Comment by modeless

We had some visitors to California from out of state recently, and the rental car place gave them an electric car (not Tesla), without basically any education about how to deal with them.

I'm a huge fan of electric cars, and will probably never buy anything except EVs in the future, but man are you right that the non-Tesla experience is bleak.

Charging was incredibly stressful. Few CCS chargers, each with a tiny number of charging spots (4-8), with many chargers broken, and the rest fully occupied.

I know it will get better, but I can't believe how bad it is at the moment, and can't believe that car rental companies are handing EVs out without much much more handholding.

(Edit: plus, the car navigation system had zero knowledge of how to plan a long route with charging. That's table stakes for an EV, and criminally bad management that they'd ship a car that didn't have full knowledge of the chargers out there and also how to route. Traditional US car manufacturers are absolutely incompetent and will not survive competition with Chinese manufacturers unless they clean house on everything software related.)

This situation sounds like Europe (& the UK) two or three years ago. Plentiful well maintained, fast and convenient chargers have sprung up since from a wide variety of operators (electricity companies, oil companies, startups, plus Tesla).

We standardised on CCS a while ago.

Many chargers are even faster than Tesla Superchargers whilst supporting the plug-and-charge standard ISO 15118. They are often surprisingly cheap too.

> Crazy how no one else could figure this out.

Tesla obviously didn't figure out how to do it with third parties either. It's about cooperation and politics, not so much about the technical implementation.

>The chargers are few and far between

Where are you that the CCS chargers are few and far between? While I agree it's annoying to have to potentially use multiple apps if you aren't in a car that has a consolidation play (like fordpass), there are far more CCS chargers in the states I've visited than Tesla counterparts.

With gas station chains like Pilot, 7-eleven, Wawa, Circle-K, and others building out their own networks, and Tesla firing basically their entire charging network staff, non-Tesla chargers will only continue to grow at a faster pace than what Tesla has to offer. At least we've standardized on J3400 plugs so we can (hopefully) move away from the game of "do you have the right adapter"?

> the [Tesla] charging experience couldn't be simpler, park and plug in, unplug and go. No tap, no app. Crazy how no one else could figure this out.

Agreed. I don't know why the vehicle and charger manufacturers didn't settle on a system that would let a user store credit card credentials or some other token in the car itself. When you pull up to a charger, plug in, and the charger and car do the handshake, and the car requests that a PIN be entered to release the credentials to the charger.

The charger could still support their own cumbersome apps or CC entry system (if you're trying to charge someone else's vehicle, in a rental scenario for example), but the default experience should be: pull up, plug in, enter PIN/Passkey, walk away.

Well, for another anecdote from the PNW, there are dozens of combo chargers in the 300 miles North of me and 6-8 in the 300 miles south. They seem to mostly work, more are going in, and old, unreliable ones are getting swapped out. It’s not perfect, but it’s fine for me. Of course, 99% of my charging is at home.

> The chargers are few and far between, half of them are broken, and even the ones that aren't broken have compatibility issues so they may not work anyway. The required apps are unreliable and annoying.

This also describes a lot of modern American life. I am constantly impressed by people saying how reliable the Tesla charger network is. This level of quality should be held up as an example at every opportunity. My 0.02€

It’s not that Tesla has uniquely worked it out. It’s that the other options in your country basically only exist out of spite. We know how to do charging networks now. Eventually, someone in the US will see the worth in it.

Crazy how Tesla vastly outperformed the govt investing billions into making 8 chargers

>> The required apps are unreliable and annoying.

The requirement of an app to fuel a car is ridiculous and is one of the largest barriers for many people. Too much of our lives are already dependent on our phones. The idea that any random issue with my phone will then cause my car to not work ... that is just unacceptable. This is why airplanes don't have keys, let alone apps.

(My secure work phone is currently bricked due to an issue with my email address being moving between departments. That sort of thing is why I would never trust a phone for vital things like fueling a vehicle.)

I have a Mustang mache specifically because of the Tesla supercharger authorization and compatibility

It’s still bleak-ish, but is right on the cusp of getting better

Tesla’s schizophrenic behavior makes the promised adapter to have an unknown delivery date

The bootleg adapter works decently, tricky at first though

I had to learn there are multiple versions of tesla superchargers, and even of the V3 ones they are not all the latest version that I’m supposed to use. This is undocumented.

Then, of ALL of them, the charging cable is too short and in the wrong place for my vehicle. I have to take up two spots unless I’m next to another vehicle with my ‘affliction’, rare

I dont want a Tesla I want the supercharging network

Now, knowing all these things and altering my life just a little bit around the local ones, things are great

CSS charging stations are pathetic and often have long lines, while the Tesla stations are massive, don't have a line, all while an additional doubling is occurring in a roped off section

Fortunately, you don't have to supercharge and its ill advised to do it often.