[Scott Utah]

Took delivery of my ID.4 on May 5 and love the car. For local driving, have far exceeded the 250 mile range.

This past weekend, we took our first road trip, driving to So Cal (about 400 miles away). The ride was great,
but the charging experience at EA stations was a total disaster. VW and EA (which is 100% owned by VW)
make the marketing claim that you can charge from 5% to 80% at EA stations in about 38 minutes.

The ID.4 is capable of receiving about 125 KW of electricity. So I can see how it's possible to charge
from 5 to 80% in 38 minutes if you are using an EA unit which has the capability of delivering 350 KW
or 150 KW.

In reality, our experience has been that very few EA chargers deliver anywhere near to the output on their
chargers. We had experiences where EA chargers that shouild be delivering 150 or 350 KW were only
putting out KW in the 40's.

When you call EA, the people are nice, and they try to reset the unit, or ask you to try a different unit,
but the output doesn't change. They then tell you they will notify maintenance. But they can't tell you
when "maintenance" will respond.

Was told that some issues can be fixed via a remote software update. It appears that EA doesn't
have any proactive monitoring system, but instead relies only on customer input to report a ;problem.
You would think EA would have technology that would run automatic reports and proactively address
problems with stations not performing anywhere near the stated capacity. But that doesn't appear to be
the case.

Stations visited included the Walmart in Washington, Utah, the Las Vegas Soiuth Premium Outlets, Ultra
Gas and Mart in Baker, CA, the Walmart in Hesperia, CA, the Target in San Dimas, CA, and the Walmart in
Burbank, CA. Of these, only the Las Vegas South Premium Outlets chargers seemed to initially work near
the advertised speed, but even that also took a nosedive well before reaching 80%.

The charging station in Baker, CA was expecially disappointing.It has 8 chargers, but only two are 150 KW
units and the rest are 50 KW. This station is right next to a Tesla charging station with 40 chargers. It
was sad to watch many Teslas comingh and going as those at the EA station were moving their cars around
to try and find a decent charger.

If VW really wants the ID.4 to be successful, it needs to address the serious problem it has with their
Electrify America charging stations. Today I am following up via phone and FedEx with Giovanni
Palazzo of EA and Scott Keough of VW Group of America.

We are making the same drive this coming weekend and it will be itneresting to see what changes
EA makes via software updates. I'm not holding my breath.

 

[Lxtruong]

If VW really wants the ID.4 to be successful, it needs to address the serious problem it has with their
Electrify America charging stations. Today I am following up via phone and FedEx with Giovanni
Palazzo of EA and Scott Keough of VW Group of America.

I'm sorry that you had a bad experience, but I don't see what the VW guy is supposed to do about charging speed at EA stations. They are separate companies, as far as I know.

 

[ericy]

In reality, our experience has been that very few EA chargers deliver anywhere near to the output on their
chargers. We had experiences where EA chargers that shouild be delivering 150 or 350 KW were only
putting out KW in the 40's.

I have had intermittent problems like this - in fact I have gone out of my way to try different charging locations just so I can see if I see the problem elsewhere. So far I have only seen it once - in my case, the charging started out fine at 125kW, but after about 5 minutes, there was a fault of some sort and it stopped charging. When I attempted to restart, I got something like 32kW. EA reset the charger and all that (which itself time consuming - those boxes take a long time to reboot).

A complicating factor is that EA has installed chargers from 4 different manufacturers - ABB, BTC Power, Efacec and Signet (I believe they have recently upgraded and removed the Efacec units, as they were particularly problematic). Unless you know what to look for, it isn't obvious which type of box you are using - one little project in the back of my mind was to come up with a way to quickly ID what type of box you are at.

FWIW, I had trouble on an ABB unit. For me it was obvious when they rebooted the box as there was an ABB logo on the boot splash screen. Fun fact: These things are running Linux.

 

[Spin]

Sorry to hear of your bad experience Scott. I have to say that my experiences at 2 different EA chargers here on Long Island have been totally fine. When we start charging with the battery below 20%, we always see numbers between 120 and 127KW to start. Charging times are usually a little over a half hour. We have charged about 12 times at EA. This is the receipt from the latest.

 

[Scott Utah]

I'm sorry that you had a bad experience, but I don't see what the VW guy is supposed to do about charging speed at EA stations. They are separate companies, as far as I know.

