New Issue for EV Owners: ‘Charger Hogs’
A study of 20,000 EV charging stations shows the experience is still a massive bummer
In our continuing series of all the unintended consequences of forcing Americans to switch to electric vehicles (EVs) based on climate crisis pseudoscience, a new problem has been detected: Charger Hogs.
Recently, I drove a new Chevrolet Blazer EV from New York City to Bristol, Pennsylvania. I figured the drive down to Bristol with my family would take about 90 minutes and, since I didn’t start with a full battery, the return trip would take 15 to 20 minutes more with a stop along the way to charge up the EV some.
I was so very wrong.
It took us four hours to get home that night. We were sitting in line for electric vehicle chargers. Blame ill-mannered charger hogs who don’t respect EV etiquette. It’s like waiting for your table in a restaurant while watching people casually chat over empty plates and half-empty wine glasses.
As a reminder . EV drivers are also experiencing “range anxiety.” For this, and many other reasons, nearly 50% of EV-owners now say that they regret their purchase.
Electrify America, an EV charging company that claims to offer the largest amount of open hyper-fast charging stations, says they are are planning to institute new policies to prevent charger hogging.
In an effort to reduce charging congestion, Electrify America is testing a pilot program that would enact a strict charging limit at 10 of its busiest EV fast-charging stations in California.
The idea is that once the charger detects that an EV’s batteries are already charged to 85%, no more electricity will be dispensed. Drivers will be kindly asked to unplug and leave for the next person or face an “idle fee” of 40 cents per minute every minute their car stays plugged in.
In an interview with CNN, Electrify America President Robert Barrosa said that many new EV owners are still getting to grips with how EVs “fill up” compared to traditional gasoline cars.
Essentially, automakers like Tesla, Hyundai, and Lucid recommend that owners fill up to 80% or 85% of the battery’s capacity for peak battery performance and longevity; filling to maximum capacity is recommended when absolutely needed.
In a related report, a study of 20,000 EV charging stations shows the experience is still a massive bummer. The study was conducted by ChargerHelp, a firm specializing in EV charger operations and maintenance solutions.
The experience of charging an electric vehicle in the US could be better, and a big new study is out that lists the biggest infrastructure pain points, including a failure to report broken stalls, inaccurate station status messages, aging equipment, and some habitually unreliable network providers (who go unnamed in the study, unfortunately).
…EV chargers can break in many ways, the study concludes. These include broken retractor systems intended to protect the cable from getting mangled by vehicle tires, broken screens, and inoperable payment systems. There is also general damage to the cabinet and, of course, broken cables and connectors.
Across the chargers recorded, ChargerHelp calculates that actual uptime is only 73.7 percent, compared to the 84.6 percent self-reported by the EV network providers.
The study found that 26 percent of all stations analyzed did not positively match the perceived status of the chargers as presented in the networks’ software. That means some charge networks overstate the number of stations it has that are online, which puts a damper on the confidence EV owners should have in the charging infrastructure. It’s especially problematic when one badly needs a charge and ends up at a station that an app said was online but wasn’t.
I have to say, I am bitterly clinging to my Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) vehicle. I spend no more than 15 minutes filling, and I can top it off without penalty. I only hope I can keep my Honda CRV going for another 100,000 miles.
To round out this report with something in keeping with the presidential election season, here is a video of Vice President Kamala Harris attempting to charge an EV.
Remember that time Kamala discovered how electric vehicles work? 🤣🤣🤣
She thinks she’s pumping electricity like she’s pumping gas…
Has there ever been a dumber candidate? 🤦♂️🤦♂️ pic.twitter.com/v0t3JDGOnA
— Tim Young (@TimRunsHisMouth) August 8, 2024
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Comments
So if fast chargers are only designed to get to 80% why don’t they just cut off automatically? It’s not rocket science.
I will believe we are ready for EVs when I see an all electric Buckees.
I have long said that the thing should register full at 80%, but then they’d have to reduce the “maximum range” claims by 20% as well. Not to mention that driving at highway speeds means you’re getting less mileage out of the thing. they work best at lower speeds which is why if you never leave the city and you can charge it overnight, they’re probably ok for that situation. But if you need longer trips, they’re shit.
Or when an episode of Roadkill features a Tesla.
I don’t know if there is some form of feedback network in the charging plug to alert the system at 80%.
“when I see an all electric Buckees.”
You may not have long to wait.
