Video and you join me stuck at a charging station uh, not only a Tesla supercharging station, but also an Electrify America charging station not able to charge, and I thought Id make a video because Ive spent the last few days in California and it is a whole Nother ball game out here when it comes to owning an EV and honestly, I dont think I can recommend owning an electric car in this state uh, just based off of some of the things Im, seeing some of the trends that Im noticing its pretty insane so Lets start with the issues here at this charger, this supercharger just went completely offline and we also have major issues at the EA station across from me over here Ill show you, the car, Im driving talk about the situation and some friends of mine are just coming Back from the Tesla takeover, we tried to plug in their car to the supercharger wouldnt work, some viewers of ours over here at EA, everyones pissed from Tesla to all the other brands, its not looking good to own an electric car. Today, I hate to make these negative posts, but its important that people realize that hey owning an EV is still a bit of the Wild West. So currently you join me over here at Electrify, America and theres. Two of four stations working all is uh. Okay, ish that entire Bank of superchargers, when I arrived, was nearly full rocking cranking out the speeds everyone was charging and now its completely offline Ill, actually insert a clip right here of my friend, Troy, who I met just now, uh, who basically, we tried to get His car to charge take a look at this guys Im here with Troy, hey Troy were rating your charge at the supercharger and not working at all, so the whole row everyones just hosed right here.

The good news is, I have plenty of charge to get to the next one thats good news. Well, hopefully, someone has a CCS adapter and we can get a long line forming over there, this ones too old. For that one right, no same with my model: three yeah, the retrofits coming soon, but man Ive never seen a whole supercharging station go offline, just like that before yeah, but true, Im gon na have to rate it. Yeah were gon na rate it a zero out of ten first time ever for a Supercharger close, two, probably for me for sure. Yeah thanks Troy, so a bit of a shame that its not able to charge any cars over there Ive, never seen a whole supercharger site just go offline and its not really because the whole area lost power. Taco Bell still has power. These EA Chargers still have power and um happy to report actually that two of four Electrify America chargers are working. Now when I got here, there was a line of CCS cars, but we let some of our friends come through here. We have some viewers here in the Maki. What was your name again? Hey Ryan and uh just doing a quick top up here in the Maki love to see it, and now we have a bolt pulling in whos, definitely not going to be able to charge over there. So the rivian originally uh pulled into this spot to charge.

On number three, this unit here doesnt actually recognize at all that cars are plugged in whatsoever. The unit on the end is completely offline. One of the old baby ABB shows not as available and so really were down to two stations here and um yeah before Ryan got here. There was an id4, of course, doing one of their 100 charges, as id4 owners do and now were just kind of. Let me walk you around whats going here right now. I have the i7 pulled off to the side, because I was actually going to do a range test with it. This is where I typically start all of my range tests here in California. You can see the bolt owner pulled in is trying to get that third charger to work its not going to happen. The connector just doesnt work and were kind of hosed Ryans, just juicing up the Maki a little bit and the rivians gon na be good to go so well, actually be fine over here. Its a guy doing some two step in his n55 3 Series over there. Actually sounds freaking, awesome and uh. I love that the whole supercharger is offline, though so um you can see. People are pulling in theyre looking confused, they dont know where to go and me either. I really dont want to do 100 charge here in the i7 and block a whole bunch of people traveling through that would just leave one CCS plug available and the rest, not so yep lets see whats going on over here.

All of these are kind of down not on power. Only two or four are working at the moment yep, so we got a line forming for it, uh yep, so its the i7 and then the bolts and then thatll. Be you right there so welcome to figuring all this out lets jump in the i7 and figure out the California problem yeah. This is 150 here yeah, but its 33 miles. You have four left seven miles from here. Oh seven miles! Okay! Well, you might be able to go a bit below zero yeah. I think so. Im gon na try it all right. So he has four miles. Remaining hes gon na go seven miles to the next Charger, because the supercharger died and um. I told him theres a couple kilowatt hours hidden but turn climb it off and go really slow, so thats his plan over there. So, just on this situation that were dealing with here in Bakersfield, the boat that arrived cut, the line plugged in and now cant get his car charging over. Here you know he just was looking confused, but just totally cut in front of everyone, and we were all like what what the heck are. You doing like that dont charge were just waiting here Im at 15, so yeah I can make it to another station. I think I will and uh, but the other guys here. Ah man thats, not cool, so a couple things Im noticing in California.

