Let's talk about Electrify America

When I wrote my last article on EVgo I didn't intend to write one on Electrify America , but John Voelcker forced my hand by coming out with his excellent article in CHARGED Electric Vehicles Magazine titled: "How automakers’ disappointment in Electrify America drove them into Tesla’s arms " (which is Part 1 of a 4 part series that I can't recommend highly enough).

Prior to the EVgo article I ran an informal poll with the question:

"Which EV Charging network do you feel has better reliability? "

and after 74 votes the results are below:

Furthermore, I was looking at properties in MA yesterday with a potential site host and a site nearby was this one from Electrify America (with a 2.4 score!) and the recent charge reviews are ...well...not surprising:

All this lines up with the general viewpoint expressed in John's article that the charging experience at Electrify America stations is "lackluster". (that's being kind)

Some of my favorite quotes from the article:

"It’s hard to overstate the disgust and anger at Electrify America among virtually every person we interviewed. The network has come to be viewed, fairly or not, as the most minimal effort VW Group could have exerted to comply with the 10-year, $2-billion settlement it jointly negotiated with the EPA and the California Air Resources Board (CARB)."

"Five years after its first fast charging station went live in May 2018, Electrify America continues to have sites down for weeks or months and other locations where only one or two cables (out of four, six or eight) actually deliver a charge."

"EA has steadfastly refused to discuss its reliability statistics, offering years of bland reassurances that things are improving."

"Tesla aside, all networks are perceived to be more focused on getting new stations in the ground—and associated photo ops with local politicians—than funding operations and maintenance."

"While EVgo, Shell Recharge (née Greenlots), ChargePoint and others were included in reliability complaints, those networks are seen—rightly or wrongly—as less unreliable than EA. “EA is by far the most difficult network for us to work with,” said one automaker employee. “It’s just not clear they believe in it, or that they’re in it for the long haul.”

And possibly my favorite:

"Initial hopes that EA would provide a new, large-scale, nationwide network of fast charging stations have now curdled into a desire to see EA out of the game altogether—with “lots of bad blood” directed at the VW Group as a whole. One engineer and one executive even suggested that Volkswagen deliberately did a subpar job. “Remember Dieselgate?” said one. “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice…”

And all the above sentiment is not necessarily new by any means...which makes the now 1 year old announcement about Siemens investing a significant sum into EA that much more puzzling (although this was when investing groups were just throwing money around like it was confetti, before interest rates started to rise)...but still...interesting.

Early this year Electrify America tapped, Robert Barrosa, a long time executive as it's new CEO . His previous title was "VP of Technology" - apparently their weak spot - so here's to hoping in can steer the ship in the right direction...

I'll finish with this: While EA does get a bad reputation, I - and many other EV drivers I know - have relied on them during road trips and without them many EV road trips would simply not be feasible. They often have multiple stations not working or delivering charge well below advertised, but it usually is possible to find one charger that can get you to the next point. But they have a lot of work to do to improve their reputation with the EV driving public (and power auto OEMs).