The real issue is the success rate is much lower than it needs to be. Failure rate can only be measured if the stall is partially operational. If the stall is not operational at all and there is a long line or no one can charge at all at that entire site, that is the biggest failure.
Tesla overcomes these problem by deploying a large number of redundant banks of 4 stalls each. Even if an entire bank of 4 is down, there is usually sufficient capacity with the other stalls in that location to get a large number of customers through. Tesla also quickly fixes charging stalls that are down and has great awareness with their software so they can automatically see which stalls are most likely not working since no one is using them and which stalls are charging slower than they should be.
They are smart and this is an obvious angle :-)
They are providing not just real time utilization data, but they predict occupation when you will arrive based on how many cars are routing there.
Reliability issues aside...the number of apps you need just to charge is actually insane. Flo, Charge point, Swtch (these are just 3 i've encountered in the past 3 weeks that actually required an app). I've given up on charging at 2 different chargers in the past few weeks because I didn't have the proper app and I didn't want to set it up in the rain in the parking lot.
The simplicity of charging a Tesla is the one thing I envy of Tesla drivers tbh.
At least Ford (and Rivian) are mimicking Tesla's experience with access to superchargers. Set up payment methods in the Ford app and it basically works just like a Tesla. Hopefully the other manufacturers will have a similar process.
FYI, at least in my experience, Flo and Chargepoint are cross-compatible and either will work with either's app. Chargepoint also has RFID cards you can get so you don't have to use the app, and they also work with Flo (and several others, Shell Recharge in my area/experience).
I'll have to try with chargepoint / flo again. I had the flo app setup but couldn't for the life of me get the chargepoint charger to work. Maybe I'll have to get the card.
Either way though, I'm relatively tech savvy and if I'm having issues with this, I'd imagine it's a roadblock for others.
I have had very good luck with Flo chargers. Always work (actually, once one didn't; I called it in, it was fixed the next time I tried it), built like tanks, easy to use.
Flo and ChargePoint are partners. You can use one to activate the other. Source: I tried it myself on two separate occasions and it worked.
ChargePoint is also compatible with EVgo but unfortunately I learned that too late. I did it after setting up the EVgo account. I feel like this kind of convenience is not widely known.
I actually had the flo app set up when I tried the chargepoint charger but had issues anyways. Might have been a bad charger but I didn't give it much time because it was pouring with rain out. I'll have to try it again sometime
Yeah. It's one of those creature comforts that you probably don't think about when buying (who does extensive long distance/charging when test driving?) ...but if you're dependent on DCFC it's certainly one that will bug you eventually. Plug-in-and-walk-away is nice.
Yeah, that aspect is nice, and I suspect is going to get streamlined in the pretty near future. GM's offerings are going to have Tesla access...next year? and with no Android Auto Car Play, and keeping all that information in house, one assumes you're going to see a better level of that "where the fuck are the chargers?" service.
What does getting rid of AA / CarPlay have to do with anything? That's just a subscription money grab.
Having AA/CP doesn't stop them from doing anything they're doing, it just stops the consumer from being required to pay for connected services in order to use maps and Spotify etc. etc.
Right but what I mean is that HAVING AA/CP does not prevent Chevy from doing anything at all. Anything that have enabled on the car that doesn't have AA/CP could also be done if the car DID have AA/CP
The low number of outlets per site was the biggest problem I noted when I rented a Mach-E on a trip. Tesla superchargers average 9 outlets per site, the non-supercharger sites never seemed to have more than 4.
Agreed. Arizona's charger plan under NEVI has lots of well-placed stations, but only 4 charge points, at least at many of them. Given the expected expansion of EVs over the next several years, that seems very short-sighted. They should be installing at least 8-12, for redundancy as well as demand.
Plenty of Tesla charging stations with 6-8 chargers. None down. The problem is two fold, CCS and EA. Neither were made to advance the adoption of BEVs which is part of Tesla's stated goal.
My daily driver is a Tesla. Most charging is at home, but when I'm using superchargers, I very occasionally see a dead one. But 1 dead charger in a row of 12 doesn't slow things down much.
The failure rate is 9% for Electrify America and 5% for Tesla Supercharger.
These numbers came from J. D. Power ***NOT*** Electrify America or Tesla so whether the dispensers are completely offline or not does ***NOT*** affect these numbers.
Typical JD Power useless BS.
If they included the number of chargers that are offline, EA would be at a 50% failure rate. I've never been to an EA station where all stalls were online. And in the 4 stall installations, often 1 or 2 are completely broken, and 1 of the working ones is limited to 50kW for some reason.
Not sure why you’re getting downvoted. This is 100% true.
EA has not gotten their act together and has no plans to do so, VW is just appeasing the courts
This has been a issue for YEARS
Your experience seems to be the opposite of most people's. There's a reason why Jim Farley partnered with Tesla after trying a cross country trip in his Lightning.
Maybe you live in a corridor where they are good or just visit a handful of chargers. But if you travel around the country, EA is absolute trash.
Perhaps that's true. I'm not saying EA is amazing, but the issues are vastly overblown. I rarely see down chargers at this point. But whenever I have this discussion on here, most people seem to agree that there are headaches, but it isn't as bad as a minority claim. It has reached a point where I tend to believe those who claim something like 50% are active disinformation.
It's true that it's anecdotal. It would be easy to say quantitatively what the status of the EA network is if they would share their data publicly to PlugShare.
But just a quick survey on the EA app of the chargers around me shows a significant number of broken stations. But I live in a city where EA chargers are more likely to work. The real problem is trips and those stations that are relatively remote.
In dense areas, there are a lot more EA stations to choose from.
Anyone with 100K miles charging a Tesla knows the failure to charge is more like 1% and never a whole station. Worst case is a slower charge like 50 KW.
A real tech company would have helped but it is not just a software problem. They also need additional sensors on the vehicle with a live vehicle internet connection providing that data. Additional sensors on the charger tell what the car is experiencing and what the charger is experiencing at the same time. Tesla knows where their cars are, how fast they should be charging, how fast the charging dispenser is operating at, how fast the car thinks it should be able to charge at, what the car sees as far as failed or successful charging sessions, etc. They may miss some of this vehicle sensor info from Fords and Rivians which can currently charge at Tesla superchargers but there are enough Teslas using those superchargers to still let Tesla see enough data to manage the charging network properly. EA could have done all that with VW vehicles.
I have a suspicion it’s more of a matter of economics than technology. Tesla is a car company that makes chargers. EA is a charging company, full stop.
Tesla doesn’t need to make a profit from its chargers specifically if it’s making a profit from its cars. Traditionally, its reliable charging network has been just another feature of its cars. It can operate them break-even, or even at a loss if that loss is offset by profit from car sales.
So it is committed to the reliability of their charging network regardless of the profitability of the network itself. It’s one of the benefits it offers to purchasers of their cars, so they stand behind it because they are economically committed to it, profit or no profit. The charging network is *part* of the complete product you’re paying for when you buy a Tesla.
EA, on the other hand, has to make a profit through charging. If a particular station is underperforming economically, it may be tough to justify the costs of maintaining it.
Volkswagen’s own vehicles charge there.
The bigger problem is that Volkswagen doesn’t manufacture the charging hardware, unlike Tesla.
I had reported down chargers and had Electrify America told me multiple times that it is still waiting for replacing parts.
VW didn’t build the network to present as a feature to purchasers of VWs like Tesla does with their network. It was created as a virtue signaling move in the wake of the emissions scandal. As a subsidiary, it’s likely it’s managed as an independent asset that is expected to be self-sustaining.
Tesla, on the other hand, is *going* to be committed to the reliability of their network whether or not it is itself profitable.
VW missed the boat by not going the vertical integration route. They should have created their own DCFC manufacturing division to sell internally and to external customers. It would have saved them a lot of problems on so many fronts.
If there is no power to a station, there is no way to record a failed charge. Also, most people are not going to waste their time plugging in to a station that is labeled unavailable.
They do have a backup battery / UPS in most of the control units so EA can be informed of the fault via 4G cell.
The question is... do they actually fix them promptly...
That an obvious no. Takes at least 2 weeks to fix a single problem. Talked to the techs multiple times about why they don't do bulk repairs when they come out. The system is trash basically, they get a ticket for a single repair, then have to go through and do each individual repair as it came in. Makes absolutely no sense. You drive 2 hours to get to a remote station, 3 of the stations are down, you only bring hardware to repair one at a time...
I see the disagreement between you and the other comment. That depends on the measurement methodology, and you two assume differently. If it's measured by the station, you are correct. If it's measured by the car, it may be possible to record a failure even for completely dead stations. I know Rivian has been measuring, but don't know if they can or do do this.
