I am watching the “sh*t show” that EA is live and in person

[TycanNewHampshire]

@fullmetalbaal , I understand your point about profit; however, companies are in business to make profit...I don't see them investing if they can use other peoples money, that's what leverage is all about. Not to mention the additional social dilemma that we have (at least in the U.S.) where officials magically end up on the boards of these companies after a bill was passed when they were in office that funds those exact same companies. One final cherry on top....less profits, means less money for lobbyists that will cost a fraction of what they would spend on infrastructure/R&D investment. Thus, back to square-one of path of least resistance/lowest investment for greatest return and you will end up with a public/private partnership.

@feye I tend to agree with this/your logic and the network is built for a niche volume of cars, despite being the 'largest network' (not sure if this is still true in totality), it is nowhere near the size needed to meet the demand that the government is going to put on the system when the mandates for producing EV vehicles start to go into effect.

So, you see the dilemma....the government creates artificial demand by forcing faster adoption of EV vehicles and not allowing the market to scale at the responsible rate of reinvestment and then the only logical solution, can be argued that government should be partially responsible for subsidizing the growth of the service/power network to meet the demand it created. Voters will expect there to be a convienient infrastructure in place for forcing them to purchase a new car that is electric by a set date and it will be popular to those that vote for it; as I am sure they will say that "it is completely paid for...it will cost nothing".....So Mote it Be

N.B. Tesla is no stranger to this game....just look at all the public funding it has received and what they are doing:
https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-motors-secret-weapon-thoughts-lobbying-efforts/
https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/tesla-hires-in-house-lobbyist.7232/
....I could find a dozen more.....
And they benefit from it:
https://cleantechnica.com/2020/08/03/tesla-subsidies-how-much/
https://www.rt.com/usa/264065-musk-tesla-government-subsidies/
....this goes across all the brands/business units - here is an example of a single-project, yet alone all of the going concerns business:
https://pjmedia.com/columns/drew-jo...payer-funded-explosion-was-a-success-n1227501
...but don't worry, it is rampant and everyone is getting in on the action. Corporations are becoming the 'government' and almost every politician in the U.S. will tout accolades of public-private partnerships. No doubt when the 'infrastructure bill passes', if anyone cares to read it, we will have plenty to talk about.
Final example to not bash Tesla, in order to showcase that this is the 'new normal' and it is just a more sophisticated way of cronyism/corruption that can't be called out on the 24-hour news cycle where media consumers can only digest hyperbolic soundbites:
http://wilmingtonjournal.com/jeff-b...m-nasa-before-he-takes-off-on-his-own-rocket/

I am not arguing for or against, right or wrong...just highlighting what reality is.

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[whitex]

_IF_ someone were to care about all this crap - you really really should just go sit and “watch” an semi-busy EA station one day and watch people coming and going and their attempts to use these piece-o-sh*t design chargers - and then report back to the “boss” who then needs to come down like a ton of bricks on somone at EA and say in no uncertain terms…

F I X I T ! THIS IS UTTER BS AND UNACCEPTABLE FOR OUR CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE.

but I won’t hold my breath for this to happen.

Sounds like a YouTube video idea. Park at one of the semi-busy EA and tape it for a day, then edit into a 15m video showing the issues, stats on how many people had issues vs. how many just plugged and charged, etc. Sometimes media attention is what it takes to have the bosses pay attention, and videos get more attention than any written pieces.

 

[feye]

@feye I tend to agree with this/your logic and the network is built for a niche volume of cars, despite being the 'largest network' (not sure if this is still true in totality), it is nowhere near the size needed to meet the demand that the government is going to put on the system when the mandates for producing EV vehicles start to go into effect.

Exactly, just do the math with 60%, 80%, 100% EV adoption, particularly in urban, semi urban areas.

During the day, everybody can charge, private EVs, all the uber drivers, all the taxis, local distribution vans, but also large dump trucks, city waste trucks, public charger.

But at night, starting 9 pm, the electric city buses come in and fill up this place for overnight charging. No more public charging.

 

[chrisk]

I participated in the sh*t show myself today at the Belmont, CA station.
Station #2 is constantly out of service in last 5 months and my repeated calls to EA they haven't fix it yet and they have no ETA.
No problem, there are two other working stations. Station 1 is on the "wrong place" and the cable is hard to reach the DC port so parked at #3. I opened the Charging NA app, but it doesn't show any of the two. I called EA to initiate a free session, I had to read the VIN number and then wait 10 minutes for them to authorize the transaction because "things are slow today" as their representative said.
Just a second after I started charging, a Nissan Leaf arrived and they wanted to use the same station because it was the only one with Chademo port. I told them that I cannot move to station #1 because then I would need another 10 minutes on the phone with EA. The Leaf owner was upset and now I am worried that at best they would stop my session if I go to the store next door as I originally planned, or worst he might damage my car. So I stayed in the car for 15 mins guarding my car and my charging session. The Leaf plugged in the slow AC charger.

