America's EV Charger Uptimes Were Overestimated in 2023, 'Reliability Report' Finds (cleantechnica.com) 147
A company called ChargerHelp provides certified technicians to service EV charging stations (for a monthly fee). And they've just issued their annual "reliability report," reports CleanTechnica:
Its analysis of more than 19 million data points collected from public and private sources in 2023 — including real-time assessments of 4,800 chargers from ChargerHelp technicians in the field — finds that â"software consistently overestimates station uptime, point-in-time status, and the ability to successfully charge a vehicle...."
[W]hen ChargerHelp technicians personally inspected 4,800 charge points, they found more than 10% were reported to be online but were in fact unable to complete a test charge... These findings by ChargerHelp are backed up by many smaller scale studies and surveys over the past several years that have found that claims of 95% uptime or greater do not match real world experience. A 2022 study of 657 chargers at 181 non-Tesla public charging sites in the San Francisco Bay Area determined that only 73% were capable of delivering a charge for more than two minutes, for example.
[I]mprovements have been slow to materialize. In fact, driver satisfaction with public charging has only worsened over the past year, according to the latest J.D. Power Electric Vehicle Experience Ownership Study, released in February. As the variety, price, and range of EVs available to US drivers have become more attractive, mistrust of public charging now constitutes the most significant headwind for EV adoption, J.D. Power says.
The report also "lists the biggest infrastructure pain points," reports the Verge, "including a failure to report broken stalls, inaccurate station status messages, aging equipment, and some habitually unreliable network providers (who go unnamed in the study, unfortunately)." EV chargers can break in many ways, the study concludes. These include broken retractor systems intended to protect the cable from getting mangled by vehicle tires, broken screens, and inoperable payment systems. There is also general damage to the cabinet and, of course, broken cables and connectors.
Across the chargers recorded, ChargerHelp calculates that actual uptime is only 73.7 percent, compared to the 84.6 percent self-reported by the EV network providers.
[W]hen ChargerHelp technicians personally inspected 4,800 charge points, they found more than 10% were reported to be online but were in fact unable to complete a test charge... These findings by ChargerHelp are backed up by many smaller scale studies and surveys over the past several years that have found that claims of 95% uptime or greater do not match real world experience. A 2022 study of 657 chargers at 181 non-Tesla public charging sites in the San Francisco Bay Area determined that only 73% were capable of delivering a charge for more than two minutes, for example.
[I]mprovements have been slow to materialize. In fact, driver satisfaction with public charging has only worsened over the past year, according to the latest J.D. Power Electric Vehicle Experience Ownership Study, released in February. As the variety, price, and range of EVs available to US drivers have become more attractive, mistrust of public charging now constitutes the most significant headwind for EV adoption, J.D. Power says.
The report also "lists the biggest infrastructure pain points," reports the Verge, "including a failure to report broken stalls, inaccurate station status messages, aging equipment, and some habitually unreliable network providers (who go unnamed in the study, unfortunately)." EV chargers can break in many ways, the study concludes. These include broken retractor systems intended to protect the cable from getting mangled by vehicle tires, broken screens, and inoperable payment systems. There is also general damage to the cabinet and, of course, broken cables and connectors.
Across the chargers recorded, ChargerHelp calculates that actual uptime is only 73.7 percent, compared to the 84.6 percent self-reported by the EV network providers.
youtube channels have documented this for a while (Score:5, Interesting)
Robert Dunn has a coupe of videos documenting the sorry state of non-Tesla chargers. In a pair of trips between St Louis, MO and Nashville, TN, the non-Tesla chargers were derated or broken at most of the charging stations, compared to near, but not quite, 100% availability of Tesla chargers along the same route.
If there are other youtube channels that have done comparible trips and reports, please list them below.
Roberts trip video is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
His video with Alex (from Technology Connections) is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Don't forget chargers which just don't have any charging cable attached because the copper in them can be easily converted to meth.
Maybe US charging stations should do like Europe where there is one receptacle, and you bring your own cable.
