I could almost hear the mosquitos slurping my blood as I sat stranded at a horribly slow charging station in the parking lot of the LA County Sheriff’s Department Crescenta Valley office. I’d flown too close to the sun with my $2000 Nissan Leaf — a vehicle that, due largely to poor battery thermal management in hot Southern California — has experienced so much battery degradation that the overall capacity is at roughly 40 percent. The vehicle originally was rated at 72 miles of range, in good condition. After 12 years, mine can really only go about 25 — or so I thought.
I was at work yesterday shooting videos with our beloved suspension engineer, Huibert Mees, when I decided to join my friend in Pasadena to volunteer with the Pasadena Humane Society. I love cats, for one, and, well, I feel even more strongly about my friend. So it was a no-brainer. Plus I had faith in the Nissan Leaf; I was stuck with it as my main car since I’d lent my BMW i3 out to Jason’s awesome wife, Sally; my Wrangler was receiving Paint Protective Film from our soon-to-be-announced partner, XPEL; and Huibert was using my J10 to visit friends located well beyond my Leaf’s 25-mile range. Over the past few days, the Leaf had gotten me (and Matt) to work with plenty of range to spare; it had been a great runabout during the Galpin Car Show; I was feeling good about it.
The problem is: The Nissan Leaf’s degraded battery didn’t care how “good about it” I felt. It cared about the steep grades I’d have to take to get to Pasadena and the stiflingly hot exterior temperatures. I found myself driving 47 MPH eastbound on the 210 praying that the miles of range expected by the Leaf’s Guess-O-Meter would remain higher than the miles-to-destination displayed on my Google Maps app.
But by the time I was 14 miles from Pasadena, the Guess-O-Meter was reading 12. And then when I was done climbing one of the many steep grades about a mile later, the range was down to 9.
Eventually, the dash started blinking and chiming and telling me that the battery had reached a dangerously low state-of-charge. I was to pull over immediately. So I did. I stopped by the nearest charging station, which was in a Vons grocery store parking lot. What did I discover? A line of cars waiting for a single charging station as the rest of the stalls were broken.
Three Broken Electrify America Chargers
This is so typical for Electrify America.
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I’d been hearing horror stories about non-Tesla charging stations for years. But I figured that this is California — the land of the EV. Surely the charging situation here would be better, right? Surely Electrify America can’t be as bad as they say it is, right? I mean, the complaints have been non-stop for so long by now. Hasn’t Electrify America gotten its shit together?
Apparently not.
Look, I’m fine with a broken charging station here and there. It happens. Nobody’s perfect. But when a station has four chargers and three of them don’t work, you’ve got a huge problem.
Here’s a look at the setup: Three fast chargers and one smaller charger that I assume was a Level 2
Only the charger that the VW ID.4 at the end was using was working — the other three were broken.
One of the chargers had two exclamation marks in red circles with the word “Unavailable” below each. The others just had a blank screen. Meanwhile, in the parking spots opposite those of the chargers, a Kia Niro EV and a BMW i4 sat and waited for some juice as I foolishly tried plugging in the CHAdeMO charger from the working charger, before I was reminded that each tower only charges one car (despite the two cables). Whoops.
Anyway, the car (I think it might have been an ID.4) using the only functional charger was only at 70 percent, and with the Kia and BMW waiting, I knew it’d be probably 2.5 hours at best before I was out of there.
I Saw Chargers On Google Maps, But I Couldn’t Tell How Legit They Were
So I desperately searched for another charger; I say “desperately,” because, according to the blinking guess-o-meter, I had only five miles of range left on the Leaf. That left me with these options (the blue Electrify America one was my starting point):
The Shell Recharge one seemed promising, with the brand name and all. But I Google Map’d it, and didn’t see anything there! Plus there were no reviews! Ditto with the Electric Circuit Charging station and the Flo Charging Station to the north. That left me with the PowerFlex Charging Station, which also featured no reviews. A quick Google search didn’t look hopeful until…
Aha! What do we have here behind that bush? It looks like a charging post! So I hit the road, and — due to the mostly downhill path to the charging station – which was in the parking lot of a Sheriff’s office — I arrived with five miles of range.
The Charging Apps Need To Stop!
