I suspect this is a major reason. Many CCS charger failures seem to be due to problems in the connector. This is often seems to be true for Tesla Supercharger sites as well.
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VW Fallout: $2.0 Billion for ZEV Infrastructure Buildout
- Thread starter RubberToe
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- Energy Environment Policy
Yeah - agree. In Japan many CHAdeMO failures are attributed to connector and cable issues. People drop the connector, run over the cable with the car, etc. Some people don't stow the cable after charging, thus water gets inside and cause corrosion. With Tesla, their cables are light and short, so virtually impossible to drop or keep unlatched.
Which location? I’m curious if there is a pattern of problems on specific charging hardware or if it is generic to all charging hardware they are using?Still having some teething issues...
SageBrush
REJECT Fascism
Why, are you saying that he shouldn't be able to use the one CHAdeMO connector at each site?
Still having some teething issues...
So which site is already seeing someone try to charge an I-Pace? I didn't even think that I-Pace had sold any cars in the US yet...
I looked on PlugShare and the comment is about the Chicopee site in Massachusetts.
There are some pre-production I-PACE cars being sent around to dealerships in the US for customer intro events. I attended one just north of San Francisco last week.
I noticed comments about buggy software at one or two other EA locations with different charger hardware so I suspect it may be generic to the software they are using which is licensed/supplied by Greenlots. The problems seem to be mostly billing-related (credit card readers etc). I haven’t seen a pattern of failed charging as was reported with the I-PACE. That could be an interoperability bug unique to the pre-production I-PACE — I dunno.
Another early on-line location at Brugh’s Country Store on I-81 in Virginia seems to have been out for a few days with a utility power line issue.
Unfortunately, the only place to get real online status right now is PlugShare. The EA location map appears to be static and EA hasn’t released their smartphone app yet.
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SageBrush
REJECT Fascism
I figure someone there will eventually take the executive decision to actually try to charge a car before declaring it ready for business.
But for now they sure look like clowns with three left hands, four right hands and no brain.
I can see it now:
VW: "This electric charging stuff doesn't work - lets us go back to diesel..."
I suppose it’s sufficient for wondering but I think it’s too early to suggest any kind of longer-term trend or pattern.
The general pattern is pretty simple:
* all charging spaces support any CCS-capable car and are capable of “150 kW” CCS or better
* Typically 2 of the spaces support up to “350 kW” CCS
* One space supports “50 kW” CHAdeMO or “150 kW” CCS
This pattern has been seen at locations with the minimum 4 charging spaces and at locations with the maximum 10 charging spaces being installed over the next year. Every site so far has a CHAdeMO space and 150 kW CCS spaces but it isn’t certain whether all sites also include 350 kW CCS charging spaces although most seem to.
The “50 kW” CHAdeMO cable and plug is actually capable of “100 kW” (200A) CHAdeMO and will be upgraded via a software change and further testing and certification. I believe this may be happening at some European non-EA ultra-fast charging sites as well. Although the CHAdeMO specs have officially supported 400A since the spring of 2017 there still are no certified cables and plugs from any supplier supporting that power level. When 350-400A liquid cooled CHAdeMO cables and plugs are available it should be easy for Electrify America to upgrade these CHAdeMO charging spaces if they choose to do so since the charging pedestal already supports liquid cooled cables.
Good question. With only a single cable available at each location it will be no more reliable than the single charger locations scattered around today.
If it isn’t available for some reasons then they can still use one of the 150 kW spaces. Those spaces will still support 800V charging meaning that the Taycan will be able to wring the maximum power output from the cable.
I doubt there is anything about the payment system that can’t be fixed by improving the software over the next few months.
I think he meant that with only a single CHAdeMO cable, it's much more likely to be occupied than the multiple CCS connectors at the site.
In this respect, the EA sites are worse than most EVgo sites for CHAdeMO because EVgo has at least two CHAdeMO connectors per site.
The 13th and 14th sites are now live in Tennessee and Missouri, with 50 now listed as coming soon.
The Missouri location along I-44 has 4 charging spaces at a Casey’s General Store. The Tennessee location is at a suburban Nashville shopping mall along I-24 and has 8 charging spaces.
Electrify America’s website update was tricky this time because they didn’t just append the 2 new locations at the end of their open locations list but added the entries in the middle — not sure why.
For those in the San Francisco area, I recently drove to one of the 3 “coming soon” locations in California which is at a modest shopping center in Novato. I did not see any obvious evidence of construction yet.
The Missouri location along I-44 has 4 charging spaces at a Casey’s General Store. The Tennessee location is at a suburban Nashville shopping mall along I-24 and has 8 charging spaces.
Electrify America’s website update was tricky this time because they didn’t just append the 2 new locations at the end of their open locations list but added the entries in the middle — not sure why.
For those in the San Francisco area, I recently drove to one of the 3 “coming soon” locations in California which is at a modest shopping center in Novato. I did not see any obvious evidence of construction yet.
Technical capability to fix it is indeed one aspect... unfortunately it may not the major one.
Consortiums have a nasty habit of letting political issues, lack of will, standards stagnation, etc...get in the way of execution.
It will be nice when we have some evidence otherwise...
Wasn’t that true of the Tesla Supercharger network in its early days? I think it may also have taken EVgo quite a time to get their online status available.
I’m happy that they are opening locations without waiting for everything to be perfect. Same thing with Tesla — they said many locations would have solar panels and that basically never happened.
This is VW/EA directly overseeing 4 charging equipment suppliers with a basic common platform and a common software platform that is derived from existing Greenlots software.
Yes, it’s more complicated than one company vertically integrating and executing the entire project (Tesla). However, the kinds of problems being discussed seem likely to reflect typical software bugs commonly seen in newly designed and installed infrastructure. They shouldn’t be hard to fix.
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