ElectrifyAmerica :: Using the ConnectApp vs ChargingNA app ... your experiences?

arijaycomet

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PREFACE:
For those of us in North America with the free 3yrs of DC fast charging, you may have been told to download the Charging NA app, in addition to the Porsche Connect app. This app allows you to use the "Porsche Charging Service" with your vehicle, which is a subset of the features baked into the Connect app. Best I can tell, this might be useful for someone who doesn't want the full Connect features, but wants to be able to activate their free charging. It also might provide a faster and more streamlined approach? Either way, my delivery person told me to download it. And I didn't need to use it until this past weekend. Let me explain:

(Side note: new cars are supposed to offer a "plug and charge" feature that should prevent anyone from needing to use the app whatsoever; and this may or may not be software retrofit to 2020 cars; TBD. This would be nice and more like the experiences I've had in my Tesla vehicles. But, I have no issues opening an app as most all chargers are in good LTE/5G signal locations.)

MY FIRST EXPERIENCE:
During my first DC fast charging experience at an EA charger a few weeks ago, I decided to first try just using the Connect app. The thought of having to use some other additional app for such a singular experience sounded, well, annoying. So even against what I had been told by my dealership, I went right to the PRIMARY Connect app. In there, selected the map ("Explore" on bottom left corner) and instantly saw 3 pins. One for me, one for my car, and one for the station. I was able to tap the station pin, tap the "Electrify America 4/4 E-Charging points available" at the bottom of the screen, press the big green "start charging" button .. and so on, so forth. And it WORKED FINE!

MY SECOND EXPERIENCE:

Yesterday, while out/about, I decided to check out a different ElectrifyAmerica station. Upon arrival I replicated the above, but the pin for the station never showed. up. I tried to pinch/zoom in/out many times but alas, I never got the pin for the station to appear. Instead, then, I loaded up the ChargingNA app and followed the correct process there to charge. It worked flawlessly, but it aggravated me to need this app.

MY RESEARCH & MY SOLUTION:
While the car was charging for 20m, I decided to try to figure out what the issue was here. And sure enough I SOLVED THE PROBLEM! For those of you who have not been able to use the native app to start charging because the pin for the station was missing, here is the fix:

1- Open the Connect app, and go to Explore/map
2- Make sure your map view is your current location**
(**this assumes you/car are on screen, near a charging station, that is not showing up)
3- Tap the lightning bolt icon (top left corner), choose "Hide All", then instantly, turn back on "E-Stations", then close "X"

By simply having the stations HIDE and then SHOW -- it brings them back into view. HOWEVER -- if you pinch/zoom they will DISAPPEAR. To make them reappear simply follow step #3 above (lightning, hide, show, close menu-- boom, they are there!)

At this point if you are already plugged into a station, you should then be able to click on the station ping, open/drag/slide it up to view the details, hit the big green charging button, etc.

QUESTION:
For those of you who are still reading this -- what have been your experiences? Have you been unable to get a charger to start a session for OTHER issues or reasons? Or is the only issue that caused my Porsche dealership to suggest this app related to the pins not showing up? Because if that is the only problem, again, my "3-second fix" above seems to work flawlessly. YMMV of course -- please let me know!
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Genau

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For those of you who are still reading this -- what have been your experiences? Have you been unable to get a charger to start a session for OTHER issues or reasons? Or is the only issue that caused my Porsche dealership to suggest this app related to the pins not showing up? Because if that is the only problem, again, my "3-second fix" above seems to work flawlessly. YMMV of course -- please let me know!
Thanks -- your work around for the Connect app charger map works! But the EA site near me in Ormond Beach, Florida has several chargers that always show up as unavailable in both the Connect App and the Charging America app. All of the 350 kW chargers always show as unavailable, along with one of the 150 kW chargers. So, I've gotten used to just calling EA to start every charge. It doesn't take long, the EA representatives are friendly, and by calling I create a service ticket that may eventually result in improvements. Sometimes the EA rep will start my charge and then transfer me to a Porsche rep to report their erroneous charger status. I don't expect anything will result from the call to Porsche, but I play along since I have nothing better to do while charging. In a week or two I sadly return to wintry Reston, Virginia where my local EA charging station is at their national headquarters. That location has examples of every brand of charger they deploy in the US. I also have to call sometimes to activate charging there.
 
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arijaycomet

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@Genau thanks for the feedback. Interestingly, when I went to the location yesterday I had looked ahead of time on the EA app (not either Porsche app but their own app). That is something I suggest since the most up to date status of any given charging site is most likely to be accurate on the host’s own app, not Porsche or PlugShare (though EA does a decent job updating PlugShare).

