10 ms·

Charger outages leave northern Ontario EV drivers stranded

51 points by james_pm 3y ago

toomuchtodo 3y ago
> CCS and CHAdeMO fast chargers in Marathon, White River and Wawa were down for most of June; the Ivy location in White River has been out of service since mid-April. > Tesla chargers in the region were still working, according to reports on the forum PlugShare, where drivers update each other on charger status, but they are not currently compatible with non-Tesla vehicles. > "June was a rough month for this area," said Real Deschatelets, a volunteer with the Electric Vehicle Association of Northern Ontario (EVANO).
jeffbee 3y ago
In Oakland, California there is a DC fast charger that has been showing the Windows Update screen all year. These networks do not seem to have the operational know-how to keep the systems running.
- blamazon 3y ago
  I don't understand why they even have fancy screens. Why can't they just put a payment card tap thing and some LEDs and be done with it?
  - capableweb 3y ago
    The same reason everything is being replaced by fancy screens VS just a hardware interface with buttons and LEDs: You can change the UI and UX after deploying it. Say you want to illustrate the charging differently, you'd just deploy software updates rather than having to switch out a bunch of hardware panels. Company branding changed color and now you want to display those instead? OTA updates, instead of replacing charging station hardware. Not saying it's great, I prefer good old interfaces myself, especially outside of the internet, but I can totally understand why companies consistently make this choice over and over again.
    - jackmott42 3y ago
      Tesla superchargers have no screens OR buttons. Everyone wins. Just plug in and go pee.
      - jdsully 3y ago
        They rely on the screen in the car to confirm that you are actually charging.
        toomuchtodo 3y ago
        You could do the same with LEDs, just like the LED ring around a Tesla charge port changes color to indicate status (red or amber = fault, white = ready to charge, blue = preparing to charge, green = charging). https://service.tesla.com/docs/Public/diy/modely/en_us/GUID-07FBA723-779F-4CF0-B9A7-AA8076335CE4.html https://service.tesla.com/docs/Public/diy/modely/en_us/GUID-...
    - MisterTea 3y ago
      > You can change the UI and UX after deploying it. Its a dumb gas pump.
  - MochaDen 3y ago
    Marketing says we'll make a fortune with ads on a big screen! Plus we can upsell related products and charging packages!
- steveBK123 3y ago
  Tesla is the only one making their own hardware for DCFC. The other US networks are at the whim of both 3rd party hardware suppliers & 3rd party software vendors. So they are just integrators really, and do a very terrible job of it. They are slow to get new parts, slow to send out repair teams, etc. Further a lot of them have screwed up incentives, such that the person charging is not really their end customer. Also they all lose money. Some of this is the result of legal settlement mandated networks (EA) or them pre-selling some amount of charging to automakers (EA) or partnering with states (evGo) or running an ad network (Volta).. All of which means you, the person charging, are not the customer. Whether you can successfully charge or not is besides the point, and possibly increases their losses if you do charge! Yes I know Tesla also receives government money, but it is just one part of the funding, and they are actually performing well as a charging network, because they want to sell more cars. They must make enough money off it that they are willing to open it up to 3rd parties now.
  - oceanplexian 3y ago
    It's pretty simple why. The reason these chargers exist is to capture government subsidies, not because enough people actually want them for them to be financially viable. Once the vendors get their check from the taxpayers there's literally no reason for them to provide any more than the bare minimum level of support.
    - steveBK123 3y ago
      > It's pretty simple why. The reason these chargers exist is to capture government subsidies, not because enough people actually want them for them to be financially viable. Once the vendors get their check from the taxpayers there's literally no reason for them to provide any more than the bare minimum level of support. Completely agreed. Tesla is the only one operating them commercially in practice. They probably are cash flow positive, and even if not, are a loss leader to sell cars. EV DCFC can be commercially viable though considering 1) the markup on electric is HUGE compared to gas (possibly 2x) and 2) they have a captive customer stuck 5x as long as a gas buyer, to spend $$ in their convenience store (where they actually make all their money) The problem is the current companies are trying to do standalone stalls in others parking lots. I think we will eventually see some gas station chains bring out an offering, but there needs to be demand first. Something like 90%+ of EVs on the road in US are still Tesla, so CCS has always been a niche within a niche here.
- jjtheblunt 3y ago
  whose charger?
  - jeffbee 3y ago
    EVgo. Checking in on the plugshare for that station I was thinking, apparently the cords have been chopped off by vandals.
    - jdhawk 3y ago
      I dont understand why they didnt put the cable in the car itself. Just two female plugs (car and charger) with a M-M cable?
      - tkanarsky 3y ago
        That's how Type 2 cables in Europe work, at least for L2 AC charging. DC chargers have built in cables, probably because the wire gauge needs to be a lot thicker to support the current (why haul all that around?) and for water cooling in the case of Supercharger V3s.
martinald 3y ago
