Trying to enroll in EVgo’s “plug and charge” system

I have a table where I am trying to keep track of progress in the US toward “plug and charge”.  It is quite discouraging to see so many cells that fail to say “yes”.  Having said this, I figured I should try out EVgo’s “plug and charge” system, which it calls “Autocharge+“.   It did not go well. 

The idea of “plug and charge” is that you don’t need to tap or swipe or fiddle with a smart phone app.  You simply plug in your EV and charging commences.  For this to work, lots of things need to go right.  The car needs to be the kind of car that knows how to identify itself to a charging network.  The charging network needs to be the kind that knows how to communicate with the car.   The car needs to have been already “enrolled” in the “plug and charge” system for the particular charging network that is of interest.  And the particular charging station where you have parked your EV needs to be functioning correctly at the time that you arrived there.

With Tesla cars and the Tesla charging network, “plug and charge” is simply always there.  It has always simply been there.  No owner of a Tesla car, hoping to charge at a Tesla charging station, has ever had to give even a moment’s thought to what it will take to charge the car.

But with other charging networks, it is commonplace for “plug and charge” to be simply unavailable for many car makes.  And even if it is a “friendly” car (the kind for which “plug and charge” is expected to work), it often does not work on the first try.

I decided to try to enroll my Tesla car in the EVgo “Autocharge+” system.  (By the way, why do so many EV charging service providers feel the need to use a “plus” sign as part of their naming system?  See  for example “-ChargePoint+”.  I suppose it’s a sort of a “look scientific” thing evoking the positive terminal of a battery.)  To do this, you follow a sequence of steps:

• • Set up a user account with EVgo.
  • Set up a credit card with your EVgo user account.
  • Download the EVgo smart phone app, and log in to your user account.
  • Stand in front of the to-be-enrolled vehicle, and using the app, scan the VIN number of the vehicle.
  • Click around a bit in the app, confirming that you really mean it.
  • If the car is a Tesla car, click in the app to confirm that yes, you really do have an adapter (blog article) for plugging in a Tesla car at a CCS charging station.
  • Drive 75 miles to reach the nearest EVgo charging station.  (Throw a dart at a map of the US, and in general there will not be an EVgo charging station within a hundred miles of where the dart landed.)
  • Select a CCS plug at the charging station, and place the adapter onto the CCS plug.  (This is not as easy as it sounds, requiring the use of two hands and requiring quite a lot of upper-body strength.)
  • Plug the adapter into the car.  (This is the normal first thing that one does when charging an EV, right?)
  • Look at the app.  On the screen is a scolding message telling you that you must now unplug the adapter from your car, because it was a mistake to plug the adapter into the car.
  • Unplug the adapter from the car.  This is not as easy as one might think, because now the adapter is locked into place in the car’s charging port, and because the CCS plug is locked into place in the adapter.  There is only one button to push to try to release the adapter from the car, and it is on the CCS plug.  It turns out that the button, when pressed, more or less tries to accomplish both kinds of release at the same time.  And mostly what that button does is release the CCS plug from the adapter.  So you have to sort of grip the adapter extremely firmly and, while pressing the button, try to pull the adapter out of the car’s charging port.
  • Note by the way that the adapter itself has a very smooth surface with no shaped features or knurling that might help you as you try to pull the adapter out from the car’s charging port.  I think later I will need to attack the adapter with a Dremel tool to carve some knurling into the surface of the adapter.
  • Note by the way that the button on the CCS plug is widely different in its behavior from one CCS charger to the next.  Sometimes it is merely difficult to press hard enough to get it to release things.  But other times, merely pressing hard is not good enough and one must press extremely hard.  Note, too, that the designer of the CCS charger absolutely failed to provide even a hint or suggestion of any feedback to let you know whether you did indeed press the button hard enough to make things happen.  No beep.  No indicator light.  So you just have to try again and again for the Goldilocks amount of pressing the button.  Not pressing too hard, because you will get a cramp in your thumb muscles.  Not pressing too gently, because this might not be pressing hard enough.  And note that the Goldilocks amount of pressing this release button differs notably in magnitude from one CCS charger to the next.
  • Having unplugged the adapter from the car, you then click around in the EVgo smart phone app to get forgiveness for having plugged in the adapter to the car while having failed to ask “Captain may I?”  And then you click in the app to ask “Captain may I?”

