I Used Electrify America With My Polestar 2 For the First Time Today

I am the most familiar with Tesla's Supercharging network. When I first got my Tesla Model 3, literally, that weekend I took the car for a road trip with my wife a few states away in North Eastern United States. We utilized Tesla's navigation to map our route with proper charging stops. It was amazing. We had very little issues, the Supercharging was superfast, and we never ran into a faulty charging stall. There was little wasted time spent charging, as we mainly stopped when we wanted food or a bathroom break. Obviously depending on your route, location, and many other things this is not always the case, but with proper planning it really is not difficult.

I am in a fortunate situation where my employer has free on-site EV charging available. With that, it allows me to charge for free at work. I did a longer post about how I save almost $4000/year in gas savings due to the amount I drive and the ability to charge for free. When I do charge at home, I have a NEMA 6-50 with an adapter to NEMA 14-50 and I use the mobile charger. I would however like to get something like a Chargepoint station installed in the future. That being said, I do not often need to use a charging network. Today I had to do a bit more driving around than normal. This meant I had the opportunity to try out the Free Electrify America(EA) DC fast charging for the first time that comes with Polestar 2 vehicles.

The Polestar 2 Charging plan includes two years of complimentary 30-minute DC Fast charging and L2 charging upon offer enrollment, meaning Polestar 2 drivers can explore the full potential of electric freedom, leaving gas stations and MPG in the rear view.

The charging station I visited had 4 stalls. This potentially would have provided four 150kw CCS and 4 350kw CCS spots. The 2 350kw stalls were sandwiched between the two 150kw stalls. However, due to the way the parking spots were set up, you could only access one of the 350kw stalls while both of the 150kw stalls were occupied. It rendered the one middle DC fast charging stall useless. Considering this is the only Electrify America and only DC fast charger in the area, it is a rather unfortunate configuration.

When I got there, only a 150kw spot was available. I plugged in, opened the app selected the stall number, selected the Polestar plan, swiped to start charging, and within 30 seconds it started to charge. I started the charging session with 61% and then ran in for some food at the convenient store. In just under 13 minutes it had managed to charge 14kwh, putting me at 77%. This would have cost me a little over $4.00, but with the free Electrify America charging plan it was obviously free.

The 350kw stall had freed up at this time, so I stopped charging and changed stalls. This charging session went from 77% to 90% in about 17 minutes. This allowed me to make a phone call and finish my lunch. I expected the charging curve to be low, closer to 90%. At 80% it was charging at 65kW 147amp and 439 volts. Then at 81% it dropped to 56kW. Keep in mind, I was not sharing a stall at this time.

There were a couple of things I noticed, aside from the improperly laid out charging stalls. Almost every charger seemed to have cracked plastic on the handle. The cable seemed to struggle under its own weight, and possibly caused a pressure fracture to the area. It did not render the charger faulty, however it was clearly cracked. I also have taken for granted Tesla's unified charging cable compared to CCS chargers. It is significantly lighter and less bulky, arguably easier to use. I found the CCS charger cumbersome and awkward. Another issue I noticed was some stalls were mislabeled. When I switched to the 350kW charger and opened the app, the EA app stated that the stall I was trying to use was already in use. Obviously it wasn't, so I guessed which one it was. Luckily I got it on the first guess, but that could have been an annoyance simply due to poor labeling.

Since I do not plan on utilizing Electrify America too often, the issues I had with it are minimal to say the least. I could see myself using EA more if there were more stations in my area, but given my situation, they're a nice backup if needed. I've used Tesla's Superchargers pretty frequently. Not only is the supercharging network larger in my area, I've almost never ran into issues while using the Supercharging network. There was one instance of a charger not working, but I just used the next available charger. I hope that Electrify America and other EV charging networking continue to grow and provide the greatly needed charging infrastructure to support the rapidly growing EV market.

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