Anyhow my point here is that there were 2x towers with 350kW but one of them was showing offline. So when I arrived I went right to the online one and it worked fine, but I never bothered to look at the other ones. Which reminds me of an incident that occurred a while back (~1 year ago) in my Audi ETron SUV:

Arriving at an EA station, I found there were 4x towers. One of them was online but I couldn’t get it to charge/work. Another the screen was black/dead entirely. Another one was on a Windows screen, and being a touch screen, I was able to tell it to reboot. (Forget if i tried 4th one w/o success). Anyhow, the one that was a WinOS desktop eventually rebooted, and went right into the “Usual” interface, and worked/charged fine. (it was a while ago maybe it wasn’t windows but it was def a GUI not a command prompt). Crazy eh? EA chargers are def “sloppy” is the bottom line. :p
 

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@Genau thanks for the feedback. Interestingly, when I went to the location yesterday I had looked ahead of time on the EA app (not either Porsche app but their own app). That is something I suggest since the most up to date status of any given charging site is most likely to be accurate on the host’s own app, not Porsche or PlugShare (though EA does a decent job updating PlugShare).
Just curious, why bother checking charger status in the EA app? Every time I have called the EA representative, they have been able to restart whichever charger I chose, no matter what the status on the charger screen.
 

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This is my recent experience: My goto station has been off-line ever since I got the new 5G iPhone 12 Pro, using Porsche Connect. Other locations work fine, so I blame the Verizon network. I have been calling EA each time, and they answer promptly and enable the charger. I will now rethink this and get the EA app and see if it makes any difference!
 


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arijaycomet

arijaycomet

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Just curious, why bother checking charger status in the EA app? Every time I have called the EA representative, they have been able to restart whichever charger I chose, no matter what the status on the charger screen.
Perhaps it simply depends on how abundant the charging network is for you -- but where I am located (Cleveland, Ohio) the chargers are 90-150 miles apart in just about any direction that I'd be heading. So if I were going to take a trip to Chicago, or New York, I'd want to make sure the chargers are working. Recently, the entire I-90 corridor from Erie, PA all the way Albany was offline for upgrades. This data was shown on both the EA app/website as well as the PlugShare web site. Had I taken a trip in my Taycan, I'd have been SOL -- entire sites were DOWN for repairs/upgrades.

Also -- the ability for EA to get your charger working/started over the phone presumes that the terminals are online and their data connections are working. If you check PlugShare and someone was there a day ago, and shared that unit -002 was offline, that is good to know/be aware before you arrive. It can also help you pull into a stall that is known to be working. Note: within the EA app it shows you not just the current status (inoperable, in use, etc) but it also shows how many hours/days ago that status update was retrieved.

Also checking the EA app/site and PlugShare provides better data about locations currently being constructed. For example, there is virtually no data on the EA app/site and zero data in our cars, but the new Cranberry location near Pittsburgh is almost completely finished. Photos exist from members of the PlugShare app/site that you can see showing the construction progress. This kind of data might be useful for future trip planning. Hope this explains why one might want to check these sites/apps before taking a trip. Cheers!
 
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arijaycomet

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This is my recent experience: My goto station has been off-line ever since I got the new 5G iPhone 12 Pro, using Porsche Connect. Other locations work fine, so I blame the Verizon network. I have been calling EA each time, and they answer promptly and enable the charger. I will now rethink this and get the EA app and see if it makes any difference!
Just understand that you wont be able to activate the EA charger with your FREE Porsche subscription via the native EA app (sorry if that was not clear in my prior posts). The only way to activate a FREE charging session is with the Connect app (under the Explore/map view) or in that CharingNA app that you can also download. (Or if you have a 2021 Taycan with plug-and-charge). But if you use the native EA app from the App Store, you can see info about the charging stations. And you could "start" a session that way, too -- but at a cost out of pocket.
 

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Just understand that you wont be able to activate the EA charger with your FREE Porsche subscription via the native EA app (sorry if that was not clear in my prior posts). The only way to activate a FREE charging session is with the Connect app (under the Explore/map view) or in that CharingNA app that you can also download. (Or if you have a 2021 Taycan with plug-and-charge). But if you use the native EA app from the App Store, you can see info about the charging stations. And you could "start" a session that way, too -- but at a cost out of pocket.
Thanks, I was suspecting that would be the case. I will try it anyway next time, just to see if it is my Verizon coverage that sucks. If the EA app communicates ok and lets me charge, I guess it is an issue with Porsche connect...
 