Re:youtube channels have documented this for a whi (Score:4, Informative)
Maybe US charging stations should do like Europe where there is one receptacle, and you bring your own cable.
You don't bring your own cable in Europe either for fast (DC) charging, it's only for AC charging (typically 11kW - 3x230Vx16A, but with 32A can be 22kW). Thieves grabbing copper is already a big problem at least in UK and also reportedly in Poland.
Proposed solution has been to put the DC cables in a cabinet that only unlocks after you have swiped your card/tag/mobile app, but that takes time to deploy.
Still, the copper in the DC cable must be worth $3 or something, so it's not exactly a profitable criminal enterprise, and they have to strip it from the insulators and cooling feeds and all...
Re:youtube channels have documented this for a whi (Score:5, Informative)
No one strips it. They burn the insulation off and recover the copper from the toxic rubber slag pile. If you are cooked enough on meth that you are reduced to swiping copper, you are not worrying about how efficient your earnings are.
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So accurate. Addicts are some of the dumbest people I have ever run across. Cunning, but dumb. They'd rather shoplift and pawn stuff and swipe money from their famiiy rather than secure benefits that would probably pay better than the criminal stuff.
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They'd rather shoplift and pawn stuff and swipe money from their famiiy rather than secure benefits that would probably pay better than the criminal stuff.
So you can just go to the government and tell them you're a meth/crack head and they'll give you free money? Please tell me more about this one weird trick to avoid having to get a real job! /s
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Imagine a 41 year old woman who is a crackhead who is doing all the things I discussed above. It would be possible to get benefits. She quite obviously can't work and has gross physical effects from the drug use. They'd give her food stamps, section 8 housing and probably a direct stipend under some disability program. She'd just have to show up occasionally looking like a human, which is the main barrier to this.
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Clearly you've never actually tried applying for any sort of government benefits in a southern state. During the Great Recession I got laid off and tried applying for Florida's pittance of what they call unemployment. I ultimately just gave up due to the ridiculous amount of hoops they make you jump through. Basically, shit goes wrong on the website and then you have to speak with someone in the unemployment office to get it fixed, but joke's on you because you'll never get through to someone.
I'd imagine
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She's already on Medicaid. So yes, her doctor visits are free. In WV. I know the FL system is much harder to navigate, but even in WV I think she could navigate the system, but not without showing up looking decent once in a while.
My daughter who has mental health issues moved from MD to FL, so I am familiar with the issues of navigating the FL system. In MD, she qualified for stuff no questions asked. In FL, no.
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I've yet to hear a good explanation of why only Tesla seems to be able to install decent charging infrastructure in the US. Normally when some new tech comes along, the investors can't wait to throw money at startups trying to flood the country with rental scooters and DVD vending machines. There is clearly demand for better charging.
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Tesla had* huge incentive to build a charging network. They faced a major chicken and egg problem and the only way to overcome it was to make that investment themselves. DCFC is actually very difficult to make money on and requires large financial outlay. There's not much of a business case to be made in it unless you also sell cars and can market both the vehicle and the infrastructure as a package deal.
There's demand for better charging, but there's no profit in providing it.
=Smidge=
(*arguably may no long
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I'm not sure either, but here's my theory.
Tesla's network I figure was a loss leader as there was very little out there at the time they were ramping up, so they had to build them out to sell the cars. So it makes sense that they are well maintained since they were always a core part of Tesla's business model.
Electrify America makes sense that it sucks since it was formed as a punishment for Volvo for cheating on emissions testing, so it's going to be funded at a minimal viable level.
For the rest, I think
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For the record: Dunn's main gripe about the non-Tesla chargers is that most of them could not charge at their expected/advertised rate - most of them were de-rated in some fashion or other. This doesn't mean he was unable to charge, but rather that he'd end up spending a lot more time waiting. (He had other gripes, too, l
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You know, with all the reports of credit card skimmers, I'm not sure I'd want a credit card reader on some EV charger out of the way. A cell phone app seems much more secure in that way.
