Watching a lot of YouTube EV content, non-Tesla charging infrastructure is a
sad joke. Kyle Connor of "Out of Spec Motors" has been reporting on CCS
charging, including Electrify America, and it's not a pretty picture. It's not
uncommon for an EA charging station with four units to have three that are
inoperable. For WEEKS. It's worse in winter, when their choice of hardware
can't cope with low temperatures. The "All Electric Family", out in Nebraska,
had to be towed on at least one occasion due to inoperable CCS chargers
(including EA). There are numerous accounts of people having to stay at a hotel
as a result of being unable to charge on non-Tesla hardware.I don't know what
people expected from EA, an entity born of the Dieselgate scandal and VW's lies
-- they cobbled together equipment that wasn't designed to be used in vehicle
charging, wasn't intended for outdoor use with wide temperature variations,
didn't set up adequate maintenance schedules and called it a day.Ford seems to
have effectively called it quits with CCS after CEO Jim Farley experienced
some of this on an EV trip with his family (and I'm sure, outcry from customers
who have to deal with this fiasco). They're switching to Tesla's NACS solution
-- so much easier to use (the charging plug is a fraction of the size and
slides into the port with zero effort) and vastly more reliable -- in 5 years
of owning our Model 3, I think I've only seen TWO chargers out of order in
hundreds of SuperCharger visits.Ford is only the first domino to fall, I think.
Other manufacturers will (if they're smart) undoubtedly decide to go with the
solution that costs them less money and delivers better customer experience.As
we all know, 99% of day-to-day charging is done at home and DC fast charging is
primarily for road trips. But when you take a trip, the charging has to be
there -- enough locations and enough FUNCTIONAL chargers per location -- to
make it practical.If I didn't drive a Tesla, a road trip would be a
miserable exercise in "Range Anxiety" -- something my wife and I actually
joke about on road trips, considering our first EV had less than 50 miles of
range (just 17% of our Model 3's range) and no fast charging.-TomSent from my
Verizon, Samsung Galaxy smartphone
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