Heads up!
I drove down to Plattsburgh, NY, for the first time in the SE today. It’s about 80 miles from my driveway to the EvolveNY/EA station at Sam’s Club just off I-87, so this would be my first time charging at my destination in order to have enough to get back to my city (and where I know all the charging station locations to go the last few miles if necessary). I left home with a full charge, Green, no AC, just “Auto” to maintain 68° (it was 52° outside), and arrived at the EvolveNY station with 42%. I plugged in, and as I was about to hold my phone up to the reader, a young man sitting in an older Altima nearby hollered that it wasn’t necessary, charging is comped for now as ENY/EA roll out updates across the network. Instead of aiming for 80% (which took all of 14 minutes running between 46 and 49 kW), I let it go an extra 15ish minutes and got to 96% before the rate dropped below 10 kW and I stopped it.
While charging, I had a good chat with the helpful guy, it turns out he’s an EA service tech and he was on a call to repair one of the other units (a combo CCS/CHAdeMO unit). There was another combo v2 unit out of service that he believes will be replaced by a CCS-only v3, leaving two dual-CCS and a slower combo. I asked about the cooled cables on these 350 kW Signet dual-CCS units and he opened up the inop one to show and explain its gizzards. It’s quite something, like a hybrid of a server rack, a 600V electrical panel, and a fridge!
I asked the technician if I had gotten lucky, that it was free while he was there, working on the system, and he said no, it will remain free for the foreseeable future while they are rolling out updates. Whether software or hardware updates, he said multiple EA stations throughout New York and New England are currently free.
