EA is bad at best. Very unreliable network, especially the ones not near urban centers. Yeah you get reliable charging if you’re near big cities but once you’re out in the middle of nowhere, it can be terrifying. I’ve personally arrived at an EA charger to only find it not working and the next closest one was a 50 mile detour. Thankfully I plan liberally, but I’d be in a very bad spot if not. Someone I know, also had a locking problem where the charger wouldn’t detach. And I’ve seen news items relating to literal bricking of cars by using the chargers.
Having to "plan liberally" is something that makes EVs much less usable on long trips. When road tripping, its fastest to arrive at a charger with a very low state of charge (way less than a 50mi buffer). When I road trip my Model X, I trust that the supercharger will work, and I target arrival at a 3-5% state of charge. This allows me to charge at the fastest part of the charging curve, and to depart when the charge rate starts to drop off.
I have road tripped well over 10k miles in my Telsa over the last 5 years, and I've never seen an entire supercharger site offline (like happens with EA). I'm sure it must happen after natural disasters when grid power is cut, but its not the normal state of operations like it is with EA.
