Re:I Visited over 120 EV Chargers: Why So Many Were Broken
by hn_throwaway_99 on Wednesday November 15, 2023 @11:35PM
(#38285821)
> > The vast majority of these companies are shitty, fly-by-night companies that can't scale up to maintain their network.
> They really aren’t, it just turns out it’s a hard problem. Electrify America was founded by vw as part of the diesel gate settlement.
Except your sentence there exactly explains why Electrify America is probably the network people love to hate on the most (myself included given the number of times I've visited non-functioning EA chargers), while the Supercharger network is leaps and bounds more reliable.
Electrify America was essentially forced into existence as punishment to VW because of dieselgate. Which means it's not surprising that the folks in charge of EA had very little motivation to provide a stellar experience. Contrast this with Tesla, who sees the Supercharger network as an integral part of their business of selling cars.
As the owner of a non-Tesla EV who loves my car but is very wary of 3rd party charging networks, you really have to hand it to Tesla for their work in building out the Supercharger network. They had the foresight to realize how critically important a good charging network would be, so much so that they are now able to dictate the "North America Charging Standard" (which given the history of how that name came about takes a ton of chutzpah, but that's a discussion for another poast...) for the rest of the automakers - basically all the other EV makers have announced transitions to NACS.
So, yes, it may be debatable to call the other charging networks "fly-by-night" companies, but I'll definitely agree with the "shitty" aspect. There are just tons and tons and tons of non-functioning chargers, and the comparison with the reliability of Superchargers is extremely stark.
> They really aren’t, it just turns out it’s a hard problem. Electrify America was founded by vw as part of the diesel gate settlement.
Except your sentence there exactly explains why Electrify America is probably the network people love to hate on the most (myself included given the number of times I've visited non-functioning EA chargers), while the Supercharger network is leaps and bounds more reliable.
Electrify America was essentially forced into existence as punishment to VW because of dieselgate. Which means it's not surprising that the folks in charge of EA had very little motivation to provide a stellar experience. Contrast this with Tesla, who sees the Supercharger network as an integral part of their business of selling cars.
As the owner of a non-Tesla EV who loves my car but is very wary of 3rd party charging networks, you really have to hand it to Tesla for their work in building out the Supercharger network. They had the foresight to realize how critically important a good charging network would be, so much so that they are now able to dictate the "North America Charging Standard" (which given the history of how that name came about takes a ton of chutzpah, but that's a discussion for another poast...) for the rest of the automakers - basically all the other EV makers have announced transitions to NACS.
So, yes, it may be debatable to call the other charging networks "fly-by-night" companies, but I'll definitely agree with the "shitty" aspect. There are just tons and tons and tons of non-functioning chargers, and the comparison with the reliability of Superchargers is extremely stark.