I'm surprised that the chargers aren't more of a target for theft (or maybe there are already). They have enormous copper cables which could be fairly easily stolen? Especially in our of view highway rest stops.
- doubled112 3y ago
  Aren’t most copper thieves hoping the wires are not live? Perhaps the thought of crossing the wrong wires and being met with 400V at 625A is a deterrent.
  - martinald 3y ago
    Yes but the ones I've seen have giant emergency shutdown buttons which I assume kills all the power to the charging cable.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - somerandomqaguy 3y ago
    Please excuse my ignorance, but why wouldn't they just cut the cable when it's not in use then? And on the flip side; there's plenty of cases with thieves cutting into live high voltage lines. This one is the most visible example I know of though: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuXeJ4_s8G8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuXeJ4_s8G8
    - hervature 3y ago
      "Not in use" means that nothing is closing the circuit. A machete going through the cable has a high likelihood of completing the circuit.
      - willcipriano 3y ago
        No way a car charging cable has current running through it when it's not charging.
justrealist 3y ago
This is why GM and Ford were so eager to jump on NACS. All the charger networks other than Tesla's Supercharger are a clown show. Why hitch your horse to them? I hope that changes and there's competition, but right now I would never even consider trying a non-Tesla charger. I've literally never found one that works properly, and 100% of the times I've used a Supercharger it was effortless.
- jeffbee 3y ago
  How much of supercharger reliability comes down to selecting the population of cars, though? I've wondered if deploying chargers that are meant to plug into various vehicles is somehow more difficult, or more likely to damage the charger. Aside from software flaws, by far the most common problem I see with non-Tesla chargers is some current module has taken itself offline due to internal fault detection, leaving the dispenser operating at half capacity or sometimes zero capacity. This has also made me curious as to whether Tesla simply lacks these fault-finding safety devices, or they do the better.
  - hedora 3y ago
    The CCS chargers have an emergency stop button. You can twist it (or whatever) to bring it back online. From what I can tell, people press it instead of dealing with the touch screen. 90% of the problems I've had come down to payment processing issues. They all thought they should bundle a crappy social network with the ability to pay for charging, and installed buggy / broken card readers. Ford made it pretty clear they're supporting NACS because they sent people to chargers to see if they could charge or not, and the failure rate was way above the networks' reported broken charger rate. I don't think the switch to the supercharger network has anything to do with the charging technology. Having said that, can you pay to charge a tesla with a credit card? Does it actually work reliably? If the other networks are any indicator, that's the hardest technical challenge in this space.
    - teagoat 3y ago
      You keep a credit card on file in your Tesla account. The supercharger recognizes your car and it automatically charges your card.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
LovinFossilFuel 3y ago
[dead]
ZeroGravitas 3y ago
[flagged]
- madsbuch 3y ago
  It would seem to be the solution to keeping the chargers running?
- isykt 3y ago
  Yeah. The other day I got a stale donut from Tim Horton’s, so I cancelled my doctor’s appointment at TGH. If Canada can’t even serve fresh donuts, how can I expect them to provide competent medical care? It’s the same people.
- ipaddr 3y ago
  It's already the largest generating station in the world.
- voisin 3y ago
  I am pretty sure the people building nuclear plants are different from the people who maintain EV chargers. Canada has a small population but not that small, eh?
voisin 3y ago
I’ve had the misfortune of driving through northern Ontario five times in the last four years and I am embarrassed that it is a vital link in our country. The distances between Sault Ste Marie and Thunder Bay and then Thunder Bay and Kenora or Winnipeg are devoid of any form of amenity, have terrible cell reception, and are poorly maintained in winter despite the traffic. If poor weather hits you can easily add 25-40% to your already long 8-9 hour drive, and have no option to split the drive. The few motels that exist in the podunk villages on the way are often boarded up out of season, and the temperatures get so low in the winter that sleeping in the car to break up the drive could literally be a matter of freezing to death.
- ojbyrne 3y ago
  Having also driven that route (Ottawa-Winnipeg) several times, there's an easy solution that solves the lack of infrastructure in that area (but also does not reflect well on Canada) - cross the border.
  - voisin 3y ago
    That’s often the easy solution in Canada. Want cheaper flights? Drive over the border and fly from there. Want guaranteed (but expensive) health care, just cross the border. Want cheap gas and groceries, just cross the border. We as a country need to figure this shit out.
    - yuppie_scum 3y ago
      Wait til you find out about the stuff you can get from China!
cs702 3y ago
More precisely, charger outages have left non-Tesla EV drivers stranded. Tesla chargers have had no outages, so Tesla EV drivers are A-OK.
Jemm 3y ago
Ontario, where most of the millions of immigrants wind up. Zero money spent building infrastructure, most of the province is uninhabitable or even reachable by anything other than sea planes or ski planes.

