Thanks for the report. I take it you're "Blueberry II" on Plugshare? BTW, were the CCS working, or were they out too?Leaf3540 wrote:I’ve read the horror stories about Electrify America being unreliable. They are true. Trying to get from Iowa to Denver. Grand Island Nebraska station is off line. Charged at a campground for 4 hours to make it to Lexington, NE. With a 78f battery, this station only puts out 13kW. Ogalala, is out of service so I can’t get to Fort Morgan, CO. Colby, KS is doable from Lexington as an alternative. It is out of service too. So far this trip, only Waukee, IA and Council Bluffs, IA actually work.
Someone way up the thread said this network is a joke. It is a cruel joke. I did the trip because when I left, all stations reported “in service “ on the EA webpage. Don’t be fooled, this only means not under construction. You must phone in to the call center to ask if things actually work. This 11 hour drive in an ICE will take me 3 days.
The above information issue is one reason why they're going to real-time status info on a cell phone. Of course, the info actually has to be real-time to be useful, and it remains to be seen if that will be the case. Part of the problem is that teething issues with sites are inevitable - just ask Tesla. I had to add and remove some sites several times from the "open" list I kept in that thread, and plenty of owners got burned the same way you did with sites reported open that weren't by the time they arrived.
The range of the cars combined with the long spacing between sites pretty much requires that you stop at every site to charge, just to make sure you have enough to get to the next site beyond (or before) it on your reserve. ICEs benefit from both longer range as well as the near-certainty that you will have another gas station within 30 miles if the one you plan to use is closed or broken. We're a long way from having that kind of density on any U.S. charging network, Tesla included, although a few heavily traveled routes may have it, so a much larger reserve is required.
Personally, I don't consider EA's network really viable for CHAdeMO cars, simply because there's only a single charger per site so no redundancy. But, with virtually every manufacturer other than Nissan or Tesla (so far, in the U.S.) using CCS, I think that's less of a deal than it might be. Obviously, if you have a LEAF, that's not the case.
