New Year's Eve Charging Nightmare

[Neilthepilot]

Frankly, I wish EV charging worked the way gas stations worked. Pull up to the charger, tap your credit card, “full” your car, and go. Why do I have to download an app for every single stupid charging network - especially when there’s a card reader right on the charging station?
Sure, plug-and-charge is a nice ADDITION but I pull up to a foreign charger, I want to charge - not spend 10 minutes downloading apps, registering, verifying my email address and whatever else, like I did in Baltimore a couple of months ago!

And lets not forget that many want money on account, not just billing what you use.

Sponsored

 

[MellowJohnny]

I think this is very on point. The free market cost of installing a DCFC station just on actual costs/ depreciation likely requires some thing like $0.25c kWh assuming like 24/7 usage to make a 10% IRR. When you add in cost of electricity and fact that its best likely usage is maybe 50%. It probably means something like $0.50 kWh or more probably to make an economic return. Hence, the model is already broken and dependent on government largess before it even gets off the ground

Except the model isn’t broken if that‘s the actual economics. We get used to paying a lot less at home, but don’t factor in all the sunk costs of a commercial charger.

It cost me under a dollar to make a hamburger at home, yet nobody complains when they pay $19.95 at a restaurent plus $8 for a pint. We don’t complain because we understand the economics of running a restaurent - labour, rent, waste, food cost, profit, etc. Same for DCFC. I don’t expect government subsidies to last forever, so either we pay the market rate dictated by economics, or investment will dry up once the gov’t dollars disappear.

 

[Mach-Lee]

As far as I can tell, the charger locations in question are currently marked in FordPass within 100' of their actual location. Actual location shown with a red dot. They are also shown correctly within 100' in the ChargePoint and PlugShare apps as well. Google Maps seems to be bang-on accurate within 10'.

 

[83girl]

Please tell me if anyone else has had this issue becasue It was definitely a first for me...

I will start off this post by saying I work at a Ford dealership and have had training on all things Fordpass and the Blue Oval Charge network since I am the one that has to sell it to people. So, this New Years Eve I had an event about 80 miles away from my home and, according to the Fordpass app trip planner, I would be able to do the round trip with only one stop on the way back home. I didn't have any worries with that since I have used the trip planner feature multiple times before with no issue. Jump to later that night when leaving the event I am getting ready to go and load the trip into the GPS so it can take me to a local Chargepoint DCFS charger (I will note here it was the only one showing in the area). When I arrive at the location there was no charger to be found in the immediate area. This was in a hotel parking lot so I decided to go into the hotel and ask the front desk where it was located. They had no idea what I was talking about and mentioned I was the 4th person that month asking the same thing. I thought that was very strange but not a big deal since I could make it to the next charger on the list (also a Chargepoint).

The second charger was located in a hospital parking lot but when we arrived there was again no charger to be found. I went into the hospital and asked if they might know where its at and they also had no idea what I was talking about. At this point in time my range was getting way to low for comfort so I decided to contact Chargepoint to see what the deal was. The man was nice on the phone and preceded to tell me there was a charger at my location. I asked him to verify the address and he gave the exact address I was at except it was in an entirely different zip code.....To make sure I am not an idiot I put in the address and guess what...IT DIDNT EXIST. I relayed this to the call center employee and he basically said " I don't know what to tell you sir" and we just parted ways from there. Since there were no "in network" chargers within my posted range I decided to try the out of network public chargers. There was a Blink charger a few miles down the road and would be my last hope seeing I was now down to 7 miles of range. I get there and it is a GMC dealership which I thought was strange but had to at least try to see if it would work. I was thanking god when I found the charger and was able to plug in but had my hopes dashed when the "you are not an authorized user" message came up. Why would a dealer list their charger as public when it isn't? I have no idea and believe that is more on the dealer than the Fordpass app.

By this point it is almost midnight and I have 3 miles left. I decided to find an open parking lot to park and call Ford roadside assistance so they can tow me to an available charger since none were showing available in my range. I did not expect to be helped the same night when I started this because of the holiday but I at least wanted to start the process. After waiting 2 hours Ford called and said I would need to find place to stay that night since they were unable to find an available truck. Since I was only 30 mins from my home I decided to call an uber and deal with it tomorrow. I get home around 3:00am and as soon as I sat down the tow truck driver called asking where I was...I told him Ford told me no one was coming to which he replied I should have received a text that he was en-route (no such text was sent). I started to get ready to head back to the cars location but while I was talking to the driver he mentioned he could not find the car. I asked him to verify the address and it turns out Ford gave him a COMPLETELY different address. His location was about an hour away from where my car was and we both decided to handle it in the morning.

Morning comes and I try to call/text the guy. Granted, it was about 8:00am so I did not expect to get a response right away. Continued to try and contact him until about 2:00pm with no luck. Finally just decided to make a new request with Ford and head towards the direction of my car. My second attempt at roadside was much smoother than the first. I immediate received the confirmation text and constant ETA's along with a link to track the driver on the map. They got to my car and had my at an EV Go charger inside of 2 hours.