51 points by james_pm 3y ago

> CCS and CHAdeMO fast chargers in Marathon, White River and Wawa were down for most of June; the Ivy location in White River has been out of service since mid-April. > Tesla chargers in the region were still working, according to reports on the forum PlugShare, where drivers update each other on charger status, but they are not currently compatible with non-Tesla vehicles. > "June was a rough month for this area," said Real Deschatelets, a volunteer with the Electric Vehicle Association of Northern Ontario (EVANO).

jeffbee 3y ago

In Oakland, California there is a DC fast charger that has been showing the Windows Update screen all year. These networks do not seem to have the operational know-how to keep the systems running.

blamazon 3y ago
I don't understand why they even have fancy screens. Why can't they just put a payment card tap thing and some LEDs and be done with it?
- capableweb 3y ago
  The same reason everything is being replaced by fancy screens VS just a hardware interface with buttons and LEDs: You can change the UI and UX after deploying it. Say you want to illustrate the charging differently, you'd just deploy software updates rather than having to switch out a bunch of hardware panels. Company branding changed color and now you want to display those instead? OTA updates, instead of replacing charging station hardware. Not saying it's great, I prefer good old interfaces myself, especially outside of the internet, but I can totally understand why companies consistently make this choice over and over again.
  - jackmott42 3y ago
    Tesla superchargers have no screens OR buttons. Everyone wins. Just plug in and go pee.
    - jdsully 3y ago
      They rely on the screen in the car to confirm that you are actually charging.
      - toomuchtodo 3y ago
        You could do the same with LEDs, just like the LED ring around a Tesla charge port changes color to indicate status (red or amber = fault, white = ready to charge, blue = preparing to charge, green = charging). https://service.tesla.com/docs/Public/diy/modely/en_us/GUID-07FBA723-779F-4CF0-B9A7-AA8076335CE4.html https://service.tesla.com/docs/Public/diy/modely/en_us/GUID-...
  - MisterTea 3y ago
    > You can change the UI and UX after deploying it. Its a dumb gas pump.
- MochaDen 3y ago
  Marketing says we'll make a fortune with ads on a big screen! Plus we can upsell related products and charging packages!
steveBK123 3y ago
Tesla is the only one making their own hardware for DCFC. The other US networks are at the whim of both 3rd party hardware suppliers & 3rd party software vendors. So they are just integrators really, and do a very terrible job of it. They are slow to get new parts, slow to send out repair teams, etc. Further a lot of them have screwed up incentives, such that the person charging is not really their end customer. Also they all lose money. Some of this is the result of legal settlement mandated networks (EA) or them pre-selling some amount of charging to automakers (EA) or partnering with states (evGo) or running an ad network (Volta).. All of which means you, the person charging, are not the customer. Whether you can successfully charge or not is besides the point, and possibly increases their losses if you do charge! Yes I know Tesla also receives government money, but it is just one part of the funding, and they are actually performing well as a charging network, because they want to sell more cars. They must make enough money off it that they are willing to open it up to 3rd parties now.
- oceanplexian 3y ago
  It's pretty simple why. The reason these chargers exist is to capture government subsidies, not because enough people actually want them for them to be financially viable. Once the vendors get their check from the taxpayers there's literally no reason for them to provide any more than the bare minimum level of support.
  - steveBK123 3y ago
    > It's pretty simple why. The reason these chargers exist is to capture government subsidies, not because enough people actually want them for them to be financially viable. Once the vendors get their check from the taxpayers there's literally no reason for them to provide any more than the bare minimum level of support. Completely agreed. Tesla is the only one operating them commercially in practice. They probably are cash flow positive, and even if not, are a loss leader to sell cars. EV DCFC can be commercially viable though considering 1) the markup on electric is HUGE compared to gas (possibly 2x) and 2) they have a captive customer stuck 5x as long as a gas buyer, to spend $$ in their convenience store (where they actually make all their money) The problem is the current companies are trying to do standalone stalls in others parking lots. I think we will eventually see some gas station chains bring out an offering, but there needs to be demand first. Something like 90%+ of EVs on the road in US are still Tesla, so CCS has always been a niche within a niche here.
jjtheblunt 3y ago
whose charger?
- jeffbee 3y ago
  EVgo. Checking in on the plugshare for that station I was thinking, apparently the cords have been chopped off by vandals.
  - jdhawk 3y ago
    I dont understand why they didnt put the cable in the car itself. Just two female plugs (car and charger) with a M-M cable?
    - tkanarsky 3y ago
      That's how Type 2 cables in Europe work, at least for L2 AC charging. DC chargers have built in cables, probably because the wire gauge needs to be a lot thicker to support the current (why haul all that around?) and for water cooling in the case of Supercharger V3s.

