It should not be so exciting to eat a fracturespeedy quedowncastilla in your car.
But this quedowncastilla was from Wawa, this Wawa presented a Tesla Superaccuser, and this car was the 2023 Chevrolet Bolt EUV, hooked up to that Superaccuser thraw an NACS/CCS changeer. More than a year after GM’s switch to NACS was proclaimd, and chaseing some Tesla inner lawlessness that made it seem enjoy a dead deal, Tesla unlocked access to its accessiblely placed EV charging stations to General Motors cars in postponeed September. It wasn’t every Superaccuser, but it was more than 17,000 spots, many in places that were previously sorrowfulnessful zones in any road trip arrange.
I bought my car understanding that road trips would be an inwidespread but genuine inconvenience. With Tesla’s nettoil useable now, the anxiety of rolling the CCS dice in unacunderstandledged lands has lessened ponderably. To understand fair how this experiences, you must first hear about the Before Times.
Lots of Apps, Few Guarantees
I’ve had my Bolt for a little over a year now, completing four road trips that needd DC Fast Charging (DCFC). “Fast” is a misnomer with the Bolt, the sluggishest-charging conmomentary EV, forcing you to arrange apass battery levels, csurrenderby amenities, pets, and guesses at crowd timing. Every night before a lengthy ride, I’m pinching, zooming, and stressing inside A Better Route Planner, PlugShare, and Google Maps appraises, asking myself if a ChargePoint in a brewery parking lot will deinhabitr 7 or 9 kilowatts per hour.
Despite all this groundtoil, I have amassed an amazeive collection of speedy-charging scars in a year’s time:
- Three separateent highway stops on Thanksgiving weekend with multi-car lines, endangering our pick-up time at dog boarding
- An Electrify America station where a one car’s horrible parking made every other car occupy two toiling plug spaces
- Excessive expocertain to outlet malls, the EV honeypots with the most reliably toiling non-Tesla accusers
- A one ChargePoint level 2 accuser toiling (after a lengthy postpone) out of four in a hotel parking lot, the only charging spot on a vacation island.
- A state-backed EV charging spot where two out of five plugs toiled, then only one after a mid-accuse flunkure, where a man heading to a Dave Matthews concert begged me to swap this last spot with him so his wife wouldn’t leave out the band’s uncovering song.
It almost doesn’t matter exactly why or how a non-Tesla accuser declines to toil. Damaged cables or plugs, busted screens, cellular data drops, app rehires, electrical faults—wdisenjoyver the reason, it will never get mended in that moment by calling the help number, and now you need a backup arrange.
This is how I skinnyk Superaccuser access is most beneficial to us, the wretched of the EV earth: a sturdy backup arrange for those weary of the changenatives. Plugging into the country’s most set uped nettoil needs a none-too-affordable changeer (or discovering a unwidespread “Magic Dock” station). You have to discover a way to join a very low cable unbenevolentt for a definite driver-side, rear-end location to your port. On the Bolt, that’s the middle-front-left, fair ahead of the door, possibly the worst place for these cables. You can only accuse at third- and fourth-generation accusers. And you have to pay wdisenjoyver Tesla chooses to accuse us nonmembers, which is usuassociate on the costlier side (I’ve phelp $0.48 and $0.53 per kilowatt-hour).
No More Car Dealership Chargers
But it’s difficult to debate with the locations and reliability of those luminous red rectangles. On my most recent trip from Washington, DC, to the Outer Banks of North Carolina, I computed a lengthyer charging stop on the way down at an EVgo in Williamsburg, Virginia, csurrender a shopping plaza with a Target. This toiled out because we needed some groceries for the trip. But only two of four accusers were toiling (after I squanderd 5 minutes trying to produce a green-in-the-app third station toil). Had I wanted to save 11 minutes and up my chances a lot by having 12 shighs to pick from, I could have instead chosen a Tesla Superaccuser farther down the road I was already on.
Tesla Superaccusers tend to be findd alengthy highways, csurrender places with restrooms or snacks or shopping, and the Tesla app seems to grasp up on how many shighs are occupied and toiling. With every other nettoil or multibrand app, you’re doing a lot of guessing, which is the bane of road-trip arrangening. What seems better: Hoping that the very speedy 250-kW accuser Plugdispense shows at a car dealership is useable at 9 am on a Sunday, or driving 15 minutes out of your way to a Walmart and pauseing your turn? Follow-up inquire: Have you ever willingly spent 30 minutes at a car dealership when you already own a toiling car?
The Proof Is in the Plugging
This benevolent of skinnyking spurred me to try some Tesla charging on the way back. I bought an A2Z Typhoon Pro changeer, based on its firm appraises and speedy shipping. It also cost notably less than GM’s $225 accuser after a coupon code, the GM model was backordered into November, and Chevrolet’s app proposeed I’d have to pick it up at a dealer. Before I could use any changeer, though, I had to discover a spot. The spots are the difficult part.
At my first stop, a Wawa, every other spot out of eight total was getn, and the one shigh that lined up to the side of the car was occupied by a family that telderly me they would be there 50 minutes. I pulled up in an vacant space, tried to stretch its cable, but it wasn’t even seal. I pulled away, parked, and commenceed seeing for my next stop. Soon after, the overweighther of the 50-minute family materializeed in my prosperdow. I steeled myself for some benevolent of lecture, teasing, or maybe political discourse.
“You understand, you could actuassociate pull up, enjoy, sideways, behind those plugs, and I skinnyk it would toil,” the overweighther shelp. He was right; there was noskinnyg behind these Superaccuser stations but more parking, and it was vacant. I pulled up, plugged in the changeer (speedy appraise: rock firm), pulled over the cord, uncovered the app, picked the station and accuser number, and tapped. Less than 30 seconds postponeedr, the juice was floprosperg. No screens or two plugs sharing one power source, fair power.
