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ruggeri | 2 years ago
I don't accept or trust your pivot to personalize the discussion by focusing on my personal experience. I never said I had vast experience with EV charging (I said it was limited). But for the benefit of anyone reading this thread, I will tell you my experience, and then I'm going to disengage with you.
I have owned a CCS vehicle (Toyota Rav4 Prime) for about 6mo. I live in San Francisco. I have tried to charge it about a dozen times at non-Tesla chargers. I succeeded one or two times. I have also observed friends charge their Tesla vehicles at Tesla chargers about a half dozen times.
In my personal experience, I have had connectivity problems (unable to pay because NFC didn't work, and EA app had no signal in a garage), and chargers labeled as up in the EVgo app were not functional. On the Plug Share app I have seen a non-functional station (https://www.plugshare.com/location/37345), where it has been labeled as up for over 12mo, during which time it has never worked. It happens to be the exact station I have most wanted to use.
Those are some of the exact problems Technology Connections mentions, which is why his video did resonate with me.
It sounds like you've had a good experience with non-Tesla charging, which is great. I wish my experience was as positive as yours, because I am unable to charge at home at my rental unit. I would love to have a great experience with non-Tesla charging, both for myself, and for wide adoption of non-Tesla EVs. It sounds like where you live non-Tesla charging infrastructure works more reliably than it has for me here.
Maybe you're going to tell me I'm a moron and don't know how to charge my car. But I haven't had a great experience at it.
vel0city|2 years ago
I'm not suggesting the non-Tesla chargers are perfect, I'm not even saying they're particularly great. They do need to have faster turn around when even a single dispenser goes offline. They've been adopting regular credit card terminals over needing the apps, which is how it should have been from the start. I'll definitely agree overall Tesla charging experience is better. They've been way more responsive to problems and made the better bet on cheaper but easier to replace components. I agree with practically everything he said in that video, but that doesn't mean it was personal experiences. A lot of my "they need to improve" agreement is looking at plugshare around the country, reading comments like yours, seeing videos on YouTube from places like Out of Spec Reviews, and others, but not much personal other than seeing like 1 of 4 chargers out at the places I've gone to.
I'm just suggesting it's not the way the OP said it is across the entire United States. The poster was essentially describing a charging hellscape, someone asked if it's like that across the whole US, and you said yes based on your experience in SF. Well, maybe SF isn't the whole US.
I am trying to suggest Alec's experience isn't as bad as failing to charge 83% of the time. It sounds like he had a road trip where the EA app was glitchy (which he'd prefer to use over a credit card as his car has free charging through the app), he's run into a few dispensers which should have worked save for a broken clip and used another one at the site, and he's seen some percentage of dispensers out of service when he's gone to charge but still managed to charge. But from most of the content he's posted over both of his channels and other channels he's participated in, it looks like his overall success rate is much higher than 17%. Can we agree on that?
Another poster here mentioned plenty of empty chargers in the Midwest. Another mentioned no problems in the PNW outside of holidays. Multiple people in California talk about charging hellscapes. Maybe it's not a US thing? Maybe we shouldn't tell people it is?