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A customer may not have cell data access at "some EV charger out of the way". If downloading and using so-and-so's charging app is the one and only way to access the charger, then you're screwed. Even if you have cell data, downloading so-and-so's app (and setting up yet another fucking login) is a giant pain in the ass
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A customer may not have cell data access at "some EV charger out of the way". If downloading and using so-and-so's charging app is the one and only way to access the charger, then you're screwed. Even if you have cell data, downloading so-and-so's app (and setting up yet another fucking login) is a giant pain in the ass when all you want to do is pay and start charging. App-exclusivity also screws over people that don't have smartphones at all (or lost it, or have a dead battery, or are traveling abroad, etc.)
1. If it's in an important enough spot to have chargers at all, it should be in cell network coverage.
2. Dead battery - you have your EV right there, you don't have a cord/wireless charging available? Traveling abroad - temporary plan. You have a point with a lost/stolen/broken phone. Of course, these days I expect the first stop many people will make in such a case is at a store to replace it.
3. Tesla handles this via having the car do the necessary stuff. IE sign up your car, charge. No real need
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You know, with all the reports of credit card skimmers, I'm not sure I'd want a credit card reader on some EV charger out of the way. A cell phone app seems much more secure in that way.
While stopped to charge in Jacksonville, I've actually had to help an elderly couple because they couldn't figure out how to sign up to use FPL's app. A credit card reader on the chargers would've been a lot simpler for them.
Hard sell. (Score:3)
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I'd actually say the opposite-- it is a time when capitalism is kind of failing to realize the opportunity. I picked my hotels on a recent trip based on EV chargers. I also ended up picking a restaurant with an EV charger. Each hotel got >$400 from me before taxes, during low season. Say they operate at a 10% net margin, that is $20 profit minimum per day. At least one other car wanted to charge pretty much all the time, so the charger generated at least $40 in net profit per day, which basically pa
Re:Hard sell. (Score:4, Interesting)
Does it translate into that much money for the business? I imagine I would see a lot more chargers if it did.
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Hotels don’t operate the chargers. A random company agrees to install them and kick a few bucks to the hotel. The problem is when the charger breaks, the hotel has zero involvement or maintenance. All they can do is report it same as you.
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Not entirely true; you do have things like ChargePoint that operate on that model, but there are plenty of Tesla "Destination Chargers" out there, along with other options. The Superchargers and equivalents do all operate on that model though; they are otherwise economically infeasible.
Many times they are installed because an owner or manager have an EV.
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Not sure if you have stayed at a hotel lately, but even the "value" category has gone up a lot. We too are best-value shoppers, but paying $10 premium for a charger factors into that equation.
More businesses don't install chargers for one of two reasons: they either don't want customers to stay longer (McDonalds picking the least comfortable chairs is a classic example), or they have no way of quantifying the benefit for installing them (vs other capital demands). I spoke to the owners and general managers
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The closest chargers to me are at a McDonalds. Weird, because it's not an upscale neighborhood, and McDonald's not a place where you stay for more than 10 minutes. I do see some cars charging there, but only rarely.
Worried, as I charge at work, and we're probably relocating to next door and subleasing our building, so that I won't have that charger access; and in the same week the HOA says to not charge in our garages because they weren't designed for it... Luckily it's a plug-in hybrid so I can still us
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Didn't say how many people it was for.
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"This is why I think capitalism will never be able to make automobiles work. It is very difficult to sell someone transportation that gives them more inconveniences and risk of being stranded. They need to be selling for less cost than a horse for these to become mainstream... Then maybe I don't mind using it on a trip and possibly running into issues somewhere. But pay MORE for an automobile and possibly have those problems? That's going to be a hard sell."
- fluffernutter, 1901
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"This is why I think capitalism will never be able to make automobiles work. It is very difficult to sell someone transportation that gives them more inconveniences and risk of being stranded. They need to be selling for less cost than a horse for these to become mainstream... Then maybe I don't mind using it on a trip and possibly running into issues somewhere. But pay MORE for an automobile and possibly have those problems? That's going to be a hard sell."
