Electrify America Mach-E Charging Issues

[Maquis]

There's only two Tesla superchargers. One really close to the Electrify America station and one pretty far southeast near the IL boarder.

That's kind of surprising for as big as the metro area is. When I was flying out of Lambert pre-pandemic, the EV charger spaces in lot A were almost always full. I guess I expected more stations in the area.

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[breeves002]

That's kind of surprising for as big as the metro area is. When I was flying out of Lambert pre-pandemic, the EV charger spaces in lot A were almost always full. I guess I expected more stations in the area.

Theres a decent amount of L2 around (nothing like cali), but DC fast charging is pretty slim pickings. The electrify America station is 25 minutes from my work and about 35 minutes from my house. The southeast Tesla station is about 15 minutes from my house.

 

[PCPilot]

On my first road trip I found out from the EA phone rep that , despite the EA instructions to plug the connector in first, you need to initiate the charge on the EA app first, THEN plug the connector in. Tried it at my second EA stop and it worked like a charm. Plugging it in first results in a Charge Fault Error in the car and flashing red lights next to the port on the car.

 

[dbsb3233]

On my first road trip I found out from the EA phone rep that , despite the EA instructions to plug the connector in first, you need to initiate the charge on the EA app first, THEN plug the connector in. Tried it at my second EA stop and it worked like a charm. Plugging it in first results in a Charge Fault Error in the car and flashing red lights next to the port on the car.

I've heard others say that tends to work better too. I'm OK doing that for probably the rest of this year on any road trips. The free 250 kWh is good for 2 years, so I'm in no hurry to use it up (it's only ~4 charges). I'll just leave P&C turned off until it's all working well, and until it integrates seemlessly with EA Pass+ pricing (if ever).

On any lengthy road trip, I'll be signing up for Pass+ that month, and initiating charges in EA to ensure I get the Pass+ rates. Easy enough to do.

 

[Austin]

I took delivery last Friday, and Electrify America has been super frustrating.

• On Sunday (14-March), the EA station outside of Ypsilanti, Michigan, refused to connect at all with three or four attempts. I was at 90% charge, so decided to move on.
• Based on the success at Walmart, and seeing a lot of Walmarts along my route from SE Michigan to Louisville, Kentucky, I decided to embrace my anxiety, and go for broke.
• I wish I'd paid more attention to this thread before my trip; it sounds like the EA 800-number folks are very, very helpful, and even gave out a complimentary charge or two. I also would have seen the tip to close the doors but leave them unlocked.

I really, really hope that most others are having a better experience than I had. I have to travel to Chicago Heights in a week or so, and I'm heavily debating whether or not to take my lovely MME or my 2004 Expedition.

Thanks a lot for your detailed post. I also tried the EA station in Ypsilanti and had no luck with Plug and Charge with 3 tries. I had set up an account with EA and put them in my iPhone wallet, so on the fourth try, I waved my phone over the charger and that was successful. But of course the charge was going to my EA account.

I tried again this morning using the recommendation to select the specific charger first through FordPass then initiated the charge. That worked.

We have an upcoming road trip to Atlanta mid-April and I've been trying to convince my wife to take the MME. We normally take 2 days. Of course it will extend time on the road versus an ICE, but the last thing we need is additional time trying to get the chargers to work. In addition, since the non-Tesla charge infrastructure is very sparse right now, I need success on each station along the way, and those stations are primarily EA, starting near Dayton as you did. Then Georgetown KY, Williamsburg, KY, and finally near Chattanooga, TN.

Given the inconsistent experiences of those posting here, I'm still undecided as to whether we'll take the MME.

Unfortunately, this is a case of "overpromise/underdeliver" on the part of Ford. Let's hope the OTA's and vendor improvements will help. In addition to the installation of more high-speed chargers that will make more trips possible without a large time penalty.

 

[Mach-E VLOG]

A couple of weeks ago, I had a very frustrating time at an EA charger. Yesterday, I stopped at 2 EA chargers (and 2 ChargePoint) with no issues. The difference? I disabled Plug and Charge and used the EA app. I didn't try the Ford Pass app, but I hear that works OK too.

Plug and Charge sounds really cool, but after using apps to start my charging, I don't think it is a big deal. The last time when I did use P&C, it took about a minute for it to authorize the charging session. With the app, it was about 15 seconds. The ChargePoint stations were really quick and I didn't even have to open the app. I just tapped my phone to the charging station and it was good to go.

I do hope they get Plug and Charge working, but in the meantime, the app is more than OK.

 

[dbsb3233]

A couple of weeks ago, I had a very frustrating time at an EA charger. Yesterday, I stopped at 2 EA chargers (and 2 ChargePoint) with no issues. The difference? I disabled Plug and Charge and used the EA app. I didn't try the Ford Pass app, but I hear that works OK too.

Plug and Charge sounds really cool, but after using apps to start my charging, I don't think it is a big deal. The last time when I did use P&C, it took about a minute for it to authorize the charging session. With the app, it was about 15 seconds. The ChargePoint stations were really quick and I didn't even have to open the app. I just tapped my phone to the charging station and it was good to go.

