Now 2 fast chargers down in my area

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rawlins02

Well-known member
Joined
Jan 29, 2017
Messages
99
Location
southern Delaware
I live in western Massachusetts. Two weeks ago I stopped by the dealer where I bought my 2014 Leaf early last year. Looking for a quick charge. I was told they are hoping Nissan will soon fix it. Last night I stopped by the Big Y in Greenfield on my way home from a 80 mile round trip. Now that fast charger is down. Had to sit at a L2 there for >30 minutes to get home, at 11:30 pm.

No new fast chargers have come online in my area (within a 30 mile radius) in the past 18 months. I certainly hope this is not a trend. Can't say now that I'd recommend a EV with a range of less than 200 miles.
 
rawlins02 said:
No new fast chargers have come online in my area (within a 30 mile radius) in the past 18 months.
You mean, no new CHAdeMO have come online in your area. The Hadley Supercharger is new just this April. It looks like 1 or 2 new CCS have been installed in Springfield in the last 18 months.

I used to have 2 CHAdeMO at Nissan dealers near me. One or the other was always broken. Recently, one of the dealerships moved across the street and just never put the CHAdeMO back up again. And with Electrify America installing 4 or 8 CCS, where just one is a shared CCS/CHAdeMO, it's becoming obvious that CHAdeMO is an also-ran.
 
The CHAdeMO situation is better on long Island. EVgo has some chargers in good locations which they maintain very well. Nissan dealers have been getting worse at maintaining their chargers. Here are some I've used

Nissan 112 has been down for a while now :( .
Garden City Nissan seems to be dropping their charger. Last time I was there, it was down and I got the feeling nothing would be done to fix it when I asked. Now it's gone from Plugshare :shock: .
Huntington Nissan seems to trip it's breaker. I have never had any success using it, but never asked for help with it. Apparently, you have to keeping asking for them to reset the breaker :( .
Koeppel's charger has always worked :) .

New York State has 2 chargers at the rt 495 rest stop. It is CHAdeMO only which was strange since it was installed just before the Bolt came out. They seem to need to be reset about once a month and there is no one there that can do that for you so it then down for a few days. They were both down recently after a lot of lightning storms came through so I'm guessing power issues can cause the problem :roll: .
 
DaveinOlyWA said:
So not in Chicopee area then? Because that station is only a few months old.

North Amherst. There are a few I've used in the Springfield area. Not a problem down there. Nothing available when you get north of Amherst and Northampton. The CHAdeMO at the Greenfield Big Y is right on I-91. Very convenient, if it's working.
 
Things are better here in Eastern Mass, but I still wish they had more fast chargers. There are more L2 chargers popping up along the state, but fast chargers need to be addressed more for long distance travelers. Even if they limited the fast charger locations to areas close to major highways, I think that would still help tremendously.
 
I hate to say it, but that is probably just part of the trend. I don't rely upon fast chargers because there are so few of them and their reliability is a known issue - even here in California where we are arguably a leader in this.

It is very sad to see just one or two kiosks installed at a location. Even if they worked 100% of the time, that few can easily be occupied when needed. Conversely, the spots I've seen that also have Tesla stations have many more spots available. If you are going to make the investment to set up a location, the incremental cost of a decent number of chargers is worthwhile if the company is serious about EV success. And for the non-Tesla group, this is even more critical. The lack of infrastructure support does really suggest a lack of commitment and is hampering EV adoption. This is an area that Tesla understands well but everyone else seems to miss.
 
jlv said:
And with Electrify America installing 4 or 8 CCS, where just one is a shared CCS/CHAdeMO, it's becoming obvious that CHAdeMO is an also-ran.

