I’ve lurked for a while and appreciate the tips and experience I’ve gained from reading others’ post. In that spirit, I’ll share the embarrassing story of my trip yesterday and the many things I learned. I live in Atlanta and travel to Charlotte for work 1-2 times each month. The Niro is technically my wife’s car, but I take it on these trips because it’s either “free gas” for my travel or (even better) the client’s mileage reimbursement subsidizes the car payment. Normally I stay in hotels in Charlotte that have EV charging. This means I leave CLT with a full charge and, if I have to stop at all, I can stop for a 10-15 minute top-off at a free charger off I-85. This trip, the prices on hotels without EV charging were SO much cheaper I couldn’t resist the savings and decided to roll the dice with charging. One thing I learned: Charlotte (at least outside of Uptown) does not have a lot of good charging options. If I was going to make this choice again, I’d use one of the EVGO chargers to fill up once I arrive in Charlotte. I’ve done that once before and it was the most expensive charger I’d ever used, so I didn’t do that this time. I left Charlotte with about 150 miles of range. Just outside of Greenville, SC is a Sam’s Club with multiple ElectrifyAmerica chargers. My plan was to stop there and get 30-45 minutes of charging while I walked across the parking lot to a restaurant for dinner. I’ve never had a seamless experience with EA chargers. I normally have to plug/unplug several times to get it working. The credit card readers are often offline. Twice I’ve had to call EA to reset something. Still, once I’ve gotten them started, they’ve always worked in the past. They’re fast and I find the price is reasonable for the speed. Sure enough, the credit card reader was offline, there was an error message about reduced charging speeds, and it took 4 tries of scanning my card, plugging in, unplugging, scanning...to get things working. Finally, the car starts charging and I walk across the parking lot. 14 minutes later, my food has just arrived, and the car stops charging. I call EA while eating as quickly as a can and beginning to see the idle fees start to rise. The customer support from EA was terrible. No sympathy, no willingness to understand the situation. All he cared about was making sure I understood that the idle fees would not be refunded and I needed to get to the car immediately and unplug if I wanted to avoid paying them. After a few minutes of trying to be rational, I gave up on him and asked for a manager. He put me on hold for 20 minutes and came back to inform me there was no one else available I could talk to. Lesson learned: you can’t actually walk very far away from your car when on an EA charger. You may need to unexpectedly intervene. While on hold, I paid my bill, left the restaurant and went to the car. This fill up was supposed to be all I needed to get me home but I was way short of the range needed and the night was already slipping away. The available range was within ~3 miles of what I’d need to make it to the next EA chargers in Commerce, GA - so I decided to press on rather than risk wasting more time here waiting for EA to get their act together. I put the car in ECO+ and tried to make up the 3 miles of range I needed over the next 80 of travel. It didn’t work. Lesson learned: take the range estimate seriously, especially if there’s a chance of rain. (It started raining hard about halfway into the 80 mile trek). The EA chargers in Commerce are in a Walmart parking lot that’s at the very top of a big hill right off the main road. The car became immobile in the turn lane to go into the parking lot. I was no more than 250 yards from the charger (albeit straight up hill) with absolutely no way to get there. The cops came and wanted me to move the car out of the turn lane. This is when I realized I didn’t know how to put the car in neutral when you’re in Park and the car won’t start. They were (reasonably) frustrated with me. Looking in the user manual didn’t help - the instructions there are not correct. Lesson learned: foot on brake, press the power button, press “P Release” just below the shifter until the car goes into neutral). Tow truck arrives 20 minutes later. 20 more to get the car on the bed. 2 minutes to get from there, up the hill, to the EA charger. Those chargers also had offline credit card readers and warning messages about reduced charging speeds. I had to do the plug/unplug dance 12-15 times trying 3 different plugs in this case. Finally - one of them started working. Charged to 40%, drove home. This morning I googled around looking for emergency batteries for EVs. Seems like the only ones that exist at this point are for commercial applications (tow trucks, AAA, etc.) and cost thousands of dollars. Might be a good business model though, if you could become the go-to emergency charger in a particular city. If you made it this far through my saga, I hope you learned something that helped. If not, at least you can shake your head and wag your finger at me in rebuke.
Wow - sorry about your terrible experience -- I used an EA charger with my Bolt a few times in the past and had the same type dance where it might or might not pair up, then stop 10 minutes later. Last weekend was the first time using the same EA charger with the Niro and it paired right up immediately, charged at 74-75kW and in 25 minutes I unplugged with more than enough to make it home.
It seems the only way your story could be worse is if your wife was riding shotgun. I know mine would have shot so many daggers at me that it'd look like I had gotten into a tangle with a porcupine.
