Ken Fields

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Electric Vehicles

What’s The Best Home Electric Vehicle Charging Station

I’ve installed and use two different EV charging stations at home and I’ve used, or at least plugged into a couple of others. This hardly makes me an expert, but it does give me some real world experience from which to share my opinions.

All home EV charging stations are pretty much the same, it’s a standardized box and a plug that hooks to 240 volts and either 40 or 60 amps and delivers somewhere between 7 and 9 kilowatts of power to charge your battery. Tesla of course makes it’s own home charging station that has it’s own plug, other than that for all other home EV chargers you’re going to get the J1772 plug.

There are dozens of chargers on the market, but maybe only ten that are from reputable and recognizable manufacturers. In no particular order, the top five brands are JuiceBox, ChargePoint, Clipper Creek, Blink Charging and Bosch. I use a Juicebox at our house in DC and a ChargePoint unit at our home in CT.

It should be noted that as far as I know when you purchase any electric vehicle, a charging unit of some sort comes with it. So you probably don’t need to buy a separate charging unit. With our Audi Etron we received the Audi manufactured unit, which is probably best used as a secondary, or back up portable charger, but can easily be permanently installed in a garage or other “home” location. The Audi charger is relatively compact, light weight and comes with both a 120 and 240 volt plug / adapter.

The Jukebox is by far and away our favorite. It has a really good metal exterior housing, the enclosure is NEMA 4X rated, the highest of any residential EV charging unit. The unit size is small and doesn’t take up a lot of room on the wall. It has a 25 foot cord. The unit has all sorts of wifi bells and whistles, which actually we don’t use, but it’s nice to have incase. It feels sturdy and solid. We went for the hardwired version on the outside of the house.

For our house in Connecticut we installed a Chargepoint residential unit, also Level 2. Honestly, about the same as the Juicebox, looks a little more “modern”, had wifi connectivity, a 25 foot cord. For this one we also did a hardwire install on the outside of the house.

Plugshare The Best Online Resource For Finding Ev Charging Locations

Pretty much every commercial manufacturer and installer of EV Charging stations has a map posted to their website of where their units are located, which should hardly come as any surprise, after all, you can’t make use of something you can’t find. However rather than trying to figure out which network has better availability in your neighborhood or whatever destination you may be planning to head off to, there are a handful of aggregate websites that include many, but probably not all EV Charging locations around the US.

The website that I have found to be the most useful is by far and away PlugShare.com. Plugshare has a super easy interface, it is literally just a map where you can easily zoom in and out to wherever you want to go, with pin drops for charging locations. If you’re using a laptop or desktop the menu is on the left hand side and you can toggle between, networks, types of plugs, minimum power ratings, etc, etc… Another incredibly handy feature is that it has an active user base of EV drivers who check in and leave comments as to whether or not any particular station is on the fritz or isn’t really charging at it’s highest capacity and any other relevant notes – ie. is there a good place to grab a cup of coffee and donut while you charge your car.

Lessons Learned From First Long EV Road Trip

Having successfully completed my first long distance road trip in an electric vehicle, here’s some of my thoughts and lessons learned.

First and foremost, it is 100% possible and doable to make long road trips in an EV, there is a reasonably good and functional network of fast charging stations available for all EV makes and model besides Tesla. The caveat to that statement is that the network still needs work, it needs more stations, especially off of major highways and state turnpikes. When you start getting in to rural areas finding a high speed charger is touch and go. Of course with the continued roll out of stations from Electrify America, and in particular their deal with Walmart, this problem should be mostly solved in the next year or two. There’s something like 4,700 Walmarts across the US, if Electrify America installs units at only half of all those locations then we’re good.

Not all electric vehicle charging stations are created equally, be mindful of what the power supply is, how many kilowatts the station can deliver. A 50 KW station is going to charge, from empty to full, a 100 KW battery in two hours. A 150 KW station will do it in 40 minutes. Considering that you’ll almost never pull in for a charging stop close to empty, a 150 kw station or better will probably get you where you need to go after a 20 minute charge.

Doing a little advanced research on your route is a good idea. Know where your EV charging stations are, and know where a backup station is incase your first choice doesn’t work for some reason, although to be honest both EVgo and Electrify America had great customer service and when I couldn’t get the station to engage and had to call in, the customer service representative did a manual start and got it going really fast with no problems.

If at all possible you need to avoid level 2 chargers on road trips, they cannot charge your battery fast enough, they’re good for topping up in a worst case scenario and obviously they’re good if you need to stop over night and charge.

 

Return Road Trip Salisbury To DC

Yesterday I did the road trip back from Salisbury CT to Washington DC, considering all the stops to quell my range anxiety on the way up, I wasn’t super pumped to get back on the road. For the return trip I planned a different route, rather than doing the turnpike which has a lot of charging stations, I decided to go my usual route that I’ve taken over the years, across to Newburgh NY, down 87, to 287 to Bridgewater NJ and then hop on to the Jersey Turnpike. I’d tested out two EVgo charging stops and now figured I would hit up the Electrify America Network on the way back. Bridgewater has an Electrify America Station at the Target.

Salisbury to Bridgewater was easy, 150 miles. I had no hesitation to go through, no range anxiety, I was already feeling more confident with the Etron onboard computer telling me exactly home much battery charge and distance I had left, and there were at least two more fast charging stations within range if the Bridgewater station was out.

I pulled in to the Bridgewater Target parking lot and plugged in to the Electrify America charging station, I have to admit I miscalculated and had just assumed all Electrify America Stations were super chargers that were rated at 150 kw or above, not so. I guess the Bridgewater station was one of the earlier installs and only charged at 50 kw, so serious let down. Regardless, once agin, the ritual of taking the dog for a long walk around the parking lot. I went to the Target to use the bathroom. I did some shopping getting cleaning supplies and paper goods. Checked emails on my phone. I did also manage to confirm that there was a 150 kw Electrify America station in Abingdon Maryland – one hour stops to charge my car, is not going to work on a long term basis. In order for me to love my new electric vehicle I need to get that hour long stop, down to 20 minutes. I killed an hour at the Target and took off again.

Bridgewater NJ to Abingdon Maryland was another 150 miles. Second and hopefully last stop before DC, I need about 60 miles to get home. I pulled in to the Walmart and found the Electrify America stations no problem, checked the stickers and they all had either 150 kw or 350 kw on the units, the holy grail, super fast charging stations. I had trouble plugging in to and getting the units started, I had to call customer service and switched to two different units before customer service was able to get the charging session to initiate. But we got it going. I stopped for a minute to watch as the station screen updated with how much power it was delivering to the car, almost 150 kw, that means in less than 40 minutes, if my battery had been completely empty I would have fully charged up my car, but I only needed another 40 miles or so. Once agin, took the dog for a very quick walk, went to the Walmart to use the bathroom, didn’t feel like I needed to do any shopping since I’d already stocked up at Target earlier. Back to the car, it’s been plugged in for less than 15 minutes and I have more than enough juice to get me back home.

Made the trip home Abingdon to DC no problem. Home with maybe 20 miles left on the battery. Mission accomplished, first full long distance, multiple stops to charge, road trip in the Etron done.