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Walmart plans EV Charging network which will blanket the US within a few years

evchargingstations.com

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Re: Walmart plans EV Charging network which will blanket the US within a few years

#41

Post by fullstop »

dheera wrote: post #36
russell_h wrote: post #21

At least in the Pacific Northwest most Electrify America installations are in Walmart parking lots. These have caused me to spend more time at Walmart the past two years, honestly its a pretty good experience - aside from EA reliability issues, which seem to have improved but still far short of Tesla.

I have a hard time just picking up and plugging that heavy fatass CCS connector. And then I have to try plugging it in 3 times because it waits for the car and the car waits for it and one gives up before the other succeeds.

I'm not a big dude, but I've never struggled with this.

Re: Walmart plans EV Charging network which will blanket the US within a few years

#42

Post by Aurornis »

johnea wrote: post #3

> and offer access through its own Walmart app. 8-( I've _never_ been required to "join the club", or "run the app" to purchase gasoline. Why does charging an EV require use of an app? This is an accessibility issue and as such should be illegal...

The app says that credit card access will be available in the future “at least” in states that require it.

> This is an accessibility issue and as such should be illegal...

Assuming it was app-exclusive, you would have a hard time convincing anyone that someone might be capable of driving an EV on the road while also having enough of a disability to make it impossible for them to use a phone app.

There are already members-only gas stations such as the ones attached to Costco. This would be following the same pattern but with an app instead of a card, which is actually far more easy to acquire than a paid Costco membership.

Re: Walmart plans EV Charging network which will blanket the US within a few years

#43

Post by alostpuppy »

vel0city wrote: post #8
kposehn wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the app will be for plug-and-charge users, while they'll have credit card readers for everyone else. I do agree that chargers requiring an app are a royal pain. We're an all-EV household and I don't bother with local chargers that don't have readers or support plug-and-charge. There's a lot of Shell chargers in our area that require an app to work and almost no-one uses them because of how clunky it is.

The article says the app is the primary way to activate the charger (scan a QR code on the dispenser) while they'll have credit card terminals for states that require it.

This is how it works at Sam’s club gas fwiw

Re: Walmart plans EV Charging network which will blanket the US within a few years

#44

Post by manmal »

constantcrying wrote: post #30

Germany already has a pretty good charging network, yet EV adoption is very slow. This will not change much. Charging infrastructure is only a small part of making EVs appealing, although it is obviously a necessary prerequisite.

EV prices are just way too high. As a father of three, I can decide between a used BMW 2 which goes 1k km on a full tank, for €17k, and a Kia EV 7 seater for €70k. Guess which one I went with. There are some other, cheaper, EV models with 7+ seats (40k+), but they charge so slow and need so much power in winter, you‘d get max 200km out of them and then need to charge 1h.

Generally, most EVs you can buy in the EU are just 10-20k more expensive than their ICE counterparts, and incentive programs don’t make up for that difference.

Re: Walmart plans EV Charging network which will blanket the US within a few years

#45

Post by pkulak »

constantcrying wrote: post #30

Germany already has a pretty good charging network, yet EV adoption is very slow. This will not change much. Charging infrastructure is only a small part of making EVs appealing, although it is obviously a necessary prerequisite.

Very true. My first EV went about 80 miles, in the summer. Fast charging was the name of game! It was the difference between the trip being possible or not. Now I have a car that can go 350+ miles in the summer (280-300 in the winter) and I basically never fast charge it. I guess we don't "road trip" much, but we do drive around our state quite a bit, and 300 miles is just so much range. We went to the coast last weekend, my son asked how the charging was, and I replied that I hadn't bothered to look because it wasn't at all needed. It almost takes the fun out of it.

Re: Walmart plans EV Charging network which will blanket the US within a few years

#46

Post by jf »

tzs wrote: post #2

Note: I submitted using the article's subtitle instead of the title, because the title was much less informative. The title is "EXCLUSIVE: Walmart EV Charging Network — Save Money, Charge Better". I did have to shorten the subtitle to fit. The full subtitle is "Walmart plans expansive EV Charging network which will blanket the US within a few years".

Thanks for making that decision, the title you picked is better

Re: Walmart plans EV Charging network which will blanket the US within a few years

#47

Post by snypher »

Aurornis wrote: post #42
johnea wrote: post #3

> and offer access through its own Walmart app. 8-( I've _never_ been required to "join the club", or "run the app" to purchase gasoline. Why does charging an EV require use of an app? This is an accessibility issue and as such should be illegal...

The app says that credit card access will be available in the future “at least” in states that require it. > This is an accessibility issue and as such should be illegal... Assuming it was app-exclusive, you would have a hard time convincing anyone that someone might be capable of driving an EV on the road while also having enough of a disability to make it impossible for them to use a phone app. There are already me…

They could be dyslexic or something?

Re: Walmart plans EV Charging network which will blanket the US within a few years

#48

Post by daft_pink »

While I really hope that they do a great job with it, I have no faith in Walmart to offer an effective charging network. Doing everything on the absolute cheap leaves a lot to be desired.

They were great when they were expanding and had great stores to lure you away from the competition, but now they operate under maintained not well staffed stores with confusing self checkout and obtrusive surveillance everywhere. It’s just a total race to the bottom at their stores.

Hopefully it will encourage better players like Target to follow suit.

Anyways, reality is that people buy EVs to charge them at home most of the time. At least thats what I think the reality is.

Re: Walmart plans EV Charging network which will blanket the US within a few years

#49

Post by darknavi »

russell_h wrote: post #21

At least in the Pacific Northwest most Electrify America installations are in Walmart parking lots. These have caused me to spend more time at Walmart the past two years, honestly its a pretty good experience - aside from EA reliability issues, which seem to have improved but still far short of Tesla.

> honestly its a pretty good experience - aside from EA reliability issues, which seem to have improved but still far short of Tesla.

Going from the Tesla Supercharger network I can't share this sentiment at all. Virtually every time I charge at an EA station (which is admittedly only a few times a year) there is either random power degradation with no notice or one or many totally dysfunctional stalls. This latest time a few days ago the only open stall was busted because the terminal said to unplug from the last session over an hour ago.

The flakiness is compounded by the lack of chargers per station. Superchargers often have 10 or even 20 chargers, EA chargers often have 2 to 4 chargers so a charger going out is much worse.

Re: Walmart plans EV Charging network which will blanket the US within a few years

#50

Post by iwanttocomment »

vel0city wrote: post #33
iwanttocomment wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've driven EVs since 2013 across several states and I've never once encountered a functioning public charging station in the US that has a credit card reader and does not require payment and/or access via an app. I'm all in favor of it, and I understand they technically exist, but perhaps your specific locality requires that? It's in no way my experience.

I've driven EVs in the US across several states since 2021 and I've run across several dozen DCFC that accepted nothing but a credit card reader.

You should consider yourself a lucky individual who has had a very different experience than many of us longtime EV drivers have had.

(I should note that I have occasionally encountered charging stations that had integrated credit card readers, but they have all been out of service.)

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