Just today I picked up the i7 from BMW Im just inching forwards, a little bit here to see whats going on at the supercharger. I picked up the i7 today at uh, BMW, yup, supercharger, still not functioning, you can see everyones looking around they dont know what to do. Hands will waving. Confusion ensues sorry for the bad camera angle um. So, basically, yes was uh picked up. The i7 went to La Canada, Flint Ridge, which is where I always actually go. When I pick up media Vehicles thats the first charging stop its an old BTC three stall, and you know its right at the base of the hills. I love to drive Angeles Crest Highway and all the roads in the area, and I thought let thats a good base. Point picked up. The i7 lets go there and um was just completely full of id4s, all of them local all Pasadena purchased at the local Volkswagen dealer, then, as Im waiting, two more id4s pull up also waiting for their local charges. Now a pulse star 2 is arriving and Im definitely gon na go find a different charging station because its crazy here um. So basically, I had to wait almost an hour to get out of that charging station, but – and I only charged to about 50, because the charger I worked on or charged on was derating power from 30 kilowatts to 90 to 130 back to 30. All over the place, it was just crazy, so that was a poor charging experience.

I did a rate your charge on Twitter and I really think um you know giving away free charging programs disincentivizes good charging behavior. My friend Tom balogni made a great video talking about how free charging sucks and pretty much everyone we looked at. There was clogging up the station for local charging now, Im, not sure if it was because theyre trying to save a few dollars on their electricity at home, or they just have no way to charge at home or work. But to be totally honest, if you cannot charge at home or work, do not buy an electric car today, just dont uh that you should not rely on public infrastructure to charge your car, you know, maybe find a different place to live honestly. If you really want to drive EVS but its not worth the hassle to everyone else or yourself having to go publicly charge your car as your only means of charging its pretty rough. Actually, if you do that now, if you live in Kansas City and Denver, maybe you can get away with it because theres a lot of public charging right now, but especially here in California, its just insane um, really insane how many people have bought EVS recently and How few charging locations have gone in its just a massive disparity so um? I want to talk a little bit about yesterday. I drove the model S plaid from Colorado to Phoenix and then from Phoenix to San Diego and then up to La, not One charging issue.

All was great. Just yesterday I was at a supercharger in San Diego at uh, some Mall Fashion Valley. I believe it was. There were 48 superchargers, huge installation and then, in that same parking lot between EA and evgo, there were only five ccs stations, so it still definitely numbers wise shows buy a Tesla. If you need to publicly charge because at least the superchargers are available, theyre not cheap, but they work pretty well aside from the one behind me here: Ive never actually seen a whole station go offline. They must have tripped a fuse or a main breaker, or something because theres power in the area thats, not the issue uh pretty wild, actually um, so yeah. I think California lets just talk about the problems as a whole, not so much what Ive experienced the first bit is were noticing a huge uptake of electric cars, and not many new charging stations is going in weve all heard of the Navy funding different state programs. Things like that that have been coming along. However, most of those funding programs wont really. We wont see the benefit for another two years down the road at minimum. It takes a long time to put Chargers in the ground to get the sites permitted to get the equipment purchased, to get the power run and commissioned by the utility its a really long and complicated process. And so I think this problem is only going to get worse over the years, Ive been saying that for a while um, so a yeah theres, not enough Chargers compared to electric vehicles B, theres, not enough of a focus on level, two installations, uh or even home Charging or condo charging or multi unit dwelling.