- fluffernutter, 1901
If you think this comparison through, you may find it actually makes the opposite argument.
You said "less cost than a horse", but the truth would be "an entire herd of horses".
Cars outpowered horses from the very beginning. Steam engines had already been around for a couple hundred years and also were outperforming horses.
Additionally, cars require less care and maintenance than a herd of horses. Your car doesn't have a personality and will that has to be "broken" out of it through significant labor (and ph
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> You said "less cost than a horse", but the truth would be "an entire herd of horses".
Why a herd?
You DO understand that a real horse is not actually 1HP right? That unit of measure is basically a marketing gimmick that became standardized later. An actual workhorse can pull is "around 7.3 horsepower over longer periods" [equineinstitute.org].
Which, by the way, is more than the 5PH engine of the first mass produced car; the Oldsmobile Curved Dash [wikipedia.org]. With an engine rated 5HP, it cost $650 in 1901 money compared to a good horse w
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In short, he's an idiot that doesn't realise that there is no comparison at all between the wide chasm of improvement to life gas vehicles gave and the arguably very small improvement EVs give us along with many downsides. The first allowed us to cross wider expanses and move further apart from loved ones in search of opportunities. The second is just a second rate solution to fossil fuels that threatens to make it more complicated and inconvenient to travel as far. But now people have all moved apart from one another, so few can afford for their travel to get more difficult now.
Hmm. I thought I was saying the opposite -- that there was a major value-add to automobiles that within a couple decades made horses obsolete for every use case that isn't off-road travel or farming (and no USA farmers outside the Quakers have horses pulling plows in the past 60 years).
Meanwhile, EVs have nowhere near that level of value-add. In 2024 you're buying an EV because you have a lot of disposable income to buy the hot new thing, or you have medium disposable income and sincerely believe you're hel
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Those are all great points, and stated clearly and thoughtfully. I'll happily concede.
Again, I'm not saying, "We can't move from ICE to EV until we first solve all the problems and do it in one big step". Because of course the practical reality would mean we'd never change.
But the reason we moved from a town culture/infrastructure to a car culture/infrastructure was inherent in the technology. The automobile is better than a horse at every transportation/commute use case other than off-road travel. And the
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Mostly society in cities was based upon walking for the most part. Later you could pay for the privilege of taking a coach or other transport, which is where the horses were. In the farms the horses were for working, but they could harness one up to a cart to go into town (while also bringing stuff to sell). It was very rare for a horse to be used for a casual trip to the gym to use a treadmill :-)
I have definitely seen other cars try to mate with my car. They start by trying to sniff its rear bumper at
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Don't forget, in those cold winters a horse can keep you warm.
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Operating costs are much lower so it IS cheaper when you factor energy costs, at least if you drive enough yearly. It depends where you live but here I would say that over 15000 km or so per year EV must be cheaper, and likely pretty much everywhere if you drive more than 30000km/year.
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in that case a cab is likely the most cost-effective solution.
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I don't know - ever lose a rear crank seal while far from home?
B-EV certainly could offer better dependability and LESS potential to get stranded, there certainly could be built to be much simpler than their ICE counter parts. So far the build quality, manufacturer support, cost of parts does not seem be delivering on that reality.
I think this is a combination of Tesla has decided they want to stay in the premium market. The other manufactures are still waiting to see where the industry will really go. Per
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I think this is a combination of Tesla has decided they want to stay in the premium market.
Tesla isn't really premium anymore. The Model 3 starts at $38.9k and goes up to $45.9k. The average cost of the top 10 selling EVs in '24 was $53.7k. The Y runs about $5-$10k more than the 3, but that puts them solidly in the mid to low range in terms of cost for their two best selling models.
The Model 3 is fast becoming the Civic of electric cars, which is no bad place to be for them, but it doesn't seem to be positioned as a luxury car.
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I would argue though the entire EV space isa premium market. Your aforementioned civic starts at $24k.
