Rossde

Took my Etron on its first trip to southern california since leasing it in 2019. I stopped 7 times for charging over the 1000 miles traveled and the chargers at EA for the most part worked well. I had trouble connecting at the Pismo Beach EA but the phone support got things started. Other EAs we visited were Soledad, and camarillo and Carlsbad. On the way back today, no problem in Solvang. The temp in Paso Robles was 109 degrees. We did get one EA charger working there after trying two others that failed to connect after two attempts. The Gilroy EA worked great today. So after visiting 7 separate EAs on this trip, I connected first time 4 out of the 7. I solved the other 3 by moving to other chargers and had to call EA one time.

Mysta

What was your average stop time at the 7?

Lucken2

For those of us who are used to this kind of hit & miss performance, it's fine. For those that have agonized over buying an EV, finally commit to it, and then encounter this behavior, it will not be fine. There is no hit & miss at gas stations and this needs to carry over to charging stations.

hrc1079

EA will be the downfall of EV adoption in the US. The constant issues at the chargers are appalling and they do nothing to fix them. In fact, I think the new chargers are even worse at getting the to work properly. My last trip from SF to LA more people were charging at the EA stations and every single person had a story about how bad EA was. One woman was stranded for over an hour once in the scorching heat and nothing EA was doing over the phone was working. This is just unacceptable and they need to be held accountable. With every car manufacturer giving 3 years of free charging with EA it's only going to get worse and people will just give up on EV's

Every ICE person that comes over to me while charging asks how the car is. I tell them "nothing wrong with the car, this charging network is ****". 9 times out of 10 they say "I'll stick with a gas car then"

jsclarke99

There were issues at 4 of the 7 EA chargers you stopped in?!

This is exactly why I'm scared to do a road trip from Orange County to SF. It seems like every other time I try an EA charger here at home- in Mission Viejo or a new site in Irvine- I get at least one abort. You hand to hold the cable just right so it'll communicate with the car. This stuff can't be that flakey to encourage adoption. If I needed my BEV to do road trips, I'd definitely buy a Tesla to gain access to their network, even though their build quality is poor (imho).

Bill33525

Here on the east coast the break-downs are unbelievable considering E.A. spent 2020 completely rebuilding most of the sites. Gainesville Fl was completely rebuilt late last year, now both of the 350 kW chargers have been down for months. Looking around the country on their map many sites have unavailable chargers. It's like they have run out of maintenance money. Now VW is selling a billion dollar stake in E.A. Only time will tell what's going on with E.A.

Lucken2

I have to say we were fortunate this weekend in our first long trip (300 miles) to upstate NY in our 21 Sportback. Charging was fast & uneventful at both chargers we tried and there were no other cars charging at the time. One had a couple of 350kw chargers that had been under repair for quite some time, but even those were fixed by the time we got there. I only used the 150kw units.

So there are some good stories to be told.

Rossde

Our average stays were about 20 minutes. I usually filled up to 85%, not much past it. The one time i had to call, we were there maybe 30 minutes.

danielk015

In the 7 months or so i have had my etron, I went on one mini trip from Orange County to the Central Coast. Had trouble on the 2 EA chargers. I have zero plans on using the Etron on any extended trips anymore. I will use the Q7 or another ICE car. I don't mind as much as I have the other ICE cars I can use, but for people where the Etron is their only car or only larger car for longer trips, the pain is real

Lucken2

I’ve found the apps like Plug Share to be good for planning, prior to starting out on a trip, which chargers are working and which are not. Of course this is something that any owner of a BEV, not just Audi, needs to plan for and something that should be understood prior to purchasing.