Electrify America PlugShare Trends by Region: Sept 1 Update

[1Insight]

The Elon Mush Supercharger team hack job motivated me to become more interested in the performance of Electrify America, the 2nd largest nation wide fast charging network. Anecdotal reports suggest the reliability has improved recently. I'm not a fan of anecdotal, I wanted something a bit more quantifiable.

As imperfect as it is, PlugShare is our best resource to judge charger reliability. I partitioned the United States into 9 regions and used the PlugShare score filter to get the number of stations with scores of 10, 9, 8 etc. I did this on or around the 1st of May and 1st of June. I plan to continue doing this on the first of the month into the future. Hopefully people find it useful and maybe applies a little more consumer pressure on EA to continue striving for better reliabilty.

A lot of graphs below.

The top line result is shown here; the average PlugShare score by region. A lot of regional variability..... The central US and Mountain regions fares well while Southern California not so much. As a resident of the Upper Midwest this make sense, as everything is better in the Upper Midwest.... But I suppose you could argue that the equipment in Southern California is older on average and gets heavier use so is more likely to malfunction. But I will stick with "Everything is just better in the Upper Midwest".
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Next are charts showing the percent of stations in a given region getting PlugShare score of 10, 9, 8, etc.

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Lastly, screen shots of the PlugShare page showing the boundaries of the regions I'm using;


NorthEast Region

SouthEast Region:

NorthCentral Region;

SouthCentral Region:

\

Mountain North:

SouthWest Region:

Washington and Oregon:

SF to LA:

LA to SD:

We stopped in Bakersfield Walmart on East Canyon road yesterday Electrify America faster charger site. Connect right away start charging. Five minutes into charge “Limited” speed charger slows. Change chargers reconnect same thing five minutes in limited charging. Leave go find EVGo charger works great. Call Electrify America support. Tells me yea sorry if you ever have issues call us we are here to help!

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[HaveBlue]

Great idea. Shame you didn't think of it earlier as a year trend would be useful. Thanks for putting the effort in on this.

I think 25% of car sales in California are EV. The used market is becoming affordable for people with average incomes. The chicken and egg syndrome seems to be here where more apartments need L2. Tenants are starting to live off DC chargers and that needs to change.

 

[TexasBob]

Just noting that all of these scores range between mediocre and cr@ppy. Using the same methodology, a quick check on Western (CA & NV) Tesla Superchargers gives an average score of 9.64 and the southeast gets an astonishing 9.94. EA has a looong way to go.

Looking at same southeast region where Tesla gets a 9.94, EVGO gets 8.7. What that means in practical terms is that you have a better than 90% chance that the Supercharger you pull into is a 10 rated charger and the worst will be an 8. At EVGo, you have less than a 50% chance of driving into a 10 plus, and a one in 5 chance it will be 7 or below (ie really bad on this grading scale).

 

[hgpayne]

Thank goodness for RAN in California (the California Adventure Network) because EA is not so good.

I’m checking Groveland status every day, and Lee Vining once Tioga Pass opens.

Check PlugShare rating on RAN chargers. It is interesting. I see very low ratings for some RAN and when you look at the details the low rating is because non-Rivian people are trying to charge and reporting a failed charge. That lowers the score. RAN in general have always worked for me*.

* OK, 2 exceptions:
1. Brand new R1T, tried to charge at the RAN on the way home and it didn't work. I moved one stall over and it worked fine.
2. Charging fine and all the sudden it stopped. I got out, it had stopped for everyone. Soon aTesla showed up and wanted to charge. I told them you can't charge a Tesla here but none are working anyway. Net result was the whole town lost power. The RAN weren't working, none of the 120 so superchargers were working, none of 4 EA stations were working, and yes, the gas pumps weren't working either. The whole town had lost power. I can't blame RAN for that.

 

[Joe schmoe]

Thanks for doing this, it’s a fair amount of work to collect and organize.

My experience is a bit limited, since I stopped using the Rivian for cross-country travel last fall because of the lack of charging infrastructure in the southeast. I’m waiting on my NACS adapter to resume.

When I did travel with the Rivian in the midwest and southeast, only about 1 in 5 of the 350kw chargers worked properly, and at the average EA station only half of the cabinets were working properly at any given time. I don’t recall if I ever stopped at an EA site where all of the chargers were working at full capacity.

Tesla is of course vulnerable to a lot of criticism, but in eight years of driving a Tesla, I encountered one or two slower chargers, but never had one fail completely. Most often every cabinet was available and working as advertised.

With the NACS adapter, I’ll be ready to drive cross country with a non-Tesla EV.

 

[Budman]

Thanks for doing this, it’s a fair amount of work to collect and organize.

My experience is a bit limited, since I stopped using the Rivian for cross-country travel last fall because of the lack of charging infrastructure in the southeast. I’m waiting on my NACS adapter to resume.

When I did travel with the Rivian in the midwest and southeast, only about 1 in 5 of the 350kw chargers worked properly, and at the average EA station only half of the cabinets were working properly at any given time. I don’t recall if I ever stopped at an EA site where all of the chargers were working at full capacity.

Tesla is of course vulnerable to a lot of criticism, but in eight years of driving a Tesla, I encountered one or two slower chargers, but never had one fail completely. Most often every cabinet was available and working as advertised.

With the NACS adapter, I’ll be ready to drive cross country with a non-Tesla EV.

I have no doubt experiences like yours exist. My experiences, fortunately, have been quite good in the Midwest and mountain west areas. Often, but certainly not always, I’ve seen all charges at an EA station occupied and operating at they should. Hopefully that experience become common.

