PowerFlex 4+

So confusing and tedious to use

If you have to use it, you have to use it, but every step of using this app is either confusing or tedious. This app has one job, and that is to turn on the charger for my car and that should take a quick login and a couple taps. Instead it’s a serious of confusing steps that I have to read and guess about. Buttons that I’m supposed to tap are greyed out so they don’t look like they would work. It’s definitely in the bottom ranking of the various charging apps I have to use from time to time.

I do notice that they added faceid login so that’s probably gonna be better.

Developer Response ,

Hi Chris, thank you for helpful feedback. We apologize for your frustrating experience. We hear you: starting a charge session should be as easy as possible, and we'd love to solve these issues for you and for other drivers. We'd appreciate hearing more about what steps you find confusing and how we can deliver a great charging experience for you- feel free to reach us at suggestions@powerflex.com. Thank you, and we're looking forward to delivering a better charge experience to you soon.

Upgrade causing charge failures

The app upgraded automatically a couple of days ago. When I started using it this morning, the charge station didn’t work. I tried to restart app , log out login and add fund to the account. I also changed a few parking spots but never worked. I called the support number. The support engineer can’t resolve the problem. He saw my session in the backend and station was ready to deliver power. We ended up with the conclusion that my car could have some issue.

I drove to supercharge and charged successfully. Apparently my car is ok. Then, I drove to a different PowerFlex station and tried again. I saw similar issue. The session seemed established but my car still reported charging equipment was not ready. I clicked ending session button and started answering a call. Surprisingly, the station started delivering power without a session. I was charging for free.

It is apparently an app bug introduced by the upgrade. I highly suspect that there are not enough tests before release.

Developer Response ,

Hi there. We're really sorry to hear about this incredibly frustrating experience. We can't give you your time back, but we can fix these issues for other drivers. We appreciate you reaching out to our support team and wanted to check in - are you continuing to experience these issues? We've released a series of fixes and improvements since version 3.4.1 that we believe will resolve these problems. If not, please reach back out to our Support and we'll investigate ASAP. If you have other suggestions on how we can improve, please let us know at suggestions@powerflex.com - thank you!

What’s the point?

If I need to plug in my car, I want to charge it. It’s as simple as that. PowerFlex concept is not user or driver friendly. It throttles your speed for no apparent reason or benefit. The two major music venues in Los Angeles use these chargers. In the four hours I am parked and at an opera, I should attain a fairly full charge. Not with PowerFlex. There are questions a vehicle engineer would know, but not an ordinary driver. How many kilowatts do I want? How should I know. How many miles do I want? Oops, guess that’s not attainable without loading $10. How long will I park there? *That* I can answer, but not until PowerFlex refuses to alter or sometimes does alter my two previous responses, only an app developer could tell me why. The future of charging is user friendly, plug in and power. The charging systems that will get ahead in our EV future are the ones that benefit the driver—PowerFlex will not be part of that green revolution.