbsb3233]

Maybe a Map Issue??

On a recent trip between Vancouver BC and Canmore AB we had issues getting charges started at some Electrify Canada (EC) stations. FYI Electrify Canada is for all practical purposes the same company as Electrify America (EA) and uses the same phone support staff based in the US. At our first stop in Merritt BC I could not get a session started as my phone app did not seem to recognize where we were. It could see EC stations in other communities but the app didn't recognize that we were sitting in front of a charger in Merritt. I even tried using my credit card but the charger but the unit rejected my card. Oddly enough, when we used my wife's phone and EC app which is set up with identical sign-in credentials we got the session to start-up.

The charger in Salmon Arm, BC worked OK. In Revelstoke BC we had issues and neither of our phone apps could initiate a session. We had to talk to the EC help line and the nice lady there was able to help us initiate a session. Again, the problem seemed to be that the EC app could not locate us at the charger station in front of us.

In Golden, BC the EC charger started up on the first try without a hitch.

I am thinking that the issues have something to do with MME built-in navigation vs Apple-Car-Play nav and the maps set used on our phones. I.e. Google Maps vs Apple Maps, etc. I also, understand that Electrify America nows works with Apple-Car-Play. I haven't had the occasion to try EC since our trip or to experiment with combinations of navigation programs, or to use the EC app on Carplay so haven't been able to test this theory.

Has anybody else had these issues or knowledge of solutions?

The same thing happened to us in Winnemucca NV last year. Others also reported the problem on Plugshare. Not sure if this is correct, but the consensus was that it was the cell towers. Depending on your cell service, people thought some were connecting to a tower too far away to match up with the location of the EA charger. Or some other scenario that resulted in a mismatch between your phone location and charger location. It will only activate the phone app swipe if it thinks you're at that charger location.

One potential way around that is to activate with the phone tap option instead of the swipe. Since the phone has to be present at the charger to do a phone tap, that might not even look at the phone's location. I actually find the phone tap to be the easier way to activate the session anyway. Just make sure NFC is turned on in your phone (it usually is by default), and that your EA app is open and logged into your EA account on your phone. I also make sure Plug&Charge is turned off in FordPass so it doesn't grab the session and pay through the FordPass wallet instead. Then just plug in, and tap your phone to the tap symbol on the EA charger. (Not the similar symbol on the credit card reader, but the symbol right on the charger itself.)

 

[Valkyrja]

We search out EA because they are more likely to work than not. Of course during this heatwave the rates have been toned down and a station shutdown here and there. However, nothing that has been too terrible and I have been able to charge at each set of charging stations I pull in to use.

evGo has been horrible and most I have tried using have not worked. Same for Blink. Chargepoint stations, although few and far between, have been pretty decent.

 

[GaryCanmore]

Maybe a Map Issue??

On a recent trip between Vancouver BC and Canmore AB we had issues getting charges started at some Electrify Canada (EC) stations. FYI Electrify Canada is for all practical purposes the same company as Electrify America (EA) and uses the same phone support staff based in the US. At our first stop in Merritt BC I could not get a session started as my phone app did not seem to recognize where we were. It could see EC stations in other communities but the app didn't recognize that we were sitting in front of a charger in Merritt. I even tried using my credit card but the charger but the unit rejected my card. Oddly enough, when we used my wife's phone and EC app which is set up with identical sign-in credentials we got the session to start-up.

The charger in Salmon Arm, BC worked OK. In Revelstoke BC we had issues and neither of our phone apps could initiate a session. We had to talk to the EC help line and the nice lady there was able to help us initiate a session. Again, the problem seemed to be that the EC app could not locate us at the charger station in front of us.

In Golden, BC the EC charger started up on the first try without a hitch.

I am thinking that the issues have something to do with MME built-in navigation vs Apple-Car-Play nav and the maps set used on our phones. I.e. Google Maps vs Apple Maps, etc. I also, understand that Electrify America nows works with Apple-Car-Play. I haven't had the occasion to try EC since our trip or to experiment with combinations of navigation programs, or to use the EC app on Carplay so haven't been able to test this theory.

Has anybody else had these issues or knowledge of solutions?

Update; Drove this same route in mid October and the Electrify Canada chargers were working. I had talked to an EC tech on the phone before we left and he mentioned that the problem of not recognizing the location was fixed with a software upate.

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