This entire experience has shaken my faith in Fords system and I will be making calls today to see what is going wrong. Before I did that though I wanted to see if anyone else has had a similar experience with not being able to find chargers that were showing on the map? Thanks for sticking with me! I know if was a long story but I wanted to get all the details and context.

Do you know if the chargers you tried to connect to used chargepoint inside the network? Chargepoint app was fully down on the 28th of December. Luckily the access of touching the phone to the station without having the app open still worked otherwise I wouldn't have been able to charge my MME. It was really annoying as I had to take a chance to drive to it not knowing if the charger was free or not. Luckily it was, but I was not impressed with chargepoint for sure! Sorry this happened to you, but this may be the reason.

 

[AhardFSU]

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

^^^This.

 

[mccdeuce]

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.

except that gas stations generally make their profit from selling stuff inside the store.

to fill an ICE I need 5 min and have no reason to go into the stores. In my 15 years of driving gas stations have made very little money off of me.

Now flip the model to EV - I need to plug in for 20min. Build fast chargers at locations where I go in for a $5 coffee that costs 15 cents to make (I don’t want to go to Walmart….)

Back to OP and plug share - as is discussed here before how many gas stations have you been to where the credit card reader or some other aspect doesn’t work on ALL pumps? Cause that happens with DCFC although it seems to be happening less now. PlugShare really helps to ensure I am not going to a bad station. And I will give it to EVGo over EA, whenever I have a bad experience and check in on PlugShare EVGo reaches out to know more so they can fix it. Never once have I used FP or built in Nav for charging plans, just like I wouldn’t use a Ford route planner for gas either (the pessimist in me, assuming Ford would take me to their preferred Stations - maybe a kickback, not necessarily the best for me)

 

[Rfehl62]

Do you know if the chargers you tried to connect to used chargepoint inside the network? Chargepoint app was fully down on the 28th of December. Luckily the access of touching the phone to the station without having the app open still worked otherwise I wouldn't have been able to charge my MME. It was really annoying as I had to take a chance to drive to it not knowing if the charger was free or not. Luckily it was, but I was not impressed with chargepoint for sure! Sorry this happened to you, but this may be the reason.

The Chargepoint chargers I tried were in network. I have yet to be able to use a Charepoint. The only ones near my house are at a Harley dealership and every time I try to go by the thing is dead.

 

[agoldman]

and therin lies the EV problem in a nutshell. not fun.

 

[Logal727]

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

They do use PlugShare data for charger reviews

 

[Logal727]

The Chargepoint chargers I tried were in network. I have yet to be able to use a Charepoint. The only ones near my house are at a Harley dealership and every time I try to go by the thing is dead.

Pretty much all ChargePoint L2 are privately owned, ChargePoint is just the payment and status network basically

 

[Logal727]

Curious OP, were there any reviews in the FordPass app for these ghost chargers? It should be showing PlugShare reviews like this, which is the best part of PlugShare so I don’t see any reason why people are saying you should have used PlugShare

 

[RickMachE]

Curious OP, were there any reviews in the FordPass app for these ghost chargers? It should be showing PlugShare reviews like this, which is the best part of PlugShare so I don’t see any reason why people are saying you should have used PlugShare

Using the FordPass app to look at reviews for a charger isn't something I would be doing. If you use FordPass, you use it to plan a trip, which you then send to the car. Once it's in the car, I cannot recall every seeing a review for the charger, but I haven't used the Ford Navigation for that purpose in over a year.

 

[macchiaz-o]

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

This is the point I have been trying to make exactly. It has since been verified that the charges were down the street from where the app was saying...From what I am finding out though, Ford is not the one who collects the data. It looks like the individual company provides the location data and Ford post it on the app.

Ford should allow us to submit charge network problem reports through the car or FordPass. Until they do, though, we should make corrections via the source (if we can deduce it).

In my limited experience, I noticed a nearby pool of L2 chargers marked as free and available (and non-networked) in FordPass. But when I drove over there, I found they were for employees only.

They were also marked incorrectly in PlugShare.

So I corrected the location in PlugShare and then that correction automatically flowed over to FordPass. I didn't need to contact Ford at all, but it sure would've been helpful if Ford let me know where the data came from so I wouldn't need to guess.

 

[RickMachE]

Ford should allow us to submit charge network problem reports through the car or FordPass. Until they do, though, we should make corrections via the source (if we can deduce it).

In my limited experience, I noticed a nearby pool of L2 chargers marked as free and available (and non-networked) in FordPass. But when I drove over there, I found they were for employees only.

They were also marked incorrectly in PlugShare.

So I corrected the location in PlugShare and then that correction automatically flowed over to FordPass. I didn't need to contact Ford at all, but it sure would've been helpful if Ford let me know where the data came from so I wouldn't need to guess.

The do allow you to leave feedback, which seems like it MIGHT feed to PlugShare, other providers, and Ford.

 

[macchiaz-o]

The do allow you to leave feedback, which seems like it MIGHT feed to PlugShare, other providers, and Ford.

Ah, cool. I hadn't noticed it before.

The extra nice thing with PlugShare is that for location errors (like wrong zip code) you can sometimes edit and correct it rather than only leaving a review comment. I've only done this for open, non-networked locations so I don't know but it's possible this capability is limited on some listings.

Sponsored