What was bad about it?
Pull into charge, plug in the car, start charging.
Here's the competition.
Pull into charge, plug in the car, Maybe swipe a credit if you are lucky and start charging. Likely, you need to install a 3rd party app first then you need to feed that app your CC information and then you need to tell that app a station number to activate. You better hope there's good internet because if there's not you might not be able to charge.
Further, for stations that do take a credit card or tap and pay. It's like 50/50 on whether or not it will actually go through. Usually it takes a crazy long time to actually validate the card number before charging (Like, I've waited 10 minutes before for a charge to start!).
Using a Supercharger is even easier and more seamless than refueling with gas. Other EV chargers are generally much worse than gas. I hope they get there eventually, but right now it is a night and day difference in my experience.
What I really care about is how much time I'm interacting with the charge equipment. It sucks to be standing outside in the freezing cold waiting for your card to maybe get accepted only to find out that for some dumb reason the machine decides to decline it (forcing you to use an app which you likely don't have).
There's no reason all EV charging can't be a better experience than gas charging. There's already a data line established when you plug in (Both CCS and Chademo have data lines) so it should be beyond trivial for there to be a standard payment scheme (It should have existed from the start).
If you plan things out well, you generally don't end up waiting too long for fast charging.
That depends completely on the charger. "Normal" DC charging stations are 50kW around here.
HVDC chargers go up to 350kW, but not many cars can utilise all of that, most cap out at 75-100kW.
Particularly regarding the app. Do I complain that I need to install Sonos and Prime Music and Apple Play once to do what I want?
Also, you seem to have only picked on part of the inconvenience given that this exists:
> Like, I've waited 10 minutes before for a charge to start!
Putting a hard dependence on someone having a smart phone, and reliable internet in order to get gas or charge their car is a ludicrous step backwards in user experience compared to either the (described) Tesla experience or filling your car with gas.
Then it's only a matter of time before gas station brands start requiring the same (or pricing a bunch more if you don't have it).
Fair point on the need to be online to use the service. However, not unusual these days.
Your last point? I have similar feelings towards Tesla putting a hard dependence on someone having a Tesla in order to charge up.
But anyhoo.
It’s not just one time, it’s every time you do a larger road trip. That’s very much a case of death by a thousand cuts.
That ideal experience of just plugging in and immediately starting to charge is restricted to a particular car brand.
From that perspective, what a ridiculous situation which could be solved with cooperation but ... anyways, USB-C, Lion, etc etc ...
In conclusion, not just the independent charging networks are at fault here.
No, because there is no easily available alternative to this that gets rid of those pain points in you example. While for EVs, there is. Hence the whole disappointment.
It is much more difficult to accept inconveniences, when you have an option available that shows you that it is possible to perform the exact same functions, but without dealing with those inconveniences.
Seems like the same problem to me, but from two different ends of the spectrum.
Look up nearest charge station on chargepoint. Pull into charge, ICE car is parked there. Wait indefinitely or look for another charge.
Most of the reports I've seen are drivers of the e-Tron, Bolt and Setec CCS (for Tesla) adapter. They often report needing to put pressure on the handle while the station is handshaking with the car to avoid spurious ground isolation faults and/or communication errors. I don't recall reading anything similar with Teslas at Superchargers.
Given that this happens across manufacturers, I'm inclined to think that it is either a design flaw with CCS or a not-clearly-specified part of the CCS spec.
EA chargers also put you in a price tier based on how much energy your car can _accept_, meaning we were paying the 75kWh price for 30kWh of actual acceptance.
Fortunately after talking to support for several minutes they rebooted all of the chargers and one of them charged at a more reasonable speed (but still not the full 75kWh we wanted), and they comped the charge at that machine.
This is in Texas, by the way.
That being said, the Tesla charging network is far from perfect. Check to see how many US National Parks you can practically visit with a Tesla. Carlsbad Caverns? Nope. North Rim of the Grand Canyon? Barely.
I saw several Teslas around the park, and I think it's doable if you only want to visit say 1 or 2 locations, but without a Supercharger in the middle of the park, you will be limited and won't have the flexibility to see everything.
The resort in the middle of the park has 4 J1772 chargers, which would help if you were staying in the park overnight, but we were simply doing day trips.
The story for the north rim of the Grand Canyon is similar. In the Tesla, from Flagstaff, you must first drive to Page, AZ. Round trip 508 miles and 10 hours. In an internal combustion, its 422 miles and roughly 8.5 hours. When you arrive at the north rim in the Tesla, you can’t go anywhere else, and you must return the way you came.
Tesla should work on optimizing their National Park experience, as it’s the classic destination of an old fashioned American road trip.
The Chargepoint / third-party ones in Seattle have almost universally destroyed screens by vandals.
1) require a new app to be installed 2) require you to create an account and add your credit card info 3) are broken 4) work, but charge slower than they should
As opposed to superchargers, where you literally just plug the charger in and that's it, everything is handled for you.
I'd much rather have an app notify me than an automated phone call, I (and most people I know) probably wouldn't even pick it up.
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I can uninstall an app, I can't ungive someone my phone number.
The market is fragmented. Chargers are run by different companies. Very often you can't even use them, because they don't accept card payments, and expect you to have a membership, or at best use their custom shitty app.