A Really Big Trip

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One final, final bit of trivia, total cost on charging was $87.55. That was all on Electrify America. The EVconnect was free and I had free overnight charging at the hotel.
 
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Clamps said:
I don’t have a lot of positive things to say about EVconnect. When I was having my troubles at their station the friendly but ineffective rep couldn’t really help. He had no access to override the station to reset it. Claimed it must be done by the admin or owner. Kept claiming it was owned by Nissan and not until my third call with him did he realize it was owned by EVconnect.

The station itself was problematic, the connector plug was difficult to remove and for about thirty minutes I thought it was stuck in my car. The station had a CC reader that was busted, only to find out later that it was a free station from a different EV driver who stopped to charge. You did have to use the app but it was easily downloadable from the App Store but I could not get it to work with the station. The other EV owner did get his app to work and charged my car for me. Overall it was a really bad experience and I wasted about an hour before I was able to charge my car.
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FYI, EVConnect is just a software and network provider, like Greenlots. So the stations are always owned by another party, frequently a government agency or utility, and EVConnect can't do much except maybe a soft reset.

You can sometimes find information for the station owner on the station itself, in PlugShare, or Googling around if you find who the owner is. Might be more helpful, depending on the circumstances.
 
Clamps said:
So I arrived yesterday to my destination, just over 1,100 miles total. Only two real hiccups along the way. The first was the very temperamental EVconnect station (though it was a free station so, bonus) and the incorrectly mapped EA station in Ohio.

A couple of interesting anecdotes from my travels.

At my destination charging stop my car stopped charging at 61%. Thankfully I got an alert on my phone and with the help of hotel maintenance reset the station. There was a circus in town and lots of people streaming through the hotel parking lot. Don’t know if someone messed with the charger as it has a reset button or if it was just a fluke. It was corrected and I had a full charge by morning.

At one of my charging stops in western Ohio I met an owner of a Porsche Taycan. The short time I was there he had five different people stop and either talk to him about his car, take pictures of his car or simply stop and ogle his car. I told him he is going to be like a rock star.

At my Chicago stop at the charging station I met a man, named Larry, who was reviewing a MachE. Didn’t get what media he worked for but he was impressed that I was driving an EV from Boston to Milwaukee.

And finally I witnessed a car fire on the interstate in Wisconsin and it wasn’t an EV.

That’s about it.
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Excellent anecdote regarding the car fire!
 
Hi Clamps.
I'm planning on using some EV connect charge stations. I have tested a couple in my local area. I could not terminate the charge session at the station. Could you tell me how you stopped the charge when you were ready to leave to charge station? At one station I used Blue Link to terminate the session and another station I called customer service and they were able to terminate it but could not tell me how to stop it from the app.
Any tips would be greatly appreciated.
Joev
 
Joev said:
Hi Clamps.
I'm planning on using some EV connect charge stations. I have tested a couple in my local area. I could not terminate the charge session at the station. Could you tell me how you stopped the charge when you were ready to leave to charge station? At one station I used Blue Link to terminate the session and another station I called customer service and they were able to terminate it but could not tell me how to stop it from the app.
Any tips would be greatly appreciated.
Joev
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Sorry, I really don’t remember. I could never get the EVconnect station to work. Another EV driver came by and we used his app to start my session. I believe there was a stop button just below the screen or maybe we used his app. I would like to add that I also had the app but it was unresponsive for me.
 
Clamps said:
But the corker was I told him I used renewables at home and he asked me what renewables? I said wind power, he then scoffed and said, looked what happened in Texas. I then told him that was mismanagement and wind farms in the north I just fine. In closing I told him he had a very nice truck and said goodbye.
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It wasn’t even wind that caused the bulk of the issues it was natural gas and Greg Abbott is a liar.
 
Tonight head out to Charleston, sc from lewes, Delaware. ABRP has me using evgo and a few EAs. Hope all goes well. This is the first multi-charge trip I've done with the Kona.
 
Clamps said:
At my destination charging stop my car stopped charging at 61%. Thankfully I got an alert on my phone and with the help of hotel maintenance reset the station. There was a circus in town and lots of people streaming through the hotel parking lot. Don’t know if someone messed with the charger as it has a reset button or if it was just a fluke. It was corrected and I had a full charge by morning.
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What's the etiquette on these hotel chargers? Should you unplug once your car is completely charged?
 
TotalClarity said:
What's the etiquette on these hotel chargers? Should you unplug once your car is completely charged?
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I don't know if there's formal etiquette for them. I usually won't unplug if it's in the middle of the night or whatever, and especially if the hotel is pretty empty.

Just be courteous. If you're really worried, you could put your phone number on a note in your window and say people should call if they really need the charger.
 
I've charged overnight at hotels quite a few times. It always seems like the charging will complete around 3am. If there are at least 2 chargers and one is available, I go to bed and don't worry about it. The last time I did this I did wake up and notice a Tesla was then charging on the other charger and my car was of course done so I went down and moved it. It's always good to check in on Plug Share too so people can message you if they need you to move.
 
Also, set the button to the right of the steering wheel so that the charger is unlocked when you're done charging.

I think this etiquette isn't so clear yet, but hopefully we'll get to a general convention where people expect to be unplugged by the next person when their car stops charging.
 
NRH said:
Also, set the button to the right of the steering wheel so that the charger is unlocked when you're done charging.

I think this etiquette isn't so clear yet, but hopefully we'll get to a general convention where people expect to be unplugged by the next person when their car stops charging.
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Agree; the only time I set it to lock even after fully charged is the very rare time I'm using the Tesla adapter I bought and obviously don't want anyone to steal it. But in that situation a user should still be able to disconnect the other end of the Tesla adapter from the charger and just leave the piece that goes to my car.
 
It's on my right ... on your left in LHD cars.

IMG_2524.webp
 
TotalClarity said:
What's the etiquette on these hotel chargers? Should you unplug once your car is completely charged?
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There are many opinions on this. Personally, I believe that a Level 2 charger is an overnight charger and one should plan to have it all night. There are 2 main reasons for this:
1) If EVs are going to be convenient, one won't have to wake up at 2:00 am to unplug your car. Supporting this approach is detrimental to EV adoption.
2) In cold weather, it is particularly important to have one's battery warm upon departure in order to get maximum range the next day. The only way to do this is to program to stop charging at departure time, meaning you need to be plugged in all night.
3) By enabling "range charge" to 100%, one can get longer range than leaving a safety buffer in ones battery. However, charging your car to 100%, then leaving it that way for a long time harms the battery. Therefore, for optimal battery life, the practice of leaving the car plugged in all night is necessary.

Clearly, in the long run, roadside hotels are going to have to provide EV charging at every parking space. Whether we suffer by having to unplug and move in the middle of the night, have less range due to cold, shorter battery life, or inability to share the limited chargers available, these are all necessary growing pains. There is no best way to solve, therefore, I don't see that it really matters.
 
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