Hi all,
First, this is not a complaint post, though I suppose it could be one if I was in a worse mood. This is mostly just a report on our experience driving up California in our Kia EV6 on Saturday 11/26. We decided to leave on Saturday to return home from our family Thanksgiving trip, hoping to avoid the worst of the Sunday end-of-holiday traffic.
The traffic itself wasn’t too bad, relatively, as our total driving time by the time we got home was about 7 hours. Longer than on non-holidays by a good 90 minutes, but not awful. What completely f’ed up our return was the dearth of charging stations–and ones that functioned–along Highway 5.
Now, we knew what we were getting into. We’ve taken the EV6 on many long road trips across the state , and have waited in line on occasion–but usually just one or two cars deep. This was on a whole other magnitude of horrible. We had dutifully route-planned via ABRP and the Electrify America app (we wanted to stick to EA mostly because we’re still getting free charges from the car purchase but also because our experience is that EA has been the most reliable). We knew we only had to charge once to make it home, and we knew that Kettleman City was our best bet because the EA there has 10 chargers, and according to the app 9 were operational at the time we were checking.
Welp, when we arrived there only 7 were functioning. And the line was out of control. We were about 20 cars deep, and the only positive thing to say about that is that by the time we eventually left the line was more like 40 cars deep (and I wish I was exaggerating) --so in that sense we were “lucky.” For awhile the scene was chaos, as cars didn’t know where to line up–so at one point there were two separate lines until it was decided, strictly by all the people waiting, as there was no “official” there to monitor the scene, that one line had to dissolve and all those people had to get in the other line. So that sucked, as we were in the line that was forced to merge, and we lost multiple places in line after already waiting about 45 minutes.
By the time it was our turn to charge, we had waited 3 hours in line. We charged up to 80, which didn’t take too long, but when all was said and done our usual 5.5 hour drive had turned into a 10.5 hour drive. Left L.A at noon, arrived home at 10:30 pm. Woof.
Some observations:
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People were cool, courteous, and helpful. There was a general sense of camaraderie, as we were all equally fucked. Once the chaos of the two lines was solved, people behaved. About every 5 minutes some new car would drive up and try to immediately pull into the lot, somehow not noticing the endless line of cars waiting, but there was obviously a lot of diligence to shoo them to the back of the line, as no one was going to let anyone cut given how long everyone had to wait.
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Leaving earlier in the morning would have helped. We couldn’t get on the road until noon because my wife was teaching, so we were right in the middle of the heaviest daytime traffic. I’m sure the situation would have been different if we had left at the crack of dawn. So that was on us.
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There was no consensus on how much everyone could charge. Some people went to 80, some people sat there to 100. No one was policing it, and, at least while we were there, there were no confrontations or arguments. Since everyone had to wait so long, and since no one would want to go through that again, it was understandable that people would want to go to 100. In our case, we knew we could make it back home just charging to 80, so our charge only took 20 minutes. But there were plenty of cars who had been sitting at the chargers a long time before our turn, and were still there when we left. Yay for the EV6’s fast charging and range.
4) Three stations down on a holiday weekend was ridiculous. These chargers should have all been functional, of all weekends of the year. And if it were up to me, there’d be an employee (even a temp) on hand to manage the line on such a weekend.
5) The nearby Tesla charging area made us all wish we had Teslas. No denying it–the Tesla owners had it made compared to us. Plenty of chargers, no wait, a nice lounge area to wait. There was just no comparison. I hate Musk and for that reason alone don’t want one (though we rented one in France this summer and enjoyed it), but man, give him all the credit for establishing a workable infrastructure that actually makes these long drives feasible.
6) Still love the EV6, still not sorry we are an electric-only household. Yeah, it sucked. But big picture, I still wouldn’t go back to ICE. The car is still tons of fun to drive, and this is the first time since buying the car in May 2022 that we’ve had this experience. And on the plus side, we were able to listen to 12 episodes of a podcast lol, and the friendliness of everyone waiting–a we’re all in this hell together feeling–helped keep our mood in check.
Good luck to everyone making this drive today. Plan on being patient. Or buy a Tesla.
I wouldn’t have driven an EV on the holidays, especially, a non-Tesla. Even the Tesla’s have to wait on the holiday weekends to charge along the I5 corridor.
Yes, the charging landscape sucks for CCS equipped cars. Good write up of your experiences. Thanks.Yup. We drove thru 4 states yesterday in the south to the Midwest and EA was brutal. We ended up only using Shell Recharge or Pilot chargers which actually worked out perfectly. Usually EA is our chargers of choice but waiting to recharge makes a super long trip way worse.
