Charging Networks to Join? - Advice Sought

[R1Sky Business]

For most people once you can charge at home you very rarely need to fast charge. My ID.4 came with free electrify America. In ~6 months of ownership I haven’t even used it. And it is free. You will learn the joy of waking up with a full tank daily and only think about this the few times a year 300 miles isn’t enough range. And if you have a regular drive that requires fast charging you will likely pick the same charger to stop at.
It ends up not being a big deal or stressful for most users / use cases

Time for a road trip

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[BoltEVowner]

Since Rivian's Adventure Network isn't anywhere near completion, so any early delivery people won't get much out of their one year free RAN charging, so would be really nice if Rivian would make the same arrangement with EA. Supposedly they are looking at "something" for early owners, just no news yet.

 

[JeremyMKE]

This is all helpful, anyone have any experience using their Chargepoint account at EA?

 

[Lsthrz]

I can’t charge at home for a while so can only use public charging. EA is the best so far, fastest and most reliable. Typically 150kW chargers but also the rarer 350kW. You can pay $4 for a monthly pass and then get electricity at $0.31/kW vs something like $0.43/kW. Generally the process has been pretty slick: plug in, tap phone to reader and good to go. Ea app or ea card in apple wallet. Other charging networks have a card in wallet as well.

I have also done a couple of day-long road trips through Colorado and have found EA chargers to be convenient though there are many Level 2 chargers around as well.

I have a card on file with most of the apps mentioned in the thread just to have them there if needed.

The cost adds up tho. I have been spoiled with the Tesla In having had a lot of home charging available in the past and now using the free supercharging that came with the Model S. I guess I thought it was all free in an EV ? until now.

 

[Scott]

Time for a road trip

I’ve taken plenty. Just been renting Airbnb’s and charging at my destination. Lots of places worth driving to within range of Portland

 

[SeaGeo]

This is all helpful, anyone have any experience using their Chargepoint account at EA?

Unless I've missed this, I don't think that's a thing.

 

[zipzag]

Anyone investigate Pay with Plugshare ? I assume most people not charging at EA are using that app anyway.

 

[zipzag]

I’ve taken plenty. Just been renting Airbnb’s and charging at my destination. Lots of places worth driving to within range of Portland

Are you finding 240V charging at AirBnB? I'm not sure that charging Rivian at 120V will be beneficial

 

[JeremyMKE]

Unless I've missed this, I don't think that's a thing.

I found this from 2019 and not much more which is why I was asking the hivemind. My guess this isnt a thing.

https://www.chargepoint.com/about/n...te-agreement-expand-public-ev-charging-access

 

[Scott]

Are you finding 240V charging at AirBnB? I'm not sure that charging Rivian at 120V will be beneficial

Places with a garage often have a washer/dryer outlet in them that is usable. However, even 120v outlets are enough if you are going to be there for a while without driving too much at your destination. A standard 120v / 15 amp outlet pushes out 1.8kW per hour. At a 80% sustained rate that is 1.44kW per hour. I have never tried to measure charging loss on a level one with my car, but lets assume 10%. That puts us at ~1.3kW/h, and let's say you are getting 2.3m/kWh, that is 3 miles of range per hour. If you take a weekend trip, and get to your destination at 6 on a Friday and leave at noon on Sunday that is 42 hours of potential charging time. That is a max of around 126 miles added. Add that to your ~270-300 mile range from starting at full and you can easily do 390 miles in a weekend without needing to level 2 or level 3 charge. The math is even better with a more efficient car. My ID.4 gets about 3.3 m/kWh on road trips.

So for a trip to the beach for the weekend where you don't move around too much after getting to a beach house, you can usually go someplace a 2 to 3 hour drive away without a problem at all. Now if you drive around all day on Saturday you lose a lot of that, and your effective total range post level 1 charging drops. So it depends on the nature of the trip. For this reason I keep a fairly long extension cord under the false floor of my ID.4 so I can charge easily at places like this.

edit: updated because as @zipzag pointed out, I forget to only take 80% of the circuit's max rate.

