Story of our life (at least in the US)

[SergeyIndy]

Faking the moon landings would have been technically harder and just as impressive – so the point holds!

We do not believe any US Moon landings in Russia. With all the iPhones making movies now, US still cannot get "back" there that late in the 21 century. We believe in Hollywood film making of the landing.

However, here in Indianapolis EA and EVGo working chargers are plenty and growing and dealer now has 3 chargers, so we have too many at this point, so all welcome to move from LA and to stop by and charge, any time, so you do not have to go through this below. I will have more Taycan owners to wave to.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/reporter-drove-rivian-126-ev-091502104.html

The only complaint is that any of the EA stations, in town or out, I noticed no one is cleaning up trash around them. 2 of our North EA stations are in Majer's parking lots, and while they cut grass and sling it into the cars charging, the trash from fast good eaters is everywhere. Then I visited Wal-Mart EA stations in 3 states around, and it is the same, just trash everywhere and you can tell it has been there for some time, so you do not want to stay any longer than you have to. This is while MB building super-fast charging lounge like charging hub where you want to stay.

https://www.autoweek.com/news/a45861189/mercedes-benz-ev-charging-hub/

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[ciaranob]

20 visits to EA stations at 8 locations across Texas (size of France) over two years with zero issues and never once in a queue.
Not defending EA and no doubt many issues out there but I’ll suspect if you take out the CA examples there are far less - CA for whatever reason seems to have the worst EA infrastructure.

 

[tigerbalm]

We do not believe any US Moon landings in Russia. With all the iPhones making movies now, US still cannot get "back" there that late in the 21 century. We believe in Hollywood film making of the landing.

That's interesting to me – because I thought the fact that the Soviets – at the time – pretty much agreed (and acted as such) that the US "got there first" – was proof enough for me.

No way would the US have been able to fool them at the time and they would have loved showing them up too – but they didn't!

 

[tigerbalm]

The only complaint is that any of the EA stations, in town or out, I noticed no one is cleaning up trash around them. 2 of our North EA stations are in Majer's parking lots, and while they cut grass and sling it into the cars charging, the trash from fast good eaters is everywhere. Then I visited Wal-Mart EA stations in 3 states around, and it is the same, just trash everywhere and you can tell it has been there for some time.

While it is changing here in Europe – it remains a problem that associated services are lacking around IONITY (and others) charging locations. Bins, windscreen cleaners, etc – stuff you see at every petrol station – are rare around chargers (unless they share space with a fuel station). It's as if they forget that EV's are car's too – or they just don't want to maintain the area around them.

 

[whitex]

One thing in the video, the percentages were given as percent of inoperable plugs, but I didn't catch how many locations had zero operational plugs, i.e. there was no way to get a DC charge at that location at all. While out of service stalls are definitely a problem, internet videos typically will use more shocking numbers. I drove across the country last winter, visited 29 consecutive EA chargers over 3,500 miles. Yes, there were some out of order or limited chargers, but I always got a charge in a reasonable time. I've also used DC chargers on shorter trips since, with similar results. Perhaps I just got lucky?

PS> My wife used her first CCS charger (EA) earlier this month. I was a little worried how that was going to go (before her current car she drove Teslas) as I was not with her. Luckily it went down uneventfully, similar to Tesla - she pulled in, plugged in, went into to use the restroom, came out and continued on her way (only needed a few KWh's to make it home). Plug and charge just worked too.

 

[Jonathan S.]

Good point on how many stations had zero operational plugs. In northern New England, with the exception of the few EA stations (one of which had all four chargers broken on Labor Day), they’re all just one or two chargers. So always a chance of getting entirely skunked.

The video also didn’t address charging speed. (Vermont now has stations coming online from a program that started in 2019 and 2020, all of them just two chargers of 50kW each.)

She briefly cites how Tesla lacks experience in charging other models. However, Tesla now has experience with that via Magic Docks. I have not read any recent accounts of any failed handshakes at Magic Docks.

As for taking an airplane, I’ve given up on the Taycan for any day trip even just slightly beyond its range. A few weeks ago, all I needed was about 10kWh, maybe even less. Directly on my route was a station only a few months old that I knew had seen little use, and that I knew would not have a wait for an available plug. Took me over half an hour with Blink to determine that the reason that the charger I was trying to use did not work because it was broken. Fortunately the other charger that the app reported as in use by somebody else (even though nobody else was there) actually would work for me. And it least it got somewhat close to its 50kW rating in the mid 40s even though the charger screen reported half that. A recent PlugShare checkin reported both as broken. Should be quite the drama there once the adjacent mega ski resort opens tomorrow and desperate CT and NYC families try to charge!

 

[FlyingPoint]

The US is a large country, charging experiences can vary a great deal. Most of my driving is in the northeast and the charging experience is not ideal. I have found a solution I can live with. I drive my Taycan only where I can reach a level 2 for overnight charging. in 2-1/2 years of ownership, I have never driven my Taycan more than 150 miles on any one way trip. For any trips longer, my other ICE vehicle is used. IMO, I can't envision only depending on the EV in the near future for my driving needs.

