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This is a great mystery of electric vehicle charging: why is it so hard for anyone but Tesla to keep most of the chargers working most of the time?

Zanni 6y ago
It's not really a mystery if you understand who the customers are. Tesla's Supercharger customers are Tesla owners (for the most part), and Tesla has a vested interest in keeping them happy. Other charging stations are mostly installed in mall parking lots and so on by government mandate. The owners of the parking lots pay to get them installed and maintained--they are the customers. And since they're (mostly) satisfying a government tick box, there's not nearly as much incentive to keep functioning.
theshrike79 6y ago
Multiple vendors in one system. You've got the provider for the actual charger (a handful of different providers), which needs to negotiate with the car via CCS. This can fail in umpteen different ways, as car manufacturers differ on how they implement CCS (Dunno how, but it happens). Then you've got the software in the charging point, which needs to be customised for the brand you're selling under (another moving part). And lastly, you have the back end system for the brand, which handles authentication, authorization (RFID or App) and billing - this is the bit that ultimately gives the charger the go-ahead to start feeding power to the connected car. Any of these fails, no electricity for you. For 22kW "slow" chargers this is a bit simpler as the actual charger is a lot less complex, it doesn't need to negotiate, it just needs to switch one relay. Tesla is like Apple in this case, they take care of the whole stack. So as long as the charger has power, it'll work. Authentication and authorization are done by having the car negotiate with the charger directly via the charging cable, no dongles or apps needed.
- manwithaplan 6y ago
  > For 22kW "slow" chargers this is a bit simpler as the actual charger is a lot less complex, it doesn't need to negotiate, it just needs to switch one relay. To be more explicit, the actual AC "slow" charger is built into the car, so it's guaranteed to work (and indeed, it just needs to signal a contactor to close the circuit).
  - theshrike79 6y ago
    Yea, as far as the battery is concerned, there is no "AC" charging. It's always DC. The current is either provided by the built-in charger (AC-DC) or a HVDC charging point.

Zanni 6y ago

It's not really a mystery if you understand who the customers are. Tesla's Supercharger customers are Tesla owners (for the most part), and Tesla has a vested interest in keeping them happy. Other charging stations are mostly installed in mall parking lots and so on by government mandate. The owners of the parking lots pay to get them installed and maintained--they are the customers. And since they're (mostly) satisfying a government tick box, there's not nearly as much incentive to keep functioning.

theshrike79 6y ago

Multiple vendors in one system. You've got the provider for the actual charger (a handful of different providers), which needs to negotiate with the car via CCS. This can fail in umpteen different ways, as car manufacturers differ on how they implement CCS (Dunno how, but it happens). Then you've got the software in the charging point, which needs to be customised for the brand you're selling under (another moving part). And lastly, you have the back end system for the brand, which handles authentication, authorization (RFID or App) and billing - this is the bit that ultimately gives the charger the go-ahead to start feeding power to the connected car. Any of these fails, no electricity for you. For 22kW "slow" chargers this is a bit simpler as the actual charger is a lot less complex, it doesn't need to negotiate, it just needs to switch one relay. Tesla is like Apple in this case, they take care of the whole stack. So as long as the charger has power, it'll work. Authentication and authorization are done by having the car negotiate with the charger directly via the charging cable, no dongles or apps needed.

manwithaplan 6y ago
> For 22kW "slow" chargers this is a bit simpler as the actual charger is a lot less complex, it doesn't need to negotiate, it just needs to switch one relay. To be more explicit, the actual AC "slow" charger is built into the car, so it's guaranteed to work (and indeed, it just needs to signal a contactor to close the circuit).
- theshrike79 6y ago
  Yea, as far as the battery is concerned, there is no "AC" charging. It's always DC. The current is either provided by the built-in charger (AC-DC) or a HVDC charging point.