High speed charging spotted on facelift Taycan

[whitex]

So the country that started EV revolution does not have reliable fast charging network aside Tesla?

Technically Tesla, which is an American company, started that revolution. It's all the other companies which are playing catchup which don't have a reliable fast charging network. Well, most of them are jumping in bed with Tesla, so they will.

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[Jhenson29]

Ah, I think we got to the bottom of this. You (and probably the government) are making a huge assumption that we want parity with gas stations. But why? Why hold back progress by requiring parity with an old solution?

If ya’ll wanna find a better solution to existing credit card terminals at gas pumps, have at it. But different apps or a dependency on other people’s connection and devices is not it IMO. Even authenticating directly with the car worries me. Adding new single points of failure are not good.

The parity they need to reach is the redundancy. However they care to do so. There’s just a whole lot more of “one thing doesn’t work and you’re screwed”.

 

[WasserGKuehlt]

@daveo4EV @whitex im not saying it can’t be done (ie replicate Tesla model of charging), but you can’t impose on other networks “make it work like Tesla”; you have to aim for the common denominator, which is a user that can’t be bothered to install apps.

Anecdotally, the city of Leavenworth eliminated free street parking, having installed app-based meters everywhere. Unbelievably annoying - scan a code to find the app, create an account (I detest this), link a credit card, verify it, and _then_ you can start initiating a parking session: enter the stall, choose duration, pay, confirm, then ensure the meter got the push update. In charging equivalents, I’d have “just parked” and walked away if I had a car made by the meter’s manufacturer - but only them.

 

[whitex]

@daveo4EV @whitex im not saying it can’t be done (ie replicate Tesla model of charging), but you can’t impose on other networks “make it work like Tesla”; you have to aim for the common denominator, which is a user that can’t be bothered to install apps.

Anecdotally, the city of Leavenworth eliminated free street parking, having installed app-based meters everywhere. Unbelievably annoying - scan a code to find the app, create an account (I detest this), link a credit card, verify it, and _then_ you can start initiating a parking session: enter the stall, choose duration, pay, confirm, then ensure the meter got the push update. In charging equivalents, I’d have “just parked” and walked away if I had a car made by the meter’s manufacturer - but only them.

I get your frustration with the having to install an app per city location. Not exactly the case with Tesla superchargers. If the choice is having access to a large charging network (via one app for the whole network) at a fraction of the cost of building a new one, vs. not having access to it at all, which one is better for the taxpayers?

As far as reliability, well, gas stations are not as reliable without a human attendant. I only filled up gas 3 times this year, yet one of those times I had to go inside the gas station (twice, once to pre-authorize, and then to complete the purchase and get the final receipt). Even when the credit card works, Tesla supercharging of just plug-and-charge is far superior.

Last but not least, newest Tesla V4 superchargers have been spotted with credit card readers, though tap only, so not on parity with gas stations which have cc chip readers, magnetic stripe readers, and attendants which take cash or even checks.

 

[Jhenson29]

I only filled up gas 3 times this year, yet one of those times I had to go inside the gas station

…

My point is that anecdotal evidence from you or me doesn't prove anything

 

[whitex]

…

1. I refuel a lot, all across the county due to my job. For the last 18 years. While I agree my statements are still just anecdotal, I have a large number and wide sampling.

I have been supercharging over a decade.

 

[Jhenson29]

I have been supercharging to a decade.

And your ideas are still this bad? I wouldn’t advertise that…

 

[whitex]

And your ideas are still this bad? I wouldn’t advertise that…

Huh? Are you replying to a different post in your head?

Superchargers just work. Ask any Tesla owner who uses them. Gas stations also work, though I bet you’d find more problems using gas stations than superchargers.

 

[Jhenson29]

Huh? Are you replying to a different post in your head?

Lol, no; but I just can’t take you seriously if you continue to call the reliability of gas stations into question. Which you seem to be backing off of on this post.

Superchargers just work. Ask any Tesla owner who uses them. Gas stations also work, though I bet you’d find more problems using gas stations than superchargers.

