The Stig said:
You'd be better off sticking with just plugging in for free at some place. Weather it be a ChargePoint, Dealership, Hotel. ect....
Most of those places aren't exactly free. ChargePoint cost $4.95 for the tap card alone. And when you go to charge your car you'll soon find out there are very few free charging stations. So you have to call up customer support, give them your credit info, and then charge. Or you sign up on their website or app and provide your cc info and then you get charged around $1 per hour at most stations.
Blitz, while they went bankrupt, has a ton of stations and they also require a tapcard membership and then cc info on file. So if you're a member, you get charged $1 per hour. If you're not, you get charged $2 per hour.
EvGo has a couple of stations and they have some superchargers, but at this point I'm paying them $7.95 for a 60 day trial. They would be a lot better since it's "charge as much as you like" in those 60 days. After that point they have subscription rates.
As far as hotels, it's not always that easy. Some hotels just won't let you charge if you're not a guest. Some restaurants won't let you charge if you're not going to eat there. Some office complexes and parking lots charge you to park. Other issues like the Charging port is only near the handicapped parking area.... And the police and tow truck companies come over if you do park in that space. I found that rather odd, but there are many places that place the charging stations in the handicapped parking areas for whatever reason. Other times you have non EVs parked in the spots. Other times the machines just don't work and haven't worked in like a month. Other times you wind up at a Blink L2 Station and it's going to take over 8 hours to charge. It seems the new company that bought them out has cut some of the power to these stations. Normally you should get a full charge in 4 hours.
Most people who have EVs charge at home and if they need a boost, they find some station. If you have to rely on these charging stations because you can't charge at home or you need to drive 150+ miles per day, you'll know far more about all the various charging station issues than somebody who might use it once every few weeks. It's far different if you have to depend on those charging stations because at this point it's not a reliable network to think you can drive over 150 miles per day .
It's one thing to be joy riding, it's another to be driving for work and needing to keep schedules. I've driven my ICE truck around to all the different charging stations one weekend. Made it like a field trip with my kids. I used the various apps(chargepoint, blink, plugshare) and so on to find most of the charging stations within a 50 mile radius of me. Some just don't work. Others were some company I never heard of and didn't have a desire to sign up for another account. I mean at this point I have Blink, EvGO and Chargepoint. Who knows what will happen to Blink as they've gone bankrupt.
And that's the other big issue. With no super charger, a guy driving 150 miles a day who does rely on nothing but charging stations will need a job where he doesn't need to be on time. It takes over 4 hours to get a full charge at most of these stations and even more if it's a reduced charging station. So if you stays for 30 minutes, say a lunch break, he's not going to get much from that. For me if I don't stay for about 90 minutes, it's rather useless to even pay the $1 or $2 per hour to gain 10-15 miles. And for somebody who is relying on that to get to/from clients and so on, it would be a nightmare.
I honestly don't see how the FFE would be a good choice for somebody who needs to use it to drive over even 100 miles a day at this point.
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