What I saw while hanging out at public EV chargers for 8 hours

DETROIT — Ryan Clary has piled nearly 15,000 miles on his 2021 Chevrolet Bolt in the nearly six months he's owned the battery-electric hatchback. He does all his charging at public stations since he doesn't have a charger at home in Macomb County, Mich.

Clary, who makes ends meet driving for DoorDash, says he's had no issues with using public chargers, hasn't been "ICEd out" by inconsiderate drivers of traditional vehicles and hasn't had technical problems that left his car without power. But as more electric vehicles take to the roads, Clary expects charging at a public station will become more hectic — and expensive.

"Right now, I can plug into a [free] public Level 2 charger and it doesn't cost me anything. But it's going to become more difficult," Clary says as he removes the plug from the Bolt at a public charging station in a shopping center parking lot in Roseville, Mich., a Detroit suburb.

In 41 minutes, the driving range in Clary's Bolt increased from 46 miles to 200 for a cost of $13.48 at a Level 3 charger. He said when his range gets down to about 50 miles, he looks for a charging station.

If you camp out in front of public chargers for about eight hours over several days as I did this month, you'll see that in America today, where patience, understanding, tolerance, courtesy and kindness are often in short supply, public charging stations could become real hot spots — if they are not used properly.

Because there are different plugs and different charging rates for different vehicles, an EV driver who uses the wrong charger could prevent someone from charging their vehicle or from charging it at its fastest rate.

That's what happened in a Walmart parking lot in another Detroit suburb, Novi.

A Porsche Taycan, with a charging capacity of 270 kilowatts per hour, can get 80 percent of its charge in as few as 22.5 minutes, according to the automaker, from the Electrify America's 350-kilowatt charger. But the driver of a Chevy Bolt was using the 350-kW charger, even though the car can only imbibe electrons at a rate of around 50 kW per hour. And he refused to move one slot over. The Taycan driver's pit stop at the charger lasted nearly an hour instead of 21 minutes.

You can see the potential for arguments — or worse — in these situations. Another problem is when the driver of a conventional vehicle parks in a slot reserved for electric cars and blocks the use of the charger. EV drivers call that being "ICEd out."

It may be a good thing that most charging stations are lonely places in the early days of EVs. Electric vehicles are going to challenge American drivers to learn a new way of putting energy in their cars.

It's not yet clear whose responsibility it is to teach consumers the proper way to use public charging stations — the vehicle manufacturer, the selling dealer or the operator of the public charger, or all three.

Electrify America, operator of nearly 800 charging stations, believes all parties have a stake in ensuring drivers use them properly. Misti Murphey, the company's director of marketing, says more than 700 focus groups with customers have helped Electrify America develop an app that helps drivers charge properly. "Charging etiquette is one of the things we are teaching EV drivers of tomorrow as well as our automotive partners. It's huge."

Jon Lawrence and his wife roll up to an Electrify America station in their week-old Chevrolet Bolt EUV on a recent weekday morning. The retired engineering contractor from Detroit fiddles with an app on his phone for a few minutes, gets out of the car and plugs the charging cord in to the side of the vehicle.

He looks in the car at the screen on the dash, then walks to the Electrify America charger and looks at the screen on the charger, then back to the car, then back to the charger.

Finally, after about three minutes, Lawrence confirms electrons are flowing into the Bolt, and he and his wife exchange high-fives on their way into the nearby Meijer.

Lawrence has five charging apps on his phone. No one at the dealership that delivered his vehicle explained anything about using public chargers, he told me.

"There's a learning curve to each one. You need to find out what kind of charger it is and then you need to download the appropriate app. Then, each one you go to, it's a little bit different," says Lawrence, who does most of his charging at home.

"Looking into the future, for me the issue is range, recharging speed and charger availability," says Lawrence. "This is why I have a reservation for a Tesla Cybertruck. I think they've hit the sweet spot of 500 miles range, fast-charging technology and a substantial charging network."

Situated just behind the bank of Electrify America chargers in the corner of the Meijer parking lot in Roseville is a Tesla Supercharger. During the span of about three hours on a weekday morning, four Tesla drivers zip in, back into spaces and seamlessly plug in their vehicles. No apps. No phones. No screens. Just plug and play, or rather, plug and wait. And there's the challenge for all other EV manufacturers: The Tesla Supercharger is easy to use and fast. In my two visits to the public charger in Roseville, I saw eight Tesla drivers plug in. None stayed more than 49 minutes; the average charging time was about 15 minutes.

Electrify America's new Plug & Charge system aims to mimic the ease of Tesla's charging strategy, but only certain Porsche Taycans and the Ford Mustang Mach-E can use it right now.

Clary offers this advice for potential EV drivers: "If you are a person who doesn't have a lot of free time and need that one minute in a gas station, an electric car isn't going to work out if you can't charge at home."