Gas stations support far more people and vehicles, both in quantity and diversity of both. Hardly any comparison there. I don’t know the stats on issues of one vs the other.

 

[whitex]

Lol, no; but I just can’t take you seriously if you continue to call the reliability of gas stations into question. Which you seem to be backing off of on this post.

I never said gas stations are not reliable. Rotary phones were reliable too, not a reason to require mechanical rotary dials on all smartphones though. With more complexity (screens, card readers, real time payment authorizations) gas stations are bound to be less reliable than a system with less "moving parts". For example, you will never see a Tesla charger with a broken screen, or a broken card reader, or unable to charge because of communications outage, etc. The less that can go wrong, the more reliable the system. EA is following all government requirements, yet it's obviously less reliable. It doesn't mean EA is unusable, I've traveled thousands of miles on EA and never got stranded, plug-and-charge worked every time too, but it does seem like a lot more people are reporting having issues with EA vs. Tesla.

My original point was that taxpayers could have gotten access to the Tesla network by paying for MagicDoc retrofits, therefore extending the available charging to CCS vehicles, at a fraction of the price of building out a new network. By insisting on the "must be like a gas station" requirements, we simply get less access. Perhaps to some people think we have sufficient CCS for now, so it's better to not have access to Tesla superchargers if they are not like gas stations. A bunch of automakers however are adopting the Tesla connector since they do see access to superchargers as a benefit to their customers, even if they doesn't take cards or cash.

 

[WasserGKuehlt]

On a recent trip along the West Coast, I stopped at several EA stations in both directions. The ‘out’ trip was Thu into Fri morning, and the return one was Sat evening into Sun.

Several stations (3?) had all-functional stalls earlier in the week, and 2 or more of them down during the return trip: Yreka, Anderson had 2 down, and Gilroy had 5 out of 8 (!) down. A couple stations in WA (Federal Way, Auburn) also had down chargers, though I had not stopped there before. The stations in OR were all functional at all times. It would make sense that a time-consuming activity such as charging is left for the weekend by those who can’t charge at home.

And so it seems it is people who break chargers. (I know, I was also amazed at my own insight*.) Or, rather, higher density areas/higher EV population accelerate the failure rate of a seemingly insufficiently-hardened charging station design. It wasn’t the screen, the software, the CC reader or the RFID; it seemed to me the electromechanical lock of the CCS plug fails, and the car simply refuses to start charging. When this is detected, the stations are marked ‘unavailable’ remotely; otherwise one gets stuck into an endless cycle of negotiate-authorized-reconnecting to vehicle..

It seems to me EA has an unsolvable problem** on its hands, and that the manufacturers who already decided to go NACS have themselves determined the root cause of most failures in CCS networks. (@daveo4EV called this long ago.)

*that’s sarcasm, in case it doesn’t come across
**Unsolvable because the plugs seem as well-made as could be, and so it may be that the design is inherently predisposed to rapid wear. The materials are solid, tolerances are tight, and removing a hot plug takes a bit of effort. I could see how a frustrated owner would force the plug out; the lock tongue is long, and thus a small effort on the tip would put quite some stress on its root/base articulation.

(edit) somewhere along the way I lost the point I was trying to make: there is no question Tesla has a robust ecosystem. Maybe their plug’n’charge could work with vehicles of any other manufacturer. Still, they’d be the only identity provider in this space, and no way in hell we’ll get to mass adoption with a single of (anything).

 

[daveo4EV]

It seems to me EA has an unsolvable problem** on its hands, and that the manufacturers who already decided to go NACS have themselves determined the root cause of most failures in CCS networks. (@daveo4EV called this long ago.)

