Utopia Texas

https://electrek.co/2023/05/02/elect...ica-road-trip/

superswiss

I can appreciate that they have to build a whole new infrastructure whereas gas stations have been around for decades, but at the same time it seams they are reinventing things to the point where problems are just bound to happen. I mean we've fueled at gas stations by swiping a credit card forever, but somehow that wasn't good enough so these charging providers developed mobile apps to do what a simply credit card swipe would have accomplished much easier w/o the need of a new server backend to handle the mobile app. Gas pumps run software, too, and many now have added mobile apps to the basic credit card swiping. For example I pretty much exclusively fuel with the Shell and Chevron apps. They've never failed. I never pulled up to a pump and had issues starting the process from the app. It just works. And even if it did fail, I can still swipe my credit card worst case. Why is it that the old school oil companies can make this work, but the fancy modern EV industry struggles with making their charging stations work reliably.

nosnoop

The glitches and problems are usually related to the hand shake between the car and EVSE, and not related to the charges or credit cards.

For gas, there is no electronic communication between the pump and the car. You press the handle and gas pumps out, regardless of whether the gas pump spout is in the correct position or not.
For electric charging, it is a bit more complicated, as they need to talk to each other to determine whether it was safe for charging to start and the charging speed.

superswiss

I do understand that, but that isn't a factor if the charger is simply down when you pull up. Seems that is often the case that the charger itself just crashed or something. It doesn't even get to the handshake. The process is certainly complicated by the fact that there's a handshake, but it seems it often fails even before that. I mean just the fact that you can check the status of how many chargers are down at a particular site tells you that this is a common issue.

kart11

yesterday at my local charging station, there was technician fixing one of the broken charger.. he told me, customers treat these chargers like **** and don’t handle them well and most of the issue with EA always having one or the other charger broken is due that..

Utopia Texas

Sounds like a huge excuse from the technician. How exactly can a customer abuse the charger and why don’t Tesla chargers have the same problem?

superswiss

That was my thought. If they break that easily then I would argue they are not built well. I mean yes, I have driven up to a gas pump where some lowlife ripped the nozzle off, so vandalism is certainly a thing, but if chargers fail this often, because people supposedly don't handle them well, I've got to call BS, and I'm sticking to my argument that they are poorly engineered. This sounds like the Steve Jobs excuse when he said people are not holding the phone correctly. What exactly do customers do to them according to the tech? You grab the plug, connect it to your car and disconnect at the end. As far as I know, EVs don't even let you drive off unless you unplug first, so you don't have morons driving off while still plugged in as it sometimes happens at gas stations.

ScottC2

An excellent thing for the CEO to do.
Even with the issues, I think it generates good PR.

LAZARU5

The cables on the Tesla chargers are not as difficult to manage. They are shorter, easier to plug into the car and hang into the charger holster. The Tesla connectors also do not have a latch which is susceptible to being damaged. Over the last five years I have used public L2 and L3 chargers well over a hundred times. The condition of J1772 connectors at destination chargers and the CCS connectors at EA is clearly much worse than the proprietary connectors at a Tesla Supercharger station.

guess2098

Tesla charger is much lighter and easier to plug. I have to give Tesla this one.

superswiss

You may not be aware of this, but in Europe all Model 3 and Model Y use CCS and Superchargers there have both connectors. In the USA, Tesla is now adding CCS adapters as well in order to open up their network to third-party EVs. The Tesla CCS adapters don't seem to be an issue and we don't hear of Superchargers being down all the time in Europe, however the other charging providers like Ionity etc. have similar issues like EA has. All these joint ventures of car companies trying to provide a charging infrastructure seem to be struggling doing so and blaming it on how customers are handling the equipment apparently.

I will say that the 350kW CCS cables are heavy and difficult to handle especially for women. This has been recognized in Europe and many of the providers there are now installing retractable cable holders with swinging arms to make it easier to handle them. The EU has also mandated that charging stations need to accept credit cards. It's again just kinda mindboggling that this wasn't thought of before, since nozzles at gas pumps have long had this. It's equally perplexing that most charging stations stand out in the open without a roof over them to protect the hardware and the customers from the weather.

bpans

I am very new but used EA for 3 or 4 times. What bothers me is the inconsistency. Last night, I plugged in my car in a station and the car was only drawing at 35 kW. I disconnected and moved to next station and I got 140 kW. They are just next to each other. The guy next to me using the 3rd station was seeing around 75 kW.

Another one that really bothers me is the location of the stations. A lot of time, I find it very hard to extend the plug to the socket unless you get to the correct side of the station and head out or back-in appropriately.

kart11

Tech said customers twist the cable and also drop them often on the ground (May be due to its weight like others observed) damaging the socket.

Utopia Texas

So is it really abuse by the customers or a poor design for the application?

superswiss

Exactly. Don't blame the customer if they are not designed to be handled easily by anyone regardless of physical strength. Often they are also too short and they don't bend well in order to plug them in.

Crito

I think EA has a good location strategy. I can almost go road tripping in my EQE just by hopping from one Walmart to another. Problem, as many others have point out, is their chargers just aren't reliable. There's one Walmart in Spring, TX with 150 kW chargers and when I went there today screen had a popup that said "reduced power because of a software update", yada, yada, and all of a sudden I'm at a 50 KW charger that's maxing out at 31kW. If I had been desperate for juice I would have been @#$%ed. So basically there are no 150 kw chargers within a 30 mile radius of my house right now and I'm living near a major metropolitan area. I can't imaging owning an EV near where this one was manufactured in Alabama. Better buy two and make sure the other does V2L (unlike my Mercedes) so you can rescue yourself.

Anywho, it was plug and play for me though. EA authenticated my car automagically and activity shows up in the Mercedes me app. There was no charge (pun intended).

Utopia Texas

Electrify America could do better with locations here in Texas. Taking a trip from Houston to San Antonio there is a location near Columbus 60 miles away and then the next location is another 130 miles at the NE corner of San Antonio. Pretty large gap in mileage and as huge as San Antonio is, tenth largest city in the U.S., only one charging location way off in one corner of the metropolitan area. Charging locations need to be every 50 miles or so on major highways especially since many at the EA sites do not work properly. Hopefully Tesla will have the adapters at their high speed locations here in Texas soon.

finlayson

The EA infrastructure in California has been good so far. I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, and have already taken road trips (with my EQS 580 SUV) to: Phoenix and back; St. George, Utah and back; Yosemite National Park and back; and San Diego and back. Occasionally I've found that a charger (usually a 350 kW charger) isn't working, but then the one next to it usually works OK. And only once have I had to wait in line for a charger space to come available: at Quartzite, Arizona (in the desert, near the CA-AZ state line) on a weekend. However, EV adoption in California is increasing rapidly, so it'll be interesting to see if EA's infrastructure can continue to grow to meet the increasing demand.

sno

I think the broken abused handle excuse is BS.

I have three chargers that I use two down by my home and one up by my office. Each has four and the two down by my home are always broken and not broken like the handle but they say "power has been reduced so we can conduct maintenance" or it has a red X or the screen does not work. I have yet to experience a handshake issue between the car and the charger. I have reported the broken station using the app and after two months of reporting they are still down.

Crito

Their new Gen 4 chargers have integrated cable management that retracts automatically. So cable won't get kinked like winding it manually. Looks like they're addressing the issues: