The EPA will tell you that an AWD Mach-E with the larger 88-kWh battery like my test car can knock out 270 miles on a full charge, so it was a bit of a shock (no pun intended) to hop aboard my test car for the first time and see the battery at 88 percent but the range indicator showing just 163 miles. Perhaps the previous drivers had been caning it like they were trying to outrun Robert DeNiro and Jean Reno; perhaps the car had been left out unplugged in the December chill overnight, and the short drive from Ford’s local base to my apartment didn’t put enough heat in the battery. Still, it was a slightly unnerving start to my time with the car.

More frustrating, however, was the charging experience. Ford has partnered with Volkswagen’s Electrify America network to provide electrons, and the VW chargers happen to be the quickest around, offering up to 350 kW of power. (No car can accept that kind of power yet, mind you — the Porsche Taycan comes closest, charging at up to 270 kW .)

With the battery dropping below 50 percent while driving around north of New York City, I tracked down an Electrify America charger in the parking lot of a Walmart, where many of them are located. One of the four chargers was occupied by a Taycan 4S, so in a nod to social distancing conventions, I drove up to the one that was farthest away…only to find the charger unable to even recognize the Ford was there, much less charge it. I moved to the second one, only to find it put me so close to the Taycan that I couldn’t open my door. I drove to the last one, plugged in, and — success!

With time to kill and a Christmas wreath to buy, I wandered into Wally World — for five minutes, until my Apple Watch to buzz with a message from the FordPass app that was connected to the Mach-E. Error with charge station, it said. I checked my phone; it had only slurped up 5 kWh of electrons. Irritated, I walked back out into the winter chill all the way across the parking lot, unplugged the car then plugged it back in and stared at the screen for a couple minutes until it showed it was successfully charging again.

I crossed the street and made the 10-minute walk to Home Depot — a difficult task in the exurban car-centric area where I was, which had few sidewalks and fewer street crossings – to find that wreath, only for my watch to buzz again: error with charge station. Now thoroughly peeved, I marched back across the road to the Mach-E, unplugged it and took off. It had been an hour since I pulled up to the station, and in that time, the battery had only gone from 45 to 62 percent.

While I had enough juice to make it back to Manhattan, in the name of journalism, it seemed wise to try a second go-round of fast charging elsewhere. But expansive as the Electrify America network looks on the map, it favors cross-country interstates and treats urban areas unequally; while the Virginia-area suburbs around D.C. boast eleven sites and the Chicagoland expanse has 14, there are only two in New York inbetween the Bronx and Albany. (There are half a dozen just a few miles west of the city in New Jersey, but they’re all well out of the way for many travelers, and could force them to grapple with added pricey cross-Hudson tolls.)

Instead of venturing out of my way to one of those Jersey charge points, I instead found a ChargePoint CCS station along the way home. As luck would have it, the station happened to be at BMW North America’s headquarters. While it was listed as a public charger, however, I arrived to find barriers blocking the entrance to the garage; it was only through a couple minutes of persistent driving around that I found a back entrance and made my way to the plug.

Plugging in revealed yet another unexpected issue: not all fast chargers are created equal. While most Electrify America’s CCS Level 3 chargers (and many others) pump out a maximum of 150 kW, the ChargePoint units at BMW N.A. max out at a mere 24 kW. The Mach-E couldn’t even hit that, averaging about 20 kWh over the course of a 20-minute session.

This is no direct fault of Ford, of course; neither ChargePoint nor Electrify America answer to FoMoCo’s board or shareholders. But it is indicative of the biggest issue holding back mass adoption of electric cars: charging is never as easy as it could be.

Not only are public chargers slower to “refuel” than gas pumps, they’re far more rare than gas stations. Not only are they more rare, they’re often out of the way, leaving you with few options for ways to kill time while charging. Not only are they out of the way, they’re inconsistent, leaving the driver unsure how quickly the car will take on range — and perhaps wondering how long it’ll take them to get home.