The PowerFlex charging station ended up working, but the problem with the non-Tesla charging situation is that there are too many damn EV charging brands: Electrify America, Chargie, ChargePoint, PowerfFlex, Shell Recharge — I’m honestly tired of downloading all these damn apps, especially in times of desperation.
My phone was dying, I had very poor service, the charging spot was infested with mosquitos, and there I was outside a slow Level 2 charger in a Sheriff’s parking lot trying to download a damn app. And then once it was on my phone, I had to input my vehicle information, my personal information, my payment information, and on and on. It’s a huge pain in the ass. I don’t have to download an app to pay for gas at any gas station; why do I have to do it to charge my car?
It’s idiocy.
There needs to be a single app for every EV charger, and it needs to be standardized like… yesterday.
I Eventually Got Home, But It Cost Me Time
I needed about 4kWh to get back home, which was 15 miles away. My Leaf does about 3.5 miles per kWh, and I had five miles of range left on the guess-o-meter (which probably translated to about 3 miles of real-world range). The 6 kW Level 2 charger didn’t actually put out 6 kW, because they never do. It was 3.5 kW, which meant I had to wait in that creepy ass lot for over an hour.
There was no one else there, just me, waiting for those electrons to fill up that severely-degraded battery. It was deeply, deeply boring, but I considered myself lucky for having found a charging station at all. I could have been stuck in that Electrify America line for three hours; this was at least a bit better than that.
Still, I wasted two hours of my day desperately trying to find a charging station and then waiting for the only working one in my vicinity to slowly trickle its juice into my car’s battery. It wasn’t pleasant.
Should I have known better buying an EV for $2000? Absolutely. But that’s sorta beside the point; anyone could have found themselves in my position, searching for a charger near La Cañada Flintridge. And they all would have faced the same problem that I had; hell, it could have been so much worse. My house was only 15 miles away. Imagine if you were 100 miles from home. You’d have to trickle charge the car at this PowerFlex station, and then hope you could get the car to a fast charger that actually works.
So I was lucky. I wasted a few hours (whereas I’d have needed just 10 minutes if the EA fast charger had worked), suffered half a dozen mosquito bites, and ended up missing my cat-volunteering appointment (and dinner) with my friend. Not ideal, but hardly catastrophic.
Unfortunately, that EV charging story unfolded predictably. More importantly, David, how did your lady friend deal with being stood up?
I stood up the future Mrs. Wrench on our second date. I was new to the area and confused two movie theaters in similar sounding towns (ok, not that similar but both had “west” in their name.)
Anyway, hopefully she forgave you and understands that it’s your job to drive around in junk and get stranded.
Haha.
Is that in my job description!?
(She was cool with it; she’s super chill).
Can we get an anonymous guest post (byline: the queen of rust, perhaps?) on what being a female in the life of DT looks like? Have things progressed beyond parts cooking with fancy Kristen, dishwasher parts washer, and shower spaghetti? Are coveralls and headlamps proper date night apparel? Are all gifts and feline toys Jeep themed? This is the cutting-edge journalism we need!
Half those things you mentioned are things she can never know about.
See, that’s why we need to hear from her what the other side is like!!!
Then I hope she’s illiterate which wouldn’tadd up bc despite your shenanigans you are quite intelligent 🙂
Hollywood Tracy is now so ‘Fancy Kristen’ you probably have many sets of clothes without ANY oil stains on them*!
*admittedly I think I only have 2-3 pants, 2-3 shirts and 1 sweatshirt left that are my “dirty / permanently stained” clothes that I use for car and yard work
So you’ve gone from crappy rusty vehicles that let you down to the crappiest EV possible that lets you down. You must be a gluten for punishment. I’ve heard of dying for your art, but come on dude, there was cats and you missed them.
I’m seeing a pattern here David, I know it makes good content but if it makes you miss dinner with a good friend and time with cats then you’re doing something wrong…
Get a Used E-Golf for around 100 miles of range or a used E-Niro for 225 miles of range, but still terribly slow ‘fast’ charging to you can still be suffering from some element of car ownership, as suffering seems to be your deal.
The Leaf is just supposed to be a parts donor. He just left himself stuck with it because he’s too nice and let everyone borrow his better vehicles.
You are entirely correct, I had forgotten that. I still recommend a used E-Niro for about $20k to just about anyone. It’s a decent car aside from road tripping.
