Chargepoint and EVGO Ruin EV Experience

[azbill]

I use the Apple Wallet rfid with ChargePoint, it always works. With EVGO my other two EVs have Autocharge+, never had it fail. My Mach E has P&C on EA, only failed once. With my Bolt and Rivian, I always initiate with the EA app, then plug in when it tells me to, no failures. I have not tried the Rivian on EVGO yet.

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[PAFDenver]

I've been meaning to sign up for a minimal number of charging companies and this post seems pretty timely. I had driven EVs since 2013 but have only charged at home, work(free) or at a Tesla SC so I didn't need any external accounts. I just want to be prepared in case I need to top up away from home or actually get motivated and use my R1T out in the wild like I should.
Should I set up an account and download the apps or just plan on using my credit card at the charger?
From what I read, EA and maybe Chargepoint are the 2 best choices for Level 3 charging, right? It seems like those 2 companies have probably 75% of the CCS chargers out there.
Is there any benefit/detractions to linking my Rivian account to a Chargepoint account? I just saw this on the Rivian page:
"We've partnered with ChargePoint to provide you access to over 100,000 charging stations. Link your Rivian account to begin."

Thanks

 

[MXA121]

@PAFDenver you should download the apps and create accounts up front. None of the Charge point or EV GO chargers I visited had functional credit card readers, and at EA I've still had issues swiping.

 

[Dark-Fx]

Only required minimal off-roading, eh? Not like that other guy who had to traverse a curb stop, LOL.

Parking pad was a little skinny and I went on a short ride up to the public bathroom. Gas station perpetually doesn't have a working bathroom according to plugshare. Made sure to still have room to get my bike up, but in retrospect I should have used the other station.

 

[gvtucker]

I've been meaning to sign up for a minimal number of charging companies and this post seems pretty timely. I had driven EVs since 2013 but have only charged at home, work(free) or at a Tesla SC so I didn't need any external accounts. I just want to be prepared in case I need to top up away from home or actually get motivated and use my R1T out in the wild like I should.
Should I set up an account and download the apps or just plan on using my credit card at the charger?
From what I read, EA and maybe Chargepoint are the 2 best choices for Level 3 charging, right? It seems like those 2 companies have probably 75% of the CCS chargers out there.
Is there any benefit/detractions to linking my Rivian account to a Chargepoint account? I just saw this on the Rivian page:
"We've partnered with ChargePoint to provide you access to over 100,000 charging stations. Link your Rivian account to begin."

Thanks

FWIW, I've signed up with ChargePoint, EVGo, Electrify America, and Shell Recharge. I've also downloaded the apps for those 4. I have never had a problem starting a charge with any of them (save for the couple of times that EA was having a problem on their end). In each case, I use the app to initiate.

Side note: the only reason I started an account at Shell Recharge was because they have a Level 3 charger close to a frequent destination for me. I've only used that one station for them.

From my experience, EA and EVGo have most of the public Level 3 chargers. ChargePoint is almost always Level 2. There are a lot of them, granted, but they are only very rarely at speeds of 50KwH or greater.

I have seen zero benefit from linking my Rivian account with my ChargePoint account. Doesn't seem like it has hurt, either, but what's the point?

 

[PeterSK]

Tesla owner for a decade. Have used lots of SCs and early on used ChargePoint level 2s. Last month I rented a Hertz Polestar 2 at LAX, to experience the car and CCS charging while waiting for my R1S.

Tried EA at Mission Viejo shopping center. No luck at the one open charger of the 4 EAs - each time it started then gave an error message. A VW ID3 owner in the next stall tried to help us, then gave up and suggested I call EA. The support person remotely rebooted the charger, but before that was done iD3 guy left and we took his slot which worked. The next person arrived and it worked after rebooting.

On the way back to LAX I stopped again to charge briefly. Hertz delivers cars with 80% charge and there is a $35 fee if you return under 70% - which I was just going to miss. Using the Polestar’s nav I identified an EVGO station at a supermarket in Redondo Beach and after quickly downloading the app and signing up, it charged without a problem.

