First Experience with EA Charging on Road Trip

[Nickatgt]

I am in the middle of a 4 day trip Atlanta/Greensboro/Charlotte/Atlanta. I knew my experience was going to be different than my Tesla on a similar trip. Little did I realize how different.

I left my house in the north Atlanta suburbs with a full charge heading to Greensboro, N.C. by way of Asheville. The Porsche App indicated a charge would be needed in Asheville and another one up the road TBD. As expected, the car was incredible on the roads. I also felt pretty good about the way it consumed power, arriving at the first stop with about 24% battery remaining. I pulled into a 350kW spot plugged it in and it tried to connect. I received an error message, it said to replug. After 4 more tries i called EA. 20 minutes later got me charging after I giving vin and manually connecting. Charging took 13 minutes.

On the second stop the Porsche App directed me to a charger that was a Plug Share charger when there was an EA charger about 4 miles away. I don’t understand that. I tried to conn but was unable to make it work even with a credit card and a Plug Share account. When I finally gave up and went to the EA Charger off of Highway 21 in Statesville, NC..

At the second EA Charger it was a replay of my first session. 30 minutes getting the charging working then 14 minutes of charging. This time I called Porsche too to troubleshoot why my car is not being seen as plug and charge. They suggested that I put in a new credit card in the Porsche App. Everything else seemed to check out.

This morning I went to an EA Charging station in Greensboro (Easley Rd). Hoping that plug and charge will finally work. Nope!!

Plugged in, Connected, Authorization begun, Transaction rejected …Unplug and try again…

After 4 tries, called Porsche. They called EA went through the 30 minute run up to finally getting a manual connection. 26 minutes to charge up but this time it looks like they charged my credit card..

I’m going to layoff charging now until Monday when I head home. I guess I’ll just hope I can get this working.

BTW does anyone else feel that the connectors are way too hard to plug in? It seems like they are about a 1/4 turn off and the connector and cord together are so stiff getting them lined up and inserted is extremely difficult.

I’ll update on Monday.

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[Hirschaj]

Turn off plug and charge in the car and start your charging sessions through the MyPorsche app. You’ll probably be much happier and you won’t waste 20-30 minutes on the phone with EA.

 

[kort]

when you had trouble connecting with the charger why didn't you try a different unit?
as for the car directing you to a charger that wasn't an EA charger and you saw that there was an EA charger close by why did you follow the bad advice offered by the NAV?

the moral to the story is that whenever you travel beyond the car's range you need to do a little recon and planning before embarking on the trip. doing so will save a lot of time and frustration trying to locate chargers during the trip.

the PIRM is severely flawed and I only use it for pre conditioning the battery when I am near the EA units that I planned to stop at.

 

[Nickatgt]

when you had trouble connecting with the charger why didn't you try a different unit?
as for the car directing you to a charger that wasn't an EA charger and you saw that there was an EA charger close by why did you follow the bad advice offered by the NAV?

the moral to the story is that whenever you travel beyond the car's range you need to do a little recon and planning before embarking on the trip. doing so will save a lot of time and frustration trying to locate chargers during the trip.

the PIRM is severely flawed and I only use it for pre conditioning the battery when I am near the EA units that I planned to stop at.

I did try another unit with the same result. In the Greensboro location one of the stations was down and all the rest were 150kW units.
…which begs the question, am I looking for primarily 350kW units? How much of a time penalty will I suffer plugging in to a 150kW unit?

Maybe a little defensive but I didn’t notice that it wasn’t a EA unit until I was off of the interstate with a lot of construction around. 75 mph is not the time to be looking at the brand of charging although it was totally my fault. I didn’t exactly know where I’d charge because I was sort of free forming my route in the mountain. I knew it would probably be in Statesville and that there were several on the map including EA chargers.

The trip was (is) meant to be sort of a shake down getting used to the Porsche tools and EA infrastructure. I’m learning as I go.

Also regarding the difficulty in handling the cable. Is that just the “old weak man” in me or are they difficult to twist to line up?

Thanks for all the input.

