Are there a lot of stations down for Memorial Day Weekend?

Yes, here in California at 7am Friday of Memorial Day weekend many stations are reporting full, such as 4 out of 7 locations on the I-5 between LA and SF, and even large 8 dispenser places such as Barstow are full. Zooming in on Barstow 7 of the 8 are “unavailable” with only 1/8 in use. South Lake Tahoe and Truckee similar problems.

Maybe this will be the first big holiday weekend that breaks the charging infrastructure?

When I recently did a 3000 mile road trip with 24 DCFC stops, the EA app real time status was wrong more than 50% of the time. Although most of the time it was wrong by saying chargers were working when they were out of service with blank screens, or a message on the station screen saying its not working, or with a windows boot message.

BrianFellows said:

Heading to the beach today, checked on my usual station I stop at along the way and the EA app has it grayed out and says all chargers unavailable. Checked on a few more stations I’ve been to and they are grayed out as well. 4 stations grayed out in North Carolina, all along highways. Several more in South Carolina and Georgia.

Anyone know what’s going on?

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Are the chargers actually down, or is it a communications problem (meaning that they are they in free vend mode)?

An update 90 minutes later at 8:30 am, Barstow CA now has 7 working dispensers and only 1 unavailabe, so maybe it was a temporary software problem with EA that caused 7 out of 8 dispensers there as unavailabe

On the InsideEV Podcast today at 9:30 am EST, they mentioned this about a hour into the show. One of the viewers, who is a YouTuber, Mach-e-Live I think, posted they were in communications with EA and EA was not sure why their app was showing a lot of chargers down.

ericy said:

Are the chargers actually down, or is it a communications problem (meaning that they are they in free vend mode)?

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Don’t know! I’ll let y’all know this afternoon.

Seem to be mostly coming back online! Maybe a software update?

Got to the station in Rocky Mount and all the Chargers were online and working. Guess it was just a glitch this morning.

Also a Hummer EV is here charging. First time I’ve seen one in person. Thing is HUGE

Heh... I would never drive a CCS car on a holiday weekend unless you have time and want to spend a good amount of your day waiting and charging. I guess I should say specifically in CA and probably NV.

rth121 said:

Heh... I would never drive a CCS car on a holiday weekend unless you have time and want to spend a good amount of your day waiting and charging. I guess I should say specifically in CA and probably NV.

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Tesla chargers are packed too on holidays I’ve heard but usually there are nearby stations and adapters to work around it.

One time a meth head cut all but one chord in the state of Utah Supercharger and there were massive lines hours long.

rth121 said:

Heh... I would never drive a CCS car on a holiday weekend unless you have time and want to spend a good amount of your day waiting and charging. I guess I should say specifically in CA and probably NV.

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I only needed to charge for about 15 minutes to give me enough juice to get to my destination. Not really a “good amount” of my day

BrianFellows said:

I only needed to charge for about 15 minutes to give me enough juice to get to my destination. Not really a “good amount” of my day

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Not going to happen with EA having no idle fees, no limit like Tesla which is 80% during peak hours, locals charging because it’s free when they were meant for long distance traveling, ID.4 not having pre condition, broken chargers all the time, software reported incorrectly, 4 chargers max on average with some having worthless Chademo and Level 2.

TidingSStables said:

Tesla chargers are packed too on holidays I’ve heard but usually there are nearby stations and adapters to work around it.

One time a meth head cut all but one chord in the state of Utah Supercharger and there were massive lines hours long.

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They're packed, but they have limited charging and most if not all Tesla are preconditioning before making to the charger so it's faster in and out for most drivers. Plus, there are much more Tesla stations and/or chargers than EA or other ccs network.

BrianFellows said:

I only needed to charge for about 15 minutes to give me enough juice to get to my destination. Not really a “good amount” of my day

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Don't think you experienced the wait time at some locations and especially during the holiday time... and new ev drivers that decides to charge to 80%+ to feel safe so they have "enough" buffer to make it to their destination.

There are also many broken chargers at each EA station... so good luck if you're solely relying on EA.

I told myself never again would I drive an ccs ev on a road trip during holiday weekend +/- 1 week. My 8 hour trip became 10-11 hours including charging + waiting; a week before Thanksgiving going from NorCal to San Diego.

Yesterday I was running on, what's the EV equivalent of fumes?, and stopped at an EA charger(Woodridge IL) that said 4/4 of open, what it didn't mention was that upon arrival all the chargers had screens saying they were doing an update and that charging speed would be lowered. 30kw speed for my half hour under the id4 plan got me home, but not happily.

Senpai said:

Yesterday I was running on, what's the EV equivalent of fumes?, and stopped at an EA charger(Woodridge IL) that said 4/4 of open, what it didn't mention was that upon arrival all the chargers had screens saying they were doing an update and that charging speed would be lowered. 30kw speed for my half hour under the id4 plan got me home, but not happily.

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Perfect time for a holiday weekend, EA can only get worse with age.

TidingSStables said:

Perfect time for a holiday weekend, EA can only get worse with age.

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Hm... That's probably why Ford is partnering up with Tesla.

Senpai said:

Yesterday I was running on, what's the EV equivalent of fumes?, and stopped at an EA charger(Woodridge IL) that said 4/4 of open, what it didn't mention was that upon arrival all the chargers had screens saying they were doing an update and that charging speed would be lowered. 30kw speed for my half hour under the id4 plan got me home, but not happily.

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I suppose the upside is that at least they were functioning, and you could charge. If they had been completely down, you might have gotten stuck. Glass half full at least.

Senpai said:

Yesterday I was running on, what's the EV equivalent of fumes?

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Stray ions.