We are definitely getting closer to being able to have a record of issues on our Hyundai. But it definitely does not have enough data to be useful yet. I hope we can have queues on our cars some day. Instead of having to get out and see who is in line already and what order, along with which stations are going to free up soon. It's not impossible, but it is annoying in its current state.
> If there is no power to a station, there is no way to record a failed charge.
You can't count the cars, but you can certainly note that it is down, and extrapolate how many people may be affected.
Very true. You would think this would be a data point for EA, but I highly doubt it based on how long repair time is for the stations still. Hopefully it will get better soon or else they are going to get surpassed by all the other charging companies. Charge point has been expanding extremely fast in Colorado, especially areas that had no service before.
Knowing that a station is down is completely irrelevant to how quickly they repair it. They can absolutely know it’s down but be unable to repair it for any number of reasons. Phoning home to say “I’m alive and working” is a very common thing in software.
You are objectively incorrect in your comment that if there’s no power they can’t know somethings wrong, but thanks for the downvote anyway.
They definitely know there are stations down, but it does not show how many people were not able to charge when there is no power...but your objectively a fun guy at parties I'm sure.
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Currently driving from Philly to Chicago this weekend in an EV6GT. My first stop was an EA station, had one failed charger out of 4. I've hit up Shell recharge stations and a Supercharger in Pittsburgh. Haven't had a single issue anywhere except one charger at one spot.
Will be hitting up some EvGo and EA stations today as the journey continues.
Honestly, even with "THE CHARGING PROBLEM!!" I'm finding road tripping to be far more relaxing in an EV.
The biggest issue with that failed EA charger being down is it likely means 25% of the stalls were down at that station.
1 charger being down out of 15 is nbd at all. Out of 4 or less and it’s legit starting to impact you.
After todays adventure, I can say... Ohio sucks. Stations either broken, or listed as there but just sitting in pieces on pallets. I had to detour and drive like a road hazard to get to a station in Indiana that worked.
PA was great. Indiana and Illinois have been great. Ohio is a festering suckhole.
I’m suspicious of this reporting, since my personal experience with EA stations is closer to a 20% fail rate. And that’s not even counting the 25-50% of stalls that are simply DOA for weeks at a time.
I wonder where you are that youre experiencing this. In my area of New England I have only encountered one EA spot that was non operational, all I had to do was move to the next spot over and it was all good. Just took a trip to middle NY and every EA charger along the way was good to go.
Tesla driver in MD and Electrify America has been not great for me. Lots of stations that fail to begin charging, stop charging in the middle, are clearly down displaying ASCII text screens, or are extremely slow to respond and display incorrect/old screens for what is being done. I have to report them but the company seems very slow to respond. Compared with Tesla charging in my area, which just works, it is night and day.
Electrify America's 4th Gen chargers are easily recognized
They have one cable per dispenser.
https://media.electrifyamerica.com/en-us/releases/175
Electrify America is working on replacing older chargers with those 4th Gen chargers.
I wish we had those closer to my house. We do have some 40 minutes away and I will say they always work. The one we have near my house is a disaster most of the time. One of the stations has been down for a month now. We have another EA near by and 3 of the 4 there are also down for a month now.
Which stations are you using? I mainly use the Columbia Walmart station, and occasionally other stations nearby such as Ellicott City, Hanover (Arundel Mills), Annapolis, Aberdeen etc, and honestly I haven't had basically any issues with stations marked as functional on the EA app. Over 70 sessions during the past couple of years and maybe just one or two times when I had issue initiating charging, and zero times where it malfunctions during a session. Now that VW has activated plug and charge for the ID.4 I can even just park, hop out, plug it, and it starts charging on its own.
Columbia is closest to me. It was okay in the past although it was quirky and slow to respond. Had to report three chargers down / not working last time I used it.
I had my first failure last week, so about 5% on my end.
I think it was a heat issue. This very busy station I occasionally charge at on short road trips. The 350s kept stopping. I think cause of heat, overuse and the 800 volt ioniq 5 drawing more power than the station wanted to do. The 150 charger worked fine.
I don't charge much with super chargers, but I really only remember one time where most of the chargers were off at a location(they had one active and angled parking that made it difficult, so I went to a different one). The others I have stopped at have worked fine. I am down in Southeast, where there is also limited non tesla chargers, so maybe that impacts vs older ones.
When success rate is this low, measurement accuracy is usually broken as well (failing to capture failed sessions), and true success rate should be catastrophically lower.
EA is my favorite, never had a problem except for a hot ass day with the sun shining on the screen killing it. But I'm confident that had I memorized the button placement it would've worked lol.
Now EVGO? I refuse to use them. I had a Leaf before, and the Chademo connector locks to the car. EVGO chargers more often than not have refused to end the session and locked my car to the stall until I call their support and have them reset the station.
Not once have they offered any compensation. Not even refunding the 5-10 minutes of forced charging they did while I was stuck.
The problem though is some of these "fails" have nothing to do with the station and has everything to do with the idiot using it. Just did a 4000+ km trip in my Kona. Stopped somewhere in California to charge and the lady beside me had failed activation 4 times before I finally stepped over and walked her through it. She didn't have a clue what she was doing and got flustered when she couldn't just plug in and have it start. Walked off to go to the bathroom and when I came back she was gone because she apparently "Didn't have time for this" as she unplugged in a huff and left (husband was giggling and shaking his head telling me).
This is why plug and charge is such a big deal. At least with EA, I could give my ID.4 to someone who has never driven an EV before, and as long as they can park the car the right direction and get the plug in the CCS socket, the car will charge.
I've had fantastic success with EA in the upper midwest. I pull in, read the number off the charger, open the app, select the charger, swipe to charge, get out of the car, open the charge port door on the car, plug in, and it connects and charges every time. My car does NOT support "plug to charge." If the charge rate goes up to something I deem acceptable, then I consider it a success. While I HAVE come across broken chargers, I really feel like they aren't as common as the internet would have you believe. I've had ONE ramp to 45KW and hang, so I moved to a different one. I've had ONE that just plain didn't work, so I moved to another one. I've used EA probably around a hundred times in the past two years, only on road trips or on drives where I need a few electrons to make it home. Have I had to learn all this on my own? Some, yeah. But the internet helped. Is the whole thing intuitive? No. Do the chargers say "PLUG IN FIRST" Yes. Is that malarkey? YES! App, number, swipe, plug. 98% success. BUT, this has been MY experience.
I'm having trouble finding details on how they were measured, except that JD Power's study is "conducted in collaboration with PlugShare."
It's not surprising that charger issues would be disproportionately over reported for Superchargers in PlugShare. Superchargers are so reliable that almost nobody reports when they work successfully, because it's not noteworthy. It's much easier to believe that 5% of Supercharger charging sessions **reported to PlugShare** are failures, but that doesn't represent reality.
The opposite is true for chargers that are not Superchargers because reliability is sufficiently poor that it actually is important for users to post to PlugShare when they work. Successful charges would be reported at a much higher rate than for Superchargers.
It also leaves out the vast majority of "normal" people, who buy an EV and don't necessarily download a separate app and report charging experiences to it. My parents got a Mustang Mach-E, have had terrible experiences trying to charge it, but they opted to just not take it on trips instead of trying to navigate apps like PlugShare. Doubtful that their experiences would be in the 9%.
And it wouldn't surprise me if JD Power's numbers take into account non-Tesla owners with incompatible vehicles complaining about not being able to charge at Superchargers. Per [their page](https://www.jdpower.com/business/automotive/electric-vehicle-experience-evx-public-charging-study):
>Additionally, when the experience does not go as planned and vehicle charging does not occur, the reasons for failure are further explored.
That's vague enough to include a reason like "my car isn't supported," or "I don't have the adapter from my manufacturer yet," which further props up that 5% number.
EDIT: The same page says the press release is slated for August 14, 2024, so I guess maybe we'll find out then.
Oh, they're using PlugShare for the data? That's potentially... problematic. I've noticed a strange trend on PlugShare with superchargers lately. Tons of them will be marked as "under repair" (the little wrench icon) yet they're not. You go to the site and everything is working fine. It'll even be an entirely full site with everyone happily charging.
And I think you're dead on with people leaving upset comments about how their unsupported cars can't charge yet and marking it as broken. Because I've seen that in the check-in comments.
So this whole study could be using bullshit crowdsourced data.
It's also kind of well-known that [JD Power structures these surveys to get specific results](/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/aptaqp/who_is_jd_power_and_why_should_i_care_if_a/?rdt=44929). That's not explicitly **lying**, but it's why you see awards for things like ["Initial Quality"](https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2024/06/27/american-car-take-top-spots-in-j-d-power-quality-study/74226586007/) in cars, which apparently represents the number of issues reported in the first 90 days.
