Recent content by vrpratt

Certainly no bargain had EVgo charged me that for 10,000 miles, and stiffed me for the $8,500 after I complained. But for 8 miles and canceling the charge immediately (no questions asked) when I brought it to their attention, I'm not complaining. But maybe a better question than mine would...

Did that, thank you. Took ten minutes on the phone to cancel a $6.77 charge (my time is worth more than $40/hr to me). They explained that had the charging time been 5 minutes or less the cancellation would have happened automatically. The extra minute (6 minutes of charging time) resulted in...

My wife and I drove her Bolt from Palo Alto CA to Vancouver BC and back, round trip 2683 miles including side trips to beautiful Yachats on the Oregon coast, Mt St Helens, and Lake Quinault in the Olympic Forest. (I'm currently working on writing up the charging strategies and tactics I used to...

I'm driving my wife's Bolt from Vancouver BC to Palo Alto CA in a few days time. I'm looking for what Tesla calls "destination chargers" along the way, specifically in the neighborhood of Salem OR and Mt Shasta CA. For the Bolt these would be Level 2 J1772 stations or NEMA 14-50 outlets (for...

Sorry, I should have been clearer that I was referring to the value of a kWh to the motorist, not the cost. When you're tooling around the boonies in a leased-and-loaded Bolt depreciating at 47 cents a mile, a kWh's value dwarfs its cost. Even more so given that, except for very rare long...

When it comes to simply buying stuff "over the counter", product-specific apps are for apes. I see no reason why paying for electrons at the electron pump should be any different from paying for groceries at the supermarket checkout with a generic phone pay like Apple Pay or Android Pay. For...

That's assuming a lot. Would they still expect that in the event that their RFiD cards didn't work? How many Americans today expect the president of the US to make decisions that work to the benefit of the country?

Roger that. The flip side of a high Cd however is that slipstreaming, whether 10' or 150' feet behind a large truck, should have a more noticeable effect on the mileage of high Cd cars than low. Using the ten-bar Energy History indicator (my favorite indicator by far) I've noticed 6 miles/kwh...

Been there, done that. The last comment at that thread is my comparison of EVgo to a pre-internet supercomputer---they seem content to be able to charge at blazing speed triggered by nothing more than a phone call to them. That's what you get when you let an energy company like NRG try to...

At least EVgo sent you one. My wife applied for one on July 21 and they wrote back first thing next morning with "No card yet? No problem! Our team is putting it in the mail today. You should be getting it from USPS within 5-7 business days." It's now 8 business days and still no card. Is...

EVgo reminds me of the days half a century ago, before the Internet, when there were blazingly fast (by the standards of those days) computers you could program but they couldn't communicate with each other, only with their users. To use one you had to be physically present to present your job...

Further to SparkE's excellent point about planned expansion along I-15, which might be summarized as "you can't step in the same stream twice", I should have explained that my post was to challenge your evidence for your thesis "not ready for prime time!" by pointing out that, even today, it...

A few days before I saw your post I'd used Plugshare to see what it would take to drive my wife's 2-month-old Bolt from LA to Las Vegas. At first glance the complete absence of any CCS chargers in the Mojave Desert suggested you can't get there conveniently in a Bolt, which your experience...

Regarding fire, the National Electrical Code specifies the minimum wire gauge for each breaker in the house. If the homeowner has installed a higher-amperage breaker than the original, or rats have chewed up the wiring, or the breaker has corroded somehow, there will be a risk of wiring causing...

I can think of two reasons not to run at 8A when the voltage is 240. 1. You'll only get 2/3 as many years of use out of the EVSE before something fails. This is because running it at 8A will add 50% to the total number of hours per year the whole unit is in operation. The contactor is the...