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by ruggeri 1022 days ago
He means the United States. In my limited experience, his comment rings as accurate here in the United States.
1 comments

Woa the whole country? I had assumed that with a place that big and varied, there’d be large regional differences for this stuff.

Wow that’s pretty bad then.

Definitely not the whole country, I've never experienced it before and am also in the US.
My experience is in northern California. Probably no one can speak for the experience across the entire US. FWIW, this guy in Minnesota seems to have had a very similar experience to what I’ve seen:

https://youtu.be/ZJOfyMCEzjQ?si=zPqg88sE9kfZCLXE

It seems like his experience is more similar to mine given his experiences on the topic available on YouTube. Just look here:

https://youtu.be/1Vm_ASm2zfs?t=294

"Stop number two was just as uneventful as stop number one." Once again, plenty of dispensers available, got charging on the first try.

Third stop, also uneventful.

Fourth stop, "this is getting really uneventful now, its like stopping at a gas station."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Vm_ASm2zfs&t=717s

Is this a station with a wait list? Did it fail to charge? No, there were multiple dispensers open without anyone there and it worked on the first try. On his 1,200mi road trip they encountered one dispenser not working but there was another one unused right next to it.

So no, he's not constantly encountering long lines with belligerent people at multiple broken fast chargers, he's pretty much always rolling up to charging locations that are mostly empty and worked on the first try. Technology Connections is not the person to point to trying to showcase how bad charging is in the US. If you're going to paint his experiences as the norm, then I guess most CCS chargers do work fine and there aren't usually lines.

I didn't watch the video you linked, but I accept your summary of his experience then (1 year ago). The video I link is from 2 weeks ago. A good half of the video is describing many frictions he has encountered with non-Tesla charging networks. Perhaps his experience/evaluation has changed in the intervening interval.

I personally have experienced those frictions myself, in my limited EV experience. I am glad that you have had a better experience - I absolutely want non-Tesla charging networks to be high reliability and easy to use! For everyone, but also for myself, since I don't want to purchase a Tesla.

In the final analysis, I don't know how Technology Connections feels about the state of non-Tesla charging networks. In fairness, I'm not sure you do either. It sounds like his experience was more positive a year ago. But from his most recent video, it doesn't sound like he feels like non-Tesla charging networks work very well or reliably.

To be clear on one point: I haven't encountered lines or interpersonal conflict at charging points. I have encountered plugs not working, payment not being accepted, and rates lower than advertised capability. Before I had those experiences, I had heard people on HN complain about CCS charging network reliability. After, I saw Technology Connections complain about it. All I can say is that my experience has corresponded with those reports.

I don't know where you're getting "a good half of the video", it barely talks at all about his own personal experiences of CCS. It mostly talks about the history of the plugs, discusses Tesla's process of opening up NACS (and his previous reservations on it), describes how automakers are switching to it, talks about the slow roll out of CCS, talks about how Tesla chargers and 800V cars might not play nice for a while, and then talks about V2G. Could you give me some specific timestamps where he's spending half the video talking about these negative experiences? Which few sections are mostly his experiences? I've seen the video a few times before and just re-scrubbed/watched at 1.75x and I didn't see much of his personal experiences at all.

He does briefly touch on charging networks should work on reliability and just having a new connector won't necessarily improve reliability, but I'm not disagreeing with that. I've got no doubts those who do have bad experiences legit had bad experiences, I'm just suggesting it's often regional and not like every non-Tesla station is plagued with non stop problems. And given his own video publications it seems like his area and the places he traveled had reliable chargers. Maybe most of the issues are on the West coast. Either way that's not half the video nor is it really him talking personal experiences.

Also, kind of funny you're suggesting I watch a video when you refuse to watch one that rebuts your own points. You might want to re-watch both videos if you want to understand his experiences with EV charging. He's got a few of them, and they're generally not filled with routinely bad experiences.

Also, go check out Out of Spec Reviews. They've got a number of videos rightfully critical of the charging networks and several videos showing lots of them failing all at once. But notice how in most of his videos with CCS cars, the experience is almost always rolling up to a station with empty ready to use dispensers, plugging in, and getting a charge. And it doesn't get brought up like some "woah, its actually working this time!" No, instead he'll mention " these are some great Delta units" or "these ABB chargers are top notch" if anything gets mentioned at all. So obviously his experiences, which this is a guy that seems like he's practically on the road every day in multiple different EVs, seems like it's mostly that they work but with some big examples of them not.