New Year's Eve Charging Nightmare

[Jimbo]

I have a hybrid that gets 42mpg in the winter for this reason. When in doubt, I take the hybrid with it’s 600 mile range.

In southern CT there few oasis’s in the charging desert towards RI. I have 12 fast chargers near my home that I don’t need.

This. I was worried the federal funding would result in a further glut of slow "fast" chargers in urban settings that are broken 80% of the time. Fortunately, it's focused on highways for now, and has speed, distance, and uptime requirements.

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[JamieGeek]

PlugShare doesn't plan trips. They need to pull PlugShare's data into the Ford navigation.

I beg to differ:

You plan trips on Plugshare's website and (if you're logged into your account on both the app & the web) they will show up in the app.

I haven't played with it in a while, however.

 

[breeves002]

Here is the thing...Ford does exactly what you are saying BUT it is easy to come up with answers when you are making up the question. I know if may seem simple to you guys but I will admit what people are saying in this thread is the exact opposite of how I was trained by Ford. They gave us answers for everything but every answer was found in the Fordpass app or Fords main site.

Fair point, I guess they just need to take peoples questions (like on this forum) and make answers for those and add them to the list...

 

[frankietg]

In addition to reporting the issue through plugshare, you might be familiar with ‘Out of Spec Reviews’ on YouTube. Those guys have set up a twitter thread for folks nationwide to rate the EV chargers they visit and report related technical issues. Because of the Out of Spec Reviews’ popularity, all the EV charge companies began to follow, and the result is that the chargers are getting repaired faster. It might help if we all rated all the chargers we use. Follow @RateYourCharge

 

[Rfehl62]

Fair point, I guess they just need to take peoples questions (like on this forum) and make answers for those and add them to the list...

Ford pays attention to these forums. The issue is with a company as large as them everything becomes "corporified". Everything is run through focus group after focus group before we ever see it. Whenever we do bring issues or recommendations to the people it is typically a one sided conversation. I wish things were different but it is what it is.

 

[Rfehl62]

In addition to reporting the issue through plugshare, you might be familiar with ‘Out of Spec Reviews’ on YouTube. Those guys have set up a twitter thread for folks nationwide to rate the EV chargers they visit and report related technical issues. Because of the Out of Spec Reviews’ popularity, all the EV charge companies began to follow, and the result is that the chargers are getting repaired faster. It might help if we all rated all the chargers we use. Follow @RateYourCharge

I think that's a great idea.

 

[RickMachE]

I beg to differ:
You plan trips on Plugshare's website and (if you're logged into your account on both the app & the web) they will show up in the app.

I haven't played with it in a while, however.

I'll amend my statement - PlugShare doesn't plan trips worth a damn. It's capabilities for planning a route are way too rudimentary. If I plot a trip to Indianapolis, it shows me making it without charging. Nope... ABRP is what I use for route planning.

 

[Atxsw]

I feel bad piling on to your nightmare, but as a Ford sales person - the number one thing you should know is Ford's system is pretty unreliable. There's a reason Plugshare exists, and that should be everyone's #1 resource. Since you have some pull, you should directly escalate this within whatever official channels you have - since I'm sure the in-vehicle navigation pulls the same data as Fordpass.

Out of curiosity, where exactly was this? Would like to see what Plugshare says about this particular location.

I dont even use the ford system, just use plugshare and never had a missing charger

 

[ab13]

Ford pays attention to these forums. The issue is with a company as large as them everything becomes "corporified". Everything is run through focus group after focus group before we ever see it. Whenever we do bring issues or recommendations to the people it is typically a one sided conversation. I wish things were different but it is what it is.

GM has a tool to let people do online live tours and one on one consultations. Ford should at least have a lot of videos that people can reference

https://evlive.gm.com/

This is the Mach E YouTube info playlist

 

[Mach-Lee]

I'm trying to find the chargers here:

In Navasota, there are two chargers close by, a Level 2 ChargePoint at a BBQ place near a Comfort Inn motel, and a ChargePoint DCFC just down the road. Both of those show up in the right spot in the FordPass app.

I can't find another hotel charger in the Ford network on the way. There is one at a Best Western in Waller, TX but that is their own private one.

I think the second missed hospital charger was the one at Memorial Cypress Hospital. This is another ChargePoint Level 2. It's in the parking lot behind the wound care building (not by the main hospital). This also appears to be placed at the correct location in the FordPass app.

So maybe I'm way off base here, but I'm not seeing anything wrong? Unless they fixed it already? Maybe you weren't zooming in all the way on the app to see the exact charger location? It can sometimes be hard to find chargers unless you zoom way in.

Also, I'm wondering if you were possibly navigating to Level 2 stations by mistake thinking they were Level 3 DCFC stations? In the Ford app you want to look for stations that have 2 or 3 lighting bolts or or "swooshes" to denote the faster charging speed of a DCFC. A single lightning bolt is a slow Level 2 station, usually you skip those unless you are stopping for the night or desperate.

If I were you, I would have charged up at the MidSouth Electric DCFC in Navasota before heading back.

 

[Blue highway]

This is so true. I've ran into many EV owners who just have no clue how this stuff works - and then feel mislead when they are taught about reality. It's also amazing how many non-EV owners understand literally 0% about EVs. Just complete ignorance. They don't even try to comprehend anything. I had to try to explain to people this week why putting an alternator on the wheel of an EV to regenerate electricity while driving will not increase efficiency lol. I mean thats basic physics but still.

There was a thread in the forum about putting a windmill on the car to extend its range while driving. The interesting thing was the indignance of the poster to responses explaining why it wouldn't work.

