Quote:
Originally Posted by jmack123
Buddy, seriously get a grip. 99% of the time you charge AT HOME. By the team you need to take your first road trip and actually use a DC fast charger, there will be 50 more DC fast chargers in your area.
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I've visited four EA stations in the month(ish) I've owned my iX50. The first charge was an EA freebie and I got 125kw from the charger. Subsequent charges from EA have all been sh!tshow-esque and limited to 50kw -- and that's when the stations work. Consistently at least one stall is outright broken or otherwise unavailable. This past weekend, two of the four EA chargers were broken which caused an older woman to panic. At another location, one charger was entirely offline (unpowered) while another charger promised a connection but never functioned on my iX, an Ioniq5, or an ID4 (because the logical response to "that unit's broken" is "you're probably not using it right" or "yeah ok sure", only to sheepishly follow up with "so it's AKTCHUALLY broken").
I am vaguely concerned about an upcoming trip to Vegas but utterly terrified of a later trip to Pie Town, New Mexico (yes, it's a real place). Assuming the EA station, rated at 350kw, isn't nerfed to 50kw like my local EA stations, I should arrive in Pie Town at ~50% after a super-fun hour long charging stop -- and I'm sure I'll get stinkeyes from fellow travelers as I'm charging from 20% to 100% because
why would anyone need to do that apart from n00bz, lol. If the station
is nerfed to 50kw like my local stations, we'll get to explore the area on foot for 2+ hours which will be
so very enjoyable. Since there aren't charging stations around Pie Town, if anything goes wrong and I arrive with less than ~40% I can't make it back home without going wildly out of my way (as per ABRP), turning a fun day in Pie Town to an overnight driving tour of New Mexico, which strangely enough
is not on my bucket list.
There won't be "50 more DC fast chargers" by the time I take this trip in September. I'm not even sure there will be reliable DCFCs
for this trip. My options are: don't go and miss out on pies and quirkiness; admit 'defeat' and rent an ICE vehicle; yolo with backup plans in case things go horribly wrong.
It's OK to acknowledge the charging infrastructure in what could be many parts of the US is abhorrent, road tripping in an EV could be difficult due to said charging infrastructure, and to say there are currently benefits to ICE vehicles over EVs.