 

[Tooney]

However, here in Indianapolis EA and EVGo working chargers are plenty and growing and dealer now has 3 chargers, so we have too many at this point, so all welcome to move from LA and to stop by and charge, any time, so you do not have to go through this below. I will have more Taycan owners to wave to.

Indianapolis? Where is that? What's it near?

 

[SergeyIndy]

That's interesting to me – because I thought the fact that the Soviets – at the time – pretty much agreed (and acted as such) that the US "got there first" – was proof enough for me.

No way would the US have been able to fool them at the time and they would have loved showing them up too – but they didn't!

This is logical of course. However, my firsthand knowledge is that some kind of deal behind the scenes went on to benefit the win for humanity. I was part of the Soviet space program and worked on the copycat shuttle that could not fly and became a museum. I was lucky to leave the country when a Soviet cosmonaut could not be brought back to Earth for more than a year and he lost it there mentally but finally was brought back.

 

[SergeyIndy]

Indianapolis? Where is that? What's it near?

We say we are the racing capital of the world in the middle of nowhere. So everyone has to come here for Indy 500 and many other conferences and sports events. We try really hard at it and have the best airport in the country for a reason.

The benefit that I get being here is that I have probably the best PPF shop in the country owned by our own Indy Car race car family Rahal. They get to work on the second delivered Nevera in the country, while they worked on my Taycan. That is kind of cool. Nevera on the ground and I am high up in the background.

 

[stonecold926]

20 visits to EA stations at 8 locations across Texas (size of France) over two years with zero issues and never once in a queue.
Not defending EA and no doubt many issues out there but I’ll suspect if you take out the CA examples there are far less - CA for whatever reason seems to have the worst EA infrastructure.

CA has the highest EV level in US. [fact]
25% of cars sold in CA are EVs in 2023. (merely 6% in TX) [fact]
Los Angels has the most EVs in the nation. (290k registered EVs on the road) [fact]
LA alone might have more EVs than the entire TX. [not fact, just me running my mouth]

So the charging station over there probably not taken as much abuse as the ones in LA.

 

[stonecold926]

But what about long trips you might ask? I prefer another American invention for such occasions called an airplane.

and then you gotta deal with southwest, united, delta and spirit

 

[BMonte13]

and then you gotta deal with southwest, united, delta and spirit

. Touche. Lately for west coast trips I've gone with Alaska Airlines.

 

[ciaranob]

CA has the highest EV level in US. [fact]
25% of cars sold in CA are EVs in 2023. (merely 6% in TX) [fact]
Los Angels has the most EVs in the nation. (290k registered EVs on the road) [fact]
LA alone might have more EVs than the entire TX. [not fact, just me running my mouth]

So the charging station over there probably not taken as much abuse as the ones in LA.

Made all these points many times in many threads over 2 years (fact) .

Hence point re worst infrastructure i.e. ‘beat up’!

 

[Jonathan S.]

The US is a large country, charging experiences can vary a great deal. Most of my driving is in the northeast and the charging experience is not ideal. I have found a solution I can live with. I drive my Taycan only where I can reach a level 2 for overnight charging. in 2-1/2 years of ownership, I have never driven my Taycan more than 150 miles on any one way trip. For any trips longer, my other ICE vehicle is used. IMO, I can't envision only depending on the EV in the near future for my driving needs.

Same here -- alas.

I ran a somewhat interesting yet unintentional driving experiment the past three days:

• Audi A6 Allroad for ~362-mile roundtrip (for skiing of course), both b/c the VT DCFC infrastructure seems intended to deter out-of-state CCS1 travel, and b/c I was carpooling with a friend who would have been even more upset than me (as well as, upset with me) at waiting to charge -- and for extra bonus points, the parking lot he chose to carpool from in southern VT had 16 Tesla Superchargers, as compared to the ≥150kW CCS1 count for the entire state of ... based on PlugShare checkins of the few that claim that speed (while ignoring what seems to be a recent mistake of counting all shared 62.5kW ChargePoint chargers as 200kW?!?) and that actually get into the triple digits ... exactly zero.
• BMW i4 M50 for ~180-mile roundtrip, of which I drove half (for a family visit), for which we could have used the Taycan, but my wife was driving the other half, and she prefers using her [smaller] car.
• Taycan 4CT for ~175-mile roundtrip (for more skiing of course).

As much as I had loved driving the A6ar when I bought it in Aug '22, the i4 drives even better, and then the Taycan somehow improves even further on that (okay, perhaps not a great mystery, since that's the point of any Porsche!), even with speed limits (plus some enforcement tolerance of course) of 65mph interstate and 50mph secondary highways.
Even just driving around town, and in parking lots, I think the RAS makes it so maneuverable.

But the additional driving pleasure just isn't worth the long wait for the potential unavailability of a plug at a typical station of just one or two chargers followed by the certainty of a long sub-100kW charging session.
Taycan is so perfect though when staying within its range, or being able to count on L2 charging, whether either overnight or when parked at a ski resort.

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