(lively music)
- Los Angeles.
Good views. Here we are, Beverly Hills.
Bad traffic,
(horns beeping)
so many electric vehicle chargers.
Charger number one, two, three.
From the streets of downtown to the beach in Santa Monica,
11, 19 23, we visited 30 DC fast charging locations,
none of them run by Tesla.
28, 29, 30.
That meant more than 100 different charging stalls.
(chargers clicking)
There was just one little problem.
Yeah, this one's broken.
Broken and also broken.
Okay, many problems.
Come on, you can do it. Connect to the ve...
Error detected.
There's nothing on the screen.
I've tried putting my credit card in every way.
At just over 40% of the charging locations,
I encountered problems.
Yeah, not good.
As the US moves to an electric vehicle future,
LA is ahead of it all, but oh boy, are things a mess here.
What can we learn from it all and can it be fixed?
All right, let's go test a whole bunch of chargers.
Here's how we set up this test.
(upbeat music) (electricity buzzing)
Los Angeles County has more DC fast chargers
than any other place in the country.
So over two days, I tried to go to as many
as I could in a Rivian R1T.
Why the Rivian?
Well, it's awesome
unless you're trying to enter a parking garage.
Okay, duck down.
I'm totally aware that ducking does nothing.
Plus, like the majority of non-Tesla Evs,
it has a CCS charging port.
When you've got that port and you need to charge,
a DC fast charging station,
typically an EVgo
or Electrify America is your best bet,
except those stations, according to my testing,
have three main problems.
Number one, out of order.
(playful music)
I inspected 126 charging stalls in total.
27% of those stalls were just flat out of order.
That is they had a sign
or an error that said charger unavailable, out of service.
So it works.
EVgo, Electrify America
and EVCS all told me that they quickly try
to fix these issues by deploying technicians to the sites.
But honestly, I preferred this issue
because it saved me from the hassle
of trying the charger and then failing.
Which brings me to number two, payment.
(electricity buzzing)
Nearly 10% of the stalls visited had payment issues.
It says cash only. Where would I put cash?
Yes, there were specifically repeated credit card problems.
Why are you beeping at me?
Present card again. (machine beeping)
Okay, nope. Let's see if this will work.
Now it's telling me to swipe the card. Present card again.
Swiping card, present card again. Try another card.
Wiping my other card. Nope, nothing.
EVCS said these issues can arise
because the payment hardware is made
by a different company than the charger.
EVgo said paying by app is a more seamless experience,
and I found that app paying was better for all the chargers.
Some EVs and charging companies
even support plug and charge.
So it just starts charging your account
when you plug into your car.
But you still have to set those apps up.
Why don't you take Apple Pay?
Number three, connection issues.
Even if the payment works,
it is connecting now to my vehicle.
Can you two connect?
Charger meet Rivian. Rivian meet charger.
Connect. Error detected.
This may be the most frustrating one of all,
when the car and the charger don't connect to each other,
what many call the handshake issue.
Basically, when you plug the charger into the car,
the two have to talk to each other
and send information about voltage
and energy levels back and forth.
And a lot can go wrong in this process.
I'll get to more of that soon.
Sometimes the charger will prompt you
with ways to troubleshoot.
Please unplug the connector.
Wait 10 seconds, plug in the connector and try again.
I will try to unplug and replug like a router,
but it doesn't always work.
And to be fair, this handshake issue
isn't just a Rivian thing.
I've experienced this problem on many different EVs.
(lively music)
To find out why this is all such a broken mess,
I met up with ChargerHelp, an LA-based company
that attempts to clean up the mess.
So you fix chargers. - Yes.
- There are a lot of broken chargers.
- Yeah, no, we fix a lot of chargers in LA,
especially with our LA technicians that we have here.
- Sergio, one of the ChargerHelp technicians,
walked me through fixing one stall.
- It shows that it has a fault here.
So a power cycle of the unit,
we can go ahead and hit the breaker to shut it off.
(lever clicking)
- [Joanna] Yep, as simple as turning it off
and turning it on again.
(charger clicking)
- So we're getting the green prompt lights,
which means the charging station is back online.
- [Joanna] But most repairs are not that simple
because again, the car
and the charger are computers that have
to communicate with each other.
- [Sergio] This is the whole motherboard here,
which sometimes goes bad and we have to replace.
- [Joanna] Sergio explained that this set
of cables connect from the motherboard to the charger
to communicate with the car.
It's that handshake I mentioned before.
The charger tells the car how much voltage it can send
and the car says, "Hey, here's how much I can accept."
But that's where things can break down.
- Sometimes the network where you're at,
whichever area you're in, it's poor.
So you have to try it multiple times.
So it actually ends up working,
if you notice, when you try like the third
or fourth time, it ends up actually working.
- [Joanna] And remember, the DC fast chargers I tested
have to communicate with lots of different types
of electric vehicles, which is why things can get
so much more complicated than on Tesla's network.
- So it's one station trying to figure out
how to communicate
with multiple different types of firmware.
Whereas if you have a Tesla system,
it's a vertically integrated where they have a car,
a station, and a payment system that's all together.
(lively music)
- So what's the future of EV charging?
(electricity buzzing)
Starting in 2024, Tesla's opening up its charging network,
allowing cars from Rivian, Ford, and GM,
and others to charge at Tesla stations.
Doesn't fit, at least not yet.
Eventually, those car companies
will also adopt Tesla's NACS charging port.
Will it be total hassle-free charging? I'm not so sure.
Tesla is only used to charging their own cars
and those other DC fast charging stations from EVgo,
Electrify America and more should get better too.
At an EVgo station in Santa Monica,
I got to try out some newer charging stalls.
It says checking cable safety, matching voltage.
This tells you what it's doing.
These new machines are great.
Representatives from each
of the charger companies told me many
of the issues I encountered were because of legacy hardware
and that they are constantly upgrading,
which we actually saw at this Electrify America.
(Joanna knocking)
Knock knock. Is there a charger in there?
Plus, in September,
the Biden administration opened up $100 million
in federal funding to repair and replace
existing electric vehicle charging infrastructure.
That's in addition to the $5 billion program
to help states build out more EV charging sites,
which should help with the lines.
Excuse me, are you guys almost done charging?
So what did I learn here over the last few days?
Well, if you can, charge at home
or your hotel, yet I met many travelers
and apartment renters who don't have that option.
Really? What I learned is patience.
Have a lot of it when pulling into one of these stations
and understand that this isn't as simple
as plugging your phone into the wall.
Oh, and avoid credit cards whenever possible.
Just use that charger's mobile app.
But if LA is any sign, this EV revolution is going
to feel more like a slow, messy evolution.
Charging. Woo-hoo.
At least that's what it says.
20, we hit 20. You like this dance? It's really cool.