Stranded! …or so I thought
I guess I gave it away in the title: no, I didn’t have to call a tow truck. However for the first time in my EV driving experience: my plan wasn’t going to work, I didn’t have a backup, and I didn’t know how I was going to get home.
How did it happen?
I was traveling to a part of North Carolina ravaged by Hurricane Helene, but I had been there multiple times since the disaster. It was impressive to me that what has come to be one of my favorite charge spots opened up several weeks after the storm had passed, while Old Fort, NC was still unrecognizable. This has made supporting Western North Carolina a lot easier for me over the past few months, so when I rolled into town with 33 miles left I was shocked by what happened next.
The screen was lit, everything fully functional, but my Shell app wouldn’t work…. I noticed an EV Connect sticker on the charger (weird), but that app wouldn’t work either. Both charge stations, both apps, same result. I pulled away from the charger, feeling defeated, and went into Hillman’s Brewing (which is why this has become my favorite charge spot) to meet a buddy and plot out my next steps. As I walk in, I tell him: “I’m Stranded!”
Plans B through Z
The nearest fast charger is in Morganton, which is 33 miles away. I don’t trust the range on my dashboard, especially in the hills: so when it says I have just enough to get there, I need a bump to be sure. I know that there is a Stuckey’s 2 miles away with a slow charger, so I could head there at the end of my weekend, awkwardly charge for an hour or two, spend another hour in Morganton, and then be on my way. Okay, I have my first plan, so maybe “Stranded” is dramatic. I calm down, order a club sandwich for dinner, and create a few more plans. I’m out here for two nights, so I could spend one of them at the Camping World at a 50 Amp RV spot. A couple of hours there and I’d be fine, anything more would put me ahead. Nothing to worry about, I got this!
How can an EV charge station be online, but not online?
Since there was an EV connect sticker, I decided to give them a call before I gave up and accepted my slow charging fate. They answered promptly, and let me know that this charge station was not on their network, and was privately owned. Without any other clues as to how to activate the station, I’m left to assume that it was in the process of moving from one network to another, and that it is unusable for in the meantime. Many of these charge stations are owned by an independent party who has bought into a franchise model that the national network runs. This particular one is actually owned by the Catawba Vale Collaborative which is a partnership of non-profit organizations focused on economic development in Western, NC, including some of the organizations I had come to Old Fort to support that weekend.
A little help
I was volunteering at Camp Grier with the G5 Trail Collective, and these great people were gracious enough to lend me a lifeline. On a 110v outlet, I was only able to add 27 miles in about 24 hours! This pretty much doubled what I had when I got there, and gave me the buffer I needed to get to the fast charger. They also agreed that it would be a good idea to put some chargers in, so I’ll keep an eye out for that on my next trip out there to help out.
See my Instagram Post for more from the G5 Trail Collective volunteer weekend.
What I missed
I left Old Fort with enough charge to comfortably make it to Morganton, but I figured I’d stop by the Stuckey’s anyway. What I found there made me feel pretty silly: brand new Electrify America Charge stations, all 350 KW! They even had two chargers that were pull-thru style, to help folks with trailers, which I had never seen before. I can get a trailer and not have to worry about it with charging? No way!
So the lesson here is change: anticipate it. I missed that my favorite charger was offline and that a slow charger had been majorly upgraded, and that caused a whole lot of unneeded drama. I can hear my middle school teacher: “When you assume, you make an ass out of you and me.”