That is a vehicle that will seat the same number of people comfortably. Its also a car that is "perfectly fine" to drive. It will get you off an onramp into the traffic without it being scary, and generally deal with city traffic etc without adding to the tediousness. The Model 3, even the basic Model-3 is competing with something a lot sportier.
Not say that better performance isn't desirable; but in term
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The battery-only ZEV people need to get their heads out of their asses and stop letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. Their seaming insistent of BEVs leads to either ever more wealth disparity (the outcome of mandates and other heavy handed tactics) or failure to push adoption beyond about where it is.
This is one of the weirdest things to me. The people most heavily pushing government mandates of "x number/percentage of vehicles by 20xx" or "x amount of low/zero emission vehicles by 20xx" are the same people who respond to other economic/social changes by saying that "the poor and minorities are hit hardest". The poor and minorities are the ones who are hit hardest by these mandates. The mandates function as regressive taxes. They have no effect on upper-middle and wealthy classes, who are the vanguard o
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This is why I think capitalism will never be able to make EVs work.
Capitalism has no problem running EV chargers outside of America. And Tesla who is *checks notes* a for profit company has no problem running them either.
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EVs are going to be a hard sell? Did you know that the top-selling car in the world is an EV? Tesla Model Y. It's outselling ICE cars that cost less, including for example the Toyota Camry.
EVs are mechanically simple, making them reliable. If you want to save money and yet have a reliable car, an EV is for you.
An ICE vehicle in working condition can drive long distances much faster since refueling can be done in something like ten minutes while an EV will take more time. This is one of the two major ad
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The model y doesn't have much competition for people who want a crossover sized EV.
Ford Mach E
VW ID4
Kia EV6
Hyundai Ioniq 5
Audi Q4 e-tron
Polestar 3
various Chinese cars that could be imported in future
The Tesla Model Y is the best in its class IMHO but these are competition.
But the important point is that you said EVs would be a hard sell and I pointed out that the best selling car in the world is an EV. If EVs are a hard sell, why do many people want a crossover sized EV?
Staffed Stations? (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps having a traditional "gas station" model with covered drive thru charging stations coupled with bathrooms and convenience store etc... Would be a better model going forward?
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It depends on your habits, but for most EV owners, they spend less time at public fast chargers than you do at gas station over a year. It's mostly for trips over 350-400 km, and a lot of people don't do that more than a couple times per year, if at all.
Most people can charge at home or work (and often 1-2 times/week to 80% is enough).
I have an ICE car and the furthest away I've been from home in the past years is about 350 km, and that was with long stops (could have L2 charged my EV overnight). The longes
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Well I'm not going to get a charger at home. I have finished all the renos I really want to do to my house and I really don't want to start tearing it up again to run more power to the garage. The last time wires got run that way, the electrician chose to run the line outside rather than go through the ceiling and I don't need all kinds more wires snaking around.
Your choice. You could also slowly charge your car in your garage (level 1). You get about 1.2 kW. That's enough for most people to go to work and back. Sucks for weekend trips however, and you have to charge every night.
Maybe it would have been smart to plan for an extra cable (no need to install the outlet and breaker yet) for future proofing when doing those renos.
I haven't seen a lot of workplaces with chargers that I have noticed. Most companies I work for try to save as much money as they can on employee extras, and installing chargers for everyone seems to be quite an extra.
For everyone, I agree. Most people with EV install an EVSE at home and don't need to charge at work.
But having a couple L2 chargers at work (m
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Well I'm not going to get a charger at home. I have finished all the renos I really want to do to my house and I really don't want to start tearing it up again to run more power to the garage.
So you're happy spending a small fortune getting an EV, but not spending a couple of grand to get an electrician to do a decent job?
For the record I don't charge at home either (I can't, I don't have a garage or off street parking). But I don't charge at gas station superchargers. There is a 3rd option. You need to get the petrol station mentality out of your head.
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Why would you spend 45min? You can spend 10min just fine and keep your road trip going. It's literally what I did yesterday while driving internationally in an EV. Stopped 10min to charge.
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I'm fine with spending 10 minutes at a gas station, but spend 45 minutes at a gas station?
