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How reliable are EV chargers? (lemm.ee)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
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New EV owner here. We charge at home so I don’t need to use them, but stores nearby have chargers. I tried them to see how they work. They are often broken.

One store has a Volta charger (free!). It worked great the first time; the next time I went it was broken.

Walmart has an Electrify America fast charger. The first time I went, 1 of 3 was not working. The next time I went, 1 of 3 was not working, but it was a different one.

Was I unlucky, or are these charging networks unreliable? Has it been getting better or worse over time?

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[–] 8 points 2 years ago (1 child)

People don't understand this at all!!

They balk at the range but when I ask how often they drive a full tank in a day they kind of give a blank star

Don't get an EV if you can't home charge. Don't get an EV if you drive 400 miles a day. Don't get an EV if you take cross country road trips 5x a year.

Other than those scenarios, you're going to come out ahead.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Don’t get an EV if you take cross country road trips 5x a year.

    I'm an EV owner that takes at least that many 5000+ mile road trips a year with very very little issues. I've never once been stranded due to charging problems. I also however used my brain and bought the right car for the job, and right now that is a Tesla. Hopefully in a couple years once NACS becomes more mainstream I can move to another option.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    It's absolutely doable, however, some (most? IDK) people aren't down for making so many 30-60 minute stops.

    I've done it in mine as well because I don't mind... but it's definitely not for everyone.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago

    What car do you drive where charging stops are that long? My average Supercharging session in my base Model 3 is 9 minutes. That's barely enough time to go pee and walk my dog.

    I strongly prefer road-tripping my EV because the natural breaks mean I arrive more refreshed and less sore.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    30-60 minute stops

    I literally just drove 2,077.37 miles from Central CA to Chicago over the last 3 days for another one of those trips, and the longest stop out of any of them according to TeslaFi was 26 minutes and that was only once, for a really long stretch in Wyoming that doesn't have any chargers on it yet. Every other one was under 20 minutes, with most of them being around 10-15. The entire trip took 23 supercharging stops and added 4 hours and 23 minutes to the overall trip. That was with me running balls-out with autopilot set to 85 for as much of the trip as I could possibly do (e.g. slowing down for construction, etc), so my efficiency was only 65.66% which is pretty bad for my car.

    I don't know what you're doing, but you're absolutely doing it wrong if you're spending 30 to 60 minutes to charge every time.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    As a tesla owner for several years, I find this hard to believe. 15 minutes at a 250 kw charger doesn't even get you 50%. Even if what you say is accurate, stopping 23 times is extremely annoying. When I dive like that I much prefer to just go straight through with minimal stops rather than have to pull over every hour

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    As a tesla owner for several years, I find this hard to believe. 15 minutes at a 250 kw charger doesn’t even get you 50%.

    I can go buy a surgery robot but that doesn't mean I know how to use it. Just because you own a Tesla doesn't mean you know how to road trip it effectively, or have one that can do what I literally just did. For example, an early Model S or X can only charge at 120KW no matter what charger you plug it into, ergo no, it can't do this. But any long range or performance model 3 or Y certainly can.

    Part of the reason there's so many stops (which I prefer and so do my wife and daughter, for that matter), is that if you keep the battery's charge level between 10 and 50% from hop to hop, you end up spending much less time at chargers in general because you're always charging at peak or very close to it. Sitting at a charger waiting for that last 10% at like 75kw from 70% - 80% is MUCH slower than hopping on down the road and charging at near peak at the next charger.

    It works, I know for a fact it works, and I brought the receipts! Here's a few examples from my trip:

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