It gets even worse in other parts of the world: https://svedic.org/tech/daddy-did-you-really-need-electric-c...
You posted that over three years ago. How are things now?
I visited over 120 EV chargers: why so many were broken
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Re: I visited over 120 EV chargers: why so many were broken
#162Same in Germany. So many broken chargers for weeks. Read through the article, but I still don't know why so many are broken and stay broken, it says "So what was wrong with these particular machines? It could be one of many things—a broken part, a power issue, a defective connector." I don't need an article to answer why are chargers broken if the answer is "Could be one of many things, ...". Why are gasoline station…
My special talents are disappearing that thing which was just in my hand and pulling up to the out-of-order gas pump without realizing before I've exited the car.
Malfunctioning pumps are everywhere but they don't have much impact — there are other pumps, and all the occupied pumps will cycle customers in just a few minutes, and if you must move on to the next station, you almost certainly are able and won't experience further problems.
Re: I visited over 120 EV chargers: why so many were broken
#163An excellent counter-example to the usual "things with fewer moving parts are more reliable" trope. Design and manufacture play a much greater role in reliability.
Re: I visited over 120 EV chargers: why so many were broken
#164IMHO the state of the charging network is a major disincentive against buying any CCS equipped EV in the US. Fortunately over the next couple of years every company is switching to NACS and will in theory be able to use Tesla's charging network. This is not great news for the cars bought this year or next though, it would be like buying Betamax.
If all the adoption does is mean you can use Tesla chargers, that's not a great positive. If existing stations upgrade the plug it doesn't make the charging station any more reliable or the payment system any better.
Tesla’s supercharger network is FARRR more reliable. I’ve traveled thousands of miles.
Re: I visited over 120 EV chargers: why so many were broken
#165The payment thing just boggles my mind. I've been paying at card readers at a gas pump for 20 years now and exactly once did it not work. It's the one thing that has been completely solved in industry, and it doesn't work with EVs.
It is solved by Tesla... You just drive up to a supercharger and plug in. No apps nothing.
I think there's a common lesson to CCS1/CCS2/CHAdeMO and HTTP 1.1: Any standards that avoids discussion of payment integration eventually succumbs to monopolistic substitutes.
Re: I visited over 120 EV chargers: why so many were broken
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
FWIW, I think the card industry itself is having to rethink a lot of stuff for EVs. Petrol pumps with card readers are their own little universe of rules and compliance standards within the credit card industry (the formal term is 'Automated Fuel Dispenser'). It's far enough afield that you're looking at specialized software and vendors, in part because a lot of them support fleet cards, which range from "95% normal…
Also the average gas payment is about 10x larger than what charging an EV costs around here. So the amount of money "lost" on credit card fees and whatever the actual physical device costs to operate is relatively a lot bigger. VS an app, where you keep almost 100% of the money AND can track your users better.
Just set a minimum limit on the charge amount for the fee overhead to be acceptble. Why an app? Just pay with a card or NFC. If I have to install an app it's a no go. Funds "lost" in multiple apps, unable to be redeemed, tracking etc.
Re: I visited over 120 EV chargers: why so many were broken
#167Same in Germany. So many broken chargers for weeks. Read through the article, but I still don't know why so many are broken and stay broken, it says "So what was wrong with these particular machines? It could be one of many things—a broken part, a power issue, a defective connector." I don't need an article to answer why are chargers broken if the answer is "Could be one of many things, ...". Why are gasoline station…
Besides Tesla, all the other companies operating charger networks don't really care if they work. The purpose of the other charging stations/networks is for press releases, advertisements, government lawsuit settlements, etc. If it takes some more money and effort to fix malfunctions, and redesign some parts to address observed flaws, well that's not in the budget for this project, which isn't profitable anyway. They're not trying to be competitive in the charging market.
This is the second time this market dynamic has happened. Only Tesla was really trying to make a actually good EV that people want. Despite all of Tesla's and Musk's faults ... the other car manufacturers were not trying. Critics often said that BMW or VW or any car company could start making way better EVs than Tesla, with better fitment and support, and destroy Tesla in a couple of years. But it took 10+ years for the other car companies to bring competitive models, enough time for Tesla carve dominant market share, and mature.
GM made an EV in the late 90s, but it was a compliance car only available for lease in California, and GM famously destroyed them all at the end of the lease, though many wanted to buy them. It just really did not want to sell EVs.
Anyway, it'll be another 5 years before there are competitive EV charging networks, until then it seems you need a rich unstable obsessive guy, to do something crazy like try to make a good EV charging network. Later the MBAs will figure it out.
Re: I visited over 120 EV chargers: why so many were broken
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, but as the commenter pointed out, it would take a significant amount of time. > I'm not joking. If I plugged in the cable I carry in the back of my car, it would have taken 8-12 hours to charge up to the full 18 miles I get on my car.
That’s specious as i charged my BMW i3 on 110v in our garage for years and that mini hybrid is related. Sounds like they restrict current to it even at 110v?
Yea, that is odd. Wikipedia says that the second generation Mini Countryman (the only hybrid Mini I could find), has a 7.6 kWh battery. A standard wall outlet at 110V and 15A should charge that in four hours. Of course charging causes heat, which is an important consideration. I’m sure that every car monitors the battery temperature and slows down the charge rate to prevent overheating. But still, 12 hours? Wow. A Tesla plugged into the very same outlet would charge to 50 or 60 miles range in that time.
Even four hours would be a long time to sit at a charger. At that rate you’re best off charging overnight at your hotel, or during the day while parked at work. A charging network that doesn’t tell you the charging capacity of the station before you get there is laughably useless.
Re: I visited over 120 EV chargers: why so many were broken
#169Anyone work on EV chargers? Other than cable damage or mechanical damage to the plugs, there are no moving parts. So what specifically inside is likely to stop functioning or needs regular repairs/replacement/maintenance?
I recently build my own a level 2 EV charger from an OpenEVSE kit. The heart of the charger is a big mechanical relay, which connects and disconnects the charging cable based on whether a car is connected. To control the relay, there is a small circuit board that communicates with the car, and also provides over-current, over-temperature, and GFCI monitoring. If any of these things go wrong, the relay will not close…
To deal with the high current on such relatively high (keyword here: relatively) gauge wire there's also massive active cooling involve. This adds even more to the complexity.
Re: I visited over 120 EV chargers: why so many were broken
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
The funny thing is that electrical charging isn't fully standardized, but somehow hydrocarbons are.
Gasoline pumps standardized because a nozzle is relatively simple. And then use a smaller nozzle for cars that only take unleaded gasoline and you can't put leaded gas into the wrong car. On the other hand, diesel nozzles didn't really standardize until the last 10 years or so. Mostly diesel stations used the old (larger) standard, unless it was catering to trucks and then it's a really big nozzle for bigger flow. Bu…
As most of them are speaking the same protocol under the hood... It's really not much more complex then a funnel+ 4 wires.