If you have a modern 800V car and the charger is in good repair, it is more like 15-20 minutes. And this is not your normal weekly fill up, this is only when road tripping. Most of your day-to-day charging will either at home, or parked at a public L2 charger while you are doing something else. Obviously, if you are driving 300mi round trip every day or hauling heavy loads long distance on a regular basis then an EV is probably not for you (yet).
Part of the problem with the current fast charging infrastr
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I'm fine with spending 10 minutes at a gas station, but spend 45 minutes at a gas station?
Why would you spend 45min at a gas station? I am in the middle of a work trip through Germany, also a long road trip. Clocked 6 hours in the car today. Stopped for 2 pee breaks (charging breaks), the first one 10min, the second one 9min. And my car is capable of charging at *half* the rate as a fancy high end car.
If you're spending 45min at a gas station charger, it's because you want to. Not because you need to.
Re:Staffed Stations? (Score:5, Informative)
I very much doubt it. Most chargers already sort of work on the "staffed station" model in that they're attached to stores or malls, in the hopes that having a charging station will attract the more affluent people who currently can afford EVs. (Spoiler: they don't.)
The main problem is that with the exception of Tesla, the companies that make EV chargers make trash. They routinely break, the "standard" connector is trash that breaks after a few hundred plug cycles, and the EV chargers themselves break after a few months. Once they break, no one wants to pay to fix them, because they simply don't make money.
And it's that last part that kills the idea of a "gas station" model. If you charge too much above the market rate for electricity, EV drivers in the area won't bother, because they can just charge at home. This leaves your market solely for drivers passing through, who need a charge to make it to wherever they're going. That's not a huge market.
The public charging infrastructure that does exist right now mostly exists due to government subsidies. But those subsidies only cover installing the chargers, not maintaining them. So they get installed, break, and then just sit there, broken. A "gas station" model won't fix the fact that it just isn't economically viable to run a "charge station." (Tesla gets away with it because it's a value-add for their cars, plus they make hardware that doesn't immediately break. But even then, they're heavily reliant on government subsidies to cover the costs.)
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I don't think we should have many "gas station" style fast charger depots in the middle of population centers. As you said, most locals are going to charge at home, or at a much cheaper L2 parking spot while they are shopping or working.
In the end, if we get to a mostly EV world, we will have far fewer EV fast charging stations than we currently have gas stations as most EV quick fueling will be done along highways by people on long trips. The people using fast charging stations will probably end up payin
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As you said, most locals are going to charge at home, or at a much cheaper L2 parking spot while they are shopping or working.
I think it's worth pointing out that most people don't even need L2 chargers. A US L1 charger at home can add ~50 miles of range every day while the car is parked overnight. If they can also get an L1 charger at work so their car is plugged in ~20 hours per day, they'll be adding ~100 miles of range per day.
I actually got along fine for a few years with L1 charging and an EV with only 80 miles of range (early Nissan Leaf). The only time it was a problem was when I got home from work (60 mile round trip
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Most chargers already sort of work on the "staffed station" model in that they're attached to stores or malls, in the hopes that having a charging station will attract the more affluent people who currently can afford EVs. (Spoiler: they don't.)
If they have the idea that people are going to go shopping for clothing or jewelry while charging, they're wrong, but my perception is that the expectation is that people will patronize restaurants, coffee shops and convenience stores while charging.
On long road trips, I charge five times per day, three quick stops (~15 minutes) at around 10 AM, 2 PM and 7 PM, and two long stops (~45 minutes) for lunch and supper. On the two long stops, I want a selection of restaurants within walking distance, and on th
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It helps for them to be a bit more of a destination than that. There are retail shops that people tend to spend >30 minuutes in that are ideal targets for EV chargers. But the "gas station" model works at ~250kW where most cars would need less than 15 minutes, if you have enough frequency of them. Fast EV chargers don't work well though when people need to get a 100% charge; you are using up a valuable space but can only handle ~20% charge rate.