 

[Rfehl62]

I'm trying to find the chargers here:

In Navasota, there are two chargers close by, a Level 2 ChargePoint at a BBQ place near a Comfort Inn motel, and a ChargePoint DCFC just down the road. Both of those show up in the right spot in the FordPass app.

I can't find another hotel charger in the Ford network on the way. There is one at a Best Western in Waller, TX but that is their own private one.

I think the second missed hospital charger was the one at Memorial Cypress Hospital. This is another ChargePoint Level 2. It's in the parking lot behind the wound care building (not by the main hospital). This also appears to be placed at the correct location in the FordPass app.

So maybe I'm way off base here, but I'm not seeing anything wrong? Unless they fixed it already? Maybe you weren't zooming in all the way on the app to see the exact charger location? It can sometimes be hard to find chargers unless you zoom way in.

Also, I'm wondering if you were possibly navigating to Level 2 stations by mistake thinking they were Level 3 DCFC stations? In the Ford app you want to look for stations that have 2 or 3 lighting bolts or or "swooshes" to denote the faster charging speed of a DCFC. A single lightning bolt is a slow Level 2 station, usually you skip those unless you are stopping for the night or desperate.

If I were you, I would have charged up at the MidSouth Electric DCFC in Navasota before heading back.

I did zoom as close as possible and even got out of my car to walk to where it said the charger was. Also, the hotel staff telling me they had no idea what charger I was asking about. When going back to look the app showed it in the Comfort Inn and Suites parking lot but it was actually in the Mallet Brothers BBQ lot. As for the hospital, I went back and looked and it is the hospital you mentioned but I have looked at the app and it is most certainly not in the correct location. I verified with Google Maps and they both show the charger to be located on the right parking lot if you're looking at the building from the highway. Also, I had my filter to show only level 3 chargers on the fordpass app so mistakenly going to level 2 stations should not have been possible but honestly I would have welcomed one.

 

[db4z]

Fordpass pulls data from specific charging networks, but if that data doesn't include user provided feedback like on plugshare, their is no guarantee it is accurate, even though in theory each charging network should know what it going on with their chargers. This occurrence seems like a fluke bad data from chargepoint.

Unfortunately, for non Tesla EVs it is still the wild west for J1772 chargers as it is almost impossible for them to be profitable without incentives which means there is very little money to maintain them. I'm hoping in 5 years every basic grocery store, fast food and Starbucks will at least have a couple level 2 chargers that way you never be more than a few miles from a level 2 charger in an emergency scenario. However, for DC fast chargers to be reliable, as others pointed out, there needs to be so many that they are actually competing for customers to incentivize their operators to maintain them, but with such a high installation cost I'm not sure how that happens, especially in rural areas. Government incentives help install stations but I don't think they require and long term reliability standards (please someone correct me if I'm wrong).

However, right now we are stuck manually looking at user photos of chargers on plugshare to verify they really exist and are operation.

Therefore, I wouldn't trust my elderly parents to charge in public unless they were going to a station with plug and charge or a credit card reader. Downloading multiple apps and setting up an account with each of them is just too complicated for some people. I know Ford pass was supposed to avoid this, but even having to use Ford pass to turn on a charger (without plug and charge) is more complicated that swiping a credit card at gas station and I suspect over time more stations will add credit card readers over time just to give people more ways to pay. Finally there is still a decent percentage of the population that still only pays in cash that will need a way to pay if evs are to ever really move down market.

 

[Neilthepilot]

Thanks to the poster and others for these interesting comments. Ultimately, EVs are great in that most of us can charge our cars at home and/or work, and rarely have to deal with gas/charging stations. The time saved and aggravation avoided really add up, a largely unheralded advantage to EV cars.

Unfortunately, this means the the normal business model of gas stations, selling lots of energy to commuters and local people, is replaced by a much smaller business, selling energy to travelers who are too far from their inexpensive home chargers. The EV travelers (that's us) want two things that are expensive, rapid charging, which requires expensive infrastructure in a rapidly-changing engineering environment, and ultra-high reliability, so we can avoid getting stuck. It may be possible for companies like EA to provide this for non-shocking prices near coastal urban areas and the main interstate highways. But in all likelihood, providing fast charging with professional maintenance between Baton Rouge and Little Rock (just to pick a random example near me) might require charging more money for the energy than an equivalent ICE car would pay for gas in today's market. FWIW, I'm OK with that, as I save much more money charging at home when I'm not road-tripping.

My worry is that all of the free government money for charging infrastructure will end without solving that problem. To be clear, the problem, as I see it, is that the new post-ICE market will need far fewer energy stations, leaving places without competing stations near each other. These stations will each need to much more reliable than now evident, and so will have to charge much more to be profitable. Many EV drivers will not want to pay, as their price-sense will be anchored to the cheap electricity at home.

I disagree with your assessment that public chargers are only used by travelers. Where I live there is one fast charging (non tesla) station in a metro area of 3-4 hundred thousand people. It is used a lot by local people. As cheaper EV's become available there will be many owners who can't afford (it cost me $4400 plus the charger)or will not be allowed to install a charger (say at apartments or in a city using off street parking). They will need public chargers to be widely available. The other public charger I use regularly is outside Philadelphia, it too is heavily used by both locals and travelers like my self.

 

[JamieGeek]

I'll amend my statement - PlugShare doesn't plan trips worth a damn. It's capabilities for planning a route are way too rudimentary. If I plot a trip to Indianapolis, it shows me making it without charging. Nope... ABRP is what I use for route planning.

Yeah its a very manual process: You have to select the chargers you want to go to--it doesn't do any automatic selection like ABRP does (or even the Mach-E's nav does).

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