FYI Buttonwillow station is dead/offline

[kemxns]

Apparently went offline in chunks sometime during the 7-10pm hours Nov 26… yeah the dreaded Thanksgiving trek through Cali. Instead I waited 2.5 hours at an EA.

unfortunately the Rivian app had me routed to this charger only to arrive with it dead. Obvious feature request: differentiate between “0/9 chargers because it’s dead” and “0/9 chargers because it’s full, just wait in line”

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[defcon888]

dang....that sucks. Was the 2.5-hour wait in Kettleman City?. We were down in that area back in September and buttonwillow wasn't up and running yet. On the way down Kettleman City had no one there....then again, it was 5:00am on a Wednesday morning. On the way back on a Sunday around 2:00pm, all 10 stations were filled....I only had to wait about 5 mins. for a vehicle (ironically a R1T) to leave. Of the 10 stations, 5 were Rivians (4 R1T's and 1 R1S).

 

[kemxns]

Yup, Kettleman city. 4 of the 10 were down but the that’s only part of the blame for the wait (just plain traffic is a huge part). When I rolled in there were 18-24 cars in line (not counting the charging). I also drove by Harris Ranch and Curry (or whatever it’s called) and they all had similar lines.

part of the problem is people wanting to charge to 100%, which meaningfully dings the “total energy delivery rate per station” but I can’t blame folks who are calculating their needs to a final destination. The bulk of the “problem” is just lots of EVs (yey!).

Related: the obvious “solution” from my current perspective is to get that Tesla adapter in market asap. Everywhere I went there were empty supercharging stations. To my casual eye there was enough capacity to handle all other queued EVs without saturating Tesla stations, too, so hopefully that doesn’t screw them.

 

[HighVoltOverland]

Not that it helps much, but I spent this year Thanksgiving camping on the mid Coast.
No lines or outages along PCH/101

Maybe next time convince family to have a beach holiday!

 

[Chewy734]

The Barstow RAN went down on 11/24 afternoon as well. The power went out, and none of the chargers successfully rebooted. After calling Rivian and reporting it, they said they couldn’t even remotely reboot the machines because the communication was down. So, they escalated the issue and about an hour later the chargers finally came back up one-by-one.

On the plus side, I was able to get ~60 kWh for free because I was charging when it went down. But, there were several unhappy Vegas to LA Rivian customers waiting for it to come back up.

 

[seatosummit]

I used the Kettleman EA station on the Sunday before Thanksgiving, followed by the Manteca RAN and the Sac RAN before arriving in Tahoe. All of the stops were problem free.

I came home (Santa Barbara) on Sunday (two days ago) intending to follow the same route. Looking at the EA station in Kettleman, I elected to do a deeper charge at Manteca and made it to Buttonwillow where I had been keeping an eye on charger status.

I noticed that the availability fluctuated between 0 and 2 chargers available. I did not expect to arrive with three of the nine completely unavailable. Clearly there was some issue with the charger cabinet that fed that particular collection of three dispensers.

Fortunately, I charged without having to queue though by the time I left 20 minutes later there was one vehicle waiting.

Traveling that far south required that I take a circuitous route from Maricopa to Santa Maria (166) which added about 30 minutes relative to 46 that would drop me into Paso.

I figured the convenience of RAN outweighed the hectic Kettleman experience. I had a peak and it was indeed wild. CHP directing traffic, multi car queues at both the EA and EV range locations.

Sorry to hear that it was offline for you, OP, that is a major bummer. I look forward to changes to come in the next 12 months.

 

[seatosummit]

The Barstow RAN went down on 11/24 afternoon as well. The power went out, and none of the chargers successfully rebooted. After calling Rivian and reporting it, they said they couldn’t even remotely reboot the machines because the communication was down. So, they escalated the issue and about an hour later the chargers finally came back up one-by-one.

