[cptcobalt]

Electrify America is getting far too much money and is using it to effectively anti-sell EVs with their janky, broken, and insecure infrastructure. Their funding comes from government subsidies and traditional automakers making reparations for emissions scandals (Volkswagen, $2B). This network is basically being built out of malicious compliance, without reasonable desires to make it good and reliable...

My mind will only change when I see new generation EA DCFC post & charger that's designed for scale, high stall reliability, and a mean-time between service to rival that of Tesla's supercharger network.

[_6hmp]

I watched a cross-country trip review of a Volkswagen EV and one of the big takeaways was that despite funding Electrify America, the experience of using their chargers, even with a Volkswagen, was terrible at the time of review. Not only were the chargers often out of service or underpowered, you had to use some app on your phone where you type in the charger ID # to turn it on, instead of the car negotiating it.

[skellera]

My personal experience has been bad enough to not want to use it again.

First CCS cable I plugged in was broken or something because it would keep erroring out before charging. This is after 1+ min of using their app to connect to it each time (3 tries). Switched cables and it happened again on the first try. Tried again and it says it errored out again but starts charging. Obviously that is concerning but after 5+ mins of trying to get it started, I gave in. When I get back, my phone says it’s done and a $10 charge but the charger says $16. Check the app after and it says I was charged $16. Why is there such a significant discrepancy?

It’s such a backwards experience after using a supercharger where you just plug in and walk away.

[adamjcook]

My experience is the opposite for what it is worth.

I used to own an ID.4 (which was a great car in my opinion, but I recently moved from Dallas to Detroit and, ironically, was able to go car-free in Detroit).

I made a round trip from Dallas to Denver without any Electrify America charger issues in 2021 (no waiting times either).

I also made a round trip from Dallas to Detroit in September 2022 and I only encountered one (1) slow charger where I had to move my vehicle to the next available charger (I had to wait at an already full charging station for about 30 minutes at one (1) stop also).

I was pretty surprised by both trips in terms of the lack of hassles.

Today, I have zero reservations about driving any EV over long distances.

I was worried on my first Dallas to Denver leg, but after the trip was successful, my charging/range anxiety is gone for good.

Perhaps my experience would be different elsewhere in the US, but for the Midwest, my experience had been good.

Just my two cents…

[AtlasBarfed]

Zero?

I'm about as pro-EV as it gets and solar/wind.

Charging away from major interstates in the Midwest is very very very iffy if you aren't in a Tesla, and if you ARE in a Tesla it can get iffy if your destination doesn't have a home charger.

For US people, a 500 mile car really is where the sweet spot of convenience is becausee:

1) you're not going to charge it all the way up (unless you have LFP chemistry), so knock 5% off of it

2) you're battery will lose 10-20% range over the lifetime of the car, so we'll take off 10%

3) Winter can knock another 10-20% off of range

4) and of course since you need to plan ahead to the limited stations, you can assume you'll not want to get to the "vapors" and assume 10% is less.

5) fast charging is only to 80% anyway.

Suddenly, your 500 mile car is really a 300 mile effective range.

We really need some sort of range extending trailer or similar simple scheme.

I'm really disappointed there isn't any 50-100 mile all-electric range PHEVs ono the market. This is perfect for electrifying all my short and medium range trips, but makes the long distance a seamless experience until charging stations are up to snuff.

If the hydrogen lobby (not that I like them) had any sense they would have pushed fuel cells + 100 mile battery as an effective compact PHEV format (since IIRC fuel cells can use gasoline), that would have developed the fuel cell economies of scale, but since hydrogen and BEVs are mortal enemies, not likely to happen. I also had hopes that the "inside out rotary" patent from a few years ago or Mazda engineers would cook up a very compact rotary recharging engine, but alas that never came to be.

Toyota was the company best poised to do this format of car (arguably should have been working towards this since the Prius was introduced in 1997), but they were so ossified and fat from being at the top of the automotive industry for 40 years they sat on their hands as the entire BEV revolution passed them by. We'll see now that Toyoda is retiring...