So it took me 10 minutes longer to charge and it took the leaf owner 15 minutes longer .Two unhappy users because the Charging NA app is very unreliable and because EA' systems "were slow today".

 

[plamichigan]

after pulling up to the Vacaville, CA - 7 stall location and failing to start my charging session with 3 separate apps (each of which take 2 min or more to “fail” to start a session - industry standard network timeouts - meaning one will spend at least 6 min in futile attempt to activate a session while waiting the apps to fail - honestly more like 10 min by the time you fuss around to switch apps an relogin and swear outloud a bit) and a local credit card reader that couldn’t work - I called Ea customer support - and after 7-10 min they got a station to work and charge my taycan - total time spent = 18 min to charging session activation

while I’m charging OMG the following 3 cars show up:

Kia EV
Chevy Bolt
VW ID.4

I am now watching all 3 of these vehicles and their owners fail to successfully start charging sessions - including the Kia owners who seem quite confused by the whole process

at the moment - there are 4 cars parked (myself + 3 others) - the other 3 are hopelessly confused and trying many many ways to start a charging session none of which are working…

it’s just such a “sh*t show”

someone needs to fix this and fix it soon…it’s just so so so so bad.

Dear DAVE-04EV:

Yes, you and a lot of others have been watching it. EA in Michigan is particularly bad; the Novi one has so many outages that I ended up recognizing their customer service people by first name, and eventually learned different workarounds that I shared with others.

Your example of 3 cars, none of which could originally charged, was matched by a group including me at the Novi MI EA chargers a few months ago.

Recent EA fails: "idling" incidents in Gaylord, Novi, and Ypsilanti, plus complete failures to charge.

PLA

 

[REIL]

Dear DAVE-04EV:

Yes, you and a lot of others have been watching it. EA in Michigan is particularly bad; the Novi one has so many outages that I ended up recognizing their customer service people by first name, and eventually learned different workarounds that I shared with others.

Your example of 3 cars, none of which could originally charged, was matched by a group including me at the Novi MI EA chargers a few months ago.

Recent EA fails: "idling" incidents in Gaylord, Novi, and Ypsilanti, plus complete failures to charge.

PLA

The Taycan tech at my dealer told me yesterday that all EA chargers in the entire US (do not know about Canada, sorry) are currently not recognizing Porsches.
It is a problem on the EA side that they are aware off.
Plug in charge and or even the free 30 minute with the NA app does not work.
He did tell me that when you go to the charger, plug it in and call EA and they will give you unlimited charging, free until they fix this issue.
Have not tried it yet.

 

[Mr Hockey]

I’ve had my taycan for three months and it is a shit show with EA. Free for three years is useless if the system fails 20-30% or the time. Maybe once has it recognized my car. Probably 20% or more of the time I’ve needed to call EA to get the station working. Several times, the station did not appear on the Charging app and had to call EA.

The first week we had the car, we needed to drive to our other house over 400 miles away and we’re stranded for an entire weekend in a small town in GA because the high speed charging port had a failure message. Since all their connectors were CCS combo we were unable to charge using any of their stations. Found a hotel with a super slow charger and had to stay over nite. Got a hundred miles maybe of charge and drive to Gainesville FL only to find the same issue. Found a slow charger at Whole Foods and sat in their food area and worked for five hours on a Sunday while charging perhaps another fifty miles to just barely make it home. Get to the Porsche dealer only to be told the error messages said the EA system was the issue and the car charges fine. In this way, both Porsche and EA have a crap design flaw that won’t allow you to charge off the J1772 port.

Porsche also sucks in they don’t give a shit and dumped all roadside responsibility to a third party. They refused to tow my car 200 miles on a Saturday eve to get me to home / dealer a few miles away but wanted $500 miles o do so. Yet they were willing to pay for hotel; tow to the nearest dealer 115?miles away in the wrong direction. In the end, Porsche paid more to fight with me by paying for hotel, food etc than had they just paid the excess tow fees. I wrote to the Porsche VP Customer Experience or whatever his title was - total waste even though he replied. I’m so tired of complaining to EA support - that must be a candidate for Dirty Jobs as being an animal proctologist migh actuall be less awful than being EA phone support. I’m tired of them offering free charge credit when I’m only a few months into three years of free charge.

the best thing Porsche could do is provide an option one of which is a credit to install your own home charging station. Free charging is worthless when considering it’s aggravation factor at EA and if it doesn’t work 20-30% of the time. But then again, did I say Porsche also doesn’t give a shit ?