To be fair this situation is not entirely David’s fault, if we had a half decent charging network none if this would have happened.
Oh sure, but I can’t imagine it’s worth putting any money into maintaining CHAdeMO chargers
> a gluten for punishment
That made me laugh pretty hard
You found that the I3 with the Rex is the better option.
Yeah, infrastructure is crap and truthfully, I expect it will always be crap on certain times of the year (think around the holidays when there are far more people that are traveling long distances.) I don’t think we’ll ever be built out for those peak times.
Last time I used a free public charger, I was stuck there an extra hour trying to remove my charger from the receptacle because the door locks onto the charger to prevent it from being stolen, and it wouldn’t release it (it was a very old chargepoint with a broken level 2 combined with a 120V receptacle where you can use your own level 1).
EV’s are great when you can charge where you live and make it everywhere you want to go with that car within your set range. It’s your commuter car that never goes over 250 miles round trip. Have an ICE car for your long trips or rent one. Or just buy a PHEV.
And I totally agree about the apps. I have way to many on my phone. And some, like Chargepoint, make you keep a balance in the app rather than just charging your card every time. So they are holding my money for the 1-2 times a year that I use them.
We need to concentrate as a country on building out Level 2 infrastructure at apartments and multifamily complexes where people can’t add their own chargers, as well as fleet use.
I’m with you on the apps. I tried to rent some scooters for me and my son recently. 20 minutes spent downloading app, setting up an account, enabling 2-step verification, adding payment method, and funding the account, only to finally scan the scooters and get an error saying that these parked scooters are unavailable. I was so ticked, but luckily customer service refunded my minimum deposit a few days later.
Good point.. imagine trying to charge at the mall during the holiday season this year.. bwhwhaaa..
Makes me feel lucky in a land (TN) of few EVs but plenty of working chargers. We even have a free Rivian charger that runs at ~9kw! Took a road trip recently in my low-range EV and did encounter a 1 in 4 faulty charger rate, but fortunately there was a working one right next to it. Saw no one else charging at any of the stops…
Let’s focus on the important issue: “missing …dinner with my friend. Not ideal, but hardly catastrophic.”
Once one has found a friend one loves more than cats, one should save her patience for something truly unavoidable.
That’s…true.
Who told you that you needed apps to charge your EV?
When I rented Thor the Polestar from LAX to run around town and spend a weekend in Palm Springs earlier this year, I took him to several chargers that week – and loaded zero apps on my phone.
Because I have credit cards and all the EV chargers I encountered have credit card readers.
Oh – and just because something isn’t on Google Maps Street View doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
You can even look at the dates of the photos to see how out of date it is – Some are 2+ years old.
Meanwhile – it just seems dumb to take a vehicle that you know has roughly 25 miles of range to a destination 25 miles away. Because there are road closures, accidents, detours, etc., etc.
Use it for what it was intended – a local grocery getter.
“Oh – and just because something isn’t on Google Maps Street View doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.”
I think he knows that, and was just gathering the information he could to make the most informed decision possible in a dicey situation.
In my small town half the streets were Street Viewed in 2012 and the other in 2018…
Literally turned a corner on street view and a building disappeared because it burned down in the intervening time.
Meanwhile – it just seems dumb to take a vehicle that you know has roughly 25 miles of range to a destination 25 miles away. Because there are road closures, accidents, detours, etc., etc.
This is something I have to hammer into my wife. If you have to think to yourself “Ah, it’ll be fine”, the chances of it NOT being fine are very high. Murphy’s Law and all that.
I wonder how many credit card skimmers are on chargers these days..
I wonder how many credit card skimmers there are on ATMs and gas pumps these days?
I wonder how many hacks/data compromises there are on apps these days?
Which is why I didn’t recommend using a debit card.
Stranded
(Apologies to NBC, Chuck Connors, and Dominic Frontiere)
His battery died,
There at Vonn’s grocery.
And no chargers left in play.
Stranded, scorned by the charger man,
What do you do when you’re stranded, and you’ve got no plan.
Wherever you go, for the rest of your life,
You must do a charger scan.