Electrify America is owned and controlled by Volkswagen. EA came about as a result of the "Dieselgate" settlement with the US EPA when VW was cheating on clean air requirements for many years on many of its diesel cars. Volkswagen has complete control over EA.

 

[epl]

Electrify America is owned and controlled by Volkswagen.

Thanks; I didn't know. This is useful information and it does mean that VW can fix it. It possibly also means VW does not have as much an incentive to do so unless we make the shortcomings of EA visible to a larger audience.

Electrify America - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I have been using ChargePoint with our existing BEV but a viable EA would help us with travels. I briefly looked at the iOS app for EA but it had terrible reviews.

Can we get an admin to create a pinned thread just for EA?

 

[thomas_y3]

I have had intermittent problems like this - in fact I have gone out of my way to try different charging locations just so I can see if I see the problem elsewhere. So far I have only seen it once - in my case, the charging started out fine at 125kW, but after about 5 minutes, there was a fault of some sort and it stopped charging. When I attempted to restart, I got something like 32kW. EA reset the charger and all that (which itself time consuming - those boxes take a long time to reboot).

A complicating factor is that EA has installed chargers from 4 different manufacturers - ABB, BTC Power, Efacec and Signet (I believe they have recently upgraded and removed the Efacec units, as they were particularly problematic). Unless you know what to look for, it isn't obvious which type of box you are using - one little project in the back of my mind was to come up with a way to quickly ID what type of box you are at.

FWIW, I had trouble on an ABB unit. For me it was obvious when they rebooted the box as there was an ABB logo on the boot splash screen. Fun fact: These things are running Linux.

good to know ABB runs Linux. I was at a local EA place and I've used the same station # for all my charging sessions since "day 1" two weeks ago. But last night I got the "vehicle could not be fully charged" error and the charging would initiate but wouldn't proceed further. they ended up rebooting it which i saw it was some sort of Window 7 variant... lol kind a old OS if I recall. I will try to ID the station maker next time. Anyhow, ended up charging on another station and it went fine... FYI.

Facebook

www.facebook.com

[0]=AZXjpPriIzx4BiWdUOhyPkP3_gkCcdQJlwmmdt5ZJwySSDMYeTr976MblfOdhYNfdv9nOpyNUuYHPUrv5vWMUyjlJN0UNQClxegG-i4nixA_BJn4gNm2oqoDgYQsaQvCkBWHH1yzjouHIu4gFmvOb7qlHnR95doJ8AxG0mVYJkZ0ch7rMeESd9c5b4-qXvAFGjI&__tn=EH-R

 

[Gary O]

Took delivery of my ID.4 on May 5 and love the car. For local driving, have far exceeded the 250 mile range.

This past weekend, we took our first road trip, driving to So Cal (about 400 miles away). The ride was great,
but the charging experience at EA stations was a total disaster. VW and EA (which is 100% owned by VW)
make the marketing claim that you can charge from 5% to 80% at EA stations in about 38 minutes.

The ID.4 is capable of receiving about 125 KW of electricity. So I can see how it's possible to charge
from 5 to 80% in 38 minutes if you are using an EA unit which has the capability of delivering 350 KW
or 150 KW.

In reality, our experience has been that very few EA chargers deliver anywhere near to the output on their
chargers. We had experiences where EA chargers that shouild be delivering 150 or 350 KW were only
putting out KW in the 40's.

When you call EA, the people are nice, and they try to reset the unit, or ask you to try a different unit,
but the output doesn't change. They then tell you they will notify maintenance. But they can't tell you
when "maintenance" will respond.

Was told that some issues can be fixed via a remote software update. It appears that EA doesn't
have any proactive monitoring system, but instead relies only on customer input to report a ;problem.
You would think EA would have technology that would run automatic reports and proactively address
problems with stations not performing anywhere near the stated capacity. But that doesn't appear to be
the case.

Stations visited included the Walmart in Washington, Utah, the Las Vegas Soiuth Premium Outlets, Ultra
Gas and Mart in Baker, CA, the Walmart in Hesperia, CA, the Target in San Dimas, CA, and the Walmart in
Burbank, CA. Of these, only the Las Vegas South Premium Outlets chargers seemed to initially work near
the advertised speed, but even that also took a nosedive well before reaching 80%.

The charging station in Baker, CA was expecially disappointing.It has 8 chargers, but only two are 150 KW
units and the rest are 50 KW. This station is right next to a Tesla charging station with 40 chargers. It
was sad to watch many Teslas comingh and going as those at the EA station were moving their cars around
to try and find a decent charger.

