Plugshare.com Suggestions

[NeilBlanchard]

Plugshare.com is the best way to find (almost) all charging stations, as far as I know. And, you can usually see how dependable a given charging station is, by looking at the check ins and comments. But there is room for improvement:

Ideally, charging stations would have REAL TIME status shown in Plugshare. To be able to see if the station is both WORKING and AVAILABLE before you arrive would be the biggest improvement I can think of. I would pay a subscription for this.

It would be good if the check in occurred automatically.

I have had a lot of difficulty setting up a route - we need to be able to set up the route options (like avoid highways, etc) in Plugshare, so that gets carried over to Google Maps without a lot of effort.

I hope that the Chevy Bolt EV will support Plugshare on the car's system. This would be KEY for any EV, so hopefully Chevy will work with Plugshare to get this working!

Until, we have ubiquitous EVSE's in all the places anybody needs them, using Plugshare.com is the best way to drive an EV. The better it works, the more people will be able to drive EV's.

[vskid3]

What kind of experiences have you (or anyone else) had with public chargers? I've read quite a few negative things about them, which isn't very comforting when you consider that you could find yourself at a charger that won't work with 10 miles of range left and 20 miles to the next charger (which may or may not work for you). While it made an interesting story for Ben getting his i-MiEV home, it doesn't sound very fun for normal trips.

[redpoint5]

While I understand that public chargers expand the potential market for EVs, it just seems expensive and impractical. I imagine most people would only consider an EV if their family had multiple vehicles, with at least 1 of them being an ICE. I know I would never travel long distances in an EV, and would probably never use a public charger unless it was free. I don't like paying too much for trendy groceries though, so I would never encounter a place that offers free charging.

Unless DC fast charging becomes much faster, cheaper, and commonplace, I can't see public charging being sufficient for the common motorist. It's a shame that these DC fast chargers cost much more per mile of range than gasoline. It defeats a major reason why a common motorist might be interested in an EV. At home I'm able to charge at $0.02 / mile, compared to about $0.10 / mile in a 30 MPG vehicle.

My suggestion would be to steer people away from an EV if they would need to regularly rely on the public charging infrastructure.

[ECO-AKJ]

I am not in the EV category at the moment, but whether I am or not, this is a great resource for planning trips for EV drivers.

[NeilBlanchard]

I hope that better real-time information about public EVSE (charging stations) will make using them more reliable. At the very least, Chargepoint and EVgo (the networks in my area) should manually compare Plugshare check-ins for their units, and move on that information more promptly.

With our 2 EV's, each with about 84 mile EPA ranges, we have only used public chargers 4-6 times a year. Most of the Level 2 uses were before we got our home unit. We use a QC a couple of days a year.

We have been delayed twice by non-functional QC units, and twice by someone charging, making us wait.

Once we get a Bolt EV, I think we will sell our remaining ICE.

I hope we can keep this thread on topic, please.

[redpoint5]

I would think that since these charging stations already have a data connection to send charging status updates to user's mobile phones, it would be a very simple matter for the station to also send health/diagnostic updates to the network.

[aerostealth]

My plug share experience this week.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/4018...2812983066814/

[vskid3]

Originally Posted by aerostealth

My plug share experience this week.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/4018...2812983066814/

It looks like no one outside of the group can see what you posted there.

[aerostealth]

It was a test. Thanks.

[vskid3]

As I've been dreaming of an EV lately, I've been looking for places I could QC at on Plugshare. I would most likely get a Spark EV or i3, so I filtered out everything but CCS. That gives me 10 stations in the Salt Lake area. Add Chademo and that jumps to 17 stations. However, most of the Chademo stations that don't have CCS listed have pictures or comments showing that there is a CCS plug. It should be fine for me to edit the Plugshare listing and add the CCS, correct?