No. of Recommendations: 4
To the makers of On-The-Road EV chargers:
No, I do not want to join your little club. No, I do not want to download your app. No, I do not want to pre-load your app with money from a credit card, nor automatically refill it whenever you think the balance is too low.
And while I’m at it, I do not want to charge 1/2 mile from the mall, on the farthest possible point away from anything useful. Perhaps the rent was less there, or the mall was worried about giving up precious Christmas parking, but putting the chargers so far away from anything means, well, I have nothing to do while charging and the merchants get no extra revenue from people charging who have 15-20 minutes to kill.
Personally, I wonder why every gas station can afford a human being, even if it’s a helpless drone in a booth, while EV chargers are left to the elements and copper thieves 24/7. I wonder why your touch screens don’t touch, or are LCDs which are unreadable in ordinary daylight, or don’t work at all.
I wonder why your “help” lines don’t answer, or say “We’ll call you back in 20 minutes”, by which time I have moved on to somewhere that works. And you, “FLO”, I know you’re headquartered in Quebec, but when you answer a call from the US, maybe don’t answer in French? Just a thought.
The thing is: every sole-proprietor ice cream shop that sells a $2 cone has a credit card swipe machine - and it works. Why can’t you? Why all the rigamarole? I’m not going to be loyal to you any more than I’ll only fill up a gas car with Sunoco. Why make me jump through hoops for download your app? Then register. Then get an email to verify. Then add a credit card? Then find out that the farking card reader doesn’t work anyway? Seriously. I’m standing in the hot hot hot sun just trying to buy some electrons.
No, I don’t have a Tesla and won’t, given that I prefer at least some physical buttons on the dash and hate Musk, but I have to admit this might be one place where they’ve solved the Rubik’s cube and others haven’t. Having just completed a 2000 mile multi-port trip I found the scrolling list of charging stations on the dash more than sufficient, I can even tell how many are occupied or broken or available, (but can’t tell the provider, which I now realize is important.) No, I don’t need to plan out everything in advance, nor do I care to. I take life as it comes and it’s worked out pretty well so far.
Shout out to Buc-ees, which has a line of 20 Tesla chargers in a row, and a line of 20 non-Tesla chargers in a row elsewhere on their lot of 200 gas pump islands as well. That’s the way to do it. The rest of you, take a note.
Thank you.
Yeah, I’m talking about you, Electrify America. EVgo. ChargePoint. FLO. Blink. GM Energy. There were probably others, but I put these specific names here for the rare chance that somebody from a charging company stumbles upon this post and learns something, an outcome that seem vastly unlikely, but with a probability just slightly less that I will pull up to a Blink charger and have it work the first time.