I just feel like you need to consider installing a camper flex fuel generator in the trunk with a 40AMP level 2 charger attached. we use our with a propane tank for gas, but it has a regular old gas tank as well. it takes forever to charge a Lightning, but maybe an hour of polluting in the walmart parking lot for that Nissan pile. of course you will want to stay by the thing since the setup is likely worth more than the car, but I suppose if you route the exhaust out the trunk floor you could in theory run the thing with the trunk closed.
That might be 4.8kwh, if he turned it on early enough he could drive forever in LA traffic.
Maybe he could put it on the roof or get a hitch setup.
David, I have a solution. It doesn’t require you to download an app or do anything to your Leaf.
Get AAA. As long as you’re within a hundred miles, they’ll tow you home.
If you get stuck and can’t charge, just call the 800 number, they’ll send a guy, and boom! You’re home and charging. I think you could even get towed to the cat event, if you could charge there. Or tow you to a charger.
Easy as cake…
It’s just such a pain in the arse!
Sure, but we’re looking for solutions here!
On the one hand, you’re sitting at a charger for a significant amount of time.
OTOH, you’re enjoying a ride , generally in a fairly new, heavy duty vehicle with lots of interesting features to create content on, to your destination without putting any wear and tear on your vehicle!
Sounds like a win to me! And I bet LA area tow truck drivers have stories that would curl your toes.
There’s a second reason to get AAA: California’s DMV is even worse than average to deal with, and a lot of DMV stuff can also be taken care of at AAA in a fraction of the time if you’re a member. That alone is worth it, honestly. Doubly so if, say, you have a habit of accumulating fleets of cars.
Pretty sure they now have a limit of like 4 tows per year, so that might be very temporary.
I bet that can be solved with a suitable application of money! Maybe there’s a platinum level membership that people with particularly unreliable vehicle can subscribe to.
Platinum buys one an extra hundred miles of towing over the gold flavor–200 miles worth of tow. Worth every penny.
Amusingly, the AAA Club I belong to (they are all slightly different) does it by length of membership. And because I was added to my grandfather’s membership when I went to college, my length of membership shows up as about 30 years longer than I have been alive. And you get something like two tows per year of membership, cumulative. I have ~160 tows in the bank.
But I don’t drive crapcans anymore, so it is a rare thing I need to have a car towed. The first time in MANY years was last summer when the ignition switch in my Spitfire decided to stop switching due to age and corrosion.I lasted 49 years, so I am not complaining too much. And all I had to do to fix it was take it apart, clean it and lube it – result!
You don’t even need AAA for towing and roadside assistance.
Your car insurance should have that as a rider – State Farm practically gives it away.
Be cautious about using those. I read that some companies will mark those as “claims”, but not for calculating their own rates.
However, if you are shopping around, other companies will see them the same as if you’d actually had damage that the company had to pay out, and quote a higher rate.
Yes – it’s considered a “claim” in their system – as that’s apparently the only way they can process it as a service.
But if any claim doesn’t exceed a certain dollar amount, or 2X the deductible (your mileage and their algorithm may vary) there’s no ding.
As an alternative, many high-level credit cards also offer roadside assistance – at no charge.
AAA has lots of other very useful services. I have used their lawyer to get out of a couple of speeding tickets. That alone would pay for it for many years, even if my mother didn’t get it for me for Christmas every year. A family plan, so it’s really cheap per person.
“AAA has lots of other very useful services. I have used their lawyer to get out of a couple of speeding tickets”
I was at a party once many years ago with a friend of mine. At the party was a lawyer for AAA SoCal. My friend struck up a conversation with the lawyer and the conversation turned to claims. My friend mentioned AAA SoCal was the #&%$* WORST when it came to claims and that they were a pack of #&%$* liars. The lawyer took offense and they started arguing; the lawyer full of self assurance and bravado, clearly sensing an easy victory over my “ignorant”, slanderous friend.
What the lawyer didn’t know was my friend was a programmer for a startup of an early version of insurance.com. As such he was privy to ALL the various insurance companies’ internal data so he knew the REAL story, not just the marketing and legal spun version. (FYI: AAA SoCal DID suck and hard!) They keep arguing, I got drinks and watched. The lawyer was sweating, my friend was cool and calm. I got popcorn and enjoyed the show. This went on for a while until the lawyer’s girlfriend finally came and pulled the now so angry and flustered he was sobbing lawyer away. As they left my friend stuck in the final jab:
“Didn’t they teach you how to argue in law school?”
