New EV owner here. We charge at home so I don’t need to use them, but stores nearby have chargers. I tried them to see how they work. They are often broken.
One store has a Volta charger (free!). It worked great the first time; the next time I went it was broken.
Walmart has an Electrify America fast charger. The first time I went, 1 of 3 was not working. The next time I went, 1 of 3 was not working, but it was a different one.
Was I unlucky, or are these charging networks unreliable? Has it been getting better or worse over time?
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You’re not unlucky, in the U.S. any charger that isn’t made by Tesla is unreliable. It’s been getting worse over time, and the only real hope is that every manufacturer is switching to Tesla’s charge port (now called NACS) and getting access to their Superchargers.
I had a non-Tesla EV and eventually got a Tesla because I need to road trip regularly and can’t handle chargers being down.
The Tesla chargers – do they live up to their reputation for being reliable? Or are they also unreliable, but Tesla puts so many chargers at each location that you can always find a working one?
They are genuinely more reliable. Having more stalls does help for when there’s issues, but they have 99.96% uptime across the entire network. I’ve had to move stalls once in my almost 3 years of ownership.
They also have their own service people that travel to chargers to fix them, where Electrify America hires local electrical contractors that may not be experts on DC Fast Charging equipment.
Edit: ran some numbers and I’ve charged 109 times on Superchargers. One failed session. I live in the rural Midwest/South so it’s not like I’m in EV heaven either.
What are the options for adapters to let you charge an existing Bolt EV, at a Tesla station?
To date, I’ve only ever needed to charge at home, but am curious.
Right now it’s not good, but NACS was also just announced. Part of that announcement included adapters, which should start to become commonplace soon. They do exist, and it looks like they’re $200. Some supercharger locations also have one.
At the risk of sounding like Black Mirror, some chargers will have adapters, others will expect you to bring your own. I plan on getting one when they become reasonably available, probably next year.
But note that there are some additional minor wrinkles, such as battery chemistry, voltage, and adapter limits that we may have to deal with until everything standardizes.
It will get better though, and I think it’ll be pretty soon
Anything used by the public will be treated like trash and will get broken. I’d be curious to know if the stores would be compensating if their suppled charges damage electrical components etc…
From what I’ve heard that’s not true of Tesla though. My car will be able to use their superchargers starting next year. I hope they remain reliable.
I think my experience is skewed by not having a dcfc capable car. I charge exclusively j1772. And use plugshare to find the chargers. In 5 years of ownership I’ve charged not at home probably 150 times. Of those times I would say I couldn’t get the charger to work maybe 20 times. And of those 20 probably half didn’t have any other option at the same location that I was able to get working.
Again this is skewed by filtering through plug share and not even attempting locations that have comments claiming they’re broken.
I’ve found the Electrify America chargers to be the best bet. They’re almost always at Walmarts so they’re plentiful and easy to find. All the ones I’ve seen have been operating well so far
Aging Wheels did a nice bit on chargers. Even the ones which are not fully broken may well not charge at the rate they’re supposed to.
I’m coming up on 2 years of owning an EV, I have charged at two public chargers in that time.
Unless you’re actively road tripping, or don’t have a home charger, the state of the charger network doesn’t really matter.
When I had an electric car my charger broke after two years
A literal answer to the title question. I like it. What charger did you have and was it covered under warranty?
I had the 110v wall charger for a Chevy Volt that came with the car. To be fair, I bought the car certified pre-owned, so I guess it was about 5 years old when it broke. I left it outside in inclement weather 24/7. I’m not sure if it was covered under warranty. What broke were the connections inside of the plug handle. I took it apart and soldered it back together. That lasted another six months, and then it broke again. I traded the car in after that, so I never tried to file a warranty claim or anything, but I don’t think it was covered. I didn’t trade the car in because of the charger though. I just happened to find the exact used truck I wanted, in the exact color I wanted, right about when the charger broke, so it worked out.
Edit: I just wanted to add that I loved that car! It was a great car. Literally the only thing I didn’t like about it is that there was no knob to change the AC temp. You had to hold your finger on the touch button and wait like 30 seconds while it slowly adjusted. Everything else about the car was great. One of my favorite features was the little button on the end of the blinker indicator that gave 3 quick polite little horn beeps. I used that all the time to alert people that they were in my way, where a full-fledged horn honk would seem rude.
Tesla almost always works. Electrify America is like 90% operable every time I’ve used one. Charge Point is a literal 50/50 (last station I visited 2/3 were broken) I’ve never even seen a Blink charger.
The charger at my house has been working great for 7 years, and it’s installed outside and gets weather, but it’s California weather, so it never long-term extremes. It also where I charge 99% of the time.
The one that came with the car was a 120 volt, and I think I’ve used it once, but it was too slow.