I do hope they get Plug and Charge working, but in the meantime, the app is more than OK.

Plus EA Pass+ discount pricing isn't working with FordPass anyway. So even if P&C wasn't triggering charge faults, I'd still be using the EA app instead of P&C just to get the Pass+ discount.

 

[John_C]

~80 kW is pretty much what most are reporting in the 40%-80% SOC range (when working well).

The common pattern is ~160 kW for just the first minute or two if starting below 30%, then falling to ~110 kW to 40% SOC, then to ~80 kW to 80% SOC (where it then falls off the cliff to just 10-12 kW).

Thanks for this. This was exactly my experience. When I got to 80% the charge slowed to 11kW. I called Electrify America from the charging station and learned that their system automatically throttles down above 80% to save wear and tear on the vehicle's battery.

 

[Mirak]

Interesting info in this thread. In 4 stops at EA chargers on my way from Denver to Wichita (the day I bought the car), P&C never worked even though I was able to successfully activate Connected Services and add my payment info through the Ford.com website while I was at the dealership.

Worse, as others have noted, P&C appeared to interfere with my use of the EA app to initiate the charge on three of those stops. In each instance, the EA phone reps were super fast to manually initiate the charge.

I am pretty sure the car locking was NOT my problem, as it was throwing faults while I was standing right next to the car.

It is very interesting to hear that people seem to be having good luck initiating a charge through the FordPass app. I’ll try that on my next road trip, but this will be a ChargePoint charger as opposed to EA.

 

[benk016]

A couple of weeks ago, I had a very frustrating time at an EA charger. Yesterday, I stopped at 2 EA chargers (and 2 ChargePoint) with no issues. The difference? I disabled Plug and Charge and used the EA app. I didn't try the Ford Pass app, but I hear that works OK too.

Plug and Charge sounds really cool, but after using apps to start my charging, I don't think it is a big deal. The last time when I did use P&C, it took about a minute for it to authorize the charging session. With the app, it was about 15 seconds. The ChargePoint stations were really quick and I didn't even have to open the app. I just tapped my phone to the charging station and it was good to go.

I do hope they get Plug and Charge working, but in the meantime, the app is more than OK.

My biggest complaint about using the app to activate, is having to add money to your account first. There is no reason they can't just have your card tied to your account on the back-end and when you finish charging it just charges your card the exact amount.

My drive home from the dealer involved charging on 2 different networks, I had to load $60 worth of money into these companies, but only used about $28 worth of charging.

 

[dbsb3233]

Thanks for this. This was exactly my experience. When I got to 80% the charge slowed to 11kW. I called Electrify America from the charging station and learned that their system automatically throttles down above 80% to save wear and tear on the vehicle's battery.

I believe it's actually the Mach-E telling the EA charger to do that. The car is what determines the charging speed (up to the max the charger can deliver, of course).

Dropping this drastically at 80% is fairly unique to the Mach-E, although pretty much all BEVs slow down significantly when the battery reaches a higher state of charge.

Many suspect Ford may relax that "cliff" at 80% and spread it out further, but that's pure speculation. Time will tell. Fortunately few people have the need to DCFC above 80% often (if ever).

 

[TOBG]

I wish I had paid closer attention to this thread it would have saved me countless hours over 3 days.. I tried two different EA sites and got the same "charge faults". I had to travel 50 miles to find an EA site here in Ohio. EA representatives were quite pleasent but they kept wanting me to pug in and then initiate the charge. They reset the stations but in each case I got the dreaded charge fault. On my second try I was parked next to another MME from Michigan (the car was happily charging) but the driver not in the car so I couldnt ask how they got it charging. So after reading that I should activate the station and then plug in it worked like a charm. So in my case the third time was a charm. I used the FordPass app and it deducted from my bundle. I got about 78 kw until I reached 80% and then dropped to 18 kw.

 

[Luke]

My biggest complaint about using the app to activate, is having to add money to your account first. There is no reason they can't just have your card tied to your account on the back-end and when you finish charging it just charges your card the exact amount.

My drive home from the dealer involved charging on 2 different networks, I had to load $60 worth of money into these companies, but only used about $28 worth of charging.

I think the simple answer is, they are trying to minimize the number of transaction charges from the CC company. If I'm not mistaken they pay about 10c per transaction plus a percentage fee.

 

[Luke]

Plus EA Pass+ discount pricing isn't working with FordPass anyway. So even if P&C wasn't triggering charge faults, I'd still be using the EA app instead of P&C just to get the Pass+ discount.

I agree with you. The pass+ price is not passed to the client when using the plug and charge, so if you need to charge anything above 33kWh (or 50 min for the states that charge per minute), it is cheaper to eat up the $4 of the Pass+ membership and cancel it after your trip.

 

[benk016]

I think the simple answer is, they are trying to minimize the number of transaction charges from the CC company. If I'm not mistaken they pay about 10c per transaction plus a percentage fee.

Its no different than a gas station.

And that doesn't make sense either, because you can set it to only recharge $5 at a time. So a $20 charge they'd end up making up to 4 charges to your card for $5 each.

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