I dunno how AAAs lawyers are in general but that one…not so good.
AAA insurance sucks the worst.
I was hit by a AAA insured driver and the only way to get AAA insurance to respond was to file complaints with the state insurance commissioner. And even then, they just denied the claim even though their driver was clearly at fault.
When I was hit by a guy who had too many accidents so he only could get insurance from “Vinnie’s Insurance and Massage Parlor”, located behind the abandoned strip mall, they paid the claim right a way.
IIRC it really depends on where you are.
SoCal AAA was the one my friend was ripping apart but other AAA regions were better.
I have a better solution. Drive your i3!
Why are you driving this??
EDIT: Nevermind. I saw that he lent it out.
A lot of car insurance plans have tow services as well, and better than AAA. AAA has bizarre waiting periods and limitations.
Dave, move back to Detroit City and grow some balls again. Your articles and LA whining have destroyed your credibility.
I ain’t worried about it.
*click on frown face*
If he moved back to Detroit we’d have to make sure his tetanus shot is reupped. And in any case, there’s still plenty of credibility in complaining about the pathetic state of many charging stations
https://media.tenor.com/zka7O9YFrK4AAAAC/pierce-ill-be-a-living-god.gif
David has enough legit car cred for several lifetimes.
You call it whining I call it investigative journalism. These cars are for sale out there. People will buy them and then get stranded because of lack of ev infrastructure while EVs are being paid for using our money.
Of course the answer is… another app! Actually, I do recommend trying A Better Route Planner. It takes elevation changes into account on the route and it also can be custom-set to match the actual state of your EV battery. It also seems to keep track of which chargers are working, etc. I know, it doesn’t fix the actual problem of non-functional chargers, but it might give you a slightly more relaxed experience.
FWIW, Colorado has been a much better experience for us and our EVs. We’ve occasionally seen a non-functional charger, but we’ve never gotten stranded or not been able to find a working charger nearby. ChargePoint seems to generally have it’s shit together out here, and even the EA chargers I’ve used have all been fine (and they allow you to charge without an app – just run your credit card).
Very good suggestion. This app is crucial for roadtrips if you don’t drive a Tesla.
I can’t vouch for any other new EVs, but I don’t need ABRP for my Polestar 2. The integrated Google maps navigation does a wonderful job of predicting where we’ll need to charge and directing us to an appropriate charging station on the route. And it also takes elevation changes into account. It does tend to underestimate energy usage, so I always know that we’ll arrive with at least 5% more than what it estimates, but that’s OK with me. But for the FIAT 500e, ABRP has been a boon.
The phone too? David does anything you own hold a charge?
It’s not like he dares charge it in the Leaf.
I’m pretty sure most of the time, the Leaf would steal electrons from his phone.
haha!
You need an anker phone charger in your life , David.
Well, his EV is already an anchor. Makes sense.
He needs a car he can charge his phone in without losing 10 miles of range.
may I humbly suggest the Ryobi battery generator that he can haul around in his leaf’s trunk to charge his phone? https://www.homedepot.com/p/RYOBI-18-Volt-1800-Watt-Power-Station-Battery-Inverter-Push-Button-Battery-Generator-8-Port-Charger-Tool-Only-RYI818BT/326468633
He just needs an OTG cable to charge the Leaf off his phone.
hahhahah that is hilarious
That generator plus 8 x 6ah batteries will set you back $1,290 before tax. You can add a solar panel for another $250 and we’re talking 3/4 the price of the car.
but the car can’t power his fridge if the electric goes out 🙂
Just remember that Anker spies on you. Only Anker products you should own are cables and power banks, and I’m not sure I’d even trust those now.
those and headphones are typically what ive bought. Everything spies on you now I feel like.
Their GaN charger wall warts are excellent as well. Especially for travel, when having one little cube in your backpack that covers all the devices is really nice. Just steer clear of anything of theirs with an internet connection.
Here is what alot of people are rightly worried about with electric cars. A $2000 Nissan Sentra can all likely get you across the country. But a $2000 Leaf can’t get you to the next county. The used car market is going to 100% die off because even if they can bring down the prices of new electric cars NO ONE will want to pay to replace batteries in a used one. And that’s if batteries are even available. Try to replace a battery in a 10 year old cell phone, most times it can’t be done
Fortunately most EVs don’t have the design flaws of Leafs.
