Mike’s EV Diary: BP Has a Strong Pulse. My Visit to Their Impressive LAX Charging Station.

BP Pulse, the quickly growing EV Fast-charging arm of energy giant British Petroleum (BP), made a big announcement back in July when it opened, with great fanfare, “the largest EV charging hub in the U.S.” near Los Angeles’ LAX international airport.

They call it a “Gigahub.” (Three-point minor demerit for the on-the-nose Gigi stuff.)

Recently, I decided to have a look. The station is tucked away on a semi-industrial side street near LAX. When I visited on a Sunday afternoon, it was deserted. Only two other vehicles were there, among its 48 shiny new DC fast-charging units. I liked it.

Highlights: lots of chargers, a canopy, and plenty of room. A support building with a lounge and clean bathrooms, all well-lit.

MotorTrend.com has more details and a photo tour here.

There was no wait, and if this is a sign of what BP Pulse is planning to build, it’s very good news. It was Ionna-level quality in almost every way… except one.

One Significant Flaw

The hardware at the station is a mix of wonderful Alpitronic 400 kW fast chargers (about a third of the total units) and a bunch more 150 kW units from the recently rebooted Tritium, an Aussie company that got into mid-power DC fast charging early, grew fast, built a big plant in Tennessee, went bankrupt, and is now back with new owners and management. And therein lies the rub.

I drive an 800-volt EV with CCS ports, which loves 400kW units, like the shiny Alpitronic units at the BP station. Those high-powered units can fully feed my fast-charging car at maximum speeds.

But for some reason, all the top-level Alpitronic units are set up for NACS (the native Tesla charging port) only. CCS does not apply.

Why? I say, why?!? Tesla maxes out at 250kW. The Alpis are overkill.

Being CCS, I had to use the slower Tritium 150kW units when I should be ripping away with the higher-powered stuff. Yes, I know I can get an adapter, but it’s nuts not to have at least half of the Alpi units set up for CCS so 800-volt cars (a growing number) can charge at their best speed.  And most Teslas do fine at 150kW and max out at 250kW.

In other words, Professor Backwards must have come out of retirement to land a big job at BP overseeing the charging standards at this station.

To be clear, aside from this 400kW stumble, I want to applaud BP.  This is a great station, big, well-located, and I’m sure expensive. Three cheers to the Empire for investing in it, and I hope more are on the way.

But let’s make the easy adjustment and switch a bunch of those beautiful Alpitronic units to CCS nozzles (like Ionna does). It would fix the one significant flaw and make this a perfect, state-of-the-art EV charging station.

Note to the public file: For all the Big Oil bashing out there, you’ve got to respect BP for standing apart from the crowd and actually putting industry money into building chargers. Credit where it’s due.