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Just understand that you wont be able to activate the EA charger with your FREE Porsche subscription via the native EA app (sorry if that was not clear in my prior posts). The only way to activate a FREE charging session is with the Connect app (under the Explore/map view) or in that CharingNA app that you can also download. (Or if you have a 2021 Taycan with plug-and-charge). But if you use the native EA app from the App Store, you can see info about the charging stations. And you could "start" a session that way, too -- but at a cost out of pocket.
Has anyone actually seen the plug and charge work with a MY2021?
 

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So charged at EA for the last two days, can’t figure out what has changed, used two different 350 chargers and a 150 charger and nothing above 65kw, been doing this a while, anybody else have this experience? Now the connecting and charging are flawless, but speeds, meh. I used to always get at least get 150kw, using ea app, will try the Porsche app next time.
 
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arijaycomet

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So charged at EA for the last two days, can’t figure out what has changed, used two different 350 chargers and a 150 charger and nothing above 65kw, been doing this a while, anybody else have this experience? Now the connecting and charging are flawless, but speeds, meh. I used to always get at least get 150kw, using ea app, will try the Porsche app next time.
What app you use to start the charge should have no connection to what speed you are seeing. What might be the factor are things such as SOC (State of charge), and Battery Temp. See chart below.

I'd suspect that there are a mix of other factors here too, such as the charger itself can be flaky. But assuming you are using the same charging stall, and the battery and SOC are the same, you should see 150kW. But if the battery is cold, or the charge is more full, you will see a lower kW/speed.

Porsche Taycan ElectrifyAmerica :: Using the ConnectApp vs ChargingNA app ... your experiences? Taycan Charging Chart TempSOC
 

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What app you use to start the charge should have no connection to what speed you are seeing. What might be the factor are things such as SOC (State of charge), and Battery Temp. See chart below.

I'd suspect that there are a mix of other factors here too, such as the charger itself can be flaky. But assuming you are using the same charging stall, and the battery and SOC are the same, you should see 150kW. But if the battery is cold, or the charge is more full, you will see a lower kW/speed.

Taycan Charging Chart TempSOC.png
I used the charging america app, could be the cold weather, next time I charge, if it happens I will call EA and have them check their charger just for the heck of it, didn’t know if I was the only one having this issue, I am in Kentucky
 

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Perhaps it simply depends on how abundant the charging network is for you -- but where I am located (Cleveland, Ohio) the chargers are 90-150 miles apart in just about any direction that I'd be heading. So if I were going to take a trip to Chicago, or New York, I'd want to make sure the chargers are working. Recently, the entire I-90 corridor from Erie, PA all the way Albany was offline for upgrades. This data was shown on both the EA app/website as well as the PlugShare web site. Had I taken a trip in my Taycan, I'd have been SOL -- entire sites were DOWN for repairs/upgrades.

Also -- the ability for EA to get your charger working/started over the phone presumes that the terminals are online and their data connections are working. If you check PlugShare and someone was there a day ago, and shared that unit -002 was offline, that is good to know/be aware before you arrive. It can also help you pull into a stall that is known to be working. Note: within the EA app it shows you not just the current status (inoperable, in use, etc) but it also shows how many hours/days ago that status update was retrieved.

Also checking the EA app/site and PlugShare provides better data about locations currently being constructed. For example, there is virtually no data on the EA app/site and zero data in our cars, but the new Cranberry location near Pittsburgh is almost completely finished. Photos exist from members of the PlugShare app/site that you can see showing the construction progress. This kind of data might be useful for future trip planning. Hope this explains why one might want to check these sites/apps before taking a trip. Cheers!
Those are good points, and my opinion about using the apps vs. calling EA each time has evolved. Yesterday I went to the Ormond Beach, Florida EA site I've been using for the last five weeks by calling EA each time, and this time the status of all the chargers was correctly displayed in the Porsche Charging America app. For the first time, I was able to charge there without calling EA. (I like to think that the service tickets generated/updated each time I called helped make that happen.) Then I brought my Taycan to Virginia on the Amtrak Auto Train and charged this morning at an EA site in Alexandria, Virginia from the Porsche Charging America app with no issues. I was also able to navigate to the chargers from PCM, which pre-heated the battery and allowed a reasonably fast charge rate despite freezing weather. (Interesting observation: the charger screen was off the entire time I charged, so don't assume that a charger with a blank screen is non-functional.) Later today I charged at Electrify America national headquarters in Reston, Virginia and also had a flawless charge at >100kW/hour without calling EA (first time without calling at that location as well).

To summarize, don't assume that a charger that shows unavailable or offline, or has a blank screen, is actually non-functional. Clearly this makes it challenging to plan a trip using status available from the apps, but perhaps you could call EA before departing and ask them if a charger that is offline in the apps can be remotely restarted.
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