I’m genuinely curious because I don’t know about Leafs (Leaves?). What’s the fatal design flaw they have?
Air cooled hv battery pack, leads to Severe premature hv pack degradation, (since batteries are like humans, ie they really really prefer pretty similar temp ranges as humans), meaning the already pitiful range shrinks even more to the point of being useless.
Nissan refused to ever address this design flaw over 3(?) Generations of Leaf(s)
The Leaf is, as far as I know, the only BEV ever made that relies entirely on passive air cooling instead of having some sort of active liquid cooling. It doesn’t generate much heat, so it’s fine in cooler or milder climates, but if it regularly gets over around 100-105F the pack degrades pretty fast. Plus it’s small to begin with. They’ve tweaked the design a bit, but the fundamental issue wasn’t fixed even in later generations.
Also, a car with 270 miles of range that’s lost 70% of the battery capacity will still work around town (and have more range than a brand-new first-gen Leaf), but when you start at 75 miles every KWh counts.
Every single other electric car made just actively cools the battery and will go hundreds of thousands of miles before that kind of degradation.
David, you’re at 40% capacity remaining now. What is the expected capacity decline over next 24 months?
“ A line of cars waiting for a single charging station as the rest of the stalls were broken.”
And that seems to be the case everywhere and it doesn’t seem to be getting better. Relevant related video from Aging Wheels:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92w5doU68D8
Plugshare does a pretty good job of showing which chargers are and are not operational (obviously depending on how recently someone has provided feedback, though it does seem relatively frequent).
Yes, I was going to suggest the same. This app is a must for any EV owner.
So, Tesla doesn’t make the greatest cars, doesn’t meet any timelines, has a CEO that is a man child, has questionable self driving software. BUT, the charging infrastructure is so much better that it really doesn’t matter. I drove from the Bay Area to Riverside 4 times in the past year and found 3 Superchargers not working. David found 3 at one location. It’s the ease of use that seals the deal. Now, if only Elson would take his meds…
Since the other OEMs are migrating to the Tesla standard soon we’ll all be able to charge without buying a Tesla.
Of course, with the larger number of people using the Superchargers, they might become in use/out of service more often.
Also true.
In-use for sure. They’ll probably still be a lot more reliable than Electrify America’s though.
For anyone interested, Aging Wheels just did a video comparing a 400 mile road trip in his Polestar 2 vs a base Model 3 Standard range, and similar to what David found, it was broken charger after de-rated and broken charger for nearly every single non-supercharger, while nearly every single Tesla supercharger was fully operational and max charge speed. To make matters worse for OG Leaf owners, so very few chargers even have a Chademo port at this point, even further limiting things.
While I’m far from a Tesla fanboy, and certainly not an owner, but their charging network is top notch, and the NACS adoption in the US alongside expanding supercharger network will be a game changer.
Tesla needs to give up making crappy cars and just be the Supercharger Company. There is probably more money in it anyway. Cars are notoriously low margin items.
Not their cars. Comfortable margins, especially when you buy vaporware for several $Ks and the company tries very hard to deny warranty claims.
At 2 hours, you could’ve ridden a bike there and back.
I warned you last week the Nissan would be lost.
So if the only functional charger is marked as a handicap spot and you don’t have a tag/plate, can you use it?
As not a lawyer, I would argue him trying to make a road trip in a 2,000 dollar Leaf with a failing battery pack qualifies him as handicapped.
In California, yes.
This story lays bare the assumptions behind the “well, road-tripping an EV isn’t so bad, because recharging only takes an easy 20 minutes and you can get dinner while charging” statements I get as rebuttals on my takes here so often.
Let us count those assumptions:
-There must be a charger located near your route (easy in CA, not as easy elsewhere)
-The charger must be functional and compatible with your car.
-The functional, compatible chargers must not all be in use.
-You must have the proper app ahead of time, or sufficient service to download it
-Your car must be capable of accepting a full charge in 20 minutes.
-In addition, many of these chargers in empty, dark parking lots are not confidence inspiring for people travelling alone, or families with kids. A parking lot with no buildings attached is also awful in bad or cold weather and doesn’t allow you to eat the proverbial dinner either.