 

[805Badger]

I thought Rivian was going to integrate with EA plug and charge... Is that not a thing anymore?

I'm also wondering about this. In the navigation system you can choose Rivian, EVGo and ChargePoint. It seems like some EA chargers show up under ChargePoint, but is there a way to only look for EA chargers (through the Rivian navigation, I know I can with other apps).

 

[zipzag]

Places with a garage often have a washer/dryer outlet in them that is usable. However, even 120v outlets are enough if you are going to be there for a while without driving too much at your destination. A standard 120v / 15 amp outlet pushes out 1.8kW per hour. Charging loss is lower on these chargers usually, and I have never tried to measure it with my car. Let's say you are getting 2.3m/kWh, and let's assume post charging loss you are putting in 1.5kW's per hour in to the vehicle, that is 3.45 miles of range per hour. If you take a weekend trip, and get to your destination at 6 on a Friday and leave at noon on Sunday that is 42 hours of potential charging time. That is a max of around 145 miles added. Add that to your ~270-300 mile range from starting at full and you can easily do 400 miles in a weekend without needing to level 2 or level 3 charge. The math is even better with a more efficient car. My ID.4 gets about 3.3 m/kWh on road trips.

So for a trip to the beach for the weekend where you don't move around too much after getting to a beach house, you can usually go someplace a 2 to 3 hour drive away without a problem at all. Now if you drive around all day on Saturday you lose a lot of that, and your effective total range post level 1 charging drops. So it depends on the nature of the trip. For this reason I keep a fairly long extension cord under the false floor of my ID.4 so I can charge easily at places like this.

You numbers seem too optimistic. Input is 1.5kw (80% of 15 amps @ 120V). Charging losses are typically greater at 120V. That maybe puts 25 miles into a Rivian overnight.

There's not going to be a problem with a typical 400 miles round trip because you can always hit a fast charger on each leg of the trip. But for those of us trying to travel within a remote area 120V charging was little help with Tesla-like efficiency and approaches worthless with a Rivian.

Which is probably why many of us are waiting for the max pack. With a low efficiency EV the kw hours need to be brought in.

 

[Scott]

You numbers seem too optimistic. Input is 1.5kw (80% of 15 amps @ 120V). Charging losses are typically greater at 120V. That maybe puts 25 miles into a Rivian overnight.

There's not going to be a problem with a typical 400 miles round trip because you can always hit a fast charger on each leg of the trip. But for those of us trying to travel within a remote area 120V charging was little help with Tesla-like efficiency and approaches worthless with a Rivian.

Which is probably why many of us are waiting for the max pack. With a low efficiency EV the kw hours need to be brought in.

Ahh yes, I did forget the 80% sustained rate. Thanks for that. I edited and updated the original post.

And I totally agree, fast charging is needed on many road trips and to a variety of remote areas. And in some use cases, EV's are a total pain (long range towing and real remote destinations). My original point early in the thread was not to say fast charging is never needed, but simply that managing multiple charging networks is not really a gigantic head ache. Most people rarely need to fast charge. Home charging and charging at your destination on more standard family trips to non-remote locations can cover a lot of your needs. I will definitely need to do some fast charging this summer heading out to more remote eastern Oregon. And if my destination there doesn't have a level 2 charger at least, I will have to probably go out of my way during the trip to find more of them. But the day to day benefits of never hitting a gas station in normal daily live far outweigh those much more rare annoyances for the average US consumer.

 

[JeremyMKE]

This is all helpful if only to confirm my assumptions. The initial ask was created because charging away from home is likely to be the exception and I want to be prepared for that eventuality.

I don't want to be downloading apps and adding credit cards last minute.

Near as I can tell EA and Chargepoint do not talk to each other for billing despite some promises that they might. I have ABRP, Plugshare and the other route and charger planning apps as it seems as if Rivian is not ready to deliver that content yet, if ever. Another argument for AA and CarPlay BTW.

Thanks to all.

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