Kind of unrelated to this, but I have a rental 2022 Model 3 and I’m going to take a small (300mi round trip) drive today, so it’ll be my first time experiencing Tesla charging infrastructure.
@IAC has already advised me that on a Model 3 Standard Range I should consider my actual range to be 2x the charge percentage, seems like a nifty trick.
Electrify America network is mediocre at best but free charging is making the experience far worse. I am curious to see battery degradation on these free-charge vehicles. I wish automakers would limit free charging to under 70% charge level.
I’ve used an EA about 1.5 miles away that has 4 - 150kw chargers. I’ve only used it twice, and checked to make sure that there were two open ones before I left the house so I’ve never had to wait. I just checked now - 1 in use, 1 avail, 2 unavailable. The ones with the 350kw chargers are always full with a wait, and also have at least 3 unavailable. I hope I never actually have to depend on having to charge at EA.
I’ll see your 3 fulls with 3 fulls and 2 unavailable… at 1:17 AM on Tuesday. That’s LA EV life for ya!
Are you in OC or NorCal? Another problem in LA area is that you cannot rely on either app for accurate info on availability as they always show some broken chargers as available for days or weeks at a time. BTW, EA app is somehow is even less accurate than Mercedes Me in that respect.
I’m in Carlsbad, CA. The EA app always shows 1 or 2 broken for the 4 charger station near me (all are 150kw), and 3 or 4 broken for the 10 charger station that has two 350kw chargers, so it’s definitely reporting the unavailable chargers. I still want to try the 350kw charger, just as a novelty, but whenever we go by there while we’re shopping at 5-Below, which is my kids’ favorite place to shop, there is a line of Rivians waiting for the 350kw chargers, as well as a bunch of other EVs waiting to charge in whatever spot available.
These stories are why so many people are saying “i’ll wait 5 to 10 years” for an EV.
Unless you are charging at home and work you are in for some type of wait.
I stopped at that Walmart in East Brunswick earlier this year when I was coming from the south.
Was barely any cars there but it was late at night on a Sunday night. 350w chargers there too.
I admit, free juice has ruined it .
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again:
There will be no mass EV adoption until driving an EV is as simple as driving a gas car, until you can just get in, drive, and not have to pre-plan your charging or route at all, you just know you’ll be able to pull off and charge with the same ease as you would pull off for gas station when you’re low on gas.
Not sure if they’ll win but some enterprising class action firm will file for the inability to use the advertised product.
Just theorizing here but what are the demographics for EVs in your area? Younger people? So maybe they are still up at that time.
What does it looks like at 6am> That seems to be a more open time in my area (Orange County).
Last year, i was getting in the 220s on them. That dropped drastically. It feels like they throttle.
This is not a neighborhood but rather a huge part of LA County which probably has over million residents in the areas shown. You have richest zip codes on the bottom (Beverly Hills, Bel Air, Brentwood, etc) to the poorest ganglands in the North San Fernando Valley and everything else in between.
I utilized the free EA charging plus out of pocket charging with the Volvo C40 that my company let us demo for 4 months, started April 2023. I have a home away from home, which is a 116-mi drive that I did once a week with the C40.
The EA chargers were my primary method of charging for the return trip–which is from Rocklin, CA to the Bay Area (in the Bay Area I used a 8kWh parking garage charger). Typically spent 30-min to 45 min and charged from 25-30% to 85-90%.
I never really had a negative experience that stood out as far as the Rocklin/Roseville chargers went. At one time the charger stopped charging 10 minutes after plugging in. So I just plugged/out then in and it worked normally. The app reported the inactive ones accurately as well as the In-use status.
In the Bay Area the ones I would frequent (for unplanned trips) were usually full. I never encountered a 100% inactive set of chargers though, but I have seen some and heard of it (at the same chargers I used in both Bay Area and Rocklin/Roseville) from my friends.
Overall I had a pretty good experience. I wouldn’t go out of my way to depend on it if the EV was my only car…I would still rather get a Level 2 installed at my house.
I’d say my experience has been ok. I have about 6 or 7 sites in areas that I frequent. I don’t think there has been a time where all stations were online. But there hasn’t been a time where I could not charge at all, like if all of the chargers were down or if the wait was too long. Took a roadtrip once and it worked out well, but I had some anxiety for sure.
Ahh… so density over demographics.
But LA is a 24-hour area so chargers being full at 1:17am is no surprise.
In my area… eateries are still closing at 8pm (they think it’s still a pandemic).
But that being said… the explosion of Teslas in my area has the SCs pretty crowded too.
Not EA specifically but I cannot use the Audi app for free charging, as of October.
When I hit start charger, it loads the page but does not give me the prompt to enter the charger information.
Any attempt to reload the page comes to an error page - “checks.state argument is missing”
Tried to reinstall, clear cache, log in and log out, new phone … nothing solves it.
Ultimate lemon 