However, you want to call it um theres, not enough of a focus there and a lot of that is very individualized problems, power limitations and I think we really need to see a big push to actually getting cars charged slowly in a higher number of spots than Also, just increasing fast Chargers, fast Chargers should just be for road trips um, so thats thats, pretty annoying, of course, and then next really is just the way people are are treating each other out here, its wild in Colorado. You know ever maybe EVS are still new or its still the Enthusiast club right like I recognize some of the people when Im out charging and we chat – and you know its a little bit of a camaraderie. You know if youre first to pull up to a charger and wait no ones going to try and Skip around you in line, but here its a very much a free for all its like jamming vehicles in to cut the line to get your charge charging to 100 percent uh very common Im, seeing people charging to 100 on their cars. I dont know why, because theres Chargers in every direction, whichever way you go and for the most part youre doing local charging, so save your cars battery, save your time and stop charging to a hundred percent. But this is really becoming a thing, so spending time in California really opens a window to what maybe EV ownership or adoption will look like at a larger scale in the country coming up, and it has me a bit nervous Im actually really like dont buy an Electric car, if you live in California, unless you can charge at home, which, if you cant, do not buy an electric car here, because wow its crazy, but the people are not understanding the technology.

Theyre frustrated theyre in a rush theyre charging to a hundred percent and um. It leaves the people who are using the network properly. You know DC fast charging for trips for superchargers and for public CCS Chargers. It kind of leaves everyone. You know at a disadvantage so Ben. I I think its just interesting to make a video that two of four Electrify America stations are working. So half the station is online. I consider that a fail. One of the three doesnt recognize that cars are being plugged into it and its not communicating that through the app the Chatham Oak and CCS station. The old ABB is completely Offline that they know about that one. I dont think they knew about the other one. Until this video will go up and then crazy that the supercharger just died after I arrived here that that really left a whole bunch of Tesla owners in a panic. Ive actually never seen anything like that before. So, I think in terms of building resiliency into Chargers. Heres, what I ask of chargepoint operators really Im putting this at the end of the video, but its the most important bit. We need grid buffer, some sort of battery backup diesel generator doesnt matter just something in case these Chargers go down because people are relying on these on this Hardware installed to actually get around, whether its to see family for medical emergencies traveling just to see the country. Whatever it might be, its not like theres, always another one down the street, just in view here, theres, multiple fueling stations and only one parking lot with charging stations in it, which is a bit of a shame.

Secondly, I think theres a lot that can be done for improving uptime or metrics as to seeing if your chargers are or arent working, for example, this EA station here. How would they know that that handle isnt activating other cars and, to be honest, I think there might need to be some more measures as to measuring if Chargers are functional or not from a software perspective, it can only detect so much from a hardware perspective. There doesnt seem to be sensors or some sort of monitor to say, hey this handle is broken or its non functional weve, seen the clips on Chargers start to break weve, seen them just completely exploded on the ground and the charger showing is available, and so I Would say many of the charging issues are because of cable and handle related problems, and none of those seem to be logged in the software and marked the charger as offline unless a user reports them through rate your charge on Twitter weve seen great success with that. So again, the two asked at the end of the video are better reliability and power support. Stop relying on crappy grid if thats, truly what sent the supercharger offline and B um yeah, better, better measurement as to whether or not the Chargers are or arent working and thats going to require close collaboration with Hardware manufacturers and charge Point operators to really stop looking At the money side of things and say, what do we need to do to make a good customer charging experience, and that goes far beyond just delivering power goes into everything else there pretty crazy.

Actually so my recommendation today is: if you live in California and cant charge it home, dont buy an electric car it really. This is just going downhill so fast and maybe Im just seeing a bad day a glimpse into this. But every time I come to California – and I come at least once a month – it gets worse and worse and worse and worse, the problems are just blowing up and the amount of charging infrastructure is not there to keep up with the amount of EVS coming on The market crazy and more Teslas pulling in looking confused what a shame. Truly a disaster actually theres a whole bunch of Teslas here, just everyones just standing around behind me. I dont know if you can see that just crazy see you in another out of spec reviews.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUl4OdgLbT0