We’re RVing today. Just used a Flying J station on the Interstate that we’ve used many times. It had a really nice open apron on one end where you could park a long truck and trailer after fueling up, so you could use the rest rooms, buy lunch, whatever. Imagine my surprise when we pulled in today and saw the entire former apron occupied by three brand new ranks of EV chargers…. with absolutely nobody using them. Took fifteen minutes waiting in line at the pump and fueling up — still nobody pulling in to charge up. So we parked the rig blocking one of the three EV charging lanes while we went in to empty our personal tanks. (Two whole lanes with two chargers each still accessible, right?) When we came out, there was still nobody there.
What an efficient market centralized Soviet control creates!
Next in the Soviet American centralized market control. No other shoes will be sold until the remaining size 14s are sold, and no gas will be dispensed until the EV stations are at capacity.
Equity doncha know!
Pilot/Flying J was sold to Warren Buffett. That’s why you see 3 lanes of chargers. None of the wine sipping EV owners are going to stop at a truck stop for access to a charger. Why hell, they might be converted to MAGA voters if they hang around a truck stop long enough. FKH
It’s a problem that there’s no way to fix. Physics says you can’t charge a battery as fast as filling up a tank, you can only push so many electrons across a certain size wire and batteries have nowhere near the energy density of hydrocarbon fuels. Therefore, the experience will suck by comparison. If you need to use them for long trips, the trip will take longer in an EV because you will need to charge and it will take at least 4 or 5 times longer than simply fueling up a vehicle. Because it takes so much longer, lines will accumulate and you might well end up waiting much longer before you can even get to start with charging your own car.
If it weren’t for these stations, I’d never be able to find a parking place for my Suburban (never gets old).
So yesterday I was at an intersection and one of these new Jeep pickups rolls up, and the engine stops. About 15 sec later the window rolls down and I ask the driver “so when the engine stops, so does the AC?” He shakes his head “yes” and I reply, “I think I’ll keep my 15 yo Subaru.”
Can you imagine that vehicle in DC gridlock at 5M on a Friday in August? I wonder if they point out this feature in the sale’s process.
Carry a generator. A small Honda 2200i can deliver the equivalent of a gallon of gasoline in electricity in just a few hours.
The Honda 2200i can’t be sold in Kalifornia. It generates 5.4KW of energy in 3 hrs on a gallon of fuel (their numbers). According to some web page the average EV takes 0.35KW per mile, so that gallon of fuel and 3 hrs of one’s time yields 15 miles of travel. The generator lists for $1200. Did rhhardin forget the /s in their comment, or was it implied by the “carry a generator?”
I did read an article where some guys did long distance trips using a 3L diesel generator to keep their EV battery topped off for extended runs. I do applaud the efforts and the humor generated trying to make these projects run.
What gets me is how the wonder fixes are never tasked with a solvable problem. Take city buses. Dump the 9L 300HP engine and replace it with a 4.5L 100-150HP engine running a generator at 1800 rpm (tuning the engine to run most efficiently at one speed seriously reduces the particulates). Put a pair of 150HP electric motors on the rear axle, and add-in an interim battery pack with regenerative charging. Now you have a bus that runs all day, consumes way less fuel since the accel/decel part of the bus is where it is least efficient, and the bus will also be A LOT quieter with the smaller engine. But instead these towns spend their money on buying an EV for city managers who spend their day in the office because it virtue signals. The building inspectors are still driving all over town all day in their V6 Malibus.
Locomotives use a huge ic engine to turn a 600 volt DC generator and use the current to power traction motors, and it would work splendidly with a small motor to keep a charge on the battery.
What prevents that Honda generator from being sold in California? Just curious…
Outrageous restrictions on small gas and diesel motors, lawnmowers, weed whackers, chain saws.
Women with guns (and some men too).
That went so far over my head it needs oxygen piped to it.
Emissions. The same reason they banned lawnmowers and leaf blowers.
Thank you. Why can’t they just run the generator on electricity?
You know that keyboard I owe you? I think we’re even.
Griz owes me a cup of coffee and a couch.
Thank you. Why can’t they just run the generator on electricity?
… 5 points to Grizzendor.
There’s nothing new about this. Tesla had some sort of “free unlimited charging” for some cars at one point but had to put an end to it because people were taking up charger space and either talking or walking around or doing anything but charging. Tesla had to start charging (MONEY!) for charging and also charging people who have their cars sitting idly in a charger spot for a few minutes.
None of this is helped by the fact that most of the EV buyers are insufferable, obnoxious, self-centered douchebags. Putting them in EVs only make their putrid personalities even worse.
The South Park “Smug Alert” episode was just so far ahead of its time.
“None of this is helped by the fact that most of the EV buyers are insufferable, obnoxious, self-centered douchebags. ”
Maybe because so many came over from Mercedes, VW, Audi, and Porsche.
