Charging During Thanksgiving Week, 2022

insightman

insightman

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Have you found it easy or hard to charge on trips during Thanksgiving week, 2022?

Most Tesla drivers have no problems charging due to the plethora of Superchargers near expressways, but are there Tesla drivers worried about charging because they're driving to grandma's house deep in the woods, away from those ribbons of Superchargers?

I and my fellow non-Tesla EV drivers generally have less-satisfactory charging experiences.

I was wondering about the charging experiences of EV drivers this 2022 Thanksgiving season. Then I saw @ke4d's "Charging Woes" post on Inside EVs' Bolt EV forum and decided to start this General EV Discussion thread based on that post (thanks, @ke4d!):
ke4d said:
Did a trip to one of our grandsons with our 22 Bolt in St Pete Fl yesterday. 115 miles each way. Four of is with the heat on, after all 50 is cold in Fl. Stopped at an EA in Tampa four of the 8 machines were down. All working ones were being used. No big deal, just went a few miles more to an EVGO. Nope, not working. Went to another EvGO, wouldn't charge. Called support, they could not get it to start. Moved to a third location with EVGO, deader than a rock. Went on to our grandsons, stopped at the original EA on the way home with 17 miles on the GOM and 80 miles of driving. Called support, they could not get the machine to start. Finally, another EV unplugged and asked if we wanted to move to that machine. Yeah, it worked. Dumped 125 miles in, got home with about 25 miles on the GOM. More than fristrating. This was the first time for such a dismal experience. We have run non working machines before but nothing like this
Click to expand...
 
I have to wonder if ke4d tried lifting the handle trick on the Bolt to get it to charge at the EVgo stations. I guess if ke4d is a seasoned Bolt driver that trick would have be tried.
 
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marshall said:
I have to wonder if ke4d tried lifting the handle trick on the Bolt to get it to charge at the EVgo stations. I guess if ke4d is a seasoned Bolt driver that trick would have be tried.
Click to expand...
Being a MINI Cooper SE driver, I don't know about the Bolt handle trick. Is it a handle on the Bolt or on the EVSE and if it's on the EVSE does the trick only work with Bolts?
 
Our nearest EA (New Castle DE, near I-95) is shut down for the upgrade.

It looks like there are other scattered charging locations around the country that are also down.
 
I've run into a couple of EA locations all fenced off and ripped up for "upgrades" recently too. I wish they'd
do it in a more "staged" fashion, like only take half the site down at a time so there's at least *something*
available, instead of leaving people potentially stranded if they didn't hop on the net and check before
heading there.

It seems like EVgo is having some issues too, when the older 50kW units break, nobody bothers fixing
them if a site is slated to receive the newer 100kW [?] ones. But how long will it stay useless in between?

_H*
 
Really what this past weekend has shown is the inadequacy of the sites with just 4 chargers. I have seen numerous reports on SM of long lines at certain sites. But Thanksgiving was always going to be a stress test for the whole system, and unfortunately it failed in many ways.

The older 50kW units are kind of crappy - we have numerous CP 50kW units that were put in 5 years ago - all are down, and have been down for a year or so.

When they only have 4, it probably limits their ability to do partial upgrades.
 
CP is kind of a special case, as it allows them and property owners to finger-point at each other and
keep saying "not our problem". CP really needs to lean on site liaisons a lot more, because bum gear
still makes CP look bad.

I had a convo with their support yesterday, in fact, because the website is effed up and I can't log
into my account. I also mentioned how the touchscreens on a lot of the newer units are completely
failing, evidently related to sun exposure, and they have no particular plan in place to get them
fixed. Meanwhile, their support is getting frantic calls from people who aren't able to stop a charge
session early, and think they're trapped there because they can't unhook.

_H*
 
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