firsttruck
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EV charging is changing, Part 1: How automakers’ disappointment in Electrify America drove them into Tesla’s arms
Posted August 28, 2023
by John Voelcker
https://chargedevs.com/features/how...o-teslas-arms-ev-charging-is-changing-part-1/
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Fury at Electrify America
It’s hard to overstate the disgust and anger at Electrify America among virtually every person we interviewed. The network has come to be viewed, fairly or not, as the most minimal effort VW Group could have exerted to comply with the 10-year, $2-billion settlement it jointly negotiated with the EPA and the California Air Resources Board (CARB).
Five years after its first fast charging station went live in May 2018, Electrify America continues to have sites down for weeks or months and other locations where only one or two cables (out of four, six or eight) actually deliver a charge. While a majority of its stations will recharge an EV, the widely touted standard uptime figure of 97 percent still translates to 11 days a year of downtime for every location. Would you have confidence in your local gas station if you knew it might be dark almost two weeks a year—at random?
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Tesla aside, all networks are perceived to be more focused on getting new stations in the ground—and associated photo ops with local politicians—than funding operations and maintenance. Kameale C. Terry, the CEO of ChargerHelp, which repairs charging stations, tweeted in December 2021, “I recently spoke to a program manager for EV charging at a major utility and he said, ‘I have $18 million to build new EV chargers and $0 to fix the broken ones previously deployed.’ ”
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One engineer and one executive even suggested that Volkswagen deliberately did a subpar job. “Remember Dieselgate?” said one. “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice…”
Posted August 28, 2023
by John Voelcker
https://chargedevs.com/features/how...o-teslas-arms-ev-charging-is-changing-part-1/
.....
Fury at Electrify America
It’s hard to overstate the disgust and anger at Electrify America among virtually every person we interviewed. The network has come to be viewed, fairly or not, as the most minimal effort VW Group could have exerted to comply with the 10-year, $2-billion settlement it jointly negotiated with the EPA and the California Air Resources Board (CARB).
Five years after its first fast charging station went live in May 2018, Electrify America continues to have sites down for weeks or months and other locations where only one or two cables (out of four, six or eight) actually deliver a charge. While a majority of its stations will recharge an EV, the widely touted standard uptime figure of 97 percent still translates to 11 days a year of downtime for every location. Would you have confidence in your local gas station if you knew it might be dark almost two weeks a year—at random?
.....
Tesla aside, all networks are perceived to be more focused on getting new stations in the ground—and associated photo ops with local politicians—than funding operations and maintenance. Kameale C. Terry, the CEO of ChargerHelp, which repairs charging stations, tweeted in December 2021, “I recently spoke to a program manager for EV charging at a major utility and he said, ‘I have $18 million to build new EV chargers and $0 to fix the broken ones previously deployed.’ ”
.....
One engineer and one executive even suggested that Volkswagen deliberately did a subpar job. “Remember Dieselgate?” said one. “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice…”
