The Miserable State of Electric Car Infrastructure

Little Blue in Jasper National Park

 

The infrastructure for electric cars stinks right now.

Having got back from a 3,000 mile road trip to Jasper and Banff National Parks in scenic Alberta, I can say with some certainty that I'm glad I bought the plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) instead of the full electric vehicle (EV). Little Blue, as we call the Kia Niro PHEV in the garage, will run on petrol after it runs out of it's 26 mile electric range. With an EV, we'd probably still be somewhere in Saskatchewan, full of regret.

It's nice to get a bit of juice from a public charger when I can. When I commute to my day job, for instance, I can fill up on electricity for free, and not use a drop of gasoline. 

The biggest problem, of course, is that there are currently not nearly enough chargers. There are two in the University of Minnesota's largest public lot. Typically, someone with a Tesla and someone else with an Audi eTron are already there when I arrive. 

But that's not the biggest problem. The biggest problem is that you can't just plug in your car and pay for the electricity with a credit card or (gasp) cash. No. Dirty little greed-heads have been allowed to monopolize the chargers and make them accessible only when you join their little club. 

At the University, all of the chargers are owned by some gang of crooks called "ChargePoint." I figured O.K., I'll join the club to get the free fill-up. Unfortunately, they drive you - really, really hard - to use an "app-based" system. Because I hate those useless, malfunctioning hell-rectangles so much, I thought I would take advantage of the card that they say they will send you if you request it. 

It only took me two months and three phone calls to the imbeciles in their alleged "customer service" department to acquire one. After failing to send said card to me twice, they then promised to send it via UPS. Then they called back the next day to say that they couldn't do that after all. By some miracle, over the next week I got three of their cards. 

In fairness, it's been working fine ever since.

But sometimes you run into the following problem. I was on another road trip to the scenic Boundary Waters Canoe Area, and on the North Shore of Lake Superior I was staying at a hotel. Whoo-hoo! I saw that they had car chargers. When we started out with a full charge going up the shore, I was able to get 61 mpg all in. 

Oh dear.

Unfortunately, said charger was useless to me unless I downloaded a different "app" for a different company's club. What fun!

I don't need an ordeal. I need electricity for my car.

Suppose I'd had an EV. What would you do if you didn't have a cell phone? What would you do if you didn't have any or poor reception or if you'd been in the wilderness for a couple of days and your phone was not charged? You'd be standing in front of this useless post with a piece of junk in your hand, unable to get your car to go.

We just ran on gas back to the cities, getting a measly 48 mpg. 

What needs to happen is that standard gas stations need to install electric car charging points. The entire infrastructure needs to be disentangled from cell phones. Cell phones are toys. We don't have time for this rubbish. You need to be able to purchase a charge without joining some stupid club. I want a transaction, not a relationship.

Furthermore, there needs to be a standard. All chargers should work with all cars. We seem to be in a VHS/Betamax struggle between Tesla and everyone else right now.

I hope to go full EV next time around, but this needs to get solved.