Cracker Barrel and the disappearing Blink chargers

[bwilson4web]

Hi,

Last year, Tennessee was full of Blink chargers with fast CHAdeMO at dozens of Cracker Barrels. In 2017 I was headed home and grabbed a charge at the L2 charger at the Kimball, TN store. Now Plugshare shows they have all been removed.

Anyone know what happened?

UPDATE

Apparently ECOtality, the company that contracted with Cracker Barrel, went broke.

The results don't look good:
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4106048-financial-distress-table-blink-charging

Thanks,
Bob Wilson

 

[marshall]

The trouble with Blink is that they charged too much for L2 charging. If a public charger is charging more than $1.50 an hour for around 7KW/hr, then it's not going to get used much.

As I told the WSDOT engineer, low cost charging at work, and hotels is where the emphasis on L2 charging should be placed. It can be as simple as just installing 240 volt outlets, and the employee or guest can bring their own EVSE.

 

[dGarry48]

Too bad to hear about ECOtality. Thought Blink is serving very well.

 

[bwilson4web]

... Thought Blink is serving very well.

When working, I have no complaints. Losing all the Cracker Barrel sites is a big hurt. Sad to say, their fast DC charger was CHAdeMO only. They also provided L2, J1772, but the charging rate was disappointing.

Bob Wilson