[bryanlarsen]

I've done several 2000 mile road trips in a 320 mile range EV. That's a 225 mile range 10%-80%. IOW just over 3 hours. I know I can drive longer than 3 hours without stopping for food, coffee, a bathroom or sleep, but I don't wan't to.

On a short road trip you can drive for 5 hours without stopping because you recover at your destination, but on a long one it's so much nicer to stop regularly.

Adding the complexity of a range extender for trips in the 3 - 5 hour range just seems silly.

[schiffern]

If you really want a power-dense engine, teh two stroke opposed piston opposed cylinder is an interesting option.[0]

As for range-extending trailers, Tesla cofounder J.B. Straubel had it right. The last time I linked to his "pusher trailer" the response was surprisingly close-minded for HN. The reasoning was (paraphrased) "I don't believe it because I don't trust the builder that it works because I don't believe it."[1]

[0] https://idaoffice.org/posts/rebirth-of-opposed-piston-engine...

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20747218

[fomine3]

Mazda rotary is revealed, I don't know is it small vs I3 https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a42485033/mazda-mx-30-r-ev...

[Kirby64]

Really seems like perverse incentives to me... EA was created due to the VW scandal, and they were forced to spend this money this way.

Except, VW's bread and butter is still gas cars. They're not incentivized to herald EVs at all; if anything, they'd prefer it to go as slowly as possible so they can continue to make money off their gas fleet.

[barbazoo]

Right now, sure but doesn't seem to be their strategy long term. Why would they purposefully sabotage that as you're suggesting?

https://www.volkswagen-newsroom.com/en/strategy-3912

[mrguyorama]

Whether it's purposeful or not doesn't matter. Right now Electrify America gives EV charging a bad rap. Tesla shows large scale charging networks are economically viable, and really Tesla should be pushing their network open ASAP, as you can sell fast charging at a serious premium and it would literally be free money for a network that currently is underutilized.

[bhauer]

If I were a company still on the low side of EV volume (GM, Ford, BMW, Mercedes, etc.), I would be seriously in negotiations with Tesla to adopt NACS and join the Supercharger network, allowing our customers to avoid the debacle of CCS.

I consider any manufacturer that isn't making moves in that direction to be demonstrating an unserious attitude toward EVs. CCS is a total shambles in the United States and its headwind should cast doubt on any advertised optimism from manufacturers using CCS.

[matthewdgreen]

Musk promised that the Tesla network would be open to other manufacturers by the end of 2022. Nobody really knows what's going on now, and I sure hope that the late-2022 decision to open-source the NACS standard isn't what's holding progress up. Only one of these two standards is going to win: the faster we pick one the quicker we can make progress.

In this case while I prefer NACS myself, I'm worried that convincing a dozen manufacturers to switch standards is going to take much longer than just adding a second CCS connector to (many) Superchargers. Otherwise we could lose years to this, and still wind up with CCS everywhere.

[cptcobalt]

Exactly this.

[foepys]

VW has repeatedly stated that they aim to stop producing ICEs by 2035.

This is very likely to happen considering that the EU wants to ban registrations of ICE powered cars in the same year.

[bhauer]

That is twelve years from now. Even assuming they stick to that plan, which I feel is a naive assumption considering how often they've failed to meet EV plans previously, they can easily continue poisoning the EV waters today and for several years to come.

[foepys]

VW has made multi billion Euro (~20 billion until 2027) investments into EV, from a completely new vehicle platform to investing hundreds of millions into battery tech startups. There was even serious talk about buying a cobalt mine which was abandoned when battery tech got rid of cobalt.

Why would they do that if they want to sabotage it? It doesn't make any sense to that to throw it all away later on purpose.

[drewg123]

What government subsidies is EA getting? I thought their funding was initially from VW, as reparations for the VW emissions scandal..?

[aaomidi]

Local

[dheera]

Is this an issue with EA or with Rivian?

I've charged a Tesla at EA a few times with a CCS adapter without issues.

Also, EVGo never seems to work.

[danbr]

EA. Other EV owners (Bolt) have run into the same issue at EA chargers as mentioned in the article.