EV Problems: Re-Charging Edition

Aside from the fires (infrequent but devastating), and the un-sustainable power demand through an electric infrastructure not built for that load (coming soon), there's another little problem with EV's:  re-charging on the road.

...Finding a charger isn't actually the problem, though, even if it adds another 50 miles to your road trip. According to the Department of Energy's Alternative Fueling Station Locator, there are 1,433 Tesla Supercharger locations and another 4,564 public DC fast charger locations that use the CCS plug, which will charge basically every EV on sale other than a Tesla or a Nissan Leaf.

Between networks like Electrify America and plans from the White House, as a nation, we're spending billions on expanding EV charging infrastructure.

No, the problem is whether or not any of the chargers will be working when you arrive. (Unless you're driving a Tesla, since Superchargers are painless to use and appear to be extremely reliable.)...

Good for Tesla!  Not for others.

... A few weeks later, it was time to drive from DC to Watkins Glen in the Finger Lakes region of New York, this time in a BMW iX. And despite plenty of planning, I still spent almost as much time stationary, arguing with charging machinery, as I did actually pulling electrons into the car's battery pack throughout the 600-mile journey.

At each charging stop, in Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New York, I ran into problems. A five-minute wait to see if the car and charger would establish communications was invariably the case. Waiting 10 minutes was not uncommon. Even then, there was no time to relax; more than once, an error somewhere in the loop shut everything down after just a few kWh.

Only one of six charging stops was painless, and I found similar problems whether the station was operated by Electrify America or Shell Recharge. Frustration often got the better of me and I berated the white monoliths, channeling the spirit of Basil Fawlty to summon down all manner of ills upon them and their circuitry, to my shame. (But seriously, it's all just so opaque. Why don't they just bloody work?)

Then there was the problem of whether or not all of the chargers at a given location were even functional. At one EA station with a Plugshare rating of 9.8, two of four chargers were completely inoperable and a third was reduced to just 50 kW....

The AlGore Future is HERE!!  You can tell he's a Democrat; the f****ng systems don't work.