Public Charging Question MA

[AnniesaurusNissan]

Hello! New Leaf owner here as of last week! We got a 2015 SL because of the dealer incentives at the end of the month. We have a level 1 charger at home, and since we plan to use the car for local drives, this should generally be fine for us, I think. Or will it? Is getting the level 2 charger a total necessity?

Also, I'm baffled by public charging stations. I should get an EVgo card, right? Is that the only gig in town or are there other public charging companies I should know about? And I thought I read somewhere that MA gives free public charging for 2 years, but is that only at specific locations?

Any insights would be awesome and apologies if this info is in a thread somewhere else--I looked but didn't see anything quite right, though, to be fair, I didn't go digging through the board. Thanks so much for any wisdom anyone has!

 

[NYLEAF]

You should add your location to your profile so it is easier for people to answer any questions you have. I'm going to assume you are in the Boston area? If you leased from a participating dealer, you should have received an "EZ Charge" card, which gives you the "No Charge to Charge" program for 2 years. The card itself works on any Chargepoint station, Blink station, EVgo station, and Greenlots station, although some of them won't be part of NCTC. If you have that card, there's no need to sign up for individual cards with each of the different charging station networks. Additionally, some public charging stations are not on any network; you can just drive up, plug in, and charge for free. Some stations might use a parking meter, separate from the charging station, to bill you.

As for getting a Level 2 at home, it really depends on how far you need to drive daily, and how long your car has to "sleep" at night. If you typically get home from work at 11pm and need to leave again at 5am, and you have a 60 mile commute, then you'd definitely want to invest in a level 2. If you get home from work at 5pm, don't leave the house until 8am the next morning, and you have a 20 mile roundtrip commute, level 1 will serve your needs just fine. The only other thing to consider with Level 2 is that it's nice to be able to preheat the car during the winter (so it's warm when you leave for work), but the heat will use up more power than your level 1 cord can supply, so you lose the advantage of having a full battery to go along with your warm car if you preheat.

 

[mjblazin]

If not in the EZ Charge program ( excludes used vehicles), get a plugshare app for IOS/Android and identify station types where you most likely will use. My quick scan of Boston indicates ChargePoint has the overwhelming number of stations, concentrated in downtown, Cambridge, Seaport and Back Bay/Fenway area. One thing in Boston that is different from Dallas is almost all the stations are in paid parking garages or hotels that charge for parking. We have a lot of stations in free parking lots. You will pay the garage and the station owner. Sometimes the garage is the station owner too.

Stations in the suburbs look rare, tied either dealers or paid parking sites.

 

[DNAinaGoodWay]

The EZCharge card currently is only good at the new eVgo stations and the L2s at Patriot Place. You'll want a ChargePoint card for almost everywhere else. There's also SemaCharge and Greenlots, but not many of those. See www.plugshare.com

Welcome to EVs, enjoy.