So the net is one problematic but successful charge, and one charge without incident. Both were more complex and time-consuming that going to a Supercharger. But are Superchargers/NACS inherently better in all cases, or does Tesla signicantly benefit from having a closed system with control of the chargers and the cars? What will happen when Superchargers are broadly opened?

 

[VSG]

But are Superchargers/NACS inherently better in all cases, or does Tesla signicantly benefit from having a closed system with control of the chargers and the cars? What will happen when Superchargers are broadly opened?

All of these are true:

• The superchargers are better maintained and much more likely to be working.
• The superchargers benefit enormously from the closed system.
• When superchargers are opened, the supercharger experience will be degraded somewhat. How much depends entirely on Tesla at this point.

 

[kurtlikevonnegut]

I've been meaning to sign up for a minimal number of charging companies and this post seems pretty timely. I had driven EVs since 2013 but have only charged at home, work(free) or at a Tesla SC so I didn't need any external accounts. I just want to be prepared in case I need to top up away from home or actually get motivated and use my R1T out in the wild like I should.
Should I set up an account and download the apps or just plan on using my credit card at the charger?
From what I read, EA and maybe Chargepoint are the 2 best choices for Level 3 charging, right? It seems like those 2 companies have probably 75% of the CCS chargers out there.
Is there any benefit/detractions to linking my Rivian account to a Chargepoint account? I just saw this on the Rivian page:
"We've partnered with ChargePoint to provide you access to over 100,000 charging stations. Link your Rivian account to begin."

Thanks

I ve found that my charging experience at EA is far better when using the app to initiate charge by selecting the charger I am at in the app first and then plugging in. I have not set up the EVGo app, so it's possible that doing so would improve my experience there.

 

[Zoidz]

I did my first L3 charge yesterday at EVGo in Exton, Pa. I’ve had the R1S for 2 weeks and wanted to make L3 was working since a few others have reported L3 did not work with their new truck. I set up an account in advance with the auto connect feature. It worked perfectly. It seems all of these networks are hit or miss with reliability?

 

[PeterSK]

All of these are true:

• The superchargers are better maintained and much more likely to be working.
• The superchargers benefit enormously from the closed system.
• When superchargers are opened, the supercharger experience will be degraded somewhat. How much depends entirely on Tesla at this point.

I agree. The superchargers also benefit greatly from design simplicity. No screen, no card reader means less to be vandalized (I’ve seen cracked/scratched ChargePoint screens that make them harder to use) and less to go wrong (no need to reboot a hanging application or OS). It will be interesting to see how this simplicity will be balanced against the requirements for federal $ and the agreements with Ford, GM and Rivian.

 

[RivianXpress]

Also going to avoid EVgo in the future. Had to top off befits a long trip and paid 61 cents per kW this week and then a $5 session fee yesterday on top of 49 cents per.

 

[md2023]

Charging related, but I was in a Polestar 2 not a Rivian.

Bay Area
Last night I needed just a quick energy boost to get home. We are talking a 5 minute charge stop. I could have driven the Model 3, but hey it's just a short stop no big deal, right? Wrong.

1st went to a Chargepoint station with 6 available. Nobody there. Tried 2 chargers, with app, multiple times, no dice.
Left and went to next closest, an EVGO station, with many available and two cars charging. Plugged into 2 machines only for them to immediately stop charging and canceling. Got charged for each session I attempted too.
Then went to EA further away, had to re-park since 3/5 stations were broken, but luckily one was open. FINALLY started charging.

THIS is why people do not want Electric Cars.

The Chargepoint station has tons of reviews in their own app how they have been broken for over a year, no maintenance or fixes.
The EVGO station I have no idea why it was tripping each time and stopping. $0.56/kwh plus a session fee also.

I will avoid Chargepoint and EVGO like the plague moving forward.
I suppose EA is my only hope for this year. They only burn cars down occasionally...
Tesla network cannot open soon enough.

Sorry, that is frustrating. I've been lucky and have had really good experiences with Chargepoint, EVGO and EA in the northeast.

 

[MM in South TX]

For me EA has been mostly fine (maybe 75% success rate)

It amazes me how much people are willing to endure in order to drive an EV. Can you imagine calling a 75% success rate at a gas station mostly fine?

