Electrify America Chargers

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I recently took a trip to SC and back (to PA) and used Electrify America chargers most of the time. I also used Chargepoint once, and EVgo once. A quick comparison of cost (I'm on the "Hyundai" plan with EA).

Electrify America charge that provided 36.39 kWh was $12.24 (Took 35 minutes)
Chargepoint charge that provided 37.65 kWh was $10.17 (Took 51 minutes)
EVgo charge that provided 14.7 kWh was $7.20 (took 24 minutes)

Again, I only had 1 Chargepoint and 1 EVgo transaction to compare , for EA I just used the one that was closest to Chargepoint in terms of amount of energy received. Personally, EA provides me with the best deal in my opinion. The Chargepoint was about 20% cheaper for the same amount of electricity but that cost me 45% more time to get. Time is money....

I will note with EVgo I wasn't very low on the battery, I think I started at 58% so it didn't really have a chance to charge at a high rate. However, with Chargepoint the max was 50 (but the max it actually charged at was around 42 kW) whereas EA reached 74 kW, even if only for 15 minutes or so.

I guess my summary here would be that I think with the new Hyundai plan EA is at least in the same ballpark now as the other major players, with respect to cost. And certainly they're still better when it comes to speed and amount of energy delivered in a short period of time.
 
Actually, one more comment. Charging was flawless... except 1 EA location. I tried 3 chargers and none of them would work properly. I had to call and she rebooted the station I was at, it still failed, so I moved to yet another charger (thankfully this location had 8 total) and that one finally worked when she activated it remotely. This fiasco wasted a solid 25 minutes of my time though.

Again, I did charge .... (counting) 7 times with EA on this trip, and the other 6 charges were flawless and I was getting juice within 60 seconds of pulling up. But... I was pretty angry about the one that gave me problems.

In case you are curious, the customer service rep said that her preferred method for charging is:

1. Pull up and park your car. Open the app.
2. Pick the number of the charger you are going to use and swipe to activate from the app*
3. Plug in the connector to the car (you have 40 seconds to plug in after swiping or it will time out)

*note this goes against what the monitor will say when you pull up, as it will say "plug in first"
 
With it looking a little more promising that we can actually go places again,
I called EA yesterday to gripe once again that people without Google accounts
cannot get the Android app. And a while back they even REMOVED any of the
stuff on their website about signing up at all, such as for the "plus" plan with the
monthly fee -- *everything* is done through the app now.

I told them that it would be the work of all of 5 minutes for their dev people
to put an .apk on the website for direct download. They'll probably still
blow that idea off and never do it. They're riding a very fine line between
just pissing everyone off and completely losing all business, and I expect
they'll hold back on the *real* fix -- per-kWh billing -- for as long as they
think they can get away with it. Unfortunately for some of the routes I
would take on certain trips they're the only game in town.

_H*
 
hobbit said:
I expect
they'll hold back on the *real* fix -- per-kWh billing -- for as long as they
think they can get away with it.
Click to expand...

Or until they are allowed to. There is still a lot of states that don't allow per kWh billing. And what a pain in the a** to have to switch between different billing methods in different states, maintaining different firmwares of the chargers and dealing with customers who are confused. I totally get why they don't do it currently.
 
That shouldn't be that hard to manage, and just track the allowable states
with rolling updates. They could start by maintaining a nice public list
on their website of which states allow which type of billing, and keep it
updated as a handy trip planning tool . There's no reason to wait for EVERY
state to change over before taking action.

_H*
 
I have taken several long..2000 mile trips in my Kona EV. I used EA primarily to charge because of the locations and speed of charging. I have in the past griped about the per minute billing and still agree with everyone here that is is grossly unfair. Just the extra time charging in winter drives the price ridiculously high. The new Kona pricing is great but in the 3 times I've tried to charge since it went into effect I have never got the 77 kwh speed from any machine. Twice I have change machines and called in to get the machine reset.
Just to note, the people working on the phone for EA have been great. They have all had good attitudes and have apologized for any issues with their machines. In face the last charge was in southern Washington and the representative apologized and gave me a free charge. She noted I should charge to 100% since it was free.
I am torn weather to use them @ .35 with no connection fee and no monthly charge. Big issue for me is I never get the 77 kwh speed anymore. As stated earlier in the blog "time is money". If I can charge in half the time as Chargepoint or EVgo, then it is worth it. If I want to take a long trip 1000 miles or so, I cannot avoid using them and will continue. I am a little tired of shopping in Walmart and now with Covid, I don't travel much.
 
My 2020 charges under ~55% to 77kw at EA chargers in California. I’ve hit chargers blocked to 33kw though, but they gave me a refund so it was fine. Maybe you have a cooling issue with your car ?
 
Esprit1st said:
There is still a lot of states that don't allow per kWh billing. And what a pain in the a** to have to switch between different billing methods in different states...
Click to expand...

Yeah, that's stupid. I'm all in favor of small government as a general principle, but here the Feds should step in and impose one rule for everybody.
 
hobbit said:
Apparently the "Hyundai select" pricing trick still only works through their app, you can't
do something reasonable like log into their website and launch a charge. [The app does
the moral equivalent, this shouldn't be so hard...] But needing the app also disenfranchises
anyone without a Google or itunes account -- you simply can't have it.

For Android, at least, I told EA they need to make the .APK directly downloadable from
their website. There's probably an equivalent means for Apple stuff. I have no problem
side-loading stuff I know the origin of. We shouldn't *need* to have to load yet one more
gratuitous app onto our toys just to participate, but if that's their only answer they
need to make it *available* on a nondiscriminatory basis.

_H*
Click to expand...

Well, the app isn't gratuitous if it's used for commerce with EA. It's highly unusual for reputable apps to be distributed other than through the official stores -- which offer update notifications among other benefits.
 
Incorrect; quite a few companies / developers have woken up to the fact that some
of us prefer to not have Google run our lives. Put down your kool-aid and read on:

Zello, useful "walkie talkie" app:
. https://zello.com/data/android/latest/zello.apk
Zoom:
. https://zoom.us/client/latest/zoom.apk
OSMAnd, one of the best GPS/mapping apps:
. https://download.osmand.net/releases/net.osmand-3.6.3-363.apk

to name a few. In addition, other app producers also distribute through
alternate repositories like F-Droid. No reason that EA couldn't explore these
options too, if they're so all gung-ho about EV adoption.

_H*
 
It seems like with the new BMS software update the charge profile has changed and its limited to no more than 75Kw, I am curious if any of you folks who have had the software update have had a chance to charge at an EA station without app login. I wonder if the Kona now gets automatically acknowledged under the lower charge tier ?
 
apu said:
It seems like with the new BMS software update the charge profile has changed and its limited to no more than 75Kw, I am curious if any of you folks who have had the software update have had a chance to charge at an EA station without app login. I wonder if the Kona now gets automatically acknowledged under the lower charge tier ?
Click to expand...
Been asked several times but so far no one has confirmed, hopefully the answer is yes and applicable to EC as well.
 
Charged today at an EA Charger at Port St. Lucie/FL. Only one of 6 chargers at the location was working based on the EA app, so I connected to #6 which was the only one that showed as working. Worked on the first try. Charged 39% to 72% in 24 mins. Speed dropped from 58 kw to 38kw at 70%, so I stopped the session shortly after. Peak speed was a little over 72.25 kw.. Got 25.3 kw charge for $9. 36 cents per kwh.. Seems reasonable..
Screenshot_20200620-220228_Electrify America.webp
 
Did a short road trip of about 230 miles using Electrify America on the Hyundai Select Plan.
Had some issues with one charger, but worked pretty well:
 
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