So many chargers down during high traffic day IS ridiculous. And so many people get super slow charging speeds is even more so.
I had a similar experience on the Oregon coast back in September; it drove me to order a Tesla. The DC fast charging experience is night and day. I had zero issues during my first road trip over the Thanksgiving weekend and I couldn’t be happier. I also considered buying a Rivian but the charging network was a dealbreaker. I still have my CCS vehicle but I’ve only driven it once since taking delivery of the Tesla.
Thanks for sharing your experience. I’m going to hold on to my 12 year old ICE for a few more years because of this kind of inconvenience which doesn’t seem unique. I do applaud you for your good intentions in buying an EV but I think you may not have recognized all aspects. TBF you did choose the busiest travel day of the year to make the journey, and you did so during peak traffic. You also chose to buy a (presumably cheaper) EV which didn’t come with an adequate charging network. I’m assuming Tesla pricing includes the cost associated with their network, but even Tesla owners experience difficulty finding open & functioning charging stations sometimes. No surprise Tesla doesn’t give away network access to other vehicles for free. About half (>47%) of California’s electricity generation comes directly from fossil fuels, so with the additional emissions from manufacture of the EV & batteries and the mining and transportation of the materials to the factories you aren’t really saving a lot of emissions (approx 10-20% per annum), over holding onto at least one ICE vehicle for a few more years. Your round trip to France this summer generated over 8 tonnes of CO2 which is more than the average EU resident generates in one year, and over ten times the maximum amount we each can emit in one year to avert climate disaster. (I assumed 2x premium economy on a 777. ) There are also the extra potentially toxic emissions that will come from excess tire wear (EVs are heavier and go through tires faster) and the concrete & steel reinforcement of parking garages which we & our children will have to deal with in the future.
Yesterday (Saturday) soon after noon I stopped at the chargers a bit off I-5 in Bakersfield on Enos Ln. Long line of cars waiting for the Electrify America chargers. Tesla chargers almost fully utilized, but no wait. And, get this, Tesla was in the process of setting up two mobile charging units in the neighboring parking lot, anticipating a higher flow of cars later. Massive truck bed battery packs with ~6 superchargers on the side.
That type of deployable infrastructure to deal with localized higher demand is pretty awesome. The rest of the infrastructure has a long way to go. Until you can or are willing to buy a vehicle compatible with the Tesla charging network, plan on staying near home.
Tesla’s charging network is a big part of their brand identity. They’ve worked really hard to create a “it just works” kind of a system, akin to Apple, and spend a lot of money on expanding and maintaining their network.
EA has EVGO simply do not give af beyond haphazardly opening new locations.
This is the main reason we own two Teslas and will never consider another EV for many years at least.
The Tesla tells you when there are a lot of other cars navigating to the supercharger you have set in the nav, when you’re HALF AN HOUR AWAY! And it prompts you to navigate to a different supercharger to avoid lines. It’s really quite spectacular.
And all of that planning will probably be fucked up when other brand of cars will simply drop by to charge.
- Like the other commenter mentioned, sales of non-Teslas before the 2025 model year are less than all Teslas on the road today.
- I would bet money that part of the deal for supercharger access in 2025 is that the other brands will be required to notify Tesla when their cars are navigating to the supercharger (and may optionally show status to the driver).
Perhaps but i think Tesla engineers will be able to figure out a way to solve that problem
I hope so for those already using busy Superchargers. Personally, those that I’m using aren’t that busy, if at all. Often, even in the middle of the day, I’m alone charging. It happened twice two weekends ago at two different eight stalls V3 Superchargers. I was the only one charging for the whole 15 minutes we were there. If it does become s shit show though, I’ll route to V2 Superchargers (still lots of them on my routes) which won’t be opened to other vehicles (lacking CCS protocol) until things calm down.
Keep in mind that Tesla is already 60%-ish of EVs in North America, so the increase from “other brands” will be lower than Tesla’s own growth during last year.
If they just keep up with the network expansion, it simply won’t matter. The only beef I have is with the cars that take up two spots to charge because of port location.
If people behave like adults and don’t mind moving their car (as long as they are inside of course and not eating or shopping somewhere), the best case scenario is only one bay is left empty, no matter the numbers of stalls there. By stacking from the end towards the middle with the right side port cars on one side and the left side car on the other, would leave just an empty bay somewhere in the middle. But, I doubt it will be that easy, hence why I might limit myself to V2 at first, as long as it’s less than 50% busy there.
