hobbit
Well-Known Member
Well, I took my first significant roadtrip last weekend. Boston down
to the Philadelphia area for a weekend event, and back. Other than some
traffic the drive itself was quite mellow, but range and recharging was
kind of a pain in the arse.
I had a wicked west headwind most of the way down, only made about 200 miles
[which I had planned for], so one EVgo stop was enough to get me the rest
of the way. There was another EVgo at the event hotel, which was one
motivational component for doing the event in the first place... what's
profoundly annoying is how EVgo limits every session to 45 minutes. That
is *not* reasonable for today's higher-capacity batteries, especially at
46 kW going in -- that's only ~ 33 kWh max deliverable per.
When I tried to call their support center and verify that that had been why
the charger had just suddenly stopped with no warning, all I could get out
of the call center number was "sorry, we are having system problems". That
was *not* the cell network, it was EVgo's phone infrastructure, just plain
dead and offline. Yeah, real supportive.
I tried a GougeAmerica site on the way back; their credit-card readers take
chip cards so I figured that was a good enough equivalent to the tap-cards I
have for EVgo and CP. The first station I tried couldn't sync up; fortunately
the next one I moved over to could. It only delivered about 42 kW at peak,
for a 50k unit. No idea why. $16.56 total for 44 kWh delivered, effective
37.5 cents/kWh or about 9c/mile. I can do *way* better than that in the
Prius, so you see why I call them what I do and will continue to do so until
they change their broken business model. While reporting the charger that
couldn't sync up to their support I made sure to emphasize the stupidity of
time-based sessions again. They keep offering this apologetic party-line
about how they "take all the customer feedback very seriously because they
want to develop the best service", but I'm not seeing any productive changes
fall out of that.
The EA didn't give me *quite* enough to get home, even though I waited a bit
longer past the power ramp-down point, so I had to divert slightly to a
Chargepoint somewhere east of Worcester before I could finish my trip. That
was two stops -- one to look up where to go on Plugshare, because I'm not
going to dork with a map while driving, and then at the charger. I was
hoping to get home before midnight, but that didn't happen. The whole
return trip could have been a no-stops milk run in the Prius, modulo any
"coffee rental".
Non-Tesla rapid charge infrastructure in the US is clearly *not* ready for
real prime time yet. It is too unreliable, too sparse, and not supported by
people who actually understand real-world distance driving. I fear that too
much of the Dieselgate funding that is supposedly building those networks is
simply going into various pockets, instead of being properly applied to truly
compete with what Tesla is doing with the superchargers. Maybe in another
year or more we'll starting having resources we can actually depend on?
I had some long conversations with a long-time Tesla owner over the course of
the weekend. He believes that Tesla knows there are big problematic obstacles
in the other types of networks and sympathizes, because they'd like to see
more EV adoption ... but is not willing to fund themselves competing as part
of the general public charging network at this point. If Tesla *was* willing
and able to start putting CCS heads and (reasonable) billing systems on the
supercharger networks, they would probably bury CP and EVgo in six months.
EA might survive due to an installed base of higher-power facilities by now,
but would have to radically alter their pricing model to stay viable.
_H*
to the Philadelphia area for a weekend event, and back. Other than some
traffic the drive itself was quite mellow, but range and recharging was
kind of a pain in the arse.
I had a wicked west headwind most of the way down, only made about 200 miles
[which I had planned for], so one EVgo stop was enough to get me the rest
of the way. There was another EVgo at the event hotel, which was one
motivational component for doing the event in the first place... what's
profoundly annoying is how EVgo limits every session to 45 minutes. That
is *not* reasonable for today's higher-capacity batteries, especially at
46 kW going in -- that's only ~ 33 kWh max deliverable per.
When I tried to call their support center and verify that that had been why
the charger had just suddenly stopped with no warning, all I could get out
of the call center number was "sorry, we are having system problems". That
was *not* the cell network, it was EVgo's phone infrastructure, just plain
dead and offline. Yeah, real supportive.
I tried a GougeAmerica site on the way back; their credit-card readers take
chip cards so I figured that was a good enough equivalent to the tap-cards I
have for EVgo and CP. The first station I tried couldn't sync up; fortunately
the next one I moved over to could. It only delivered about 42 kW at peak,
for a 50k unit. No idea why. $16.56 total for 44 kWh delivered, effective
37.5 cents/kWh or about 9c/mile. I can do *way* better than that in the
Prius, so you see why I call them what I do and will continue to do so until
they change their broken business model. While reporting the charger that
couldn't sync up to their support I made sure to emphasize the stupidity of
time-based sessions again. They keep offering this apologetic party-line
about how they "take all the customer feedback very seriously because they
want to develop the best service", but I'm not seeing any productive changes
fall out of that.
The EA didn't give me *quite* enough to get home, even though I waited a bit
longer past the power ramp-down point, so I had to divert slightly to a
Chargepoint somewhere east of Worcester before I could finish my trip. That
was two stops -- one to look up where to go on Plugshare, because I'm not
going to dork with a map while driving, and then at the charger. I was
hoping to get home before midnight, but that didn't happen. The whole
return trip could have been a no-stops milk run in the Prius, modulo any
"coffee rental".
Non-Tesla rapid charge infrastructure in the US is clearly *not* ready for
real prime time yet. It is too unreliable, too sparse, and not supported by
people who actually understand real-world distance driving. I fear that too
much of the Dieselgate funding that is supposedly building those networks is
simply going into various pockets, instead of being properly applied to truly
compete with what Tesla is doing with the superchargers. Maybe in another
year or more we'll starting having resources we can actually depend on?
I had some long conversations with a long-time Tesla owner over the course of
the weekend. He believes that Tesla knows there are big problematic obstacles
in the other types of networks and sympathizes, because they'd like to see
more EV adoption ... but is not willing to fund themselves competing as part
of the general public charging network at this point. If Tesla *was* willing
and able to start putting CCS heads and (reasonable) billing systems on the
supercharger networks, they would probably bury CP and EVgo in six months.
EA might survive due to an installed base of higher-power facilities by now,
but would have to radically alter their pricing model to stay viable.
_H*