(Update: what “plug and charge” charging experiences are available in the US? I have set up a table that I hope will show progress with setting up “plug and charge” in the US.)
From the moment that became an owner of a Tesla vehicle, I was able to do an easy “plug and charge”. I would park my car at a Tesla charging kiosk, plug the charging plug of the kiosk into the charging port of the car, and charging would commence.
Note what is missing from the previous sentence. Never in all of my years of charging my Tesla car at a Tesla charging station have I needed to do anything else to get the charging to commence. No tapping a proximity card in front of a “tap to pay” reader on the kiosk. No tapping a credit card in front of a “tap to pay” reader on the kiosk. No waving my phone in front of a “tap to pay” reader on the kiosk. No inserting a credit card into a credit card reader on the kiosk. No fumbling with a smart phone app, and no cursing because the stupid smart phone app had logged me out and of course I do not have the password memorized for logging back in. No going on a treasure hunt on the kiosk to try to work out what the “kiosk number” is so that I can key in the kiosk number at the smart phone app. No calling up tech support to talk to somebody about why the “tap to pay” did not work.
Tesla owners are, as you may appreciate, rather spoiled by this absolutely seamless charging experience. We read news stories about owners of non-Tesla vehicles who end up very disappointed or angry because when they finally did locate a non-broken charging kiosk, they found that it was difficult or impossible to get the actual charging to begin. Or if it was not that bad, at least the owner of the non-Tesla vehicle had to tap a phone or tap a prox card or key in a kiosk number into a smart phone app, to get charging to commence. Yes, we read those news stories, but having never had those problems, we do not fully appreciate how bad it might be to try to get charging to commence.
Across the US are tens of thousands of free-of-charge Level 2 chargers. Most of them provide a seamless charging experience, but of course it is slow. You might have to leave your vehicle at the charger overnight to get a full charge. No, what I am talking about in this blog article is fast DC charging or “supercharging”, typically at speeds of 50 kW or 150 kW or more.
Which brings me to two general questions. First, to what extent is there any way for a Tesla owner to have “plug and charge” fast DC charging experience on any non-Tesla-branded kiosk? And second, to what extent does the owner of a non-Tesla EV ever get to have a “plug and charge” fast DC charging experience?
First, to what extent is there any way for a Tesla owner to have a “plug and charge” fast DC charging experience on any non-Tesla-branded kiosk? As far as I can see, only one major provider of fast DC charging services offers “plug and charge” charging experiences. The provider is EVgo. As EVgo says on its web site:
No tapping, no cards. Just plug in and charge. EVgo Autocharge+ allows EV drivers to start a charge by simply plugging in, no extra steps needed. It makes charging faster and easier.
Here is how EVgo’s Autocharge service works. You start by creating an account with EVgo. You make payment arrangements by entering a credit card into their system. You download and install their smart phone app. You click in the app to set up a vehicle for Autocharge. You go to the vehicle and use your smart phone to snap a photograph of the VIN (vehicle identification number) of the vehicle.
By the way, this part seems almost magical to me. The app performs OCR (optical character recognition) on the VIN, which you might have captured by aiming your smart phone camera at the VIN on your windshield. The EVgo system then looks up the VIN in some massive database and tells you what year and make and model of car you are standing in front of. The EVgo system then cross-checks the year and make and model against its own database of vehicles that it knows are capable of identifying themselves in an automatic way to the charging kiosk. (Not all EVs have this capability.) Everything in this paragraph happens over the course of about five seconds.
Now your vehicle is almost ready for “plug and charge” charging. The next thing that needs to happen is, you need to find an EVgo DC fast charging kiosk, and “enroll” your vehicle by plugging in your vehicle at the kiosk. And then the car and the EVgo system pass a bunch of messages back and forth, and eventually the EVgo system decides that it will be able to recognize this particular vehicle the next time that you plug in.
Except not. When tried yesterday to enroll my EV in the EVgo plug-and-charge system, it did not go well (blog article).
So yes, you have to do a bunch of things up front. But once you have worked your way through those steps, you will (hopefully) enjoy “plug and charge” charging going forward.
One thing to keep in mind is that if the vehicle that you are enrolling in EVgo’s Autocharge system happens to be a Tesla vehicle, you absolutely must already have a CCS1-to-NACS charging adapter (see blog article).
Second, to what extent does the owner of a non-Tesla EV ever get to have a “plug and charge” fast DC charging experience?
This question is not idle for the owner of a Tesla vehicle. In just a couple of weeks I will be flying across the country and I will be renting an EV at my destination, and it will be a non-Tesla EV. (The rental car company has not said exactly which make or model of EV it will be — they merely say “Chevy Bolt or equivalent”. But I am assuming it will not be a Tesla vehicle.) This prompted me to click around to try to find out which, if any, providers of fast DC charging services offer “plug and charge” charging experiences. Indeed it is this clicking around that led me to write this very blog article! You can see the results of my research here.
The answer, if your vehicle is a rented Chevy Bolt, seems to be that the only game in town for “plug and charge” fast DC charging is … EVgo. When I arrive at my destination airport and go to the rental car place to pick up my “Chevy Bolt or equivalent”, one of the first things I will do is open up my smart phone app and click to add a vehicle, and snap a photo of the VIN. Then I will seek out the nearest EVgo fast DC charging station and do a quick little charging session. This will hopefully register the vehicle to the EVgo Autocharge system. And then for the duration of the rental experience, it will hopefully be very very easy to charge up the rental car, simply by plugging it in at an EVgo CCS1 kiosk.
The alert reader will realize that once I return the rental car at the end of my trip, I need to remember to delete that vehicle from my EVgo account.
What other makes of non-Tesla EVs get to have “plug and charge” charging with EVgo? With EVgo’s Autocharge, the answer is not very clear — see blog article.
What other “plug and charge” charging experiences are available in the US? I have set up a table that I hope will show progress with setting up “plug and charge” in the US.