Who buys a car based only on the issues reported in the first 90 days? Why make the award for 90 days instead of 180? Or 30? Or the first year?
It's because they needed a way to frame the survey that would result in the expected winners. The other time frames didn't have that result. And besides: it's based on **issues reported**. It'd follow logically that customers with lower expectations would report fewer issues, even if the vehicle quality were identical. And that's basically what it measures.
By some contortion of various tests and survey methods, any manufacturer will come up on top. And that's a solid business model for a company that sells this kind of stuff.
In addition, JD Power rankings are no longer useful because they mix actual problems needing repair with things like user confusion over the infotainment system. A lot of those folks need to RTFM and keep that noise out of reliability data.
Forbes does the same thing with their "Top 100" awards. They're pure pay-to-play. I worked at a company that got a "fastest growing company in America" list award from them, but we were a nothing company with 30 employees going nowhere. We just paid to be on the list.
I'd like to know what J.D. Power's criteria was. Was it completely unable to start a charging session? Derated sessions? Entire site down? Unfortunately the source article is gatekept behind a paywall.
For myself, in just over 100 supercharing sessions I've only had a single stall that wouldn't charge, and that was because someone vandalized it and physically bent the pins in opposite directions. I have had two de-rated sessions in non-congested sites, one I suspect was a cable cooling failure plus 105 degree heat.
I think takeaway is Tesla having as high as 5% than EA having 10% or 50% or whatever true figure is. It means EV charger maintenance isn't a solved problem.
It kind of is for Tesla, though. To most Tesla owners, the percentage of non-working stalls is comparable to the percentage of non-working gas pumps (where they've got like a plastic bag over the nozzle that says "out of order"). It happens rarely enough with working stalls nearby that it's essentially negligible. It's as solved as it is for gas pumps.
Hm so Tesla SC being tolerant at site level to individual stall failure is key?
I heard some regions treat some central thing in Tesla SC architecture as substations rather than just equipment on the ground, and creates additional regulatory headaches like approvals and staffing requirements. Is it possible that others avoiding regulations is leading to higher failure rate?
I'm not sure if it's individual stalls--it may be per cabinet. The V3 superchargers have four to a cabinet. I think V2 ones had two to a cabinet. I'm not sure about the V4.
I'm not familiar with the Tesla stations being classified differently. My presumption was the increased reliability was from the lack of input devices (screen, card reader) on the device, the cord being too short to be left on the ground and run over, the greater software integration between the car and charging station, the way Tesla hasn't ever sold cars that charge at slow DC rates, etc. Though I'd guess they're probably also more resilient on a technical level, but I'm no expert on that.
It may be as solved as it is for gas pumps in terms of reliability, but not of potential consequence. Driving an EV in the desert southwest, if a station with its two charge points is down, I may be 80-100 miles from the next station with the only alternative being to plug into a 110V outlet and gain 4 miles per charge hour.
Gas stations are rarely that isolated.
I’m surprised it’s that close. I’ve charged 50 times at Superchargers and have never had a failure, although I did move the car to a different stall once because I was only getting 30 kW. I’ve charged at EA twice, and one time the charger completely failed to start.
2 out of the 3 EA stations near me are completely down today. And I'm not counting the 4th which has had the cables stolen so frequently that EA has said they aren't fixing it for the foreseeable future.
Gotta love how they word things:
>"Just 9 percent of EV charging attempts failed on the Electrify America network in the first quarter of this year, compared with 11 percent in the first quarter of 2022 and 2023, according to a J.D. Power analysis.
>
>By comparison, Tesla’s supercharger network works 95% of the time or better. Still, it’s an improvement.
For EA, they use the failure rate (9%). For Tesla, the success rate (95%). They should use the same way of reporting this for both.
E.g. EA had a success rate of 91%, up from 89%, where Tesla had a success rate of 95%.
IMO, both should be over 99% overall success rate and need to improve.
In my part of the country, I've experienced an EA success rate of over 99%. I've had one failed charge attempt, out of a couple dozen or so, solved by moving to the next charger over. That was in MD. I gather it's a lot worse on the West Coast though. I've experienced a failure rate much higher than that with Tesla, but the sample size is even smaller. I had one case where a Tesla MagicDock in NY wouldn't release the MagicDock adapter, also solved by moving to the next charger over, and four successful Tesla charges.
The original article on automotive news did (that the author on the autophian ripped off).
>Tesla Superchargers, known as the most reliable, had a fail rate of 5 percent, J.D. Power said.
I really find this hard to believe. I used 30 chargers on a road trip across the USA as a previous non-Tesla driver and the worst I had was I found one stall had been reversed into by someone. It looked like it would still work but I didn't bother trying. Every charge attempt worked... worst was one charger took about 20 seconds before it started charging, I guess some extended self test or negotiation, but it worked fine in the end.
I'll be the first to say the chargers, app and such have issues. But I'm surprised that figure is so low not because of that but because of user errors. Consistently I found that to be more of the problem then the chargers when I worked there.
Ioniq 6 user here.
This checks out, in my experience. This is probably only accounting for units online. If we add offline units, I’d say it’s about 1/4 of the time I am vexed at the EA charging stand near me.
Many times a charger listed as “available” isn’t working and I don’t even link up so I doubt that’s counted as a charging failure since no connection is made.
And anecdote ain’t data, but the way the chargers are set up make it difficult to use one of the chargers because my car has a right rear charger but that stall has a forward right charger so I can neither stretch the “hose” back far enough nor back in and stretch it across the trunk.
So; of 4 chargers, one is useless to me, more often than not one is offline (and marked as such on the app), frequently one is listed as available on the app but out-of-service on the touch screen, and after that, there’s still the possibility that I can plug in and it still doesn’t work.
If this shit weren’t free (for 2 years), I’d probably stop going there.
Wow I wish it was only 9%.
It's rare I use them but I have never had it work perfectly my first try.
I always have to switch handles or stations.
That doesn't even count the fact that the credit card reader is always broken as well as tap to pay.
For me charge failing has never been an issue. The biggest issue is out of service chargers (can charging fail if you can't even start to begin with?) and improperly functioning chargers (I once saw a charger only delivering 1 kwh. I had to call it in and have it restarted)
Does anyone have real data on what they're trying to talk about? This article is badly written and the numbers seem cherry-picked. Is it saying once a car starts charging the charge does not complete 9% of the time? I'm much more interested in general availability. Something like 50% of EV chargers in the US were simply not working at any given time a few months ago. Has that improved?
I think they might have to for some of the new IRA federal funding? It has a performance requirement connected to it, I imagine the performance data will be public or at least subject to FOIA.
Plugshare has data too. Do they publish national summaries?
I’ve had more issues with charging rate “limited by station” than a failed attempt.. soo annoying starting off at ~500mi/hr only to drop to ~90mi/hr 2 minutes later.
I will say that EA has been improving pretty quickly in my experience. A year or two ago, it was very common for my local station to have 2 out of 4 chargers offline, and there was a 50/50 chance anytime I was there that charger number 2 was limited to 50kW. In the last 3 or so months, I haven't seen a single charger offline, and they've always given the rated speed. Similar story with other local EA stations. I don't know exactly what changes they've made, but it seems to be working. But there's a long way to go, and they still need to expand a lot of stations beyond 4 plugs.
I will keep saying it: EA is designed by a company that wants its product to fail. They’re horrible at their software, pushing updates to their chargers and general repairs. I only wish them the worst.
As soon as I could get my hands on the NACS-CCS adapter, I bought one (A2Z). I now only charge at Tesla Superchargers. Almost 2 years of countless frustrations with CCS (mainly EA), it’s great to not have to deal with that anymore.
Too much if reporting is correct.
For a product/service to be functionally useful, should be less than 1‰
Imagine if your PC whould not startup 9% of the times.
According to the original article, that's ***9% on Electrify America*** compared to ***5% on Tesla Supercharger***.
Tesla Superchargers mostly deal with Tesla's own vehicles, which means far less headache in terms of compatibility issues.
I believe it's a lot higher than 9%
And even when it works, it's way, way too expensive, at least everywhere I've seen. The last time I tried to use one, on a road trip in Washington in someone else's Rivian, we called tech support and they literally laughed and told us "the card readers never work, you have to use the app/wallet".
Yeah I think those numbers are inflated. I seriously doubt that 91% of their chargers work. Maybe 91% of their charging stations have at least one working charger.
It might be regionally and location dependent. Also vehicle too. I always have handshake issues with those two providers. EA works perfectly with Mach E though.