If VW really wants the ID.4 to be successful, it needs to address the serious problem it has with their
Electrify America charging stations. Today I am following up via phone and FedEx with Giovanni
Palazzo of EA and Scott Keough of VW Group of America.

We are making the same drive this coming weekend and it will be itneresting to see what changes
EA makes via software updates. I'm not holding my breath.

Yes, there is real concern about the E-A stations. I have read SO MANY reports from drivers who say that they are only getting 50kW or so from stations that have 150 kW or 350 kW capacity. I realize that if your batteries are charged more than 50% when you begin the charge you won't start at 125 kW, but you should still be at close to 90-100 kW.

 

[KB57]

Took delivery of my ID.4 on May 5 and love the car. For local driving, have far exceeded the 250 mile range.

This past weekend, we took our first road trip, driving to So Cal (about 400 miles away). The ride was great,
but the charging experience at EA stations was a total disaster. VW and EA (which is 100% owned by VW)
make the marketing claim that you can charge from 5% to 80% at EA stations in about 38 minutes.

The ID.4 is capable of receiving about 125 KW of electricity. So I can see how it's possible to charge
from 5 to 80% in 38 minutes if you are using an EA unit which has the capability of delivering 350 KW
or 150 KW.

In reality, our experience has been that very few EA chargers deliver anywhere near to the output on their
chargers. We had experiences where EA chargers that shouild be delivering 150 or 350 KW were only
putting out KW in the 40's.

When you call EA, the people are nice, and they try to reset the unit, or ask you to try a different unit,
but the output doesn't change. They then tell you they will notify maintenance. But they can't tell you
when "maintenance" will respond.

Was told that some issues can be fixed via a remote software update. It appears that EA doesn't
have any proactive monitoring system, but instead relies only on customer input to report a ;problem.
You would think EA would have technology that would run automatic reports and proactively address
problems with stations not performing anywhere near the stated capacity. But that doesn't appear to be
the case.

Stations visited included the Walmart in Washington, Utah, the Las Vegas Soiuth Premium Outlets, Ultra
Gas and Mart in Baker, CA, the Walmart in Hesperia, CA, the Target in San Dimas, CA, and the Walmart in
Burbank, CA. Of these, only the Las Vegas South Premium Outlets chargers seemed to initially work near
the advertised speed, but even that also took a nosedive well before reaching 80%.

The charging station in Baker, CA was expecially disappointing.It has 8 chargers, but only two are 150 KW
units and the rest are 50 KW. This station is right next to a Tesla charging station with 40 chargers. It
was sad to watch many Teslas comingh and going as those at the EA station were moving their cars around
to try and find a decent charger.

If VW really wants the ID.4 to be successful, it needs to address the serious problem it has with their
Electrify America charging stations. Today I am following up via phone and FedEx with Giovanni
Palazzo of EA and Scott Keough of VW Group of America.

We are making the same drive this coming weekend and it will be itneresting to see what changes
EA makes via software updates. I'm not holding my breath.

Sad to hear that, we drove from southern Arizona to Las Vegas with no issues. When We have travelled we charge to 100 percent. We stopped in Glendale and in Kingman and charged to 100 percent in 45 minutes both charges were at 80 percent in 30 to 35. The only thing I noticed is as the cars become more popular they are going to need more pumps at each site.

 

[jongarusa]

Going to annoy a few people by playing devils advocate. EA is funded by VW as a result of the settlement. However they are independant companies. The reason we dont have plug n play at launch is because of a mixture of covid and the fact that EA has to certify all vehicles to its network, not just VW. They have way to much different hardware (which means software), but they had to multisource to cover the ground they have as quickly as they have. Hindsight is 20/20. I have had my own sugnificant issues. However, thats why its so important to plan ahead, and have a backup, even a slower backup. I am really worried EA is going to screw up my trip to NY, especially when there are zero options on most of i80 from San Jose to Chicago.

 

[Geo]

The EA chargers in Burbank work fine for me.

You do need to check charge speeds before you leave, however. Some EA sites are inexplicably 50kw. The one in Harris Ranch along I-5 (also next to a big Tesla site) is also 50kw. Maybe Tesla is taking all the power. Who knows.

For your situation --- Baker has EVgo chargers a block away from EA that can do up to 350kw. You could also have gone to Barstow, which is 150/350, Victorville is similar.