Honda dropped Chademo in Sept. 2017. That left the LEAF, Kia Soul-EV and Mitsubishi iMIEV as Chademo BEVs. i-MIEV production was ended in August 2017, leaving Kia and Nissan. Now Kia is switching to CCS for 2019. So Chademo will finally be a LEAF-only connector. My hope would be that Nissan changes the Smyrna GA plant for the 60kwhr 2020 model, to either:
- have CCS where the J1775 is now (so the car would be dual Chademo+CCS)
- or to let customers order the connector that works best for their part of the country
- or change from Chademo to CCS, but leave Chademo as a special option (they will still have the Chademo parts in their domestic Japan model)


To be fair, That "1 Chademo plus 7 CCS chargers" being installed by Electrify America does not reflect BEV driver demand: there are still more Chademo BEVs on the roads in the US than CCS BEVs. If you exclude Tesla and PHEV vehicles, then I think you'd get about
- 124k LEAFs sold in the US (most but not all with Chademo);
- about 38k Bolts with CCS
- 37k BMW i3 with CCS
- Soul EV, eGolf, Focus-E (each less than 5k, I think)
...so maybe 115k Chademo vs 85k CCS (ballpark guess)

Going forwards, CCS BEVs are outselling Chademo BEVs, but by less than 1k cars per month. At that rate, it would take 2.5 years for CCS to catch-up. But my guess is that Nissan is going to have a hard time staying only 1k cars/month behind all CCS sales combined. If _any_ non-Tesla manufacturer is able to produce a new BEV model in high volume and sell in all 50 states, they will get some market share.
 
^^^
Well, Electrify America is apparently run by VW, so obviously, they're out to screw competitors w/CHAdeMO and try to tilt things in their favor.

You left out the Outlander PHEV which comes w/CHAdeMO. You shouldn't totally exclude Tesla as the S and X can use their CHAdeMO adapter. Not sure when it'll finally work with the 3.

Some of the Frankenplug crowd like VW and BMW include CHAdeMO in their Japanese market vehicles like the e-Golf and i3.

Nissan's Smyrna is in TN, not GA. TN is also where Nissan North America HQ is.
 
specialgreen said:
To be fair, That "1 Chademo plus 7 CCS chargers" being installed by Electrify America does not reflect driver demand: there are still more Chademo BEVs on the roads in the US than CCS BEVs.
...
Going forwards, CCS is outselling Chademo
It's really 8 CCS Chargers, where 1 unit is a combo that additionally has a CHAdeMO connector. (And Murphy's Law nearly guarantees when you pull in with your LEAF, the only unit in use will be the combo unit with an eGolf or Bolt on the CCS side.)

But EA deploying mostly CCS does reflect driver demand. CCS is outselling CHAdeMO. That there are 60K more old LEAFs around doesn't really matter, since they aren't going to use the EA network for it's intended purpose. Almost no one is taking a small battery LEAF on the type of trip that the EA network is intended to enable. LEAF owners would probably use the EA stations if they are around locally, but then the cost of charging at them comes into play and those owners are probably just better off charging at home.
 
cwerdna said:
You left out the Outlander PHEV

Perhaps incorrectly, I was leaving-out all PHEVs. I had not anticipated that PHEV owners would fast-charge in a statistically significant number. Maybe I'm wrong: I saw a Volt at a DCFC today.

jlv said:
EA deploying mostly CCS does reflect driver demand. CCS is outselling CHAdeMO.

More CCS than Chademo: yes. But 8 times more: no. I think having 2 out of 8 "pumps" be CCS+Chademo would be much better. If there is only one Chademo pump, and it is out of order, then you could really be SOL.
 
specialgreen said:
cwerdna said:
You left out the Outlander PHEV

Perhaps incorrectly, I was leaving-out all PHEVs. I had not anticipated that PHEV owners would fast-charge in a statistically significant number. Maybe I'm wrong: I saw a Volt at a DCFC today.
You did. Volts don’t have DC FC capability.

JDM Prius Prime has CHAdeMO, as well.
 
I still don't see how a 4 to 1 or higher ratio is complying with the settlement terms. The network was supposed to be equal access and its not. The one chademo is not even exclusively chademo so its realistically CCS only with a "possible" chademo if you have to get there and have CCSers that are 100% aware of what they are doing.

FYI; Soul is also chademo.
 
DaveinOlyWA said:
I still don't see how a 4 to 1 or higher ratio is complying with the settlement terms. The network was supposed to be equal access and its not. The one chademo is not even exclusively chademo so its realistically CCS only with a "possible" chademo if you have to get there and have CCSers that are 100% aware of what they are doing.