Yeah, I don’t know how they’ll manage, but completely full superchargers are somewhat rare in my experience unless you’re in a highly urban area.
Don’t you wish you had a Tesla? Over 300 Super Tesla chargers within 100 miles of Kettlemen City/ Harris Ranch
See item #5 in their comment
I was certainly jealous of that, for sure. But no, I don’t wish I had a Tesla. Totally love my EV6. Drove a Tesla all summer in France and it was fine but nothing about it (again, aside from the public chargers) was superior to our EV6, IMHO.
As long as you are happy that’s all that matters. I have a Rivian and have had to wait over an hour for to get a charge.
I’ve seen lines like that at superchargers 30 deep meanwhile I’ve been in and out at an EA in 20 minutes 2 miles away. It depends on so much and holiday weekends are ALWAYS bad. Honestly if we actually traveled on a holiday we’d just rent something until there are enough chargers.
There should really be a limit to how much u can charge at a super charger. And there should also be some sort of check in system - like when you arrive there it can see that you’re near the station via location on your phone and then you can push a button on the app saying you’re waiting in line and maybe that could start some sort of limit on how high people can charge to. So say there’s people in line, you can only charge to 80%. But if there’s no one in line then you can go to 100%. I feel like that would be pretty helpful
Tesla is doing that now. Heavily congested chargers will hit customers with a $1.00/minute fee after 90%.
3 hour wait to score $30 or so free electricity? You should have gone to charge point or EVGo and paid. I too like getting stuff for free, but 3 hours wait is excessive!!!
Literally the first thing I was thinking yet OP seemed to have ignore that in the “observation” part. It would have helped the folks here if OP told us whether the EVgo were just as bad or not.
Unfortunately there aren’t really any EVGo chargers on the 5
I actually stopped visiting EA and have been using EVGo since September. Haven’t had to wait in line since.
And when I did get curious about EA, it was a waste of time because if there wasn’t a line, there’s a guarantee at least 25% of chargers are broken.
Yes, I am giving up free charging; however, better pay then waste 3 hours per EA visit like I used to.
I like evgo better. They have more small stations spread out. I am willing to detour off the highway a little to avoid a line at the really popular just off the highway mall stop.
Highly agree. Their $12.99/mo subscription is totally worth the time saved.
We actually did this as soon as we saw the insane queue for EA yesterday but other people had the same idea. We immediately went to another station (paid; EV Range) in Kettlemen City but there were already 5 cars waiting for 2 stations that took about 2 hours. It would’ve been quicker but the cars were struggling pulling more than 80 kW despite supporting up to 350kW.
We were also monitoring some ChargePoint DC fast chargers about 20 miles north which also had multiple cars backed up.
Oh yeah, I don’t disagree. I would have paid double or triple that to get out of the scene we were in. The problem was just not knowing if it was better anywhere else, especially given Thanksgiving weekend. I was checking various apps (not just EA) and it wasn’t clear to us that we had better options. There probably were. But we were wary to get out of one line only to possibly be stuck at the back of another…
Three hours to own Musk.
Every EvGo I’ve been to was either all non functional or only one charger functional. I take EvGo off my route planning because they’ve totally f’ed me on more than one occasion.
That’s been my experience with EA. There aren’t a lot of winners in the public DC charging game these days unfortunately.
This is why, at the current state, PHEV is superior to full EV
Except Teslas
Don’t sell that wonderful EV6! Next year, those Tesla stations are supposed to open up to all EV’s, and somehow adapters will be distributed.
this situation is a great example of when the typical “ackshuyally it’s more efficient to charge to 80% and then stop again” soc-shaming fails miserably
Thanks for sharing your experience - it only takes one bad experience to really change people’s minds.
Will you be purchasing a DC CCS1 to NACS adapter when they become available?
Or because you would still be giving money to Musk via superchargers do you consider that off limits?
I’ll buy the adapter, almost for sure, if it means I can use the Tesla network, yes. And it’s not like I’m a rabid anti-Musk guy–we did drive a Tesla all summer. I think the guy is a lunatic and a*hole, but I’m not gonna deny myself access to those chargers, given the shitty alternatives. I can only imagine how annoyed the Tesla drivers are gonna be once we start clogging up those stations too lol.
This is why charge rate is actually important for mass adoption. Every manufacturer should continue to push the envelope.
Yes, if every place had a charger it’s not that big of a deal, but attacking the “problems” of EVs on all fronts is obviously better.
Tell this story to someone on the fence and they would fear EVs. “You can’t drive on travel days.”