Oh I am sure one would, but if you only use a Supercharger maybe once or twice a year (we don’t take long trips by car more often than that), it may be a trivial inconvenience.
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Maybe trivial, maybe catastrophic. That’s because we haven’t mentioned the MOST IMPORTANT feature of being connected and being shown the supercharger status WHILE DRIVING. That feature is knowing which supercharger to navigate to based on how busy they are, and based on how many other cars are navigating to them at the same time that you are. If there are 3 usable superchargers along the way, let’s say one in 20 miles, one in 45 miles, and one a tiny bit out of the way in 40 miles. If the one in 45 miles is estimated to be full when you get there, you probably want to stop early and charge at the one in 20 miles instead. Or you might manually choose to go to the one 40 miles away, but a little bit off the main road.
I make choices like that regularly based on what I see on the display regarding superchargers. Just recently on a long trip, I chose to NOT go to the supercharger being navigated to (a V2 at 150kW), and instead drove to a different supercharger (a V3 at 250kW). All I needed was 8 minutes for 25kWh (at 39 ct/kWh) to get home and charge up there instead (at 15 ct/kWh).
But what happens if you navigate to a supercharger “blind” and when you get there, there are 15 cars waiting to charge? Could take an extra 30 minutes before you can even start. Granted, this doesn’t happen very often … yet, because there are still so few EVs on the road, but every month there are more and more EVs using superchargers.
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I love my plug in hybrid. I just filled the gas tank tonight for the first time in about 2,600 miles. And the only reason I did that is because my daughter has a soccer game about 200 miles away from home this weekend. Absent that, I probably could have gone another 1,000 miles or so before having to fill up to pick up my other daughter from college for Fall Break next month (about 250 miles away, in the opposite direction).
Regards,
-Chuck
Plug in hybrids have disadvantage of both EV and ICE.
Moving parts, Oil change, maintenance and high cost.
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That has not been my experience. My car cost me just under $25,000 to buy — gently used, with around 12,000 miles on it, in 2020. Thanks to driving most miles on electric, I average fewer than two oil changes a year. It would take a lot of oil changes to make up the cost differential between what it cost me and what an available EV with decent range would have cost me at the time….
When I do go on driving trips, I frequently find that my gas cost per mile is generally comparable to — potentially even less than — paying for non-free EV charging stations. After all, it is a plug in hybrid car. As a result, even in gas mode it tends to get 40 or so MPG.
It’s now closing in on 80,000 miles. Knock on wood, it hasn’t had any repair bills yet. I can’t say any other car I’ve ever owned made it to that point without something needing me to pay to repair it. Indeed, the biggest surprise cost has been the tires — consistent with other electrified cars, compatible tires aren’t cheap, and they don’t seem to last all that long.
There are two open recalls that affect it, but both are being treated by the manufacturer as “only repair of the vehicle shows symptoms of the issue”. Thus far, mine hasn’t shown symptoms of either issue. Only one of those recalls is on a combustion engine related part…
Regards,
-Chuck
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KIA and Hyundai EVs do that. With a rolling list on the dash you can screen for just superhigh level chargers, high level, or all, including Level 2. And it shows the status of each: total chargers, how many are in use, how many out-of-service, and how many available at the moment in time. Very convenient.
You can also filter for “near me now”, “along the way”, or “at the destination.”
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The point of my previous post was that as non-Tesla EVs roll out with NACS ports they will require a software update of some kind in order to include the Supercharger stations on their in-car displays rather than use the Tesla phone app…which would only have the Tesla operated stations.
I think all can agree that having all fast DC chargers integrated into one on-screen display is the most useful.
Mike
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In related news:
To gain immediate access, owners of electric Chevy, Cadillac, and GMC vehicles will need to purchase “GM approved” Tesla adapters through each brand’s smartphone app for $225. Future GM vehicles will come with Tesla’s charging port natively installed.
…
GM is also updating its brand apps to allow customers to search for available Superchargers, check station status, initiate a charge, and pay for charging sessions. Tesla has said that non-Tesla owners would have to pay a little more to charge their vehicles than Tesla owners.
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Sure. And while I can’t speak for GM or others, Hyundai and Kia do OTA updates regularly for software improvements. They just added some sports channel (no interest here) and some other stuff to their Blue Link service. But it’s worth noting that the car is always connected, that’s how it can tell you how many chargers at what location are currently “in use”, “broken” or “available.”
The service is two way, the car reports conditions and errors back to the mother ship - for what purpose I have yet to find out. One of them, I believe, was to aggregate data which insurance companies could use to jack your rates, but I’m pretty sure I read that they had their hand slapped and have stopped that.
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The funny thing is that they are selling this exact adapter that can be purchased from the manufacturer for $200. I wonder if buying direct is also “GM approved”?
NOTE: This isn’t a particularly good adapter, the NACS side sometimes sticks inside rather forcefully and it’s quite annoying. There are better models out there.
Oh I would think GM has some skin in the game to account for the price difference.
That being stated, the article does also state:
GM says it plans on sourcing its NACS-approved adapters from multiple suppliers. That way, it’s not just relying on Tesla, which makes its own adapters at its gigafactory in Buffalo, New York, where production has been slow. Several other companies also make NACS adapters, including Lectron and Qmerit.
So probably cheaper options available in the future.
I know GM was doing that with On-star and stopped when it was discovered they were selling your data. Besides a Tesla I have a Chevy Bolt so I actually did some kind of request to get the info they had on me and sure enough it was there, discoverable by a 3rd party provider. Then GM sent a letter saying they stopped doing this several months ago.
Mike