  • 

    At this point, what is supposed to happen is that the app flashes a pop-up message warning you that you now have only sixty seconds to plug the adapter into the car’s charging port.   But that is not what happened to me at this EVgo charging station.  What happened to me, over and over again, was a value-subtracting pop-up window saying “Error Occurred – Oops, something went wrong.  Please try again.  CLOSE RETRY”.

  • As best I could discern, it made absolutely no difference whether I clicked on “CLOSE” or “RETRY”.
  • The text of the error message made it look as though if only I were to try again, often enough, things might eventually work.  That is not how it actually went.
  • At about this time, a driver of another EV (a Kia) who had already “enrolled” his vehicle in Autocharge+ tried to do a “plug and charge”.  The Kia driver did not succeed, and the only way he was able to charge was by calling on the phone to EVgo tech support, spending ten minutes on the phone with various futile troubleshooting, and eventually having the tech support person do an “override” to get his charging to start.
  • I called tech support myself, reaching Jason, and explaining that I did not need help charging, but needed help “enrolling” the vehicle in Autocharge+.  Jason ran me through ten minutes of futile troubleshooting, at the end of which Jason cheerfully announced that he had managed to do an “override” and that I should now see charging taking place.  I reminded Jason that this was not helping at all and was not why I had called.  I tried multiple times to explain to Jason that I was calling about “enrolling” and not “charging”, but I never managed to make myself understood.
  • Jason finally announced that what he would do is “open a ticket” and somebody from a higher level of tech support would get back to me.  I asked whether Jason wanted me to stay there at the charging station to wait for the response from the higher level of tech support.  He gave some answer that was neither yes nor no.  I asked again, and again.  I never managed to get a straight answer from Jason on this.
  • All four of the kiosks at this charging station were in use, with other drivers waiting patiently for their turn to charge.  But eventually a second plug opened up and I tried the enrollment process all over again.  Just as before, absolutely every time, the value-subtracting error message appeared, wrongly suggesting that the correct thing to do was to “try again”.
  • It was just as well that I gave up on this charging station and did not wait around for the call, because it took well over two hours for the higher level of tech support to respond.  I wrangled the adapter off of the CCS 1 plug, which again required an extremely firm grip and a lot of upper body strength.
  • I then drove for half an hour to reach the next nearest EVgo charging station.  (In the Denver metropolitan area where I was doing these “enrolling” attempts, the drive from one Tesla charging station to the next averages about fifteen minutes.  But for the EVgo stations in this area, it is always more than a drive of half an hour from one of them to the next.)   Arriving at the EVgo charging station, I wrangled the adapter onto the CCS plug, which was not easy.
  • I then clicked around in the EVgo smart phone app to ask “Captain may I?” for the enrollment of the vehicle.   This time it worked instantly.  The app flashed a pop-up message warning me that I now have only sixty seconds to plug the adapter into the car’s charging port.
  • At this point if I had not already installed the adapter onto the CCS plug, I would have found that I had used up most of the sixty seconds trying to wrangle the adapter onto the CCS plug.  Fortunately, I had already wrangled the adapter onto the plug.  So I was able to get the adapter plugged into the car before the expiration of the sixty-second period.

  • 

    The result was a successful enrollment of my car onto the EVgo network, as you can see at right.

How the tech support escalation went.  As I mentioned earlier, it took over two hours for the “higher level of tech support” to get back to me.  It was not a phone call.  It was an email.  The email was from Edwin.  He asked if I could please let him know the VIN of the vehicle I had been trying to enroll.  There were at least three reasons why this made no sense.  First, Jason had included the VIN in the trouble ticket, so Edwin already had the VIN.  Second, the VIN was already present in my login profile in the EVgo system, as a vehicle that I was trying to enroll.  So Edwin could have found the VIN with one or two mouse clicks in his system.