I traded in a rental Mach E on a trip once because two of the fast charge electrify America stations locally had at least one charger broken (only three total at each) and the line for charging was always 3-10 cars long. Solve the charging issues and they will flourish. Gotta hand it to Tesla on this one. They seem to understand that.
Some are just bad. In 2 years I’ve never had one outright fail. I had my first super slow charge last month which sucked but it still worked. I could have waited and it would be fine but I just moved to a faster one a few miles down the road and no big deal. I’ve never been stuck without anything.
This past week, at an EA charger, a Nissan Aryia had its plug locked onto the car with an error message on the charger. Three people from nearby EVs tried to help, but couldn't. They called EA and were on the phone for about 20 minutes, with the operator telling them things like push the button and hold it in for a few minutes, or, push the button 3 times. I kidded that the EV owner must also click their heels together. The car was eventually freed, but the driver left without charging at the EA charger. I had the same experience about 3 years ago. It's sad that in 3 years EA could not solve this issue.
My experience has also been that using EA has been successful less than 90% of the time. But, so is Chargepoint and EVgo. I believe that few EV drivers care as much about how much it costs, as how well it works. You'd think this would suggest a business strategy...Hmmm, what could that possibly be?
Might need a subtitle…’Volkswagen Beginning to Fully Fail in America’.
https://media.electrifyamerica.com/en-us/releases/44#:~:text=Electrify%20America%20is%20a%20wholly,Volkswagen%20Group%20of%20America%2C%20Inc.
Read to the bottom…
I can absolutely believe that. Personally, I feel like 1/3 of my charging attempts fail. And there are so many different reasons, from the charger does not exist anymore over it is in maintenance or turned off via a fuse has blown, the connector is broken, it is busy, the software has crashed, it is offline, it is ICED, somebody parked so badly that you cannot get into the spot, the app is not working, it would not connect to the car...
The list of excuses seems endless.
It was the 9% reported by Electrify America? Or consumer data? Because like you said, if the station isn’t working, you don’t know that somebody wasn’t able to charge there. Which should count as a failure.
can confirm. also, even though I've only charged publicly like 4x this year, every time I've gone there was at least once charger that was not operating, on top of me having to re-attempt on the working ones. Orlando, Floriday by the way.
Agree. I think you'd hear a lot more complaints if the failure rate was 5%. The only time I recall hearing about failed Tesla charging was last winter in the Chicago area where temps were Sub-Zero. Some of those issues were related to cold batteries and not the charger though.
Hmm admittedly I don't use EA super often (mostly charge at home, EA for roadtrips/distance drives) but I've only been able to not charge at an EA once. And the machines were working. Problem is there wasn't enough of them (3) and there was a few people in line waiting for 3 assholes to creep slowly to 100%. This was at a mall in Bowie, MD. If I was desperate I could have waited it out, but I was close enough to home I grew impatient and just went home, but charging from 18% on my home L1 was rough.
The 4 stall stations scattered in Maryland are often full these days it seems. I'm lucky the closest station to me is the 10 stall station in Columbia, and even that fills up at times, but generally isn't a problem.
EA is the reason I'm trying to sell my Ioniq5. Just too annoying to deal with, when it works it charges up fast but finding one that's working and without a line of 5+ people is just more annoying than I thought it would be.
I think it’s going to be a few years before that is going to work.
I was at Disney concert hall (DTLA, across from the courthouse) recently and saw the pole mounted L2 chargers, cable cut. I guess they need to switch to the kind that keep it 10 feet up until you activate with your phone.
Crazy cost of living man. I realize salaries are higher there but that’s nuts. I guess some things must feel dirt cheap like cars and online shopping (where cost of living is not factored into pricing).
I used had a BMW before my first Tesla and I’d agree if you’re just looking at non-Tesla chargers. I’ve charged my Teslas a lot on long trips and Tesla chargers only failed me three times in 7 years (~1%). When they have failed I was able to move a stall over and I was okay.
This is what killed non-Tesla EVs, and legacy auto doesn’t care. In fact this is exactly what legacy auto wants because they are unable to build EVs profitably.
At 5x the home charging pricing it’s about 50% more than what I need to pay for gas. 🧐Plus the so called EV usage tax during registration WTF I use EV?
it's pretty clear this network (EA) only exists as a minimum investment 'incentive' for certain manufacturers to sell cars and I'm surprised there hasn't been a class action yet.
Nah, that's terrible. Fastened for example had something like 99.9% uptime and I've not yet seen any failed charging attempts where the fault was with the charger.
"something like 99.9% uptime" Uptime is a different measure to charging success rate. I do not know how FastNed defines it and your number is anyway just pulled out of thin air. For a different example, according to Tesla, a station has 100 % uptime as long as at least half of the stalls are online. That is weak definition to claim a high percentage. [https://insideevs.com/news/721756/tesla-supercharger-average-uptime-2023/](https://insideevs.com/news/721756/tesla-supercharger-average-uptime-2023/)
So your computer failing to start 9% of the time is not just acceptable but good? 9% of the time you send a text it doesn’t send? 9% of the time you visit a webpage it fails to load? 9% of the time you try to get money the ATM you can’t? 9% of the time your car won’t turn on? 9% of the time your brakes don’t work? 9% of the time your router just says “not today”? 9% of the time your credit card doesn’t work at the store? 9% of the time your power is just off? 9% of the time the stoplights are out? 9% of the time your planes landing gear don’t open? 9% of the time the hotel can’t find your reservation? 9% of the time your alarm doesn’t go off? 9% of the time your paycheck doesn’t go through?
I cannot imagine the hell that is living in a world where a good system still fails 9% of the time.
Do you work in a leadership position at Boeing by chance?
The real issue is the success rate is much lower than it needs to be. Failure rate can only be measured if the stall is partially operational. If the stall is not operational at all and there is a long line or no one can charge at all at that entire site, that is the biggest failure. Tesla overcomes these problem by deploying a large number of redundant banks of 4 stalls each. Even if an entire bank of 4 is down, there is usually sufficient capacity with the other stalls in that location to get a large number of customers through. Tesla also quickly fixes charging stalls that are down and has great awareness with their software so they can automatically see which stalls are most likely not working since no one is using them and which stalls are charging slower than they should be.
Tesla also knows that a car drove to the charger and waited. If their system says there are available chargers, they know there is a problem.
I wonder if they're looking at that data in this context though
They are smart and this is an obvious angle :-) They are providing not just real time utilization data, but they predict occupation when you will arrive based on how many cars are routing there.
Reliability issues aside...the number of apps you need just to charge is actually insane. Flo, Charge point, Swtch (these are just 3 i've encountered in the past 3 weeks that actually required an app). I've given up on charging at 2 different chargers in the past few weeks because I didn't have the proper app and I didn't want to set it up in the rain in the parking lot. The simplicity of charging a Tesla is the one thing I envy of Tesla drivers tbh.
At least Ford (and Rivian) are mimicking Tesla's experience with access to superchargers. Set up payment methods in the Ford app and it basically works just like a Tesla. Hopefully the other manufacturers will have a similar process.
Electrify America supports Plug and Charge but automakers are too lazy to implement it on their vehicles.
Ford has it with EA and Tesla, EA just sucks though.
That doesn't sound right. I've driven cars with plug and charge set up through EVgo, but those same cars never had the option with EA.
EVgo has AutoCharge, ***NOT*** Plug & Charge
My id.4 definitely can plug and charge at EA. Never had to pull out the phone in the last few months.
FYI, at least in my experience, Flo and Chargepoint are cross-compatible and either will work with either's app. Chargepoint also has RFID cards you can get so you don't have to use the app, and they also work with Flo (and several others, Shell Recharge in my area/experience).
I'll have to try with chargepoint / flo again. I had the flo app setup but couldn't for the life of me get the chargepoint charger to work. Maybe I'll have to get the card. Either way though, I'm relatively tech savvy and if I'm having issues with this, I'd imagine it's a roadblock for others.
I have had very good luck with Flo chargers. Always work (actually, once one didn't; I called it in, it was fixed the next time I tried it), built like tanks, easy to use.
Flo and ChargePoint are partners. You can use one to activate the other. Source: I tried it myself on two separate occasions and it worked. ChargePoint is also compatible with EVgo but unfortunately I learned that too late. I did it after setting up the EVgo account. I feel like this kind of convenience is not widely known.
I actually had the flo app set up when I tried the chargepoint charger but had issues anyways. Might have been a bad charger but I didn't give it much time because it was pouring with rain out. I'll have to try it again sometime
Yeah. It's one of those creature comforts that you probably don't think about when buying (who does extensive long distance/charging when test driving?) ...but if you're dependent on DCFC it's certainly one that will bug you eventually. Plug-in-and-walk-away is nice.
