EA days are numbered for me

[R1Tims]

I think it depends on where you are and what 350s you are using. The newer style stations that only come in 350s work great in my experience. The older stations are hit and miss in my experience in both the 150 and 350 variety.

My experience with EA is the same. New tall 350KW with only one cable work well. Old are junk. Nothing but a pain in the a**. Trouble is you never know which you will get if it's your first time stopping at the site. Typical to find 4 chargers, 2 are down, those that are working are running at 40kw, and takes multiple attempts to connect and or trying the other working chargers to get a better charging speed. I look for RAN, Tesla, EVGO, anything else, THEN EA only as last resort.

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[COdogman]

EA around here is not bad at all. The one closest to my place is always working. In fact I can't recall ever seeing a single stall out of order.

 

[s0ysauce]

Even with the newer 350kW cabinets from EA my experiences are hit or miss. Still too many times they just don't work or are not even close to their advertised speeds. One of my latest attempts to charge there had my vehicle inform me that the actual cabinet was limiting my charge down to 41 kW on a 46% SoC.

 

[bigsky]

Have used Tesla Superchargers for 4 years. Have used CSS and EA and the others for 7 months only since getting my R1S.
My overall experience with EA so far:
1. The ones I have used worked fine
2. But always only a handful of them at a location
3. EV education or lack thereof. Example, a Bolt using a 350 kW charger; R1S has to use a 150 kW charger. Not necessarily EA's fault.
4. Uncertainty of EA charger working or not when I get there, and I am down to very little SOC
5. And my main beef with EA: OUTRAGEOUS/SCAM PRICES for electricity.

Will get my A2Z NACS adapter and use RAN and Tesla chargers only. I think RAN chargers are very good and reliable; have not used them yet, but I do know that the Tesla Supercharger network is ultra reliable, second to none; forever ubiquitous; Tesla charger will be working just fine when I get there; there may be plenty of chargers; and Tesla charger prices are about the lowest around. 100% peace of mind!

 

[Joe schmoe]

Like others, I have very little confidence tin the 350kw EA cabinets, a bit more in the 150s.

I still look at Plugshare occasionally for checkins at the EA stations along routes that I frequent, and things seem to be about the same. Using EA would add hours to a long road trip compared to Tesla superchargers.

I haven't actually used an EA station in almost a year--I quit using the Rivian for trips until we got the NACS compatibility.

Where I road trip, in the mid-south (southeast for most people) and upper midwest, NACS compatible superchargers are about 3:1 more common than fast CCS stations. Since getting access to the superchargers I'm traveling in the Rivian again, much faster now, and haven't had a need to use an EA station.

I drove a Tesla Model S 85 D for eight years, and my daughter still drives it. For those unfamiliar, it has the "nerfed" 85kw battery which is limited to about 110-120 kw from a low state of charge. Road tripping on superchargers is super easy because they are everywhere, and you never really need to use the top third of the battery where charging tapers badly. Also, the free unlimited supercharging and free premium connectivity for life is nice.

 

[Dark-Fx]

Unfortunately I have to agree. I used EA exclusively last year on my long road trip and they worked fine. This year on the same road trip they were terrible. The difference was they previously had 150kw chargers and I would get up to 175kw on them. Now they have replaced most of those with their 350kw chargers Avs those are garbage. They almost always derate to 40kw meaning the cable cooling isn’t working. They need to do something about that or they will be hurting for business.

I wonder if Rivian would be able to program the vehicle to detect that the connected cable is likely suffering from this prior to the de-rate, and de-rate the charge request before the charger does.

 

[emoore]

I think it depends on where you are and what 350s you are using. The newer style stations that only come in 350s work great in my experience. The older stations are hit and miss in my experience in both the 150 and 350 variety.

I tried 3 on my recent trip, all derated to 40kw and those are at different locations (and different states). I won't use another 350kw EA charger until they fix the cable cooling.

 

[emoore]

Even with the newer 350kW cabinets from EA my experiences are hit or miss. Still too many times they just don't work or are not even close to their advertised speeds. One of my latest attempts to charge there had my vehicle inform me that the actual cabinet was limiting my charge down to 41 kW on a 46% SoC.

Yep I think that's a failed cooling cable. Had that happen multiple times at different locations.

 

[Riviaenz]

My experience with EA is much different than most on here. They have worked well and by far what I have used most on trips.

I’m heading out on a ~7k mile trip in a couple of days, lots of my stops based on ABRP, will be EA stations, it will be interesting to see if this experience mirrors my past trips.

Agree! Plus their pricing is decent in the US compared to others.

Do you have access to Superchargers? Have you tried mapping a long trip via Rivian Nav? We recently received the Tesla adapter from Rivian and when I removed the “Hide Adapter Needed” setting on long routes I get 100% Tesla Supercharger sites with adapter required. When I pick preferred networks like Rivian, EA, and others, it still defaults to Superchargers with adapter needed. Occasionally it’ll pick an EA site or other non Tesla site like Petro-Canada if it’s at the beginning or end of a trip. Or if there are RAN along the route it’ll add those if I pick Rivian as the only preferred network. Quite disappointing as there are so many alternatives to Tesla and in many cases are better priced than Tesla.