I suspect it for a while - about 2 years ago someone much more observant than myself pointed out that CCS1 has moving parts on the "connector/cable" - and that CCS2 (euro) and NCAS do not - the latching mechanisms on CCS2/NCAS are all vehicle based - CCS2/NACS plug design has passive locking mechanisms - now locking mechanism's break - but the CCS2/NCAS design only break on the car - leaving the station operational (once the plug is extracted) - but CCS1 if the locking mechanism breaks it disables the stations for all vehicle's until the issue is resolved…

I had my suspicions about this being a core issue, but it was turned to conviction with the Ford CEO business channel interview shortly after the Ford NCAS announcement - where he directly spoke to this issue during the interview as a "key" problem - I think Ford realized the design is irremediable - and I'm sure they have data to that effect from 2 years of their charging angel effort…

CCS1's physical plug design fails in at least three dimensions:

• human/usability ergonomics
• industrial/reliable design
• MTBF - locking mechanisms all fail eventually after a given number of cycles/abuse - if you drive 80 miles a day - charge each time - you'll plug you Taycan in 1250 times in the 100,000 mile warranty period
• for a public charging stations let's model 8 charging sessions a day 7 days a week is 2912 charging cycles at a fast charging stall each year - let's call it 3000 annually
  • to have these plugs only fail once a year requires a MTBF/ABUSE in excess of 10,000 (30,000?? someone weight in here on the cycle could for 1 failure a year with 3000 cycles) cycles - and each failure I believe means you lose a week repair cycle time (best case) - so you're offline for 1 of every 52 weeks if you cord only fails once a year…
  • even _IF_ the MTBF is the same for both types of designs - let's say 1500 - your Taycan's locking mecahism will not fail in 100,000 miles, and the CCS1 design will fail twice a year
  • now I think 1500 cycles is an insanely low design goal
  • and data from EA seems to show their MTBF for these plugs is much much much lower - and every time one breaks the entire stall is offline for all vehicle's until it's repaired
  • I speculate the MTBF for CCS1 plug design is about 325 cycles (or less)…in the real world, mostly due to abuse/dropage…
    • 325 cycles divided by 8 = 40 days - let's call it once a month
    • best case 1 week to fix it
    • stalls are offline for 12 weeks a year out of 52
    • or about a 25% offline rate - 1/4 of your available time is offline by design
    • and that is only _IF_ you fix the problem in 1 week or less…so far I've not seen that demonstrated as a 1 week thing
    • these numbers get really really bad if you take more than a week to service failures of the cord/connector

- it's just so so bad - it's just awful.

the econmics here are horrible no good just so bad - it has to be cheaper to leave these stalls inoperable than it is to overcome the MTBF of the charging cables - the CCS1 design incentives the stations being offline because to repair/replace these liquid cooled cables due to insanely bad MTBF will bankrupt you - and at $20-$30 a charging session gross revenue - there is NO WAY I can envision even 3 repairs a year being cost effective.

let's model 8 charging sessions a day @ $32.50 gross revenue - that's $94,900/annual gross revenue per-stall - that's gross revenue - I'd say easily half of that is electrical costs - so we're down to $47,450 left over revenue - 1/4 of that is land costs - $35,000 now - $25,000 after equipment capital cost amortization - 10% "overhead" and other expenses - $23,000 potential revenue annually - cable replacement parts/labor have got to be about $3000 minimum each time one of these sucker's breaks (and they break a lot) - if the cable breaks 7 times a year you 've wipe out any possible profit from that stall…

doh - I did not factor in my own 25% lost revenue due to offline into the revenue numbers above $94.5k * .75 = $70k annual potential revenue - work that through and I think you get down to only 4 repairs a year to make zero $$ per stall - or about once a quarter - hmmmm - I see EA stations offline for about 2 months each time they break - seems EA is only fixing broken cables once a quarter....to mitigate operational costs - it's just so bad.

Once I personally "internalized" this it became clear to me that CCS1 _MUST_ die for EV's to move forward in North America - it can NEVER be reliable _BY DESIGN_ - it is a design fail pure and simple no different that the Tacoma Narrows Bridge…

my surprise was the willingness to adopt NACS - I've always felt the CCS2 plug design from Euro would be fine in North American - and obviously has a lot of vendor support (including Tesla)

I've said this before - but can not emphasize it enough!!

these guys (Ford/GM etc…) abandoning CCS1 and moving to NACS speaks huge massive volumes to the fail that is CCS1 - they would've done ANYTHING to avoid this - the fact that we are here now, and this is the trend - is just a massive admission of an extreme screw up.