But I do understand your frustration. As early adopters, we have to go through some growing pains. It's not fun at times. I drove LA -> Vegas and back 18 months ago. There were exactly three fast charging sites through the desert section. Now there's over a dozen. We are making progress, even though it's still not quite there yet.

 

[Huey52]

We already have a robust charging discussion area, linked below, and this thread now moved.
It's very unfortunate that some are having bad experiences. However many of us have had no issues at all with Electrify America as far as actual charging is concerned.

I had an issue getting the EA App installed on my iPhone 12 but they worked it and resolved within 10 days. And again my actual charging has been flawless.

I do hope the ID.4 reliability of charging in general, and EA fast charging specifically, becomes more reliable for all.

Charging, Batteries, and Charging Networks

Discuss all topics related to charging here.

www.vwidtalk.com

...
Can we get an admin to create a pinned thread just for EA?

 

[ChristophW]

Electrify America is owned and controlled by Volkswagen. EA came about as a result of the "Dieselgate" settlement with the US EPA when VW was cheating on clean air requirements for many years on many of its diesel cars. Volkswagen has complete control over EA.

I don't think it is that easy. As part of the settlement

"The Electrify America LLC unit, based in Reston, Virginia, is a wholly owned subsidiary of Volkswagen Group of America and is separate from Volkswagen AG's automobile brands.
[snip]
Funds spent on education and outreach must be brand neutral and cannot feature Volkswagen vehicles. Charging stations must be accessible to all vehicles."

I think they'd be on very thin ice if they favored, or even appeared to favor, VW vehicles. Nevertheless, the issues you and others experienced need to be resolved. But let's move that discussion over to the thread Huey52 suggested.

 

[epl]

However they are independant companies.

I agree that some growing pains are expected. Just a clarification that, as far as I can tell, EA is a fully owned subsidiary of the Volkswagen Group of America. I had assumed that VW had only provided extra funds to EA, but that is not so.

 

[Lxtruong]

Going to annoy a few people by playing devils advocate. EA is funded by VW as a result of the settlement. However they are independant companies.

This is correct and if VW meddles too much in EA then it risks losing the legal protections that they companies get from being separate. See, generally, the concept of "piercing the corporate veil": Avoid Piercing the Corporate Veil: Best Practices in Corporate Subsidiary Management . Thus, even if you were besties with the CEO of VW, he'd likely only forward your concern to the CEO of EA.

 

[Howlingwolves]

To be clear charging rates on id.4 is also a function of what the temperature of the battery at the start also the poc soc you are starting with for your reference I have attached the charging curve that you should see most times

 

[ericy]

You do need to check charge speeds before you leave, however. Some EA sites are inexplicably 50kw.

My own theory is that these chargers have liquid cooled cables, and if the liquid cooling is failing for some reason, that the charger will fall back to some much lower charging rate. I could be wrong - this is really just my guess. In general the 150kW units might have fewer problems in this area - and if you have the problem, it is worth it to try a 150kW unit if there is one available.

In any event, any time you see this, you should make sure that EA support knows about it.

 

[jongarusa]

My own theory is that these chargers have liquid cooled cables, and if the liquid cooling is failing for some reason, that the charger will fall back to some much lower charging rate. I could be wrong - this is really just my guess. In general the 150kW units might have fewer problems in this area - and if you have the problem, it is worth it to try a 150kW unit if there is one available.

In any event, any time you see this, you should make sure that EA support knows about it.

Nope - the ones at Harris ranch are 50k, because they cant get contracted power from PGE, as it goes to the Superchargers. They are working on that upgrade, now they have Panoche working

 

[djohan100]

The nearest EA for me is in the Brea Mall, Brea CA Usually i charge from 15% to 90% in 40-45 min. It starts @ 120 kw, and will reduce to 45kw near completion @ 90%. I charge in the morning before the Mall open and have my walking exercise for 45 min. Win - Win
The EA in Walmart Anaheim also deliver about the same speed charge start @ 120 kw.

 

[oldtechie]

I'm sorry that you had a bad experience, but I don't see what the VW guy is supposed to do about charging speed at EA stations. They are separate companies, as far as I know.

Since VW includes 3 years of EA charging with the ID.4 it would seem that they bear some responsibility for EA delivering a reliable product. Also the sales people will have a great interest if they want to use the free charging as a plus item.

I've heard nothing good about EA charging experiences. EA seems like the red headed stepchild of the VW group.