Meanwhile there is a functional gas station with a lit parking lot (that usually sells food) ready to accept a credit card or cash for payment at 99% of freeway exits in the lower 48 that provides 300-400 miles of reliable range in 5 minutes.
Is it any wonder people aren’t tripping over themselves to trade in their ICE cars?
Hence the best of both worlds – a PHEV, like my Gen 2 Volt, being the ideal vehicle right now.
I basically never use fuel on a regular basis, but a full 8.9 gallon tank of fuel will take me 400-450 miles and I can fill it back up in 5 minutes, and then save my range for when I get off the freeway.
This is the way. Prius Prime might be my next car.
Pretty much my experience with Tesla, and I’m not in CA.
Why are gas stations not adding chargers?
If we are talking about non interstate truck stop gas stations, I would say the issue is space. Most gas stations around me have 5 parking spots, maybe 10, for people to stop and grab snacks and stuff from the shop. Converting those to charging spaces just doesn’t make sense for them when they want people in and out so more people can come and go easily and spend money on high margin items.
What we need are charging stations that accept CASH. You know, you insert $X in bills and coins, and it delivers you $Y amount of power, plus any change if you don’t use all of it.
It’s not hard. But companies are greedy for data and would rather track everything you do, and are all more than willing to sell it to the government that pays for it with your tax dollars which will then claim they obtained it without violating the 4th amendment.
The fact that most of the HOME charging systems you can buy require an internet connection is insane. Why, in my own home, do I need to tell someone everything they want to know about my car. I don’t have to do that crap with my 12V battery charger. Why does a higher voltage battery suddenly need internet to charge? BS.
I’m convinced the answer to this is that eventually EVs will be used (with or without the consent of their owners) as stabilization for the electric grid.
Go to bed with a full charge, potentially wake up with half.
And the owners won’t get compensated for wear and tear on their battery, either.
But this way EVERYONE gets half a charge! Thats more betters right? When everyone can’t get to qork equally?
Or….tinfoil hat time……your charger can be remotely disabled if say the government wanted to limit travel by folks……not that a government by and for the people would ever do such a thing…….
And before you say you would just charge with your gasoline generator…..It takes a dam big generator to provide even L2 charging and a whole lot of fuel…..
I mean, you can just buy a basic non-“smart” EVSE, or not hook the smart one up to the internet. It needs internet for features like power usage tracking and remote monitoring, but it’ll still just feed electrons to whatever’s plugged into it even without being connected.
If there were actual cash in the machines, they’d get people out to them more often, unlike getting techs out to fix the chargers.
I’m fortunate in that I 99% charge at home and have Chargepoint L2 chargers at work for topping off when the weather is cold (I’m in the northeast US.)
On the one long trip I took, I saw how poorly the EA charging system is and it’s not going to improve the EV acceptance rate until they become seamless and ubiquitous (sort of like Tesla Superchargers.)
I doubt that will ever happen, at least in widespread practice, but they should all have card readers and allow you to charge without an app.
Actually, it’s hard. You basically need to add the guts of an ATM, and one that give change in coins, no less. ATMs aren’t exactly cheap to run, especially ones that can give out coins, and they need to be serviced very often to replenish the money. However, I can’t fathom why they can’t take credit cards without needing a flipping app on your phone.
It would be possible to have one ATM-like device for an entire parking lot full of charging stations. Park your car at the charger, walk to the pay device, make your payment, and start charging.
Compared to the cost of running an entire parking lot full of charging stations, an ATM would be pocket change. In this case, unlike an ATM, money would be constantly fed into it instead of dispensed out. The servicing it would most commonly need would be to collect from it, rather than replenish it.
Well, that’s not how ATMs work. The money going in is not available to go back out. And these guys can’t keep a battery charger running, what are the chances of getting a “hub” ATM to work talking to a group of chargers, themselves being flaky? Seems to me this adds a lot of complexity. You can be pretty sure that most people who can afford an expensive EV have at least one debit or credit card on them. All these chargers need is to take credit cards, like a gas pump. Easy, already working tech, and no need for extra complexity or visits to change cash.
But such a device wouldn’t be an ATM. It would be more like a vending machine that requires you to put in money before it turns on the juice. And if dispensing change is an issue, it is also possible to print out receipts where cash can be redeemed elsewhere with them or where the credit can be issued and subsequently redeemed in a future transaction.
