No Juice: WSJ Columnist Finds 40% of EV Chargers She Tried in LA County Were Out of Service
A Wall Street JournalĀ journalist who owns an electric vehicle (EV) was dismayed to find that about 40 percent of the chargers she tried throughout LA county were out of service. A troubling data point for car companies and government officials claiming that the entire country will soon go electric.
A test of 30 non-Tesla fast-charging stations in LA County, the EV capital of America, revealed thatĀ at least 40 percent of them had some type of issue, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal.
āFrom the beach in Santa Monica to parking garages under Rodeo Drive, my video producer Adam Falk and I visited 30 different non-Tesla DC fast-charger stations in a Rivian R1T pickup. I ran into problems at 13 of them ā thatās over 40%. Oof is right,ā WSJ columnist and EV owner Joanna Stern wrote.
The WSJ columnist added that she hadĀ deliberately limited the experiment to Level 3 chargers, noting, āI ignored the more common chargers known as Level 2 because theyāre just too slow for quick fill-ups.ā
SternĀ explained that she came across āthreeĀ problem categoriesā during herĀ testing expedition: first, the charging station was broken, second, there was a problem with payment, such as it being rejected, and third, there wasĀ a software error between the charger and the vehicle.
āI pressed the companies on why [these issues] happen, and what can be done to fix them,ā Stern wrote. āAnd while itās good that Tesla will start accepting non-Teslas in 2024, that might not put an end to the issues Iāve encountered.ā
When it came to the broken chargers, Stern said she found that fully 27 percent of the 126 Level 3 fast chargers at the EVgo, Electrify America, and EVCS stations tested werenāt working for one reason or another.
In some cases, the problem could be solved by a company technician turning a charger off and on again, she said.
As for the payment issues, Stern explained her āfavoriteā incident, which happened atĀ an EVgo in Culver City.
āAfterĀ I repeatedly tried the credit-card reader with several different cards, the system demanded: āCASH ONLY,'ā she wrote. āAs if this was some hot-dog stand in the park ā except thereās no money slot!ā
Sternās problems come at the same time as EV makers are facing weak demand and slashed production targets. Tesla competitor Fisker recently reported weak earnings and lowered the number of vehicles it plans to produce.
I love the part about trying to pay.
IN OTHER TECH-PLATFORM-ON-WHEELS (theyāre for surveillance & data-mining, not transpo) NEWS:
New $4B Panasonic electric vehicle (EV) battery factory in Kansas requires so much power that the facility will need its own COAL plant to run
AND...
Electric Car Charging Stationās Power Usage Exceeds That of 280 Homes Every Hour
Hereās a gratuitous meme about the man who singlehandedly immolated one of Americaās most populous and beautiful states, not to mention lives destroyed with injection mandates, closures, fascism, corruption, and a diarrhea school curriculum.
(main article source: Breitbart)
I have an EV because itās fun and cheap to own and maintain. Iāve got a few gas powered cars too.
EVās can be a great choice if you can charge at home and if your household has a need for multiple cars. For longer trips EVās totally suck, I would never even try.