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The idea of the 100% charge is a fallacy, a learned behaviour of filling a tank to the brim. You don't need 100%. In fact your road trip will be far faster if you micro dose your charging to suit your pee break.
If you drive pee, quickly swap drivers, keep driving, then charge for 40min to get to 100%, pee, swap drivers, drive pee swap drivers, and drive to your destination it will take far longer than simply plugging your car in every time you pee for 5-7 minutes which will still get you to your destination
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Norway has a lot of those, and in other European countries the chargers are often in areas where there are people around and there is CCTV coverage.
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Perhaps having a traditional "gas station" model with covered drive thru charging stations coupled with bathrooms and convenience store etc... Would be a better model going forward?
The problem is scale... The typical staffed gas station around here can generally take 8-16 cars at a time, taking 2-5 minutes each depending on how fast the pumps run. Taking the worst cases (only 8 cars and 5 minutes), that station can fuel one car every 30 seconds.
If you're extremely optimistic, and say it takes 20 minutes to charge an electric (or you just kick them out after 20 minutes), you'd need 40 chargers, and way more space than the typical street corner station has. Yes some gas stations have th
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Math Correction (Score:2)
Because my brain is being annoying. To release a car every 30 seconds (on average) from an 8-station lot, you can average a loiter time of no more than 4 minutes per vehicle. 8 cars@5 min each = 1 every 37.5 seconds.
Meanwhile, "extremely optimistic" for EV fast chargers is 10 minutes, not 20. It's around 1/3rd of a kWh per mile, at 250kW charging you should be gaining 750mph*. Assuming they're starting at 20% and going to 80% for a 300 mile battery (180 miles of charging): It should take ~14.4 minutes.
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How about the traditional "gas station" model of bonus depreciation for preferential tax treatment?
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Perhaps having a traditional "gas station" model with covered drive thru charging stations coupled with bathrooms and convenience store etc... Would be a better model going forward?
It's inevitable and I'm looking forward to it. I assume the current state is not a rejection of that idea but rather a natural inclination to reduce risk by going "cheap" and re-using existing parking lots. I wonder how profitable they are in their current state? Surely someone will go the gasoline route and shift the monetization over to retail sales.
Bad software (Score:2)
I get that software diagnostics can't detect that there is a physical defect in the plug that goes into the car. But it's not hard to estimate or report through software when multiple people attempt to use the charger and then drive away without charging. Maybe the first one you can count as user error but if it happens repeatedly, this should be immediately reported as a failure.
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73.7 percent seems generous (Score:2)
The plural of anecdote is not data, but I rented a Hyundai Ioniq 5 for a weekend to drive San Francisco -> Reno -> San Francisco drive and the charging experience at Electrify America was unsatisfactory to say the least.
At my first stop in Sacramento, out of 11 charging stations only ONE was working, according to someone else there. Since I tried a few before I got one to work I have no reason to doubt that was not the case.
Coming back in Truckee, out of 4 chargers 2 were unoccupied and I was unable t
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The beauty of anecdotes is that you can cook statistics, but most people don't lie on their anecdotes.
Re:No human to complain to. (Score:5, Interesting)
Every EV charger I have used has had a phone number on it to call, and the two or three times I've had to, I always got to a person right away who has fixed the issue in a couple of minutes, usually by rebooting the machine.
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Even though I don't (yet) have an EV (I'm in no hurry, so going to go for a RAMCharger, Prius Prime, or a Wrangler 4xe as an urban runabout), I've found that Austin has a surprisingly good charger setup, with both the city giving great rates (hell, I'd argue they have one of the best public electric utilities in the US), and good availability, even though I have a 240 volt circuit for a L2 charger at home.
In Austin, a lot of EV chargers can be addressed by dialing 311, and there are plenty of chargers. I w
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"...with both the city giving great rates (hell, I'd argue they have one of the best public electric utilities in the US), and good availability, even though I have a 240 volt circuit for a L2 charger at home."
Rather than merely suggest, or suggest you'd argue, why don't you just post what the rates are? And how do you know Austin's "public electric utilities" are "one of the best"? What qualifies you to make such a claim?
