We Experienced The Nightmare That Prospective EV Buyers Are Afraid Of

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My time with the 2024 Audi Q8 e-tron was nearly up. It had conquered the mountains of Colorado over multiple days and had safely returned me to my former home of Colorado Springs. The next day I had to drive it back to Denver early in the morning where I’d part ways with it. That’s when my EV nightmare began and it had nothing to do with the 402 hp steed that Audi loaned me.

I parked the Audi in one of Colorado Springs’ few centrally-located DC Fast Charging stations and went to dinner with friends. Before walking away I confirmed that the car said it was charging, the light was green, the charger itself appeared to be charging and all seemed right with the world.

When I returned nearly two hours later I saw the screen that you all do above. For the average EV owner who has a charger at their home, this might not be a big deal. The car had another 21 or so miles of range and my place was only six or so miles away. Where I was staying was an apartment though and it had no charging infrastructure. Did I mention that it’s now 9 p.m. and I need to return the car to Denver (90 miles away) at 6 a.m.?

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That’s when my best friend and I jumped online searching for other charging stations in the area. We didn’t need something wildly fast like a 350 kW station necessarily, the Audi can only charge at 170 kW anyway. What we did need though was something reasonably fast and reasonably close.

To find just such a reasonable charging station we turned to a number of sources like A Better Routeplanner, ChargeHub.com, and ChargeFinder.com. These sites are dedicated to improving the experience but what we found is that they actually made it more frustrating.

That’s because these sites and apps don’t always provide reliably accurate information about the charging site. We only found that out by going to a second site that was supposed to supply 50 kW only to find that it actually had a maximum speed of 7 kW. Now we had just over ten miles of range and it was nearly 10 p.m. A little over half an hour later we had about 20 miles of range.

From there we found a third charging station through a combination of Google Maps and the aforementioned sites that reportedly offered 150 kW but when we arrived it didn’t work. It was a ChargePoint station and despite every possible way to pay for a charge, it simply wouldn’t initiate a charge to our Audi.

We used a physical chip card, we tried tapping, and we even downloaded the app to two different phones in hopes that it would work. None of it mattered. The car was back down to less than 13 miles of range again. The panic was beginning to set in.

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Another charger, this time with a maximum rate of just 50 kW, was about 3 miles away and seemed to have decent reviews on Google Maps. It was relatively close to two others with lesser reviews too just in case we had to bail and try a fifth. Guess what?

It didn’t work either. This time, it was an EVGO charging station and similarly to the ChargePoint charger, nothing we did seemed to work. The range was so low that we ditched the car for a short time to go investigate the nearby charging situations in a gas-powered Jeep.

Perhaps it was the time away or perhaps it was something else but when we returned from our expedition the EVGO station finally worked when we tried it one last time. The nightmare wasn’t over though. It was past 10 p.m. and remember, this is a 50 kW charging station which means that it’s not exactly fast.

EVGO charging stations also have a 60-minute time limit which means that in an hour we could only charge to about 45 percent. Technically, that’s enough to get us to Denver just barely. I do not trust $91,000 SUV care to a technicality though so at the end of an hour, I had to unplug the Audi, plug it back in, and restart the charging situation.

Knowing that I was going to leave it charging for another hour I went ahead and locked the Audi and drove back home. When I arrived at home I learned that when I locked the car, the charging session ended. So I had to turn around and go back and repeat the process.

I’d learned the lesson that started back at that parking garage in downtown Colorado Springs though. Babysit the charger until you’re completely certain that it’s adding juice to your battery. Once you’re confident in that, only walk away if you’re confident that it’ll continue charging.

Veteran electric vehicle owners are probably laughing at the comedy of errors that I made throughout the evening. For me, it was a painful lesson in how vital finding a reliable charging source is whether that’s at home, at the office, or somewhere else.