Free EA charging Sept. 3-6 2021
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Thanks anyway and looking forward to post-Summer ease of commute. And who knows, by then we just might have Plug & Charge every day. 
Nice! We've got multiple stations within 10 miles; I rarely see over half the spots in use. It'll be good to see a few more cars at 'em.
They must have started this early... I trundled up to the EA chargers in Vacaville and it was plug and charge. My first thought was they got it working... then I realized it was a holiday weekend coming up. At the time, no notice was displayed about the free charging.
We’ll be using this for our trip this weekend, driving our eGolf.
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Same here.
It was a nice preview of what plug and charge will be😊
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Free charging is already rollin, popped by an EA charger this evening and got my complimentary charge.
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Yeah, cost-wise these free promotions don't make a difference. On the plus side it's easier/quicker to start the charging, on the other hand you don't get a record of the session in your charge history in the app.
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Yes, tell your Bolt, mach-e, i3... friends 😁.
It's an EA push to get other EV owners to try/use EA 👍. Kinda like Tesla opening up their chargers to other EV owners.
Free lunch, so to speak.
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BTW, has anyone noticed whether other charging networks like EVgo or chargepoint have free weekend promotions like this? Would be good to know I can stop at any of them offering free charging on a holiday weekend trip.
edit: doesn't look like it's too common. I saw doing a quick twitter seach that chargepoint did it once for Clean Air Day a few years back.
edit: doesn't look like it's too common. I saw doing a quick twitter seach that chargepoint did it once for Clean Air Day a few years back.
Interesting thought experiment.
With gasoline the lines would be long with people in a frenzy to get their free gasoline.
With this EA announcement the impact will be small.
The reason isn't because EV's are a small percentage of the cars on the road, although that is part of it.
The real reason is that charging an EV is so cheap already, getting the "fuel" for free isn't all that much cheaper or enticing. In my case the nearest EA station is 25 miles (31 mins) away. Is it worth it for me to drive for 30 minutes to get maybe $2 or $3 of electricity for free. Nah I have better things to do with my time. However if the gas station at that same location was offering free gasoline and I still had a gasoline car (I don't) then saving $50 would be worth the trip.
In fact the two closest Nissan dealers to me which are much closer than EA offer free rapid charging 24x7 (and have been doing so for the last 9 years). Those stations get very light use despite being free. As EV drivers we already have access to free rapid charging close to us, and because of the low cost of charging at home we simply don't bother to take advantage.
For those of you who have read Predictably Irrational offering gasoline for say 10c/gallon would have a much bigger effect than offering it for free. When something is free most people take what they believe is their "fair share". When something is very cheap they take as much as they can reasonably afford or carry which is much more than they would take if it was free.
Free charging on holiday weekend = long wait time if you're charging later in the afternoon when people get off work or about to head back home... At least in California.
Got to the charger around 4:50PM, luckily when I was there, it had 2 open spots out of 4 (occupied by Audi e-tron and another ID.4). At 5:00PM, Chevy Bolt took 1 spot and Mustang Mach-E took e-tron spot; then about 5 minutes later, a Jaguar I-Pace EV400 and an ID.4 showed up, no spots for them... 10 minutes later, another Mustang Mach-E and ID.4 showed up... and those probably waited 20-40 minute until they can charge.
Got to the charger around 4:50PM, luckily when I was there, it had 2 open spots out of 4 (occupied by Audi e-tron and another ID.4). At 5:00PM, Chevy Bolt took 1 spot and Mustang Mach-E took e-tron spot; then about 5 minutes later, a Jaguar I-Pace EV400 and an ID.4 showed up, no spots for them... 10 minutes later, another Mustang Mach-E and ID.4 showed up... and those probably waited 20-40 minute until they can charge.
Similar. Pulled into a location with 8 chargers - two were down. There was one other ID.4, a Bolt and one of those BMW i3 things. Charging was uneventful with no issues.
The trip to the charger was interesting. I was using the builtin navi (monthly data limits for cellphone were exceeded). I had it set to navigate not to the nearest EA, but another one about 80 miles away. According to the GOM, I would get there with about 30 left. At one point, we deviated from the route that it wanted, it recalculated, the distance went up by a few miles, and the car announced that it added a charging stop. I check, and it had actually added the nearer EA station. So that was actually faultless.
Electrify America To Offer Free Charging All Labor Day Weekend Long
Electrify America will offer free electric vehicle charging all Labor Day weekend-long for all of its users.
insideevs.com
I have a Bolt and did personally try and receive free EA DC FC juice after midnight 9/3.
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