 

[s4wrxttcs]

My most recent experience with Electrify America went an entirely different direction than I expected.

I pulled in with no other vehicles charging despite being memorial day
Went I went to activate the charge through the app it said the stall I was in was "in-use" but clearly it wasn't.
So I pulled into a different stall and started the charge there, and everything was fine.

I tried using the app to report the issue with the app telling me the charger was in-use, but the app was extremely buggy and would delete my text before I had a chance to submit it.

After the charge I got a notification that the EA Account did the auto-loaded funds from my credit card. But, this was odd as its not supposed to do that unless it goes under $5 which it was at $11 (after the charge amount). I had them refund me my the $100 that they auto-loaded. I don't use EA enough to give them $100 interest free loan. I changed the setting as I had it set to load $100 (apparently I was cash heavy when I set that setting. Haha).

In my mind EA remains as glitchy as ever. With an empty site it was reporting a 2 stalls available out of 6. And, again at least one stall was down (confirmed with the error screen).

One thing to note - I didn't purposely pick this site. I just happened to be at Fred Meyer in Northern Portland and decided to see if they had chargers. I would have avoided it due to the low stall availability. So that's probably why it was mostly empty. Before I left an EQS did stop.

 

[Dave Cundiff]

Check PlugShare rating on RAN chargers. It is interesting. I see very low ratings for some RAN and when you look at the details the low rating is because non-Rivian people are trying to charge and reporting a failed charge. That lowers the score. RAN in general have always worked for me.

When I can, I edit PlugShare listings for RANs so that "(For Rivians Only)" appears in the station name. PlugShare staff seem to be OK with that. They want every PlugShare user to be satisfied with PlugShare and with their charging experiences.

When RAN opens up, we'll have to edit the station names again. But for now, prominent "Rivians Only" labeling seems to help everyone.

Best wishes!

 

[Mousetrap]

When I can, I edit PlugShare listings for RANs so that "(For Rivians Only)" appears in the station name. PlugShare staff seem to be OK with that. They want every PlugShare user to be satisfied with PlugShare and with their charging experiences.

When RAN opens up, we'll have to edit the station names again. But for now, prominent "Rivians Only" labeling seems to help everyone.

Best wishes!

Great idea!

 

[KBabione]

We had one trip a couple weeks ago from Lancaster to Erie PA. For those of you with limited knowledge of PA geography, we basically drove diagonally across the state:

The red arrows show the EA Chargers available (and the only L3 chargers on that route). There is a RAN in Somerset and a MagicDock SC in Pittsburgh, but my daughter wanted to stop at Penn State so we went through State College.

The point of this is that checking EA charger availability wasn't possible here - it really didn't matter because we were that limited on this trip! We charged in Clarion and Erie the day we drove up and in Clarion and State College (though just for 10 minutes) on the way home. I'm grateful for the EA network - without which this trip through State College wouldn't have been possible. If a location has four chargers and only one works then we would have had to wait for the working one to be available. When the next charger is 30+ miles away you take what you can get. We structured our trip so that we had, if absolutely necessary, enough juice to make it to another charger, and were happy that it wasn't needed.

The flip side of this coin is that when you're in an area like northwestern PA with very limited L3 charging opportunities, there aren't a lot of EV's so it's unlikely you'll have to wait for a charger. I look at the charging maps in California and am torn between being jealous that you have so many options and knowing that you also have so many more EV's competing for those chargers. EA's corporate headquarters are in Reston VA and we've used their L3 chargers there a couple of times when we visit my father who also lives in Reston.

 

[Autolycus]

When I can, I edit PlugShare listings for RANs so that "(For Rivians Only)" appears in the station name. PlugShare staff seem to be OK with that. They want every PlugShare user to be satisfied with PlugShare and with their charging experiences.

When RAN opens up, we'll have to edit the station names again. But for now, prominent "Rivians Only" labeling seems to help everyone.

Best wishes!

It's annoying that it's even necessary to do this since the station is flagged that way already. People just aren't paying attention. Plugshare should probably have a method for moderators to flag those reviews and not count them in the station's score.

 

[hgpayne]

When I can, I edit PlugShare listings for RANs so that "(For Rivians Only)" appears in the station name. PlugShare staff seem to be OK with that. They want every PlugShare user to be satisfied with PlugShare and with their charging experiences.

When RAN opens up, we'll have to edit the station names again. But for now, prominent "Rivians Only" labeling seems to help everyone.

Best wishes!

You give people too much credit. Just when you think you've made something ID10T proof, along comes an "Individual Demonstrating Intelligence Obfuscation Thoroughly" who says, hold my beer. Yes, it says Rivian only at the top too.

 

[RedRaiderRivian]

Anyone else receive an email from EA linking to a new page with details on planned outages, upgrades, and vandalism issues. Here is the link to the page. See Latest Updates There are a lot of stations in CA listed for upgrade.

 

[Budman]

Anyone else receive an email from EA linking to a new page with details on planned outages, upgrades, and vandalism issues. Here is the link to the page. See Latest Updates There are a lot of stations in CA listed for upgrade.

Did not see this. Thanks for sharing!

 

[pastreit]

Excellent analysis. Thanks for sharing!

My experience at dozens of EA chargers in AZ, NM, and CO has been near perfect. On a trip last fall to LA with five stops at EA sites, none of them worked as expected (charger down, very slow charging, very long lines). It was a real shock to experience the difference. Most of the people I spoke to at those sites were local and inexperienced.

While I didn't try to verify this in the PlugShare data, I would guess that the SouthWest data is skewed down quite a bit by chargers in CA and not bad at all elsewhere in the region.

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