Austin charges 0.22 per kWh at its city operated chargers, roughly speaking. "surpr
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"although in Texas electric cannot be resold"
Do you have more information on this? It seems really odd for texas, land of deregulation for electricity.
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If you look at /r/austin, any topics of EVs and finding chargers tend to be fairly positive. If this were a constant issue, it would pop up on there and nextdoor.
I have no dog in the EV hunt except some pushback on the assumption that pure EVs are for everyone... ironically my preference is a serial hybrid for Texas, since the grid has had its issues.
Re: No human to complain to. (Score:2)
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Clearly you live somewhere fairly heavily populated. Does everywhere get that service?
A phone signal? No I think you may find a few parts of back country America where people don't use phones and aren't able to connect to a call centre.
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Who are the consumers you are referring to, and how would they be buying "a pig in a poke"? Or do you really mean to just say something inflammatory?
Re:Who will be held accountable? (Score:5, Insightful)
Last I hear, they had so far put out about 8 or so of them?
Any updates there?
You have to install them before you can check for reliability you know....
Re:Who will be held accountable? (Score:4, Informative)
Most detail I've seen recently on the government funded (NEVI) chargers: https://insideevs.com/news/729... [insideevs.com]
Looks like, at the moment, 15 charging stations opened for a total of 61 individual chargers currently open and working. Supposedly expected to be in the hundreds of individual chargers open by the end of the year as they start to open more and more. A lot more discussion in that article about how long it takes and so on.
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Hundreds of billions?
Anyhow, there were lots of conditions on the charging stations to prevent companies from doing half assed installs and pocketing the funds.
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Well, I do believer there are a LOT of stipulations that the recipients of the govt funds, have to be minority owned, worked, etc....
Maybe they made so many DEI stipulations that it's hard to even find companies that will qualify for any of it...?
Re: Who will be held accountable? (Score:3)
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No, not DEI. The requirement was for each state to submit a complete plan that included charging station locations every 50 miles along the interstate, all within 1 mile of the interstate.
Normally I hate the idea of crony capitalism, but in the case of EV charging it's advantageous to have the chargers located nearby places to eat, shop, and use a restroom. I don't want chargers in some empty lot 1 mile from the highway, I want them in shopping plazas where there's something to do while my car charges. Existing businesses should've been incentivized to add charging infrastructure.
If you have enough chargers, it won't matter that they're a little more than a mile from the highway. And if y
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You seem to be mixing up cars and chargers - this article is about the chargers. Mileage would be up to the carmakers, and even there they're regulated by the government, as in advertising above or below the government test is illegal. The one company doing BOTH EVs and public chargers has the acknowledged best charger uptimes.
Re:EV alternative charging (Score:5, Insightful)
"There can even be a special Dong port for liberals, equipped with what amounts to an industrial strength cigar cutter."
Ah a right winger obsessed with cocks and human excrement. What a surprise.
Re: EV alternative charging (Score:2)
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Not everyone who makes fun of liberals is a conservative.
Everyone who makes fun of liberals on the basis of cutting their dicks off is, if not a conservative, at least a total CHUD.
Re: EV alternative charging (Score:2)
Late term abortion is a good description of your comment. Way too late, I might add.
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The terms "liberal" and "conservative" are based on their (at least supposed) opinions on changes in society and law: "liberals" are in favor of changing things and thus freely allow changes, and "conservatives" are against changing them thus conserving the current state (or undoing liberal changes to revert to an earlier state). Nothing to do with personal freedom.
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Not everyone who makes fun of liberals is a conservative. Sometimes they are even another liberal, kid.
Also not everyone poking fun at EVs is anti-EV. Hell, one of the first things I did when I discovered Suno was make a country song about someone missing out on hangin' with their fishin' buddies because they forgot to charge it.
Then of course, I had to balance the yin with the yang by making a 80s style rock song about how we can't get BYD cars in the USA.
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Look at his posting history. Suffice to say, DongBringer has HUGE issues.