I've had an EV as a daily driver since 2013. I've never actually gotten so low that the car stopped, but I have had to go to some extreme work-arounds to get home in some cases. While I believe the eNiro has enough range to reduce the likelihood of running completely out of juice, experience tells me it's better to think about this at the beginning of the journey, than near the end. I tend to drive like an old granny (I hope I'm not insulting anyone here) as a hedge as I never really know if I'm going to find a working charge station. I guess you could consider this a finger wag, but more a suggestion that you'll likely end up with a more economical driving style as you gain more experience with your (wife's) EV.
Quite the ordeal, must have been extremely frustrating. Now you got me having to research how to put my Kona EV in neutral given somewhat similar circumstances (not starting or out of juice) as there is no P Release button on Kona, unless you are referring to the parking brake release?
For EA’s charges, I found out that while their phone support isn’t super helpful, sending a complaint on the app (“Report an issue”) gets me reimbursed (as a credit) every time there was an issue (they call you back, lol). To me it’s always been the charger going slower at 38/44kw though. Last time they reimbursed me just like $2 from a 4 minutes too-slow-charge even though I moved to the next charger just after.
I have yet to use an EA charger and considering in these forums I only hear horror stories, I think I will put them at the bottom of my list. Thank you for the well written post, and in particular the tip about getting out of park.
I have never charged my EV anywhere but at home, the few times I tried commercial chargers, I did not need to, and half were broken, and all had outrageous costs for electricity. Greg
I do maybe 75% of my charging at home and 25% on the road. I take the car once or twice a month on work trips that are either 2 hours away (Greenville, SC) or 4 hours away (Charlotte, NC). Greenville has a parking garage downtown with free level 2 and level 3 charging. It's great, convenient to everything, and only $1/hr for parking in the garage. There's also free charging at the Clemson University iCar center that's right off of I-85. They aren't as fast as the EA chargers but will be my go-to from now on (see below). Charlotte has much less useful EV infrastructure, but I normally (in both cities) stay in a hotel with a level 2 charger for overnight charging. I've never had a problem with either. Going forward I understand that this is essential if I'm going to take the car on longer trips. I use ChargePoint (normally free but sometimes paid) charging stations regularly - I never have problems with them. I used an EVGo charger once and, while it was ridiculously expensive, it worked perfectly. I have trouble with ElectrifyAmerica chargers every. single. time. As an update to this post, EA called me on Friday to let me know that they'd "completed their investigation, found nothing wrong with the charger, and would not refund the idle fee I was charged." I asked the lady why my car stopped charging after 14% battery gain if there was nothing wrong with the car or the charger. She asked if I had any other questions. I told her that a few comments came to mind, but no questions. Going forward, I will use EA only in an absolute emergency and will do everything I can to plan around not using them.
Given that kind of support I would delete any EA apps then rip up any RFID cards into little pieces and mail it back to their head office c/w those "in mind" comments. There will ALWAYS be some kind of alternative better than what EA has provided for you.
I used fast chargers 48 times in 15 months of driving. Just under 25% of my charging. Mostly EVgo, EA, and charge point. The only complete failure was EVgo and yes, chargers are a learning experience. I have found all the people on the telephone are quite nice, inspire of me being frustrated and somewhat less nice. EA pricing was an issue, but then there was the Kia select plan and COVID, which removed all problems with fast charging. Then there is the 20% of public charging that is free, there is not much free gas.
Thanks for sharing. The charging infrastructure issues are one of the chief reasons we're leaning more toward a Tesla to replace my wife's minivan. We want to do some road trips in our next EV, and the hit-or-miss issues with the various charging networks I keep reading about are a major negative. The Tesla supercharger network just seems to work so much better, judging by what I've been reading.
What's happening with EA's "upgrades"? The chargers I used last weekend said the same thing, not just one but multiple locations and it looks like they've been throttling for a while now. What could they possibly be doing that requires them to downgrade the charging speed for several months? .35/min at 30kw is painful. We had something similar happen to us. Skipped a charger because we figured we had enough range for the next stop. Nope! Suddenly the road was all up hill, and we ended up in Eco+ mode with everything off and driving 50mph. Boy those semi's were mad. Wife and I had a good laugh the whole way though. And THANKS for the tip on shifting to neutral when the car has no power. That should be written on the inside of the sun visor
Has anyone ever hit up a home charger listed on PlugShare? Seems like it might be a tight community to be part of, but in practice does it work? (Soon to be Niro BEV owner in Canada, doing lots of learning from the community - thanks!)