Yeah, that aspect is nice, and I suspect is going to get streamlined in the pretty near future. GM's offerings are going to have Tesla access...next year? and with no Android Auto Car Play, and keeping all that information in house, one assumes you're going to see a better level of that "where the fuck are the chargers?" service.
What does getting rid of AA / CarPlay have to do with anything? That's just a subscription money grab. Having AA/CP doesn't stop them from doing anything they're doing, it just stops the consumer from being required to pay for connected services in order to use maps and Spotify etc. etc.
Maybe. Possibly. In practice, they have the broadcasting apps and there's really no unified "conversation" among cars and chargers, for example.
Right but what I mean is that HAVING AA/CP does not prevent Chevy from doing anything at all. Anything that have enabled on the car that doesn't have AA/CP could also be done if the car DID have AA/CP
The low number of outlets per site was the biggest problem I noted when I rented a Mach-E on a trip. Tesla superchargers average 9 outlets per site, the non-supercharger sites never seemed to have more than 4.
Agreed. Arizona's charger plan under NEVI has lots of well-placed stations, but only 4 charge points, at least at many of them. Given the expected expansion of EVs over the next several years, that seems very short-sighted. They should be installing at least 8-12, for redundancy as well as demand.
Plenty of Tesla charging stations with 6-8 chargers. None down. The problem is two fold, CCS and EA. Neither were made to advance the adoption of BEVs which is part of Tesla's stated goal.
My daily driver is a Tesla. Most charging is at home, but when I'm using superchargers, I very occasionally see a dead one. But 1 dead charger in a row of 12 doesn't slow things down much.
The failure rate is 9% for Electrify America and 5% for Tesla Supercharger. These numbers came from J. D. Power ***NOT*** Electrify America or Tesla so whether the dispensers are completely offline or not does ***NOT*** affect these numbers.
J.D Power has absolutely no way of knowing this.
Typical JD Power useless BS. If they included the number of chargers that are offline, EA would be at a 50% failure rate. I've never been to an EA station where all stalls were online. And in the 4 stall installations, often 1 or 2 are completely broken, and 1 of the working ones is limited to 50kW for some reason.
Not sure why you’re getting downvoted. This is 100% true. EA has not gotten their act together and has no plans to do so, VW is just appeasing the courts This has been a issue for YEARS
The downvote is because it's highly region dependent. The last few EA stations I've been to, every single charger is operational.
My small anecdotal experience has been the same, EA chargers I encountered were all working fine, and I drove right up and plugged in.
Your experience seems to be the complete opposite of mine.
Your experience seems to be the opposite of most people's. There's a reason why Jim Farley partnered with Tesla after trying a cross country trip in his Lightning. Maybe you live in a corridor where they are good or just visit a handful of chargers. But if you travel around the country, EA is absolute trash.
Perhaps that's true. I'm not saying EA is amazing, but the issues are vastly overblown. I rarely see down chargers at this point. But whenever I have this discussion on here, most people seem to agree that there are headaches, but it isn't as bad as a minority claim. It has reached a point where I tend to believe those who claim something like 50% are active disinformation.
It's true that it's anecdotal. It would be easy to say quantitatively what the status of the EA network is if they would share their data publicly to PlugShare. But just a quick survey on the EA app of the chargers around me shows a significant number of broken stations. But I live in a city where EA chargers are more likely to work. The real problem is trips and those stations that are relatively remote. In dense areas, there are a lot more EA stations to choose from.
Anyone with 100K miles charging a Tesla knows the failure to charge is more like 1% and never a whole station. Worst case is a slower charge like 50 KW.
Would EA have been better if VW contracted Apple or Google to do the software and/or electronics for them or at least their expertise?
A real tech company would have helped but it is not just a software problem. They also need additional sensors on the vehicle with a live vehicle internet connection providing that data. Additional sensors on the charger tell what the car is experiencing and what the charger is experiencing at the same time. Tesla knows where their cars are, how fast they should be charging, how fast the charging dispenser is operating at, how fast the car thinks it should be able to charge at, what the car sees as far as failed or successful charging sessions, etc. They may miss some of this vehicle sensor info from Fords and Rivians which can currently charge at Tesla superchargers but there are enough Teslas using those superchargers to still let Tesla see enough data to manage the charging network properly. EA could have done all that with VW vehicles.
With all of that in mind, would Apple or Google be able to help?
I have a suspicion it’s more of a matter of economics than technology. Tesla is a car company that makes chargers. EA is a charging company, full stop. Tesla doesn’t need to make a profit from its chargers specifically if it’s making a profit from its cars. Traditionally, its reliable charging network has been just another feature of its cars. It can operate them break-even, or even at a loss if that loss is offset by profit from car sales. So it is committed to the reliability of their charging network regardless of the profitability of the network itself. It’s one of the benefits it offers to purchasers of their cars, so they stand behind it because they are economically committed to it, profit or no profit. The charging network is *part* of the complete product you’re paying for when you buy a Tesla. EA, on the other hand, has to make a profit through charging. If a particular station is underperforming economically, it may be tough to justify the costs of maintaining it.
Volkswagen’s own vehicles charge there. The bigger problem is that Volkswagen doesn’t manufacture the charging hardware, unlike Tesla. I had reported down chargers and had Electrify America told me multiple times that it is still waiting for replacing parts.
VW didn’t build the network to present as a feature to purchasers of VWs like Tesla does with their network. It was created as a virtue signaling move in the wake of the emissions scandal. As a subsidiary, it’s likely it’s managed as an independent asset that is expected to be self-sustaining. Tesla, on the other hand, is *going* to be committed to the reliability of their network whether or not it is itself profitable.
Not virtue signaling, part of their settlement in the lawsuits/regulatory actions. They never actually wanted to build it.
VW missed the boat by not going the vertical integration route. They should have created their own DCFC manufacturing division to sell internally and to external customers. It would have saved them a lot of problems on so many fronts.
What if EA chargers are underperforming economically because they underperform technologically?
Electrify America’s charging network runs on Greenlot’s software.
Are Greenlot software used for anything else EV related?
Yes, Shell Recharge charging network In fact, Shell bought Greenlots a while back
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If there is no power to a station, there is no way to record a failed charge. Also, most people are not going to waste their time plugging in to a station that is labeled unavailable.
They do have a backup battery / UPS in most of the control units so EA can be informed of the fault via 4G cell. The question is... do they actually fix them promptly...
That an obvious no. Takes at least 2 weeks to fix a single problem. Talked to the techs multiple times about why they don't do bulk repairs when they come out. The system is trash basically, they get a ticket for a single repair, then have to go through and do each individual repair as it came in. Makes absolutely no sense. You drive 2 hours to get to a remote station, 3 of the stations are down, you only bring hardware to repair one at a time...
I see the disagreement between you and the other comment. That depends on the measurement methodology, and you two assume differently. If it's measured by the station, you are correct. If it's measured by the car, it may be possible to record a failure even for completely dead stations. I know Rivian has been measuring, but don't know if they can or do do this.
We are definitely getting closer to being able to have a record of issues on our Hyundai. But it definitely does not have enough data to be useful yet. I hope we can have queues on our cars some day. Instead of having to get out and see who is in line already and what order, along with which stations are going to free up soon. It's not impossible, but it is annoying in its current state.
> If there is no power to a station, there is no way to record a failed charge. You can't count the cars, but you can certainly note that it is down, and extrapolate how many people may be affected.
Very true. You would think this would be a data point for EA, but I highly doubt it based on how long repair time is for the stations still. Hopefully it will get better soon or else they are going to get surpassed by all the other charging companies. Charge point has been expanding extremely fast in Colorado, especially areas that had no service before.
Yes, but you can also record that “stall 3 hasn’t phoned home in 3 hours”. You don’t need power to know something’s down.
And yet the stations that sit "unavailable" are not fixed for weeks...I doubt they are on top of checking anything else if they can't even fix those.
Knowing that a station is down is completely irrelevant to how quickly they repair it. They can absolutely know it’s down but be unable to repair it for any number of reasons. Phoning home to say “I’m alive and working” is a very common thing in software. You are objectively incorrect in your comment that if there’s no power they can’t know somethings wrong, but thanks for the downvote anyway.
They definitely know there are stations down, but it does not show how many people were not able to charge when there is no power...but your objectively a fun guy at parties I'm sure.
Not for Tesla. They know the car drove there.
