Two families from Mexico showed up at an Electrify America site in San Ysidro expecting a routine charge and got a five-hour ordeal instead. According to a Reddit post from a local BMW i3 driver, the tourists were in rental Hyundai Ioniq 5s, couldn’t download the Electrify America app because their phones were tied to the Mexican app store, and couldn’t fall back on card payment because the readers at the chargers weren’t working. This is a system failure stacked three high: the app wouldn’t let them in, the chargers wouldn’t take payment, and the rental cars arrived with too little battery to give the drivers any margin for error. “I am absolutely flabbergasted by what I just witnessed at my local Electrify America station in San Ysidro,” the Reddit user wrote. “I just wanted a quick weekend top-off for my i3s, but I ended up running a one-man rescue mission.” It’s a vivid quote, but the important part is what it reveals. Public charging still breaks down for the very people the industry says it wants most: first-time EV users, tourists, and renters. Start with the app problem. “If your phone is set to Mexico, you literally cannot get the app to start a session,” the witness wrote. That may sound like an edge case until you remember where San Ysidro is and who uses rental cars there. Border traffic isn’t a surprise. International travelers are not a rounding error. If a public charger effectively assumes a domestic app-store account, it is not built for the public. Then the backup system failed too. “Every single card terminal on these units was dead,” the same user wrote. “Tap to pay didn’t work, and swiping was a no-go.” That sentence should make charging-network operators sweat. A public charger does not get