One of the parks in my town put in a free charger in conjunction with our REC and for a year, a woman who owns a Tesla would park her car there all day long about twice a week, preventing anyone else from using the charger. I pointed out that taxpayers (town) and ratepayers (REC) were paying for this AWFL to charge her car and it didn’t take long for someone to destroy the charging station so she’d have to charge up at home.
This is so farcical. The notion that EV’s represent a major advancement in driver convenience and experience, merely because they run on batteries, is pure idiocy. EV’s are based on retrograde technology that was surpassed in convenience and flexibility by the internal combustion engine, during the early twentieth century.
The market has already spoken. The only reason that EV’s have been resurrected is because of massive government market interference/diktats, and, obscenely profligate subsidies.
Hear, hear!
Personally, I get a kick out of lefties who think they are so “advanced” and high-tech when they advocate biofuels (LOL – the Bible has lots of tales about biofuel – burning olive oil was high-tech back then) and windmills (used thousands of years ago). These geniuses will probably invent stone tools in the next 30 years and hail it as the greatest invention ever!!
Didn’t I see an article about using some type of wind harvesting to help boats travel? That’s the kind of new idea that’s totally new.
“Reeeeeee! But the new technology is so much more efficient than sailboats!”
Yeah, yeah, just like your toy pinwheels? Tell it to the magistrate, lady.
It’s all fun and games until your kite catches a bad wind (or a bad winch) and hauls your ship across an Alaskan reef.
Check out Bezo’s yacht. They are beginning to put sails on some cargo ships to test how much of a reduction in fuel use they will provide
Sparky cars have a place. When used in that place they can be very practical. They’re not for everyone.
In their niche role as 2nd vehicle for low mileage driving absolutely…. for getting out of a metro, away from the CHUDs and into the countryside….not so much.
EVs are great commuter cars for those that run about town and have a home charging station to use at night. For anyone else, they are impractical. For most households, that means they are a great second car.
Golf carts and similar-type vehicles, maybe.
I want to see a country club using Leafs around the course instead of carts. Maybe in Arizona, so you can get the a/c going between the tee and the green.
“Nearly 50% of EV-owners now say that they regret their purchase.”
Live and learn. Well, some people do.
EVs are an expensive lesson. The Ivy League equivalent of the School of Hard Knocks.
I learned my lesson on purchasing bad cars with a Datsun B210
Wait- we had one of those and it was so far ahead of it’s time.
Like 30 mpg in 1980. Light and not totally gutless.
Sporty 2 door with the crawl in back rear seats.
Simple engine, low maint. reliable.
They’re not only an expensive lesson, but the con men making bank off of it are already outrageously rich, for the most part, or are gov’t people.
It is a fair guess that most of those who purchase EV’s are both better off financially than the average citizen [from the costs] and they are on the Left side of the political spectrum. I admit that I am looking forward to the first reports of low grade riots over spaces in a charging station.
Subotai Bahadur
I can’t stand the woman, but, really, all I am hearing is her comparing the charging experience with the fill of a gas tank. Let’s not read more into it than what is there.
(puts on hat and face protection for the coming noise)
That being said, her holding onto the charging plug grip like she is fueling a gas car is a whole different situation.
It’s for the same reason you always install a dead lightbulb into a vacant socket. Energy leaks are dangerous.
James Thurber had an aunt or someone who thought an empty socket allowed electricity to spill out into the room. (She also took the telephone off the hook during lightning storms for some reason…)
I was warned as a kid to never talk on a phone or take a bath during a lightening storm
Grounding wires..
“(She also took the telephone off the hook during lightning storms for some reason…)”
She also put all of her valuables outside of her bedroom with a note to the burglars not to use their chloroform……………………………………….
Like most everyone else, I drive a gas-powered car. It’s uncommon for me to pull into a filling station to see a pump handle covered with a red or yellow plastic bag (meaning “broken”). It’s a one every-other-month issue, and usually it’s one or a short row, while the other pumps at that station are working. The only other times I’ve seen a filling station go down are when the power is out area wide or when the operator is having paving work done around the pumps.
For most of us driving gas cars, the hit-rate to find a working pump is > 99%. We notice when we can’t because it happens uncommonly.
So if I drive an EV it’s a 1/4 chance that I won’t have pull into a working recharging station? That right there is a deal-breaker.
My son had a Tesla, he charges free at Apple where he works
In his apartment there are like 4 chargers and assholes charge over night, never moving their cars
I said, I’m
Surprised someone
hasn’t done something to their cars
I talked to a guy who got to charge his car for free at the government building he worked in. For him it was great but once again we see how government looks out for their own
At taxpayer expense.
