EV charging issues (NOT Tesla) on road trips

Parent Cafe
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We have just leased an EV (not Tesla) and went away this weekend. First, we tried using a Blink charging space. Nothing we tried would get the process going. We had the app, etc… The machine appeared to be working properly, but we could never get it to accept any payment. We saw a Tesla pull up, try to use Blink, then leave. We had nowhere nearby to charge except for a super slow one that would take 2 full days to reach 80%. We decided we would charge the next day (yesterday), about 30 minutes from home.

Yesterday, we parked at an EVgo charging point. There is no notice on the station or on the app that charging is limited to 1 hour (that I saw) and we didn’t know we would only get an hour worth of charge. It got up to 70%, which was fine to get us home, but it would have been a giant pain if we had needed to find another place to charge en route.

A rep at EVgo today told me it stops charging at one hour because otherwise people use it as free parking. That’s pretty ridiculous, as we were in a free parking lot anyway. There is no push notification to tell you your hour is about to expire, therefore you could waste a lot of time waiting around only to discover the car is no longer being charged.

The car tells us where charging stations are, and we have the Plugshare app, but not sure all charging points accept that.

We have already discovered driving an EV is not as straightforward as we thought because
1.) We need charging stations compatible with our car (again, not a Tesla).
2.) Clearly, not all these charging facilities are reliable.
3.) Restricting usage to one hour only means we would have to plan to spend at least another whole hour at another charging station if we were on a longer journey. I don’t know if other companies apart from EVgo allow longer charging times.
4.) You need separate apps for all these different charging companies. THAT is very annoying.

Would like to hear how others keep their non-Tesla EV charged when they take road trips.

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We use the ChargePoint app. It lists all the different types of chargers, not just ChargePoint chargers. It is annoying if we use a non-ChargePoint charger that we have to download the app for it, but we just do it. The app is also nice because there are numerous usually fairly recent reviews for chargers, that tell you things like what the cost is, if it is working, if there’s a time limit, etc.

When we take a trip, we usually plan out where we’re going to stop. We have a first choice plan, and a second choice plan. Occasionally, depending on our situation and how reliable & busy we think the places we’re planning to stop are, we might have a third choice plan.

We plan/attempt to charge every time we stop, even if we don’t “have” to so charging never becomes urgent.

We are in the NE (MA, and have driven to NY all over, PA, and NH/ME) and we haven’t had difficulty finding a charge. When we went to ME we did have to structure our trip a little differently than we probably would have if we didn’t have the EV, but it wasn’t bad.

(We have a 2020 Kia Niro EV that gets about 275 on a full charge in summer, a little less in winter.)

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We have 2 older EVs (2016 and 2019). 99% of the time we charge our cars at home using the trickle charger (uses regular electric outlet in our garage, charges overnight). When we go on a road trip longer than 220 miles (the range for the 2019 model), we take our gas-powered car. We have found the infrastructure for non-Tesla EVs to still be somewhat spotty, and often charging stations are broken. Sometimes we have lucked out with finding fast chargers but luck seems to be needed. If we were to take a longer road trip with the newer EV, I think I’d need to spend some time carefully planning stops along the way. I’ve found the most reliable chargers to be located at dealer locations, and some Chargepoint locations. On occasion, we have taken our charger with us and plugged in overnight at the place we’ve stayed (usually Airbnbs or with family, but I imagine many more hotels have quick chargers these days).

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I’m not American so take this for what it’s worth but I have heard good things about Electrify America chargers. Not sure if they are available where you are. The other thing you need to be aware of is optimum charging strategy. Your vehicle will charge fast only up to a certain percentage of the battery and then it will take much longer to top off (the specific point depends on the vehicle). It can often be a more efficient use of time to make a few shorter stops to charge than to do 1 longer charge.

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Yes, the A Better Route Planner (ABRP) app or web site defaults to fastest trip, which commonly means recharging at 10-20% up to 50-60%, since that tends to be the fastest charging speed (and is usually just enough time for the people to take a short break). Most EVs’ fast charging gets slow as the charge level approaches 100%.

But that is a separate issue from the complaints about the CCS1 (non-Tesla) charging stations that are commonly found on forums relating to specific models of EVs.

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This is why my daughter sold her EV. She didn’t have charging capabilities at her townhouse and charging her non tesla became difficult

I know this isn’t what people want to hear but your experience was what she was finding.

When she lived in an apartment with EV chargers, there were non EV (but expensive cars) parked permanently at the charging stations. She had to ask management to make them move so she could charge her EV.