FYI; Soul is also chademo.

Dave, I agree. My reading of the consent decree is "brand neutral" and VW is short changing CHAdeMO. I don't know if there is a non-public legal document with more details. What's been made public is clear: brand neutral. Do you know of anyone who has followed this closely, including the fine print? I drive with CCS now, but I don't like the idea of VW playing games--again--after they were caught red handed.

If you know of someone to contact about this, please let me know. pgipe at igc.org or message me. I'd like to look into this.

Paul
 
Seeing things like this makes me very grateful I live in Southern California where chargers are relatively plentiful, a lot of the quick chargers cost money, but there are still some of those that are free. I live a couple of blocks away from free level 2 chargers, so plugging in on level 2 isn't an issue either.
 
Perhaps we are reading into 'brand neutral' what we want it to be. Is the requirement to be brand neutral, or is it to be neutral between the 2 charging standards? If the text of the legal agreement uses the term 'brand neutral' and doesn't define it as actually being neutral between the 2 charging standards, it might be viable for VW to ignore or minimize non-CCS as there are multiple brands that can use CCS, thereby they are not steering consumers to just their brand.

With legal documents and regulatory compliance, the devil is in the details. Sadly, the consumer usually loses out.
 
cmwade77 said:
Seeing things like this makes me very grateful I live in Southern California where chargers are relatively plentiful, a lot of the quick chargers cost money, but there are still some of those that are free. I live a couple of blocks away from free level 2 chargers, so plugging in on level 2 isn't an issue either.

I also have multiple options so EA is hardly critical for me either. Their ONE advantage which isn't (didn't happen since the locations only have one chademo) is having multiple plugs cause it definitely isn't location. Maybe phase two locations will be different but the current proposed sights not only do nothing for me but some will be located in the SAME PARKING LOT as existing QCs....

FYI; over ¾ of EVGO locations have 2 QCs with a small (but growing) number that have 3. Add the 2 L2's and you have 5 plugs and EVGO truly is interoperable (new stations simply take credit cards) dual format stations.


**edited to fix omissions in voice to text "misversions"
 
That brings up a good point. Now that I have a PHEV as well as a BEV, I've been rather disappointed when new charging stations go in and they are only L3. Having both L2 and L3 is prudent from a number of perspectives.
1 - Not all EVs have L3 compatibility (i.e., many PHEVs and many Leaf-S models). The more these can access the infrastructure, the more non-ICE miles will be driven. Several times now in my PHEV I've been at a spot with only L3s, which meant no charging for me and later that day I ended up burning gas because of it.
2 - Not everyone who is interested in charging is in a hurry. If I'm driving my Leaf that can use either L2 or L3 and I have the opportunity to charge while I eat dinner and see a movie, should I take a precious L3 slot that someone else might desperately need? I'm inclined to pass that up. But if there are L2 slots available without blocking the L3s, I can charge with a relatively clean conscience.
 
DarthPuppy said:
That brings up a good point. Now that I have a PHEV as well as a BEV, I've been rather disappointed when new charging stations go in and they are only L3. Having both L2 and L3 is prudent from a number of perspectives.
1 - Not all EVs have L3 compatibility (i.e., many PHEVs and many Leaf-S models). The more these can access the infrastructure, the more non-ICE miles will be driven. Several times now in my PHEV I've been at a spot with only L3s, which meant no charging for me and later that day I ended up burning gas because of it.
2 - Not everyone who is interested in charging is in a hurry. If I'm driving my Leaf that can use either L2 or L3 and I have the opportunity to charge while I eat dinner and see a movie, should I take a precious L3 slot that someone else might desperately need? I'm inclined to pass that up. But if there are L2 slots available without blocking the L3s, I can charge with a relatively clean conscience.
I agree and I think there should always be L2 stations available near Quick Chargers and I think there should be an abundance of L2 stations at every movie theater, theme park, zoo and other place where people are likely to spend several hours.
 
In the USA over 4/5 EV sold these days is a Tesla and that ratio is only growing.
For the EA consent decree to make any sense at all their roll-out should service the overwhelming market leader.
 
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