The third reason that this made no sense is that some 45 minutes before Edwin emailed me, I had already successfully enrolled the VIN into the Autocharge+ system by the step of driving half an hour to a different EVgo charging station and trying again.  Surely if Edwin had bothered to look, he could have seen that with no help from him, I had managed to get the vehicle enrolled.

Even though it was completely unnecessary, in my emailed reply I gave up and provided the VIN to Edwin.

An hour and a half after that, I received another email from Edwin, cheerfully letting me know that he was escalating this problem to “our Product Support team internally”.   Even then, Edwin had apparently not bothered to do the one or two mouse clicks to see that I had already successfully managed to get the vehicle enrolled.

By now a day has passed, and I have not heard back from the “Product Support team”.  I wonder if I will ever hear back from the “Product Support team”.

What else Jason wanted me to do.  It will be recalled that when I reached Jason, the EVgo tech support representative, on the telephone, he ran me through about ten minutes of futile troubleshooting.  At one point (I am not making this up) he asked if I would please walk around the car and look closely to see if all of the car windows were rolled up all the way.  A moment later he asked me to walk around the car to make sure all of the car doors were closed.

One of the troubleshooting steps that Jason proposed was for me to delete the vehicle from the EVgo app, and start all over again with scanning the VIN of the vehicle.  I had already tried that before placing the phone call to Jason, and I told him so.  He then asked that I please uninstall the EVgo app from my phone and reinstall it.

The fact is that by driving half an hour to the next nearest EVgo charging station, I found that the EVgo system was able to enroll my vehicle.  We know from this that it would have been a complete waste of time for me to uninstall the EVgo app from my phone and reinstall it.  It had also probably been a complete waste of time to delete the vehicle from the EVgo app, and start all over again with scanning the VIN of the vehicle.

It seems pretty clear, too, that it had been a waste of time for me to walk around the car twice, checking to see whether or not the windows were rolled up and checking to see whether or not the doors were closed.

My best guess about all of this is that at the EVgo charging station where Autocharge+ was not working for the Kia driver, and was not working for me, the problem was very likely simply that the Autocharge+ system was broken at that first EVgo charging station.

Advice from a driver of a non-Tesla vehicle.  You will recall that at about the same time that the charging station kept failing to enroll my vehicle in Autocharge+, a driver of another EV (a Kia) who had already “enrolled” his vehicle in Autocharge+ had been trying unsuccessfully to do a “plug and charge”.  As I described, the only way the Kia driver was able to charge was by calling on the phone to EVgo tech support, spending ten minutes on the phone with various futile troubleshooting, and eventually having the tech support person do an “override” to get the charging to start.  What I feel I must share with you, dear reader, is what the Kia driver said to me toward the end of our time together at this EVgo charging station.  He explained that until two months ago he had driven a Tesla.  But starting two months ago he began driving a Kia.  He took a deep breath, and he launched into what I could tell was his very genuine feeling about the situation:

I certainly do not mean any disrespect, but I see that you are driving a Tesla car.  I feel you are completely wasting your time trying to use any EVgo charging station.  [He explained …] I used to drive a Tesla and I can tell you that the Tesla charging stations always work.  They are never broken.  They always have at least eight plugs, and often it is not necessary to wait to use a plug.  Look around you at this EVgo station!  There are only four plugs.  There are three cars parked around us right now, with drivers inside the cars, waiting for their turn to use the next EVgo plug when it becomes available.  And the charging is cheaper at the Tesla stations than what it costs here at this EVgo station.  [He continued …]   And no matter where you go, you can always find a Tesla charging station not far away.   You can drive straight west from here for many hundreds of miles along I-70 through Colorado and Utah and there will always be a Tesla charging station when you need one.  On the other hand, if you were to rely on EVgo, headed west on I-70 from here, you can drive over 700 miles on I-70 westbound and never see an EVgo charging station.  [He summed up …]  Again, I do not mean any disrespect but I think you should never again try to use an EVgo charging station.

I thanked him very much for this.  I then explained that my reason for being at this charging station was not that I needed to charge my car, but simply that I hoped to enroll this car in the Autocharge+ system.  He said, okay, but still even that was a waste of my time because I should never use EVgo chargers and  I should only use Tesla chargers.