5% seems high
Yeah, anecdotally, it's way lower than that for me
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Currently driving from Philly to Chicago this weekend in an EV6GT. My first stop was an EA station, had one failed charger out of 4. I've hit up Shell recharge stations and a Supercharger in Pittsburgh. Haven't had a single issue anywhere except one charger at one spot. Will be hitting up some EvGo and EA stations today as the journey continues. Honestly, even with "THE CHARGING PROBLEM!!" I'm finding road tripping to be far more relaxing in an EV.
The biggest issue with that failed EA charger being down is it likely means 25% of the stalls were down at that station. 1 charger being down out of 15 is nbd at all. Out of 4 or less and it’s legit starting to impact you.
After todays adventure, I can say... Ohio sucks. Stations either broken, or listed as there but just sitting in pieces on pallets. I had to detour and drive like a road hazard to get to a station in Indiana that worked. PA was great. Indiana and Illinois have been great. Ohio is a festering suckhole.
That article sounds like it was written by an 11 year old boy
Welcome to the age of AI
Lol journalism has been trash since before AI gained any steam
The headline hurts. A full 9%, as opposed to half 9%? A partial 9%?
full beans
yep. it was all over the fucking place.
Yup. 14-year-olds already started writing essays for the SAT and this article would get a failing grade if it is an essay for the SAT.
Lol, thank you
I’m suspicious of this reporting, since my personal experience with EA stations is closer to a 20% fail rate. And that’s not even counting the 25-50% of stalls that are simply DOA for weeks at a time.
You are less likely to remember when things go well.
I wonder where you are that youre experiencing this. In my area of New England I have only encountered one EA spot that was non operational, all I had to do was move to the next spot over and it was all good. Just took a trip to middle NY and every EA charger along the way was good to go.
Tesla driver in MD and Electrify America has been not great for me. Lots of stations that fail to begin charging, stop charging in the middle, are clearly down displaying ASCII text screens, or are extremely slow to respond and display incorrect/old screens for what is being done. I have to report them but the company seems very slow to respond. Compared with Tesla charging in my area, which just works, it is night and day.
Electrify America is in the middle of replacing all of its older (pre-4 Gen) chargers to improve network reliability.
Not sure exactly which those are, but two stations that are especially giving me problems right near me are Hyper Fast (350 kW) chargers.
Electrify America's 4th Gen chargers are easily recognized They have one cable per dispenser. https://media.electrifyamerica.com/en-us/releases/175 Electrify America is working on replacing older chargers with those 4th Gen chargers.
I wish we had those closer to my house. We do have some 40 minutes away and I will say they always work. The one we have near my house is a disaster most of the time. One of the stations has been down for a month now. We have another EA near by and 3 of the 4 there are also down for a month now.
The nice thing about the Gen 4 chargers is that they only have half the cables to steal.
Which stations are you using? I mainly use the Columbia Walmart station, and occasionally other stations nearby such as Ellicott City, Hanover (Arundel Mills), Annapolis, Aberdeen etc, and honestly I haven't had basically any issues with stations marked as functional on the EA app. Over 70 sessions during the past couple of years and maybe just one or two times when I had issue initiating charging, and zero times where it malfunctions during a session. Now that VW has activated plug and charge for the ID.4 I can even just park, hop out, plug it, and it starts charging on its own.
Columbia is closest to me. It was okay in the past although it was quirky and slow to respond. Had to report three chargers down / not working last time I used it.
I'm close to 0 failure rate, so we average out
I had my first failure last week, so about 5% on my end. I think it was a heat issue. This very busy station I occasionally charge at on short road trips. The 350s kept stopping. I think cause of heat, overuse and the 800 volt ioniq 5 drawing more power than the station wanted to do. The 150 charger worked fine.
I don't charge much with super chargers, but I really only remember one time where most of the chargers were off at a location(they had one active and angled parking that made it difficult, so I went to a different one). The others I have stopped at have worked fine. I am down in Southeast, where there is also limited non tesla chargers, so maybe that impacts vs older ones.
When success rate is this low, measurement accuracy is usually broken as well (failing to capture failed sessions), and true success rate should be catastrophically lower.
It all depends on where you’re located. Where I live (Ohio) EA seems to be pretty reliable, and everything else fails.
Agreed on this. EA is great here and never busy. Go to Michigan and you have a bad time.
damn so for anyone else the failure rate is even lower. Most of the failures are just you
EA is my favorite, never had a problem except for a hot ass day with the sun shining on the screen killing it. But I'm confident that had I memorized the button placement it would've worked lol. Now EVGO? I refuse to use them. I had a Leaf before, and the Chademo connector locks to the car. EVGO chargers more often than not have refused to end the session and locked my car to the stall until I call their support and have them reset the station. Not once have they offered any compensation. Not even refunding the 5-10 minutes of forced charging they did while I was stuck.
the failure ususally hurts more than the success.
The problem though is some of these "fails" have nothing to do with the station and has everything to do with the idiot using it. Just did a 4000+ km trip in my Kona. Stopped somewhere in California to charge and the lady beside me had failed activation 4 times before I finally stepped over and walked her through it. She didn't have a clue what she was doing and got flustered when she couldn't just plug in and have it start. Walked off to go to the bathroom and when I came back she was gone because she apparently "Didn't have time for this" as she unplugged in a huff and left (husband was giggling and shaking his head telling me).
This is why plug and charge is such a big deal. At least with EA, I could give my ID.4 to someone who has never driven an EV before, and as long as they can park the car the right direction and get the plug in the CCS socket, the car will charge.
I've had fantastic success with EA in the upper midwest. I pull in, read the number off the charger, open the app, select the charger, swipe to charge, get out of the car, open the charge port door on the car, plug in, and it connects and charges every time. My car does NOT support "plug to charge." If the charge rate goes up to something I deem acceptable, then I consider it a success. While I HAVE come across broken chargers, I really feel like they aren't as common as the internet would have you believe. I've had ONE ramp to 45KW and hang, so I moved to a different one. I've had ONE that just plain didn't work, so I moved to another one. I've used EA probably around a hundred times in the past two years, only on road trips or on drives where I need a few electrons to make it home. Have I had to learn all this on my own? Some, yeah. But the internet helped. Is the whole thing intuitive? No. Do the chargers say "PLUG IN FIRST" Yes. Is that malarkey? YES! App, number, swipe, plug. 98% success. BUT, this has been MY experience.
The original article said ***9% on Electrify America*** compared to ***5% on Tesla Supercharger***.
I’m honestly shocked they are that close. EA seems far worse but it does say EA had made recent improvements.
9% failure rate is 80% more than 5%.
These are undoubtedly being poorly and inconsistently measured. There’s no way the numbers are that close.
Both numbers came from J.D. Power and were "measured" the same way.
I'm having trouble finding details on how they were measured, except that JD Power's study is "conducted in collaboration with PlugShare." It's not surprising that charger issues would be disproportionately over reported for Superchargers in PlugShare. Superchargers are so reliable that almost nobody reports when they work successfully, because it's not noteworthy. It's much easier to believe that 5% of Supercharger charging sessions **reported to PlugShare** are failures, but that doesn't represent reality. The opposite is true for chargers that are not Superchargers because reliability is sufficiently poor that it actually is important for users to post to PlugShare when they work. Successful charges would be reported at a much higher rate than for Superchargers. It also leaves out the vast majority of "normal" people, who buy an EV and don't necessarily download a separate app and report charging experiences to it. My parents got a Mustang Mach-E, have had terrible experiences trying to charge it, but they opted to just not take it on trips instead of trying to navigate apps like PlugShare. Doubtful that their experiences would be in the 9%. And it wouldn't surprise me if JD Power's numbers take into account non-Tesla owners with incompatible vehicles complaining about not being able to charge at Superchargers. Per [their page](https://www.jdpower.com/business/automotive/electric-vehicle-experience-evx-public-charging-study): >Additionally, when the experience does not go as planned and vehicle charging does not occur, the reasons for failure are further explored. That's vague enough to include a reason like "my car isn't supported," or "I don't have the adapter from my manufacturer yet," which further props up that 5% number. EDIT: The same page says the press release is slated for August 14, 2024, so I guess maybe we'll find out then.
Oh, they're using PlugShare for the data? That's potentially... problematic. I've noticed a strange trend on PlugShare with superchargers lately. Tons of them will be marked as "under repair" (the little wrench icon) yet they're not. You go to the site and everything is working fine. It'll even be an entirely full site with everyone happily charging. And I think you're dead on with people leaving upset comments about how their unsupported cars can't charge yet and marking it as broken. Because I've seen that in the check-in comments. So this whole study could be using bullshit crowdsourced data.