 

[285kph]

The Taycan tech at my dealer told me yesterday that all EA chargers in the entire US (do not know about Canada, sorry) are currently not recognizing Porsches.
It is a problem on the EA side that they are aware off.
Plug in charge and or even the free 30 minute with the NA app does not work.
He did tell me that when you go to the charger, plug it in and call EA and they will give you unlimited charging, free until they fix this issue.
Have not tried it yet.

Thanks, very useful, if not totally reassuring.

 

[Klepper]

The Taycan tech at my dealer told me yesterday that all EA chargers in the entire US (do not know about Canada, sorry) are currently not recognizing Porsches.
It is a problem on the EA side that they are aware off.
Plug in charge and or even the free 30 minute with the NA app does not work.
He did tell me that when you go to the charger, plug it in and call EA and they will give you unlimited charging, free until they fix this issue.
Have not tried it yet.

I used plug and charge at an EA station on Friday (Oct 1st), and it worked without any issues.

 

[amazing]

Unfortunately, we are all hostage to Electrify America. And, it will not get any better anytime soon.

Dave, I feel your pain. I drove from Denver to Kansas City last weekend and all the Electrify America chargers on the 600 mile drive had limited charging speeds. EA will not admit it, but all of the charging locations between Denver and Kansas City were capped to 34kW or 35kW except for the combo CCS/Chademo cabinet. So instead of enjoying charging speeds worthy of a Taycan, I maxed out at 110kW or 100kW. The slower speeds added 90 minutes to my drive both ways.

While Electrify America will not admit to anything, I feel that EA is limiting charging speeds to those locations since they are low use and they want to reduce expenses.

With the number of CCS charging EV's doubling in the next year to 18 months, I don't hold high hopes that Electrify America will be able to maintain its network to keep up with the demand.

After writing this I am not wondering why I ordered a Rivian!!!!

Interesting this theory that they are limiting speeds. I was on a trip in Panhandle of Florida, Alabama and Georgia this week that doesn't have a lot of EV infrastructure. I only saw one other vehicle charging the whole time, but similar to your experience, I was maxed out at around ~110kW at every 350 kW EA charger.

 

[mikelevitt]

Dear DAVE-04EV:

Yes, you and a lot of others have been watching it. EA in Michigan is particularly bad; the Novi one has so many outages that I ended up recognizing their customer service people by first name, and eventually learned different workarounds that I shared with others.

Your example of 3 cars, none of which could originally charged, was matched by a group including me at the Novi MI EA chargers a few months ago.

Recent EA fails: "idling" incidents in Gaylord, Novi, and Ypsilanti, plus complete failures to charge.

PLA

I charged at Novi yesterday. 2 of the 4 chargers were out of service, but another charger called EA and got them back online. I've never been able to get a free charging session going, didn't know you could call EA.

 

[Mr Hockey]

Maybe this explains why I haven’t been able to charge at several chargers I. Auburn, AL. I’ve had multiple calls to EA over a couple of weeks that their stations were not working, don’t show up on the ChargingNA app and the 350kw ones that do work have stopped pushing at the higher rates. After 20 minutes each time of all their waffling and attempts to make their system work, I just gave up. Now installed a clipper creek unit at one home and installing a circuit this weekend at the other one. There’s nothing free (or useful) about their service. I’ve also never had the system recognize my car. These folks should be assigned to the gulag….

 

[riburn3]

I charged at Novi yesterday. 2 of the 4 chargers were out of service, but another charger called EA and got them back online. I've never been able to get a free charging session going, didn't know you could call EA.

Yup for all the faults of EA, I've found their customer service is quick to answer and responsive. It is sort of ridiculous how many times rebooting their chargers is all it takes to get them to work.

 

[whitex]

the best thing Porsche could do is provide an option one of which is a credit to install your own home charging station. Free charging is worthless when considering it’s aggravation factor at EA and if it doesn’t work 20-30% of the time.

I think you're onto something, Porsche should offer a free Porsche Wall Charger (the new 80A one) as an option instead of the free EA charging for 3 years. That would allow the market to sort out the EA situation. With 3 year free charging, EA gets all of their money up front, meaning no real financial motivation to have the chargers actually work. Heck, I think the government grants to expand the EV charging network should be based on charger uptime and delivered energy (e.g. subsidize each KWh sold). Give businesses a way to make money, they'll build it.

 

[mikelevitt]

I think you're onto something, Porsche should offer a free Porsche Wall Charger (the new 80A one) as an option instead of the free EA charging for 3 years.

Offering a free wall charger does nothing to help the people who want to actually drive past a short radius of their house. Wall chargers are cheap, and where I live, the utility basically pays for them with a $500 rebate. Plus, you need a 100A hard-wired circuit to run an 80A charger, which is going to be more expensive than the charger. And I don't see the point of a faster charger at home, unless you are an uber driver, and even then, an 80A circuit is going to be slower than EA.

I'm actually pretty happy with EA so far, and I would not hesitate to take the taycan on a road trip again.

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