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Thanks all. These responses are very helpful. We did a lot of research before committing to the lease, but are newbies and obviously need to figure things out.

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Wow, now I know we won’t be getting an EV anytime soon.

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There have been a lot of news stories about people in rural areas being unable to charge their vehicles and thus unable to take them on longer trips (I assume most have some type of charging at their homes) like from North Dakota to Minneapolis.

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Yes, I don’t think we would go anywhere very rural just yet. We are planning a road trip from the Northeast to Georgia or Florida. We actually looked at all the charging options before we signed the lease.

I think the tricky thing is that while there ARE a lot of charging stations, mainly in town centers or along highways, it’s going to be perhaps a bit more challenging finding super fast charging that will get us up to 80%. For example, we were at a ski area this weekend. There were free charging stations in the lot, but they were really really slow, as in two days to charge. That’s not useful for a road trip.

Our goal is to get most of a day’s drive without stopping too long to charge (or stop midday at a place with charging) and charge overnight at a hotel or other parking area.

I’m sure we will get better at working it out.

@MaineLonghorn , I get where you’re coming from. Electricity is so much cheaper than gas though. We paid $25 for, effectively, 2/3 a tank of gas for a pretty big car. So there are definite advantages. The car is very spacious because no engine takes up half the car. It’s quiet and it doesn’t pollute. It also feels very safe because it has cameras all over and “self-drives,” although we don’t let it drive itself. It does feel a bit like driving along in a hovercraft!

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https://www.plugshare.com/ indicates that fast chargers (both CCS1 and Tesla) in North Dakota are sparse other than along I-94 and I-29, plus a few CCS1 around Minot and one in Williston.

West Virginia appears to have no CCS1 fast chargers in the entire state. Which is odd, since it would seem that they would want to encourage people to drive on coal-based electricity over petroleum-based gasoline (the state has ample coal, but only a little petroleum).

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Here’s an article about the PA turnpike. Their goal is to have charging stations at all of their service plazas by 2027.

On the entire PA turnpike, 6 have super chargers. Others (not specified) have slow chargers. Allentown has none.

This article was written in September 2023.

I don’t find the PA turnpike to be remote. I do find it expensive. Service plazas are not as plentiful as Ohio’s and tend to be crowded.

I think that until you can assess EV chargers in an east coast state on a major highway, that costs you money to use, that persuading Americans to use EV’s on a road trip will be difficult.

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The biggest issue now is availability and maintenance - so many public chargers are broken.

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Different EV brands yield different results. Yous buys your ticket yous take your chances.

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Do you mean different EV charger brands, or different EV car brands? I’m still trying to figure out which chargers are reliable.

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Both, but if your EV supports the Tesla connector, those chargers are much more reliable.

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Apparently more and more car makers are making their new model EVs with Tesla-compatible chargers.

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They will have adapters.

I have a colleague that spent 2 hours going to 9 places til he finally found a working charger - that would be my concern non-Tesla.

And now you have charging companies going bankrupt (Charge ENterprises) - and others not far off although some say they’ll start to make money.

EVs are growing - even with the wall the OEMs just hit - but infrastructure is not there. Part of the issue for OEMs, even Tesla…is huge depreciation - far more than an ICE vehicle. OEMs are losing big $$ on each EV sold. Tesla has made billions - in selling emission credits vs. vehicles.

Know that you’ll likely have significant added time on a non-Tesla EV trip - if you go long distance.

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I can help.

First off, what make/model car? It makes a big difference because some can charge at 3 times the speed of others. I drive a Chevy Bolt which tops out at being able to charge at about 50 kW which takes about an hour to get from 10% to 80% (best for the battery). Other make/models like the Kia EV 6 can use an 800v/350kW charger and charge to 80% in 18 minutes.

Blink is not a super popular charger brand and many of them are older and some older chargers may not be able to give super fast charging speeds. Plugshare reviews should be able to tell you if anyone has successfully used the charger recently and how many kW an hour other folks have been pulling. Did you read the reviews for the Blink that didn’t work?

An older charger might be all right for my fairly slow charging Bolt, but if you have a faster charging vehicle you want to pay attention to the highest level of kW deliverable which is listed in Plugshare right next to the type of plug like so:
CCS/SAE 2 Chargers | 62kW
so 62kW is the max kW deliverable.

Or you might see one that says:
CCS/SAE 7 Chargers | 150-350kW
So someone with a super fast charging car like that EV6 could charge up in 20 minutes or so at this one.