 

[Treebeard]

I took trip from Sacramento to Long Beach and then San Diego an back. The Long Beach and San Diego were L2 hotel charging. The trip down I5 was seamless with RAN.

The Los Alamitos Fairfield Inn Marriott has seven L2 chargers for $10 a night. The Brew Kitchen Alehouse around the corner is a destination restaurant!

The Embassy Suites Hilton, San Diego, La Jolla has two two Tesla L2 chargers with perpetual Tesla parkers and one broken ChargePoint for $40 a night. I managed to work around it.

On the trip North, I stopped at an EA station in Long Beach and spent an hour with an ESL student trying to activate a charge between two chargers and three cables. I think they broke my activation access in my account. She said the problem must be my Rivian and I should get it serviced.

I moved on and went to a Tesla farm in Tejon Ranch at the base of the Grapevine. A good chance to test my A2Z adapter. 67 of 76 stalls open! It took couple whacks to set the new adapter base and away it went.

A half hour to visit the Tejon Subway and a short stay up the the road at a RAN to get me home.

My EA servitude is coming to an end!

They are a last resort for me usually because they are too busy and one charger is usually not working.

 

[SANZC02]

Agree! Plus their pricing is decent in the US compared to others.

Do you have access to Superchargers? Have you tried mapping a long trip via Rivian Nav? We recently received the Tesla adapter from Rivian and when I removed the “Hide Adapter Needed” setting on long routes I get 100% Tesla Supercharger sites with adapter required. When I pick preferred networks like Rivian, EA, and others, it still defaults to Superchargers with adapter needed. Occasionally it’ll pick an EA site or other non Tesla site like Petro-Canada if it’s at the beginning or end of a trip. Or if there are RAN along the route it’ll add those if I pick Rivian as the only preferred network. Quite disappointing as there are so many alternatives to Tesla and in many cases are better priced than Tesla.

I do have access to Tesla, I’ll hit a couple on the trip. I can route using mostly superchargers just not sure how crowded they will be. When I took the Model S cross country once I got east of Phoenix most of the Superchargers were pretty open, If I see that on this trip I may use them. Just nice to have options.

 

[Tuggles]

Just got my Rivian in January as a first time EV owner, but I've been a long time lurker. I thought I had mentally prepared myself for how bad charging with EA would be based on all I'd read, but it was so much worse IRL that I feel my blood pressure rising just thinking about it now. I'd say on average I had to try 3/4 stations before I got one that worked. So many stuck at slow speeds, refused to connect/wouldn't charge at all, randomly disconnecting/charging failures a few minutes in, etc. Customer service is next to non-existent, and once I had a station that said it delivered 84kWh in 17 mins. When I finally was able to talk to someone, they initially refused to refund me, even after I explained this this was physically impossible to deliver that much electricity to my truck in such a short period of time. After like 10 minutes of arguing they finally relented and refunded me, but acted like they were doing me a huge favor.

The RAN network and the few Superchargers that had the built in adapter have worked instantly and flawlessly, so I know it's not an issue with my vehicle.

Just got my NACS adapter last week from Rivian. If I never have to use EA again I'll consider myself lucky.

 

[SANZC02]

Just got my Rivian in January as a first time EV owner, but I've been a long time lurker. I thought I had mentally prepared myself for how bad charging with EA would be based on all I'd read, but it was so much worse IRL that I feel my blood pressure rising just thinking about it now. I'd say on average I had to try 3/4 stations before I got one that worked. So many stuck at slow speeds, refused to connect/wouldn't charge at all, randomly disconnecting/charging failures a few minutes in, etc. Customer service is next to non-existent, and once I had a station that said it delivered 84kWh in 17 mins. When I finally was able to talk to someone, they initially refused to refund me, even after I explained this this was physically impossible to deliver that much electricity to my truck in such a short period of time. After like 10 minutes of arguing they finally relented and refunded me, but acted like they were doing me a huge favor.

The RAN network and the few Superchargers that had the built in adapter have worked instantly and flawlessly, so I know it's not an issue with my vehicle.

Just got my NACS adapter last week from Rivian. If I never have to use EA again I'll consider myself lucky.

curious did you buy the Rivian used? Seems odd you got a Rivian NACS adapter already if you purchased new this past January.

 

[Riviaenz]

curious did you buy the Rivian used? Seems odd you got a Rivian NACS adapter already if you purchased new this past January.

Sounds like he’s talking about the v3 Magic Dock edition Superchargers:

the few Superchargers that had the built in adapter

Which there are very few (only 2 in a 280 mile radius) and I’d say far between but the 2 are within 20 miles of each other. Then again probably several hundred miles to the next one.

 

[SANZC02]

Sounds like he’s talking about the v3 Magic Dock edition Superchargers:

Which there are very few (only 2 in a 280 mile radius) and I’d say far between but the 2 are within 20 miles of each other. Then again probably several hundred miles to the next one.

His last 2 lines says he just got his Rivian NACS adapter.

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