Compare the experiences. With a gas powered car, five minutes and you have a "full charge" 99.9% of the time. With an electric car, in many places, you can't really know when or even whether you are going to make it to your destination. We are a long way from getting the whole country on EV's. A very long way. The Tesla deals will help, but there are going to have to be a whole lot more stations built.

Thousands of gas powered cars roll by the typical gas station every day on a busy highway. There are maybe 6 or 8 cars filling up at once at each station, all day long, with stations every 5-10 miles. If we convert them all to electric, we will need far more electric stations than we have gas stations, because the fill-up time is 30-45 minutes, not 5 minutes.

I see gas powered vehicles being the norm for travel length longer than one tank of gas for the foreseeable future. I think Akio Toyoda is right.

The ideal use case for an EV is one in which you park it in your garage every night. In that case, you don't need the 300 mile range. We should be building EV's with 1/3 the range. That would be far better for the planet than trying to get as big a battery as possible in every car made, when the vast majority of driving is local. The first R. Reduce, reuse, recycle.

 

[PAFDenver]

It amazes me how much people are willing to endure in order to drive an EV. Can you imagine calling a 75% success rate at a gas station mostly fine?

Compare the experiences. With a gas powered car, five minutes and you have a "full charge" 99.9% of the time. With an electric car, in many places, you can't really know when or even whether you are going to make it to your destination. We are a long way from getting the whole country on EV's. A very long way. The Tesla deals will help, but there are going to have to be a whole lot more stations built.

Thousands of gas powered cars roll by the typical gas station every day on a busy highway. There are maybe 6 or 8 cars filling up at once at each station, all day long, with stations every 5-10 miles. If we convert them all to electric, we will need far more electric stations than we have gas stations, because the fill-up time is 30-45 minutes, not 5 minutes.

I see gas powered vehicles being the norm for travel length longer than one tank of gas for the foreseeable future. I think Akio Toyoda is right.

The ideal use case for an EV is one in which you park it in your garage every night. In that case, you don't need the 300 mile range. We should be building EV's with 1/3 the range. That would be far better for the planet than trying to get as big a battery as possible in every car made, when the vast majority of driving is local. The first R. Reduce, reuse, recycle.

MY experience with an EV is:
- I come home, pull in the driveway and plug in it every third time I drive it. Then I walk inside. About 15 seconds total. I am NOT just sitting there in the blazing sun, driving rain or freezing cold waiting to fill the tank. I have been saying for years that I HATE going to the gas station (had a gas pick up for my rentals) and standing there like an idiot waiting for it to gas up.

I also had a 4.2 second car when only a few supercars could do that. It was very cool, I got LOTS of attention (and I am petty enough to enjoy it), and I could out accelerate nearly everything else out there (I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE acceleration!).

I have been telling people who ask about driving an EV 2 things:
1. They're not for everyone. IF you are driving 300+ miles every day they really aren't a good fit. If you take many long roadtrips or pull trailers long distances, they're not for you. But that really is a small percentage of the world. Before my brother had an EV he used to rent a car for his long road trips simply to keep the miles off his car and to get a bigger vehicle for the week.
2. Drive an EV and you never will want to drive a gas car again. OK, there are a few exceptions, but in general once you feel the acceleration, (don't) hear the noise, don't have to deal with the maintenance of an engine you really won't want to go back to a stinkin' fume spewing gas car.

You have a good point about not everyone needing a 300 mi range car, but that will be harder to change than just the switch to the EVs. It's so deeply embedded in our expectations that very few people will be satisfied with just buying a car with 90mi range. It's like small city cars. They have many advantages, but very few people buy them for the 3% of the time they won't work.

EVs are fantastic. The CCS charging situation is crap (so I've read). Let's fix the real problem - the charging.

 

[jjswan33]

Also going to avoid EVgo in the future. Had to top off befits a long trip and paid 61 cents per kW this week and then a $5 session fee yesterday on top of 49 cents per.

This… I have never got as far as even plugging in a EVGO charger every time I have been directed to one I checked the cost and said nope. Connection fees are stupid and their rates are higher than others.

Another point I would make that I haven’t seen posted here, most Chargepoint stations are owned and operated by the site host, possibly with maintenance agreements or possibly not. You can be mad at Chargepoint but a good possibility is problems are not on them.

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