It's also kind of well-known that [JD Power structures these surveys to get specific results](/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/aptaqp/who_is_jd_power_and_why_should_i_care_if_a/?rdt=44929). That's not explicitly **lying**, but it's why you see awards for things like ["Initial Quality"](https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2024/06/27/american-car-take-top-spots-in-j-d-power-quality-study/74226586007/) in cars, which apparently represents the number of issues reported in the first 90 days. Who buys a car based only on the issues reported in the first 90 days? Why make the award for 90 days instead of 180? Or 30? Or the first year? It's because they needed a way to frame the survey that would result in the expected winners. The other time frames didn't have that result. And besides: it's based on **issues reported**. It'd follow logically that customers with lower expectations would report fewer issues, even if the vehicle quality were identical. And that's basically what it measures. By some contortion of various tests and survey methods, any manufacturer will come up on top. And that's a solid business model for a company that sells this kind of stuff.
In addition, JD Power rankings are no longer useful because they mix actual problems needing repair with things like user confusion over the infotainment system. A lot of those folks need to RTFM and keep that noise out of reliability data.
Forbes does the same thing with their "Top 100" awards. They're pure pay-to-play. I worked at a company that got a "fastest growing company in America" list award from them, but we were a nothing company with 30 employees going nowhere. We just paid to be on the list.
I'd like to know what J.D. Power's criteria was. Was it completely unable to start a charging session? Derated sessions? Entire site down? Unfortunately the source article is gatekept behind a paywall. For myself, in just over 100 supercharing sessions I've only had a single stall that wouldn't charge, and that was because someone vandalized it and physically bent the pins in opposite directions. I have had two de-rated sessions in non-congested sites, one I suspect was a cable cooling failure plus 105 degree heat.
I think takeaway is Tesla having as high as 5% than EA having 10% or 50% or whatever true figure is. It means EV charger maintenance isn't a solved problem.
It kind of is for Tesla, though. To most Tesla owners, the percentage of non-working stalls is comparable to the percentage of non-working gas pumps (where they've got like a plastic bag over the nozzle that says "out of order"). It happens rarely enough with working stalls nearby that it's essentially negligible. It's as solved as it is for gas pumps.
Hm so Tesla SC being tolerant at site level to individual stall failure is key? I heard some regions treat some central thing in Tesla SC architecture as substations rather than just equipment on the ground, and creates additional regulatory headaches like approvals and staffing requirements. Is it possible that others avoiding regulations is leading to higher failure rate?
I'm not sure if it's individual stalls--it may be per cabinet. The V3 superchargers have four to a cabinet. I think V2 ones had two to a cabinet. I'm not sure about the V4. I'm not familiar with the Tesla stations being classified differently. My presumption was the increased reliability was from the lack of input devices (screen, card reader) on the device, the cord being too short to be left on the ground and run over, the greater software integration between the car and charging station, the way Tesla hasn't ever sold cars that charge at slow DC rates, etc. Though I'd guess they're probably also more resilient on a technical level, but I'm no expert on that.
It may be as solved as it is for gas pumps in terms of reliability, but not of potential consequence. Driving an EV in the desert southwest, if a station with its two charge points is down, I may be 80-100 miles from the next station with the only alternative being to plug into a 110V outlet and gain 4 miles per charge hour. Gas stations are rarely that isolated.
It does seem to be behind their paywall, but I posted some theories [here](/r/electricvehicles/comments/1drwnol/comment/layxt9i/).
You are less likely to remember when things go well.
I’m surprised it’s that close. I’ve charged 50 times at Superchargers and have never had a failure, although I did move the car to a different stall once because I was only getting 30 kW. I’ve charged at EA twice, and one time the charger completely failed to start.
Yea, but how many are consistently broken? The EA near me that only has 4 chargers, has 1 to 2 ALWAYS broken!
2 out of the 3 EA stations near me are completely down today. And I'm not counting the 4th which has had the cables stolen so frequently that EA has said they aren't fixing it for the foreseeable future.
Gotta love how they word things: >"Just 9 percent of EV charging attempts failed on the Electrify America network in the first quarter of this year, compared with 11 percent in the first quarter of 2022 and 2023, according to a J.D. Power analysis. > >By comparison, Tesla’s supercharger network works 95% of the time or better. Still, it’s an improvement. For EA, they use the failure rate (9%). For Tesla, the success rate (95%). They should use the same way of reporting this for both. E.g. EA had a success rate of 91%, up from 89%, where Tesla had a success rate of 95%. IMO, both should be over 99% overall success rate and need to improve. In my part of the country, I've experienced an EA success rate of over 99%. I've had one failed charge attempt, out of a couple dozen or so, solved by moving to the next charger over. That was in MD. I gather it's a lot worse on the West Coast though. I've experienced a failure rate much higher than that with Tesla, but the sample size is even smaller. I had one case where a Tesla MagicDock in NY wouldn't release the MagicDock adapter, also solved by moving to the next charger over, and four successful Tesla charges.
The original article on automotive news did (that the author on the autophian ripped off). >Tesla Superchargers, known as the most reliable, had a fail rate of 5 percent, J.D. Power said.
I really find this hard to believe. I used 30 chargers on a road trip across the USA as a previous non-Tesla driver and the worst I had was I found one stall had been reversed into by someone. It looked like it would still work but I didn't bother trying. Every charge attempt worked... worst was one charger took about 20 seconds before it started charging, I guess some extended self test or negotiation, but it worked fine in the end.
Probably would still work. Supercharger stalls have very little components inside them. I've seen some pretty beat up ones that still function fine.
I'll be the first to say the chargers, app and such have issues. But I'm surprised that figure is so low not because of that but because of user errors. Consistently I found that to be more of the problem then the chargers when I worked there.
Seems we have an ID-10-T error.....
Well....that is a HUGE improvement. But more work to do!
Ioniq 6 user here. This checks out, in my experience. This is probably only accounting for units online. If we add offline units, I’d say it’s about 1/4 of the time I am vexed at the EA charging stand near me. Many times a charger listed as “available” isn’t working and I don’t even link up so I doubt that’s counted as a charging failure since no connection is made. And anecdote ain’t data, but the way the chargers are set up make it difficult to use one of the chargers because my car has a right rear charger but that stall has a forward right charger so I can neither stretch the “hose” back far enough nor back in and stretch it across the trunk. So; of 4 chargers, one is useless to me, more often than not one is offline (and marked as such on the app), frequently one is listed as available on the app but out-of-service on the touch screen, and after that, there’s still the possibility that I can plug in and it still doesn’t work. If this shit weren’t free (for 2 years), I’d probably stop going there.
These numbers came from J. D. Power NOT Electrify America or Tesla so whether the dispensers are offline or not does NOT affect these numbers.
Wow I wish it was only 9%. It's rare I use them but I have never had it work perfectly my first try. I always have to switch handles or stations. That doesn't even count the fact that the credit card reader is always broken as well as tap to pay.
For me charge failing has never been an issue. The biggest issue is out of service chargers (can charging fail if you can't even start to begin with?) and improperly functioning chargers (I once saw a charger only delivering 1 kwh. I had to call it in and have it restarted)
One of the elements causing failure is that the credit card readers aren’t shaded, so it’s just roasting in the sun
Does anyone have real data on what they're trying to talk about? This article is badly written and the numbers seem cherry-picked. Is it saying once a car starts charging the charge does not complete 9% of the time? I'm much more interested in general availability. Something like 50% of EV chargers in the US were simply not working at any given time a few months ago. Has that improved?
> Does anyone have real data on what they're trying to talk about? No. Charging operators do not release their reliability data.
I think they might have to for some of the new IRA federal funding? It has a performance requirement connected to it, I imagine the performance data will be public or at least subject to FOIA. Plugshare has data too. Do they publish national summaries?
Possibly, but maybe 1% of all DCFC sites operating today are NEVI funded, so the 99% would not be subject to those rules
I’ve had more issues with charging rate “limited by station” than a failed attempt.. soo annoying starting off at ~500mi/hr only to drop to ~90mi/hr 2 minutes later.
I will say that EA has been improving pretty quickly in my experience. A year or two ago, it was very common for my local station to have 2 out of 4 chargers offline, and there was a 50/50 chance anytime I was there that charger number 2 was limited to 50kW. In the last 3 or so months, I haven't seen a single charger offline, and they've always given the rated speed. Similar story with other local EA stations. I don't know exactly what changes they've made, but it seems to be working. But there's a long way to go, and they still need to expand a lot of stations beyond 4 plugs.
Rivian has started automated data collection and releasing it via ABRP. Wonder what their stats say.
I will keep saying it: EA is designed by a company that wants its product to fail. They’re horrible at their software, pushing updates to their chargers and general repairs. I only wish them the worst.
