Great Lakes Shopping - Auburn Hills

Introduction

A follow up review of local EVgo locations in the Metro Detroit area.

Business/Location Name	Great Lakes Shopping Center - Auburn Hills
Address	4000 Baldwin Rd, Auburn Hills, MI 48326
Network	EVgo
Station Details	4 Stations (2 x 350kW, 2 x 100kW)
Cost	$0.35 per minute

The Great Lakes Shopping Center in Auburn Hills, EVgo station was not open when I did my last Detroit area trip.  I made a special trip to visit this site and to set up AutoCharge+ (This station opened in October of 2022)

Accessibility

This location is 1 mile from I-75 off of exit 83 and 1 mile from I-75 off of exit 84.  The EVSE units are in the Great Lakes Shopping Center parking lot on the south side, outside of Legoland.  If you are using the loop road around the outside of the shopping center, turn north at the Steak ‘n Shake to be close to this location.

Amenities

Dining options include: Steak ‘n Shake, Charleys Philly Steaks, Panda Express, Taco Bell, Miyako Japanese Steakhouse, and many others in and around the outlets.

Shopping options include: All the stores in the Great Lakes Shopping Center

Car-related services (windshield cleaning, air): None

Concentration

This is the new standard station layout for EVgo.  This station is the pull/back into configuration, which makes charging with Elektra’s front port location easy, but those with fender locations may need to stretch the cables to make the connections.  The two 100 kW units are capable of power sharing and thus charging on both the CCS port and the ChaDeMo/Tesla, but EVgo only allowed for 2 parking spots instead of potential 4 spots that could be supplied with power.  The two 350 kW and two 100 kW units are well sized to the current set of electric vehicles on the road today.

Location

This is now the northernmost EVgo location.  With all the shopping and food options of the Outlets, there is plenty to do on a long charge up session.  Given the close proximity to I-75, I can see this site being used for many people traveling the I-75 corridor.  Taking I-75 to the north, it is 260 miles to Mackinaw City, 200 miles to Gaylord, and 175 miles to Grayling.  Talking I-75 to the south, it is 95 miles to Toledo, OH, and 175 miles to Lima, OH.

Speed

EVgo has made a big step up from their original EVSE offerings.  By offering at least 2 units that support 350 kW, and to my knowledge supporting up to 500 A, they are now offering a competitive solution to the fastest options available in the market today.  EVgo is also balancing the need for many EVSE with the need for fast units by also offering two of the 100 kW Delta units at this site.  These units are capable of 200A.  Both options outclass the 50 kW 100/125 A BTC units that were installed as part of the original build out.

Summary

Several changes happened from the end of September when I did my most recent EVgo road trip and the end of November when I went and did this site review.  First, this site was opened, so I needed to add it to the list of local EVgo sites to review.  Second, EVgo released the AutoCharge+ feature so I needed to try that out.

AutoCharge+ allows you to just plug in and start charging without using an application on your phone, or an RFID card or paying by credit card.  The vehicle ID is linked to your account and each time you plug in the station reads your vehicle ID and then starts charging the account linked to that ID for the session.  Not all EVs are supported, so make sure to check the EVgo website to check if your EV can use this feature.  To set up AutoCharge+, you select your vehicle in the application and select the EVSE that you will use for initial activation (this is done only the first time to link your car to your account.)  I activated the EVSE named Dawn and charged for 7 minutes.  Then, I was expecting AutoCharge+ to work, so I moved over to charge on Gillian.  However, when I plugged in nothing seemed to happen.  I called EVgo support and requested a reset of the station, and it seems that allowed a charging session to start.  But, it seems that wasn’t the only problem Gillian was having this day because I was never billed for this session and it never showed up in the app.  Wanting to have a session I could confirm worked by AutoCharge+, I then moved over to Gabrielle.  The handshakes to do AutoCharge+ take a long time and there is not really good feedback on any of the screens that anything is going on.  It is nice that EVgo is offering this convenience, but the user experience seems like it was designed by engineers, and not by people focused on what the end customer experience would be.

When I arrived I found the standard new EVgo station count.  There was a Hyundai Ioniq plugged into one of the 100 kW chargers, but did not seem to be charging.  With the previously listed issues I was able to successfully charge at the other 3 available stations, which is surprising given my previous experiences with EVgo reliability.  These did end up being some of the most expensive charging sessions I have done in a long time.  $0.50 per kWh is crazy expensive, but this is the reality for slow charging vehicles at EVgo locations still charging by the minute.  EVgo does have plans that can lower this cost if you are in a situation where you need to use their network on a regular basis.  EVgo is expanding where the per kWh pricing is in place, including recently to Ohio, so I hope that they will expand that to Michigan in the very near future.  Until then, I think it will continue to be EV-no-go.

What I paid for this stop:

Total Cost: $ 4.20

Total kWh: 8.03 kWh

Time: 12 minutes

Average Charge Speed: 40.15 kW (calculated)

Cost per kWh: $0.52

Part 1:

Total Cost: $2.45

Total kWh:  4.96 kWh

Time:  7 minutes

Average Charge Speed: 42.5 kW (calculated)

Cost per kWh: $0.49

Part 2: 

Total Cost: $1.75

Total kWh:  3.07 kWh

Time: 5 minutes

Average Charge Speed: 36,8 kW (calculated)

Cost per kWh: $0.57

Total Score (Max 44)	Score	Accessibility	Amenities	Usability
31	B	4	6	21