It’s midnight and 10 degrees. I have 40 miles of range on my test electric vehicle and have just returned from my favorite late-night coffee shop.
There are charging stations 6 blocks from where I live. I’ll hook up the vehicle and walk the 6 blocks. There isn’t much wind. It’s not so bad. I cannot install a charger where I live.
But my Chargepoint app will not connect to the Chargepoint charger, neither will the machine accept a credit card or other form of payment.
(Photo via Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images).
It worked fine 6 hours ago except for the fact that I was parked at one station and the map insisted I drive across the parking lot and use the other one that was also available. I did as told and got enough juice to get to the coffee shop 40 minutes away.
I try again, try a third time. “Chargepoint Failed To Connect.” I reboot the phone, which is less than 2 weeks old. Same message.
I call customer service and they are obviously halfway across the planet, and every statement I utter is responded to with a scripted return.
I don’t need scripted statements designed to assuage irate customers. I’m not irate. Yet.
I know, though, from past experience, that it’s going to be 40 questions, each followed by “Did you try this? Did you try this?” It’s not their fault – they have to start from the beginning.
I just wish we could talk like people, an actual conversation, rather than a person obviously going through a list of responses and I can’t understand the guy’s accent. Nothing xenophobic – just logistic. My mother was deaf and couldn’t understand some people, either, it was nothing personal.
Finally, I tell the guy I have to go. It’s 12:20 AM, and it’s 9 degrees. This is a wash. I grumble on the way home.
“If this was a gas-powered vehicle, I’d just pull up to a pump, feed it my card or cash – not an app – and I’d be done in 5 minutes. Cash never fouls up, and neither does my credit card.”
The next day, refreshed and ready to tackle this problem when I have a little more patience, I trouble shoot my issue, delete Chargepoint from my phone and reinstall it, walk to my poor frozen car, drive it to the lot and – bingo, I’m charging. I also send two emails to Chargepoint’s media email address over the next few days, asking them what, if any, plans they have to improve their infrastructure in the coming year. Tesla’s chargers are far more reliable. It’s not an angry email – I’m just curious. I’m looking forward to when the issues are straightened out.
Five days later, still no response. The company is going through a hard time, I discover.
It just means I won’t be able to go anywhere today unless I want to walk six blocks, disconnect the car, go to the store or the what-have-you, then return the car to the same lot and walk 6 blocks home again.
Because unless you’ve got a fast charger, it takes a good 8 hours to get a full charge.
I search “Ongoing problems with public chargers” later and I am overwhelmed at the amount of public vitriol I find out there over:
*Non-working chargers
*Chargers who demand you use their App instead of your credit card
*Chargers that don’t stay active when you leave so you come back 4 hours later and haven’t a drop of new electricity
*Chargers where the line of cars is out of the parking lot because all the other chargers in town have something wrong with them.
All of which has happened to me.
Clearly, the infrastructure for charging electric cars has got a ways to go. But this has been true for years. It just feels personal when a machine doesn’t work and you’d like to go home – or get somewhere.
It’s actually not surprising, though. When sound first came to the movies commercially in 1927, the sound was terrible, clunky, primitive and, during filming, frequently broke down.
But the public wanted sound and were willing to pay for it, and eventually the movie industry straightened it and now we don’t even think about it.
Life isn’t perfect and neither are public chargers. They’ll get it together. We’re just not there yet.
Unless you’ve got a working home charger, driving an electric can be like riding the NYC subways. “It may come, it may not. It might be 3 minutes, it might be 30 minutes, or it might not come at all. Suprise, surprise!”
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