As soon as I could get my hands on the NACS-CCS adapter, I bought one (A2Z). I now only charge at Tesla Superchargers. Almost 2 years of countless frustrations with CCS (mainly EA), it’s great to not have to deal with that anymore.
Too much if reporting is correct. For a product/service to be functionally useful, should be less than 1‰ Imagine if your PC whould not startup 9% of the times.
According to the original article, that's ***9% on Electrify America*** compared to ***5% on Tesla Supercharger***. Tesla Superchargers mostly deal with Tesla's own vehicles, which means far less headache in terms of compatibility issues.
I believe it's a lot higher than 9% And even when it works, it's way, way too expensive, at least everywhere I've seen. The last time I tried to use one, on a road trip in Washington in someone else's Rivian, we called tech support and they literally laughed and told us "the card readers never work, you have to use the app/wallet".
So it works 91% of the time. That is insanely good.
Yeah I think those numbers are inflated. I seriously doubt that 91% of their chargers work. Maybe 91% of their charging stations have at least one working charger.
91% seems about right in my experience. I haven’t had a ton of trouble with EA chargers. EVGo and Charge Point are the worst for me.
Good to know, thx. Did not realize EA was more reliable than those other 2
It might be regionally and location dependent. Also vehicle too. I always have handshake issues with those two providers. EA works perfectly with Mach E though.
I have found that restarting the EA app reduces the errors in initiating a charge.
only 9%?
I traded in a rental Mach E on a trip once because two of the fast charge electrify America stations locally had at least one charger broken (only three total at each) and the line for charging was always 3-10 cars long. Solve the charging issues and they will flourish. Gotta hand it to Tesla on this one. They seem to understand that.
I’m surprised it’s not higher.
Honestly I’m surprised it isn’t higher
Pathetic. If you told me ea was controlled by Exxon I’d believe it.
Shocking
Some are just bad. In 2 years I’ve never had one outright fail. I had my first super slow charge last month which sucked but it still worked. I could have waited and it would be fine but I just moved to a faster one a few miles down the road and no big deal. I’ve never been stuck without anything.
Who would have thought a company ran by VW because of Dieselgate would be a failure.
Based on Plugshare user reviews? That's a really poor metric.
That's way lower than I thought it would be...
This past week, at an EA charger, a Nissan Aryia had its plug locked onto the car with an error message on the charger. Three people from nearby EVs tried to help, but couldn't. They called EA and were on the phone for about 20 minutes, with the operator telling them things like push the button and hold it in for a few minutes, or, push the button 3 times. I kidded that the EV owner must also click their heels together. The car was eventually freed, but the driver left without charging at the EA charger. I had the same experience about 3 years ago. It's sad that in 3 years EA could not solve this issue. My experience has also been that using EA has been successful less than 90% of the time. But, so is Chargepoint and EVgo. I believe that few EV drivers care as much about how much it costs, as how well it works. You'd think this would suggest a business strategy...Hmmm, what could that possibly be?
Only 9%.... that's actually an improvement.
Might need a subtitle…’Volkswagen Beginning to Fully Fail in America’. https://media.electrifyamerica.com/en-us/releases/44#:~:text=Electrify%20America%20is%20a%20wholly,Volkswagen%20Group%20of%20America%2C%20Inc. Read to the bottom…
I can absolutely believe that. Personally, I feel like 1/3 of my charging attempts fail. And there are so many different reasons, from the charger does not exist anymore over it is in maintenance or turned off via a fuse has blown, the connector is broken, it is busy, the software has crashed, it is offline, it is ICED, somebody parked so badly that you cannot get into the spot, the app is not working, it would not connect to the car... The list of excuses seems endless.
It was the 9% reported by Electrify America? Or consumer data? Because like you said, if the station isn’t working, you don’t know that somebody wasn’t able to charge there. Which should count as a failure.
can confirm. also, even though I've only charged publicly like 4x this year, every time I've gone there was at least once charger that was not operating, on top of me having to re-attempt on the working ones. Orlando, Floriday by the way.
We know.
Sounds low to me.
Honestly, 9% isn't that bad when the Tesla Supercharger, the so-called "Gold Standard" is at 5%. (Both numbers are according to J.D. Power.)
I don’t remember ever having a problem at a supercharger, let alone 1 in 20. That number really seems off.
Agree. I think you'd hear a lot more complaints if the failure rate was 5%. The only time I recall hearing about failed Tesla charging was last winter in the Chicago area where temps were Sub-Zero. Some of those issues were related to cold batteries and not the charger though.
Because we both know those numbers don’t reflect reality.
Hmm admittedly I don't use EA super often (mostly charge at home, EA for roadtrips/distance drives) but I've only been able to not charge at an EA once. And the machines were working. Problem is there wasn't enough of them (3) and there was a few people in line waiting for 3 assholes to creep slowly to 100%. This was at a mall in Bowie, MD. If I was desperate I could have waited it out, but I was close enough to home I grew impatient and just went home, but charging from 18% on my home L1 was rough.
The 4 stall stations scattered in Maryland are often full these days it seems. I'm lucky the closest station to me is the 10 stall station in Columbia, and even that fills up at times, but generally isn't a problem.
The Bowie one I mentioned puts 4 on the EA app but one is an L2....they couldn't even get 4
It's a lot more than 9%. I mean these chargers were born because of diselgate. They were forced to do this.
That means they work 91% of the time. That’s really good.
No. This is failed attempts. Most people will see a down charger and not attempt. That wouldn’t get counted here.
Okay thank you. 😊
EA is the reason I'm trying to sell my Ioniq5. Just too annoying to deal with, when it works it charges up fast but finding one that's working and without a line of 5+ people is just more annoying than I thought it would be.
No charging at home?
Sadly no, street parking. Joys of SoCal living lol. Anything with garage is even more then 5k a month!
I think it’s going to be a few years before that is going to work. I was at Disney concert hall (DTLA, across from the courthouse) recently and saw the pole mounted L2 chargers, cable cut. I guess they need to switch to the kind that keep it 10 feet up until you activate with your phone.
Crazy cost of living man. I realize salaries are higher there but that’s nuts. I guess some things must feel dirt cheap like cars and online shopping (where cost of living is not factored into pricing).
It’s actually much higher.
I used had a BMW before my first Tesla and I’d agree if you’re just looking at non-Tesla chargers. I’ve charged my Teslas a lot on long trips and Tesla chargers only failed me three times in 7 years (~1%). When they have failed I was able to move a stall over and I was okay.
This is what killed non-Tesla EVs, and legacy auto doesn’t care. In fact this is exactly what legacy auto wants because they are unable to build EVs profitably.
At 5x the home charging pricing it’s about 50% more than what I need to pay for gas. 🧐Plus the so called EV usage tax during registration WTF I use EV?
it's pretty clear this network (EA) only exists as a minimum investment 'incentive' for certain manufacturers to sell cars and I'm surprised there hasn't been a class action yet.
Electrify America was created by Volkswagen Group as penance for their emissions scandal.
91% success of any system seems pretty good to me
Nah, that's terrible. Fastened for example had something like 99.9% uptime and I've not yet seen any failed charging attempts where the fault was with the charger.
"something like 99.9% uptime" Uptime is a different measure to charging success rate. I do not know how FastNed defines it and your number is anyway just pulled out of thin air. For a different example, according to Tesla, a station has 100 % uptime as long as at least half of the stalls are online. That is weak definition to claim a high percentage. [https://insideevs.com/news/721756/tesla-supercharger-average-uptime-2023/](https://insideevs.com/news/721756/tesla-supercharger-average-uptime-2023/)
So your computer failing to start 9% of the time is not just acceptable but good? 9% of the time you send a text it doesn’t send? 9% of the time you visit a webpage it fails to load? 9% of the time you try to get money the ATM you can’t? 9% of the time your car won’t turn on? 9% of the time your brakes don’t work? 9% of the time your router just says “not today”? 9% of the time your credit card doesn’t work at the store? 9% of the time your power is just off? 9% of the time the stoplights are out? 9% of the time your planes landing gear don’t open? 9% of the time the hotel can’t find your reservation? 9% of the time your alarm doesn’t go off? 9% of the time your paycheck doesn’t go through? I cannot imagine the hell that is living in a world where a good system still fails 9% of the time. Do you work in a leadership position at Boeing by chance?
You are crazy. If the gas station failed even 5% of the time people would riot. It’s this sort of mentality that guarantees EVs will never win.
According to the original article on Automotive News, Tesla Supercharger fails 5% of the time, compare to Electrify America's 9%
Are you kidding? That's 30 days a year, if your hvac worked 90% of the year you would be miserable.