 

[dflohr]

Nick, unfortunate first experience. I've had nothing but success with EA (Plug and Charge) and Chargepoint (using the Chargepoint app) on my Atlanta based trips. Even then, before any road trip I "practice" a day before at an EA charger near my home just to make sure it's all still connecting right.

 

[RAHRCR]

The variability of experience between users is concerning. Haven’t had to charge outside my home but sounds like it will be an adventure when I do.

 

[Hirschaj]

I did try another unit with the same result. In the Greensboro location one of the stations was down and all the rest were 150kW units.
…which begs the question, am I looking for primarily 350kW units? How much of a time penalty will I suffer plugging in to a 150kW unit?

The 150kW units seem to be much more reliable and will often provide greater than 150 to the vehicle (I’ve had them in the 160s while charging my car). The time difference should be a few minutes so it’s insignificant.

 

[Archimedes]

Serious question. When the car wouldn’t plug and charge, did you try just putting a credit card in and paying for the charge before spending 30 minutes trying to get p&c to work?

 

[Tooney]

the moral to the story is that whenever you travel beyond the car's range you need to do a little recon and planning before embarking on the trip. doing so will save a lot of time and frustration trying to locate chargers during the trip.

+1

Before you leave on a road trip, lay out the route (on google maps, for example), locate the EA sites along that route (can find them with google maps search, or EA locate map, or MyPorsche app). In your car nav, enter the destination, then enter the furthest EA site along your route as a waypoint, then the next furthest one, etc. In this way before you start your trip, the nav unit has your route with destinations and planned charging stops already entered.
An alternative is to enter the EA sites in the nav unit, make the first one your destination, charge up, and then enter the next charging site as destination, etc.
You select the charging stops before you depart, you don't depend on the nav unit to find them during the trip.

 

[featherless]

fwiw, my dealer shared this update with me on Friday:

This is the latest information from Porsche regarding failure to charge situations at Charge America.

Please note this is not a Porsche-isolated issue but affects all automotive OEMs on their network.

Electrify America has continued to experiencing technical issues with their new backend charger management system and are working with PCNA and PAG to resolve. This has affected the charger site details within the app and some customers ability to use Plug and Charge. At the time we do not know when these issue will be resolved, but EA plans a software release on Monday that may improve our customers charging experience at their sites. We encourage all customers experiencing problem to contact the Porsche Call Center for issue tracking purposes. In some cases, a warm handover to Electrify America will be initiated to further assist the customer with beginning a charging session.

They said that EA is expected to be pushing out some backend server updates on Monday (the 19th of December) that may resolve this issue.

 

[kort]

I did try another unit with the same result. In the Greensboro location one of the stations was down and all the rest were 150kW units.
…which begs the question, am I looking for primarily 350kW units? How much of a time penalty will I suffer plugging in to a 150kW unit?

the difference between the two isn't much, if the 150 kw units would connect you wasted far more time trying to get the 350kw to work than you would have lost charging on the 150

 

[Nickatgt]

Thanks for everyone’s thoughts. Frankly part of the trip was making the charging work. I had the time and by damn it was going to work. We’ll…not yet at least.

 

[Nickatgt]

Serious question. When the car wouldn’t plug and charge, did you try just putting a credit card in and paying for the charge before spending 30 minutes trying to get p&c to work?

i considered it and would have done it I didn’t have the time. On the way back I will want to get home so I’ll be less tolerant.

 

[RBGtaycan]

the difference between the two isn't much, if the 150 kw units would connect you wasted far more time trying to get the 350kw to work than you would have lost charging on the 150

My EA experience (over about 2 years) is that 150 work more reliably and, often, faster than the (problematic) 350..hopefully that changes but often I go right to the 150 and then go for a cup of coffee!

 

[Archimedes]

i considered it and would have done it I didn’t have the time. On the way back I will want to get home so I’ll be less tolerant.

I was just wondering if you also had CC issues. I’m hoping p&c continues to work for me, but I’m fine if I have to use the credit card once in a while. I will be pissed if a working EA charger refused to charge my Taycan even with a credit card.

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