Electric Car Fast Charging Vs Gas: One Wins On Convenience - Forbes

I love everything about electric cars except public charging.

At a fast charging station I can get an 80 percent charge in 40-60 minutes. Problem is, that’s on a good day. One a bad day, well...it’s a long story.

Scenario 1: musical chairs — first charger doesn’t work so you go to another. That one doesn’t work either so you try another. Finally, you hit pay dirt on the third plug. But ten minutes has elapsed and you’ve only just started a 40-60 minute charge.

Scenario 2: charging app isn’t communicating with charger or it won’t take a credit card.

Scenario 3: blue screen of death — chargers have crashed or are offline. You call support. It’s news to them. You give up and find another charging location. Time wasted: at least 30 minutes getting to another charging location. (This can happen at gas stations too but there’s usually another gas station nearby.)

Ford — who is sending people to go out and find bad chargers — says that “over 99.5 percent of customers go into a charger and get a charge,” according to Automotive News.

Based on my experience, that’s very optimistic. Recently, I used public Electrify America fast chargers exclusively (no home charging) several times a week for about three months. The upshot: chargers worked without a hitch about 75% of the time*.

(My most recent fail involved three attempts at three different chargers and finally getting a charge at the third plug. That took about 10 minutes.)

Most of the gas-car owning public won’t tolerate the inconvenience

The point is the average person thinking about switching from a gas car to an EV won’t tolerate this. Yes, you can charge an EV at home. But that’s not always practical. Sooner or later you have to rely on the public/private charging infrastructure.

“We are making progress – rapidly deploying the fastest High Powered Chargers available (150 and 350kW)  – over 2,800 chargers to date in a little over three years  – and we have suffered growing pains,” a spokesperson for Electrify America told me.

“We actually have our own testing group roaming the US testing chargers every day with various EVs to help us identify issues hopefully before you and other customers experience a problem,” the spokesperson added.

——

Notes

*Also included in that 25% are minor glitches such as not communicating with the charger on the first attempt.

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Electric Car Fast Charging Vs Gas: One Wins On Convenience - Forbes
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