Sounds familiar: you love your EV and hate charging it on the road.
This is an infuriating challenge for non-Tesla owners, and a tall order for the largest non-Tesla EV charging network in the U. S. Electrify America (EA).
I had a verbal exchange with Anthony Lampkin, vice president of operations at Electrify America, about reasons and challenges.
As a foreword, and as I explained to Mr. Lampkin, I’ve been driving electric cars for 10 years and have been Electrify America since it installed charging stations near my home in Los Angeles in early 2020.
The most persistent and annoying problem is testers that don’t work, either because they’re absolutely unusable or don’t deliver the rate fast enough.
A lack of technicians is widely believed to be the root cause, Lampkin said, but it’s a component problem, he says.
“The formula has a lot of other parts to safely deliver force,” according to Lampkin.
“Time affects the components. Hot day, bloodless day. There are many other things that go into the journey of food and delivery. And those things don’t go well.
EA is now in its fourth generation of chargers and older chargers, which many charging sites still have, don’t support peak usage loads, Lampkin said.
For example, a failure I had with a charger at an EA station in Valencia, California (a community in the town of Santa Clarita in Los Angeles County) due to a component, Lampkin said.
In this case, I get slow charging speeds (around 30 kilowatts at the peak) that are much lower than what my Chevrolet Bolt can reach at the peak (around 50 kW) when the battery capacity is low.
And I had the same challenge at the same charging station with a Rivian R1S I was driving a few weeks earlier. Instead of getting typical charging speeds of a hundred kW or more with the Rivian, I only get 40 kW.
An electrical cabinet component involved, Lampkin said, prevented the formula from delivering maximum charging speeds. Electrify America had to send a technician to the site and update this part.
But I upload that I suspect there was something else going on at the Valencia site besides the component issue. On other occasions, other chargers displayed a warning in the demo stating that maximum charging speeds were not possible. These messages came and went.
[UPDATE: On the night of Sunday 15/10 I went back to the charging station in Valencia. Chargers No. 4 and No. 6 – out of a total of 6 chargers – were not working and four cars were waiting for a charger to be available. . ]
Most importantly, those kinds of issues (including unavailable or unusable chargers) recur every day at EA upload sites in the U. S. U. S. Especially since newer electric cars, such as Rivian cars and the Porsche Taycan, require much higher charging speeds. than the electric cars that were on the market just a few years ago.
(It’s worth noting that EV owners, especially those driving an EV for the first time, blame EA for driver-side issues or because they don’t understand how EV charging works. For example, the owner of a Chevrolet Bolt would probably complain to EA. who use a 350kW “hyper-fast” evaluator and only get 50kW. In fact, the Bolt can’t qualify for speeds above around 50 kW. This also applies to other electric cars that have upper limits on charging rates. )
“The increase in usage has been huge for us,” Lampkin told me. “We had 5. 2 million sessions last year, up from 1. 4 million in 2021. “
“There’s exceptionally high usage, especially in places like California. And there are things like heat that contribute to premature breakdowns,” he said.
Getting the portions is either a challenge or a cause of problems, as described above.
“We. . . We want the pieces. If you take a look at the history of this new generation being brought to market, first, you’ll want to have the equipment. You want to buy as much as you can, as temporarily as possible. , and certify. He wants to develop it. You want to make sure technicians are available. Then, make sure all technicians are trained.
“We’re now at the point where we want to make sure there are enough portions available. And that those portions are well tested, certified, and available for shipment in quantities that ensure we keep the appliance in its optimal condition. “level,” he said.