Everybody’s favorite EV charger brand to hate, Electrify America, recently launched a Congestion Reduction Pilot at 10 Southern California locations that will automatically end a charging session once a car has reached 85-percent charge. These stations will then wait 10 minutes before the owner starts to receive idle fees if the car is still plugged in. The goal of the pilot is to reduce wait times, as electric vehicle charge speeds tend to slow drastically beyond the 80-percent threshold, yet many people insist on charging all the way to 100 percent at public fast-chargers.
The Volkswagen-funded charging company claims this pilot program is inspired by customer feedback, and says its team will continuously monitor station performance and customer sentiment during the program. EA says it selected these particular station locations for the pilot program because they are in urban areas, have high utilization, high queuing concerns and because they aren’t located along highway corridors where more drivers might need to charge up beyond 85 percent, like for road trips.
These are the stations that will face the new charging limit:
- Plaza Del Sol (Station 200068) at 10982 Sherman Way, Burbank, California 91505
- Target T2328 (Station 200041) at 651 W Sepulveda Blvd, Carson, California 90745
- Ralphs 060 (Station 200046) at 1416 East Colorado St, Glendale, California 91205
- Bank of America Washington-Centinela CA9-160 (Station 200044) at 12316 W Washington Blvd, Los Angeles, California 90066
- Bank of America LA Chinatown CA9-167 (Station 200070) at 850 N Broadway, Los Angeles, California 90012
- Vons 2598 (Station 200049) at 3233 Foothill Blvd, La Crescenta, California 91214
- Walmart Supercenter 2177 (Station 200144) at 3382 Murphy Canyon Road, San Diego California 92123
- Target T0767 (Station 200051) at 888 W Arrow Hwy, San Dimas, California 91773
- Target T1309 (Station 200047) at 14920 Raymer Street, Van Nuys, California, 91405
- Yorba Canyon Center (Station 200079) at 21580 1/2 Yorba Linda Blvd, Yorba Linda, California 92887
Electrify America didn’t release much information aside from a short bulletin and some FAQ’s, but it offers some good insight. You cannot unplug your vehicle and restart charging to go beyond that 85-percent mark; the chargers just won’t allow it. These chargers also won’t allow any vehicle to charge above 85 percent regardless of whether there’s a line of cars waiting to charge or not, which would piss me off. Either way, EA claims these limits will help reduce wait times for EV drivers, and that its idle fees are rolling out across the network to combat wait times, too.