In Barcelona recently some restaurants had mini automated cash registers. Feed money in, change spat out. Size of maybe 2 computer towers at most.
One payment machine with cash card and app allowed, activates selected charger. Allows all payment types, fewer duplicated parts, more flexible charging capabilities. Add a tall stick and lights and cameras and make it a greenlight location.
I have never seen a gas pump that takes cash directly. I think that is asking a tad too much. But every single charger should have a damned credit card reader, just like almost every gas pump does. Given that they HAVE to have an internet connection to be used with an “app”, it is just stupid that most of them don’t. It should be a Federal requirement.
And for the guy who said they did have cc readers around LA, NONE of them near my place in Maine do, nor do the new ones at my companies HQ in MA. App, or sod off.
Vending machines are very good at taking cash directly. Perhaps if change needs to be issued, a receipt could be printed with a code on it for the user to redeem at a later date?
Haven’t lived there in 17 years, but in the early Oughts I do remember some Sheetz pumps taking cash. They also had touch screens to order MTOs inside!
Side note, with all the self-serve checkouts now I see a lot of POS systems that now accept cash, and dispense change. Of course those still all have staff onsite to maintain them. I do like the Toecutter idea of a coinstar style system where you can only put in bills, and any change is a code on a receipt, could even be texted.
I’m sure accepting and storing hard currency will not make those chargers targets for thieves at all. And carrying cash in sketchy parking lots is also super safe.
There’s already CCTV everywhere. Using your CC at a charging station doesn’t make anything worse wrt your privacy in that particular instance.
Or we just use the same sort of payment as we do on self-serve gas pumps. I know there are people who think the vehicle running payment is the solution, but I can try a different card if my usual one doesn’t read. I can’t really do that if there is some sort of problem with, say, Hyundai’s server not sending the right info to a Tesla charger or something and there isn’t another payment option.
Please just let me use a credit card to pay for charging. I don’t want even one app.
This is the way to handle it. I don’t want more apps on my phone, and more companies with my full address, car type, and CC numbers. These apps will get hacked and personal info will leak. Not everything needs an app, just simple CC readers.
I’ve had an e-Golf with about 125 mile range for about 4 months now and have yet to take it to a public charger because for my needs home charging about once a week works, and I also have a ICE family hauler for longer trips. There are EVgo chargers near me that I checked out when we first got it, and those have a proper CC reader for easy convenience, but you get a cheaper rate if you sign up for the app. I’ve been meaning to get out and push its limits and do a fast charge somewhere, but I don’t want to do this with kids in the car the first few times.
I think that part of the problem is that people vastly underestimate the risk of a data breach and overestimate the risk of a card skimmer. Possibly because they don’t recognize the massive scope of data breaches they hear about. Or simply because of how crime reporting happens. A local card skimmer will end up with regional or even national news reporting on how to protect yourself, while a data breach is often reported as if the company is the victim (often accompanied immediately by the offer of free credit monitoring, as if we don’t already usually have that).
While a credit card skimmer will give someone my card number and possibly allow them to make purchases I would not be liable or at risk assuming I wasn’t using a debit card(which I don’t) due to the chargeback and fraud process. Data breaches are a much harder thing to prevent and monitor and can leave people in terrible situations. In short if someone skims a CC it’ll be an annoyance that can be rectified with a little bit of time, but if someone steals a bunch of personal data including DOB, address, CC and/or SSN it will be much harder to recover from.
Correct. Sorry if I was unclear. I am with you on this, but I think that people don’t think through the actual ramifications.
I was with you too, just elaborating for the conversation.
It’s my understanding that the “tap-to-pay” systems use a one-time code, so skimmers are much less likely.
Not only that, but you can have the wireless card readers which make skimming much harder. A lot to cards have this now.
Butbutbut it’s DISRUPTIVE! Apparently nothing can be disruptive without an app.
Anyway, I’m glad to see the J10 is living its LA life. 🙂
Last time you posted about this car you were running it with one low tire, which surely isn’t helping – have you fixed that?
Yep. That probably would have fixed all those broken chargers.
Problem solved!
I like how half the commentariat is just out here looking out for David Tracy. Like a bunch of internet dads. It’s a beautiful thing.