Then you want to read the reviews and see if folks have put in how many kWs they have been getting.

Electrify America usually has banks of about 8-12 chargers at Walmarts across the country and they usually have those super fast chargers too. They are very popular because of that and because some cars come with free charging on EA (Electrify America).

No EV charger is going to take two days to charge. A regular 110 outlet would take 2 days to charge. A level 2 charger will take around 5 -7 hours to charge depending on your car and the kWs being delivered. I have a level 2 charger in my garage and it charges my Bolt overnight with no problem.

One thing I like about EVGo is with the app and your account you can set it up to be plug & play. You don’t have to use a credit card or the app when you stop at any EVGo charger. Just plug in and the EVGo charger recognizes your car and starts charging automatically if you have it set up to. There’s an EVGo charger near my daughter’s college that I use frequently when I go there. It’s really easy with this set up.

If I am staying in a house on a road trip, like a trip to the beach or the mountains, I plug in at the house on the 110. My MIL has a mountain house she lets us use and we can set the amps pulled on the Bolt to 12 instead of 8 which does make a difference. You just have to be sure that it’s okay with the house and not going to trip a breaker. If it’s not a house we know we keep it at 8.

On a road trip I like to charge near something to do. On our last road trip up to Philly from NC one of our stops was next to a pie shop so we plugged in the car, and went in to the pie shop and had some great key lime pie while the car charged. A lot of times we like to have a meal or stretch our legs and walk around for 45 min or so.

EVs slow the charging rate after 80% to protect the health of the battery. The fastest point in the charging curve is usually something like when you have 10% of battery left to about 60% but again that depends on the car. Pretty much all EVs slow the charging rate dramatically after 80% and it is bad EV charging etiquette to charge past 80% and hog the charger if others are waiting for it. Good info on that here: Common DC Fast Charging Curves and How to Find Yours | ChargePoint The outside temp makes a big difference too. Too hot or too cold can affect how fast it charges.

I have the EVGo, ChargePoint, and ElectrifyAmerica apps. Those are the main ones I use. I have the Blink app, too, but I haven’t used it in ages. I also have the Shell Recharge app. I had all these before Plugshare started offering payment options so I have just stuck with them and not tried out paying through Plugshare. It’s really simple to use the apps. Most gas stations have apps now, too, fwiw.

We have taken our Bolt from NC up to Philly and down to Florida without any major problems. Sometimes we run into a station that is down, but that’s usually due to not checking Plugshare reviews before every trip. I had that happen once on a trip to the mountains that I make fairly frequently. I usually stop in a town halfway at a set of EA chargers and I didn’t think to check Plugshare first because that was my regular stop just like I used to stop at certain gas stations in my ICE vehicle. I drove up to my usual chargers and pow the whole bank of them were all down because there had been a major thunderstorm the night before that had knocked out the electricity in the area. Apparently they were taking awhile to come back online. I looked at Plugshare once I got there (too late) and saw that other folks and EA had marked them as down, so it was my fault for not checking. There was another Chargepoint charger at a drugstore elsewhere in the same town so it wasn’t a huge deal, but it just hammered home the need to check every time even if you have regular chargers you use.

I don’t love the interface of A Better Route Planner, but a lot of people really like it. I’ve been using Plugshare since we first got an EV in 2015 (a Nissan Leaf) and I really value the user reviews in Plugshare. A lot of people use both. ABRP can take into account the weather, the terrain, and wind and give you a pretty accurate view on how far you can go on a charge. It will suggest chargers to you and the optimal time to charge to get the fastest charge according to your car’s charging curve, so that is pretty cool. I’ve been driving my Bolt since 2017 so I’m pretty familiar with how far it can go uphill and down and in different temps so I don’t feel like I need that part of what ABRP offers, but it might be worth checking out for you since you’ve got a new car and are just getting to know it. But read those Plugshare reviews to make sure the chargers ABRP suggests are good because sometimes ABRP is not up to date and will occasionally suggest a non-functioning charger. I would not rely on ABRP alone.

I am happy to answer any other questions you have. If I missed something let me know. Another great resource is Reddit. There are subforms on most makes and models and a subreddit on EVs in general at r/electricvehicles. I keep tabs on the r/BoltEV subreddit, too. I’m sure there’s one for your car. There’s one for every car.

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We’ll be climbing into an EV rental for the first time in a few weeks. Do I really need to start downloading apps and planning my trip? Ugghhh.