DC Fast Charging at Walmart with Electrify America
I little while ago I got the driveway sealed so couldn’t get to the charger in my garage for a few days. I wasn’t really worried about this as I have lot of options to charge around here if necessary.
But on a whim, I decided to take advantage of the Electrify America free fast charging that I still had available with my Ioniq (it has since expired). The Walmart in the next town over has four EA chargers, so I thought I would head over there to top off the charge, which at this point was down to about 30% or so.
When I got there, there was one car charging (a VW ID.4) and three spots were open. I pulled into an open spot, but it quickly became evident that it was not working. The fellow that was there charging came out to tell me that he also didn’t think it was working.
In all, only two of the four chargers were working. Apparently the two 350kW chargers have not been working for months, but the 150kW ones did work1.
I moved over to the other 150kW charger and hooked up. I had a little trouble getting the EA app to recognize that I had an account, but it seemed to start working on its own as I was fiddling with it.
While it was charging I walked over to chat with the ID.4 fellow. He was from Massachusetts and was in Maine for vacation. He comes up often and uses these charges regularly (they are reasonably close to the highway) so knew more about them than I did.
While we were talking another VW ID.4 showed up to charge. This time it was a family from Massachusetts, who it turns out had bought their VW at the same place as the fellow I was talking with.
We chatted briefly. Both seemed to like their ID.4s and I have to say they looked really nice to me, for an SUV.
Since I was local and didn’t want to hog a charger, I only ended up charging for about 15 minutes so that the family could get some juice and be on their way. This got me about 7.6kWh of charge (which is about what I get with 1 hour of AC Level 2 charging at home), enough to get the car back up to about 50% or so. The app showed a peak of 47kW, although I don’t know for how long since it doesn’t have a cool graph like ChargePoint does.
At $0.56 per kWh, this would have cost $4.25. Thankfully it was free, because that is rather expensive. Charging at home is certainly the way to go and I don’t recommend an EV to anyone that cannot regularly charge from home (or work).
Yes, I now realize I should not have even bothered with a 350kW charger with my lowly Ioniq since it only has a maximum charge speed of 50kW.