That always pissed me off. These clowns got free “fill ups” at work, but I always got pushback when I asked for my discounted metro passes.
Isn’t charging overnight what people are supposed to do? So what do you expect, that they get up at 2 in the morning to move their car, so someone else can get up at the same time and plug their car in?!
Actually, yes. There has to be some kind of new etiquette developed if this EV nonsense is to work. One point would be not leaving your car plugged in overnight to public chargers and thus depriving others of the ability to use that resource. We used to call this manners. If there were a charger for every EV, then fine, lap up that crap 24/7, but there isn’t. Not even close. And there won’t be for decades. If ever. People have to be mindful (we used to call this being polite) of others. Down here in Florida, it wouldn’t even occur to someone (who is not from New York or California) that hogging an EV charger overnight is reasonable. It’s not.
You worded that badly, Fuzzy.
There has to be some kind of new etiquette developed to prevent a**holes from being a**holes – because a lot of EV owners are – if this EV nonsense is to work.
And there won’t be for decades. If ever.
Go with the “never” option. Trust me on that one.
Good points. I don’t think it’s ever feasible, either, but my degrees are in English, so I’m not exactly the expert here. I just use common sense, and that tells me this crap is all . . . well, crap.
Many moons ago I bought myself a Tacoma truck, best vehicle I ever had. Husband tried a variety of different cars, including Mercedes, Corolla, etc. Finally we bought him a new Outback. After a few years he decided he wanted an EV, bought a used Leaf. I sold my truck (sad face, one of my worst decisions) and took over the Outback. The Leaf battery degraded within a few years and he couldn’t reach some of his golf courses and had to borrow my car. So he traded it in on a newer used Leaf. Same issue, so after another few years, he decided he’s done with EVs, tired of charging it every night at home and he can’t reach his golf courses. He buys a Rogue. I sell the Outback and buy a Forester. We will never go back to an EV.
I won’t buy an EV because they don’t come with a 5 or 6 sp manual. And I have already conceded not getting a turbo. 🙁
I love these stories. Stupid people should be held accountable for their stupid decisions, but so seldom are.
Where I live, EVs are a status symbol driven by foreigners who come from a place with the caste systems. We don’t get best moving to the U.S., just the most arrogant. They don’t give a damned what you want or need so charger hogging is just a part of their being.
I’m keeping my ICE vehicle, thank you.
Seems to me they should design the thing with a battery bay where you snap out the battery needing charged and snap in a charged one. The network would own all the batteries, recharge and maintain them, retiring them as needed and leasing them out. They could even be charged with solar or wind on site to make for even more virtuous signaling.
It’s not as simple as removing a 12v battery and replacing it. Most EVs have a series of 8 or 10 battery packs that are mounted along the bottoms of the chassis under the seats.
https://www.carmagazine.co.uk/electric/ev-car-battery-capacity-tech/
He did say “should“, not “will” or anything indicative of actual prospects.
once the charger detects that an EV’s batteries are already charged to 85%, no more electricity will be dispensed
There will be no energy rationing! Trust me, comrade! You will have all you need.
the biggest infrastructure pain points, including … aging equipment
Wait, WHAT?! Aging equipment? That ‘infrastructure’ has been around for… no more than 16 years or so? Tesla didn’t even exist before 2003. I’ve stopped at gas stations with 50 year old pumps and successfully gassed up my vehicle before.
Also, they never do say what “charger hogs” are doing wrong. Is it just trying to, you know, get all the electricity they need? I know some people complained previously about people leaving their cars plugged in and going to get a bite to eat and such (as some people do with their ICE vehicles) and not returning in a timely fashion. But this seems to be just people whining other people are “taking too long.” (Hear that last phrase in the whiny voice of a 5yo forced to wait his turn behind his sister.)
Another reason to hang on to The Bride’s 17-YO Tucson and my 12-YO Santa Fe. And another reason to be thankful to live in a part of the country that few coastal snobs pay attention to.
.
I work for one of those companies that makes components that are used in EV’s and EV charging stations, so of course they are all-in on the EV mania. All the lefties need to hold on to their EV’s for another 15 years at least until I can retire. 😀
That being said, the newest car I will ever likely own is the 2011 Mustang currently in my driveway because all the newer cars have .gov mandated BS that I don’t want to deal with (along with all the tracking that goes along with the .gov mandated BS equipment these days).
PS, the Mach E is NOT A MUSTANG! I don’t care what Ford says about them. They should all burn to the ground so that Ford can choke to death on their ashes.