VW/Audi/Porsche not engaging on this issue is severely disappointing and reeks of simple hubris and stubbornness and lack of understanding about the situation.

It's just unbelievable that we are to this point, the CCS1 situation is so dire that we're redesigning major infrastructure "on the fly" and embracing the industry disruptor in order to pull it off - wow just wow.

 

[Tooney]

It wasn’t the screen, the software, the CC reader or the RFID; it seemed to me the electromechanical lock of the CCS plug fails, and the car simply refuses to start charging. When this is detected, the stations are marked ‘unavailable’ remotely; otherwise one gets stuck into an endless cycle of negotiate-authorized-reconnecting to vehicle..

Interesting. If the CCS "latch" does not work/fails, it provides a signal that disables the charging dispenser? As opposed to waiting for some kind of return signal from the car showing that the dispenser is properly connected to an auto HV battery needing to be charged?

Any way to overcome this?

I had the feeling that holding the charging plug/cable up a bit while charging is being initiated might "help" charging to start.

EDIT: If this was the cause of so many cases of failed charging, wouldn't we have heard about it - the need to repair/replace the plugs? Nothing I've read about DC charging repairs seems to point to plug failures, as opposed to making repairs to the internals of the dispensers or hardware supplying them.

 

[WasserGKuehlt]

Interesting. If the CCS "latch" does not work/fails, it provides a signal that disables the charging dispenser? As opposed to waiting for some kind of return signal from the car showing that the dispenser is properly connected to an auto HV battery needing to be charged?

Any way to overcome this?

I had the feeling that holding the charging plug/cable up a bit while charging is being initiated might "help" charging to start.

EDIT: If this was the cause of so many cases of failed charging, wouldn't we have heard about it - the need to repair/replace the plugs? Nothing I've read about DC charging repairs seems to point to plug failures, as opposed to making repairs to the internals of the dispensers or hardware supplying them.

I should have prefaced this with the disclaimer it was speculation on my part, based on observations and various articles.

The 2 failed chargers in Auburn, WA had a similar behavior: upon plugging in, the negotiation would go past the authorization/“payment accepted” phase but would not proceed with charging. In my understanding of the protocol, the next step would be that the car initiates the session by asking for “this many Volts, please”. It didn’t happen - the charger would simply wait and then say “reconnecting to vehicle”. The car showed a “charging error” but no details.

After several attempts, I noticed the whirring noise associated with locking the plug was missing from the sequence. Basically the charger didn’t know it was broken. (It failed for me and 2 other drivers, one of which promptly sniped me to the last remaining functional one, just as I was pulling out from the stall. But I digress..)

The speculation is that this failure mode is not detectable through a self-check- so it’s either being reported (by the user) or some remote service crunches the telemetry and determines, based on the number of different attempts, that the charger is likely broken (and so marked “unavailable” from afar).

There was no play of the plug in the port - typically when the contact is the culprit, the session doesn’t go past the authentication phase (ie nothing works).

What I did read (in articles probably shared by yourself ?) is that all DC operators are stubbornly refusing to publish reliability data (not just EA, EVGo doesn’t, either). It might be because the numbers are abysmal, but also because they simply don’t know/there is no solid number: if you count all failed sessions you include external factors (ie cars have a problem, or there’s a genuine payment declined error), and if you count only actual repairs you are undercounting availability. MTBF would be a reasonable approximation as Dave pointed out above, but I suspect that’s a damning number.

 

[whitex]

cable replacement parts/labor have got to be about $3000 minimum each time one of these sucker's breaks

Does it have to be though? Imagine a quick swap plug at the end of the cable (heck, imagine a NACS connector with permanent MagiDock, only the MagicDock is swapped out when broken) - even with a truck roll that's gotta be way less than $3K a pop.

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