I tasted the future of EV charging and it was delicious.

Electrify America’s newest, indoor charging concept reimagines the electric vehicle experience for the better. And I love it.

Earlier this week I drove from Breckenridge back to San Francisco over the course of two days. Earlier this month, I did the same drive but in the other direction. The weather and traffic was variable—as was the quality of the innumerable podcasts I listened to—but there was one constant: I cursed Electrify America the whole way.

To be clear, EA got me where I needed to go. I never once wasn’t able to charge and, while one charger did break the chip on my credit card (note: how this even happened I will never know), I didn’t experience the mass outages or broken chargers EA is infamous for. Even though there were only four fast chargers every 150mi or so — an unnerving fact even if you have the utmost confidence in “the system”—I didn’t have to wait and I didn’t get stranded.

However, I very quickly grew tired of Walmart parking lots, getting soaked in the rain, or parking at the end of a massive parking lot where the chargers were. At one point near Tahoe I got caught in a snowstorm. Other times while charging I sat in my Rivian R1T to do work, hotspotting off my phone and propping my laptop…