On the plus side, I was able to get ~60 kWh for free because I was charging when it went down. But, there were several unhappy Rivian customers waiting it to come back up.

That seems like a pretty problematic design if they can't properly recover from a power cycle.

Evidently they were at least partially connected to the Internet given that it didn't necessitate a truck roll, but still it shouldn't be the case that a power cycle causes a prolonged initialization.

 

[Chewy734]

That seems like a pretty problematic design if they can't properly recover from a power cycle.

Evidently they were at least partially connected to the Internet given that it didn't necessitate a truck roll, but still it shouldn't be the case that a power cycle causes a prolonged initialization.

Yeah I agree. I think the guy on the phone expected the communications module to come back up pretty immediately, but they never did for some reason.

 

[seatosummit]

I am a big advocate of energy storage at these DCFC sites: 1) relatively quick payback for the operator when demand charges and TOU are taken into account; 2) gives more flexibility for siting as you install more charging capacity than you have grid capacity; 3) gives some buffer for grid outages to allow a few vehicles to charge without interruption. Benefits are extended if there is a recovery period that persists beyond the actual outage as sounds like it was the case here.

 

[defcon888]

Yup, Kettleman city. 4 of the 10 were down but the that’s only part of the blame for the wait (just plain traffic is a huge part). When I rolled in there were 18-24 cars in line (not counting the charging). I also drove by Harris Ranch and Curry (or whatever it’s called) and they all had similar lines.

part of the problem is people wanting to charge to 100%, which meaningfully dings the “total energy delivery rate per station” but I can’t blame folks who are calculating their needs to a final destination. The bulk of the “problem” is just lots of EVs (yey!).

Related: the obvious “solution” from my current perspective is to get that Tesla adapter in market asap. Everywhere I went there were empty supercharging stations. To my casual eye there was enough capacity to handle all other queued EVs without saturating Tesla stations, too, so hopefully that doesn’t screw them.

that sucks for sure. We have only done 1 long trip in the Rivian but we always like to leave real early in the morning to avoid traffic and now lines at the charging stations. We also like to travel on days there won't be traffic like a Tuesday thru Thursday and then early Sunday.

I am hoping that Tesla opens up some of the 70+ stations in Kettleman City next year and we will be able to charge there.

 

[kemxns]

that sucks for sure. We have only done 1 long trip in the Rivian but we always like to leave real early in the morning to avoid traffic and now lines at the charging stations. We also like to travel on days there won't be traffic like a Tuesday thru Thursday and then early Sunday.

I am hoping that Tesla opens up some of the 70+ stations in Kettleman City next year and we will be able to charge there.

Yeah this was super rough and given a whole young family in tow I'm pretty restricted on time and logistics (this is part of the growing pains for EVs... right now you have to plan around the vehicle but ICE graduated past that many many years ago where the transportation is essentially commoditized/irrelevant when it comes to your logistics because 'it just works' ).

The result here is that the Rivian is almost certainly getting relegated to ferry range or less and the Raptor is getting back into pole position for longer road trips.

 

[Zorg]

Did some driving on Thanksgiving (250 miles round trip), which sucked because horrendous traffic, but took the Tesla. Didn't want to spend hours at a crowded EA station

 

[BeanEW]

I used the Buttonwillow RAN on both 11/22 and 11/24 to and from LA; I had some trouble on the 22rd because I had an two credit cards on file and Rivian was using the expired one as the default. However, there wasn't a clear message and I struggled for about 30 min. before I figured that out.

Be sure you have a current credit card as a default!

 

[ac95]

I used the Buttonwillow RAN on both 11/22 and 11/24 to and from LA; I had some trouble on the 22rd because I had an two credit cards on file and Rivian was using the expired one as the default. However, there wasn't a clear message and I struggled for about 30 min. before I figured that out.

Be sure you have a current credit card as a default!

How much are they charging?

 

[BeanEW]

How much are they charging?

$.36... just like EA with a membership.

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