My mind will only change when I see new generation EA DCFC post & charger that's designed for scale, high stall reliability, and a mean-time between service to rival that of Tesla's supercharger network.
First CCS cable I plugged in was broken or something because it would keep erroring out before charging. This is after 1+ min of using their app to connect to it each time (3 tries). Switched cables and it happened again on the first try. Tried again and it says it errored out again but starts charging. Obviously that is concerning but after 5+ mins of trying to get it started, I gave in. When I get back, my phone says it’s done and a $10 charge but the charger says $16. Check the app after and it says I was charged $16. Why is there such a significant discrepancy?
It’s such a backwards experience after using a supercharger where you just plug in and walk away.
I used to own an ID.4 (which was a great car in my opinion, but I recently moved from Dallas to Detroit and, ironically, was able to go car-free in Detroit).
I made a round trip from Dallas to Denver without any Electrify America charger issues in 2021 (no waiting times either).
I also made a round trip from Dallas to Detroit in September 2022 and I only encountered one (1) slow charger where I had to move my vehicle to the next available charger (I had to wait at an already full charging station for about 30 minutes at one (1) stop also).
I was pretty surprised by both trips in terms of the lack of hassles.
Today, I have zero reservations about driving any EV over long distances.
I was worried on my first Dallas to Denver leg, but after the trip was successful, my charging/range anxiety is gone for good.
Perhaps my experience would be different elsewhere in the US, but for the Midwest, my experience had been good.
Just my two cents…
Except, VW's bread and butter is still gas cars. They're not incentivized to herald EVs at all; if anything, they'd prefer it to go as slowly as possible so they can continue to make money off their gas fleet.
This is very likely to happen considering that the EU wants to ban registrations of ICE powered cars in the same year.
Customers should be selecting vehicles that don't have to deal with the deliberate incompetence of Electrify America.
From an infrastructure standpoint a gas pump (and related tubing, tanks, filters, nozzles, etc.) is quite a bit more complicated and fragile than a charging receptacle.
A charging station really shouldn't be much more complicated than a streetlight, minus the UI and billing components.
All of this to say:
I don't know how often electric charge stations should be inspected but I hope it would be quite a bit less often than a gas pumping station ...
There's also a matter of accuracy in how much fuel you receive and how much you pay for. I'm assuming it's much easier for an elective vehicle to independently verify how much of a charge they received compared to a gas car.
You could not pay me enough money to do that even if “switched off”
The two extra prongs are the DC.
Conversion would generally prevent the issue you cite. They are converting three phase ac, and usually only 480v. Isolation failure would not fry the car like this because it would fault first. They are separate ac and DC cabinets with proper controls.
It may still be overvolting the DC, just not this particular way. It is much more likely the rectifier is fucked or something.
Placing 300kw (or even 150kw) of DC at like 4x the right voltage would make more than just a loud bang. It would instantly melt most insulation, for starters.
The bang is an mccb or something catching the fucked up rectifier
These cars likely got overvolt at light amperage. Otherwise lots of things would have sparked and burst into flame
Judging by the quality of automobile maintenance and manufacturing I would bet on the latter now that I think of it.
This is why I would love to see a tear down. What type of battery fault prevention is in an EA charger? What kind of step down system? Do they use a battery as a buffer? Just plain curious.
> CCS vehicle inlets are equipped with an electromechanically controlled locking bolt … designed to withstand high pull-out forces.
Source: https://www.digikey.com/en/articles/use-ccs-connectors-to-si...
Tesla European CCS adapter teardown https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-R49NdernY
Ubitricity EV Smart Charging cable https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-seqXymUT-g
Hyundai Kona EV High voltage junction box https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpigvK8v8Tg
Renault Zoe EV Battery Charger Block ( BCB ) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=argrHjADn8g
Renault Zoe EV inverter ( PEB) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drS3sEsxOO8
TLDR: CSS is a shitshow
This isn't necessarily true. The EV manufacturer should have an emergency release cable somewhere.
I'm not an expert, but I'll assume that the opposite is as dangerous. I think that if you unplug a car that is charging car, by tilting the connector in the wrong way ypu might have a dangerous hazard both for the car and for the person unplugging it.
DC chargers can be quite powerful (480V/100A), so I really doubt it's a good idea do mess with them in general.
https://old.reddit.com/r/electricvehicles/comments/10o33jo/e...
Fortunately I stick to home (Metro Boston) and haven't had any serious problems with ChargePoint stations heading up to Mount Desert Island in Maine, the farthest trips I've done.
Sometimes specs aren't everything of course. I don't buy Sony. I don't care what the PS5's specs look like -- I'm not buying Sony. I think I might have heard one or two people feel similarly about Elon and/or Tesla. ;)
That's not to mention that one can seamlessly order the Model Y and take delivery a couple months later. Obtaining pretty much any EV from a traditional dealer is still a massive PITA.
I WAS planning to get the CCS upgrade, to diversify my charging options, but I think I'll stick with Tesla's network for now...
So DC charger going haywire could damage the battery, and say DC charger putting high voltage on the control lines could also do some damage. Protecting against both is possible, just adds cost
Having seen inside their cabinets, I wouldn't plug into one if you paid me. Building a reliable charging network is apparently only a secondary business goal of Electrify America.
[0]: https://i.redd.it/electrify-america-charger-vs-tesla-superch...
There are dozens of various oil companies who have their own gas stations (subsidized by the oil industry?). Why don’t we see more electric companies building their own charging networks as well?
So the reality is this is a money losing business and will be for years to come.
Electric utilities are pretty local and this only really makes sense as a large system.
Each one of those pedestals is able to dump 30 houses of energy into a car for 30 minutes continuously. And most sites have 4-12 of those things.
It's not a minor engineering task. Add to this that commercial electric billing is often based on your 95th percentile draw over a small window of time, so if you have a station with 12 pedestals and the circuits comes to town, say 12 Electric Hummers, you could end up with an enormous bill.
Home charging, on the other hand, is basically just a baseboard electric heater per house, so not difficult to manage at all.
Our electrical utility in the south is $.13-.17/kw
So to fill a Tesla battery from near empty to full ~80kwH is around $25.
It’s like Kubernetes has been applied to the auto industry… way more complexity than necessary, causing a massive loss of uptime and security.
No heat cycling rubber parts, solvents sloshing around, measuring flow of explosive mixtures, all the finicky bits of fuel injection and transmissions.
My main beef with EVs (and I own a Chevy Volt PHEV that I /adore/) is the fact they are rolling blackboxes. My Volt is the least shadetree mechanic friendly vehicle I have owned other than maybe my VehiCROSS I had for awhile. I know most people don't care, but it irks me. And I will not own a pure EV anytime soon for a host of reasons and that is a big part of it.
This desire manufacturers have of making their vehicles IAP Vehicle-as-a-Service (ICE and EVs) really pisses me off and I plan on driving my Volt (which has the OnStar modules entirely disabled so I have 0 analytics/metrics/tracking happening) forever. I miss my 100% analog 1981 VW Rabbit LS diesel. sniff.
If the EA chargers are not doing this, this is a huge safety hazard.
Given the report is a 'large bang', it doesn't seem to me to be a heat-based melting issue. Seems like a sudden short or surge of power.
My guess for the loud bang, based on when these reports first happened, is that it's the pyrofuse blowing. They're not quiet.
Some locations even only support paying with their RFID card that you can only get by mail. Imagine arriving at a station and surprise, you need to wait 5 working days to charge!