martinald 3y ago

I'm surprised that the chargers aren't more of a target for theft (or maybe there are already). They have enormous copper cables which could be fairly easily stolen? Especially in our of view highway rest stops.

doubled112 3y ago
Aren’t most copper thieves hoping the wires are not live? Perhaps the thought of crossing the wrong wires and being met with 400V at 625A is a deterrent.
- martinald 3y ago
  Yes but the ones I've seen have giant emergency shutdown buttons which I assume kills all the power to the charging cable.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- somerandomqaguy 3y ago
  Please excuse my ignorance, but why wouldn't they just cut the cable when it's not in use then? And on the flip side; there's plenty of cases with thieves cutting into live high voltage lines. This one is the most visible example I know of though: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuXeJ4_s8G8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuXeJ4_s8G8
  - hervature 3y ago
    "Not in use" means that nothing is closing the circuit. A machete going through the cable has a high likelihood of completing the circuit.
    - willcipriano 3y ago
      No way a car charging cable has current running through it when it's not charging.

justrealist 3y ago

This is why GM and Ford were so eager to jump on NACS. All the charger networks other than Tesla's Supercharger are a clown show. Why hitch your horse to them? I hope that changes and there's competition, but right now I would never even consider trying a non-Tesla charger. I've literally never found one that works properly, and 100% of the times I've used a Supercharger it was effortless.

jeffbee 3y ago
How much of supercharger reliability comes down to selecting the population of cars, though? I've wondered if deploying chargers that are meant to plug into various vehicles is somehow more difficult, or more likely to damage the charger. Aside from software flaws, by far the most common problem I see with non-Tesla chargers is some current module has taken itself offline due to internal fault detection, leaving the dispenser operating at half capacity or sometimes zero capacity. This has also made me curious as to whether Tesla simply lacks these fault-finding safety devices, or they do the better.
- hedora 3y ago
  The CCS chargers have an emergency stop button. You can twist it (or whatever) to bring it back online. From what I can tell, people press it instead of dealing with the touch screen. 90% of the problems I've had come down to payment processing issues. They all thought they should bundle a crappy social network with the ability to pay for charging, and installed buggy / broken card readers. Ford made it pretty clear they're supporting NACS because they sent people to chargers to see if they could charge or not, and the failure rate was way above the networks' reported broken charger rate. I don't think the switch to the supercharger network has anything to do with the charging technology. Having said that, can you pay to charge a tesla with a credit card? Does it actually work reliably? If the other networks are any indicator, that's the hardest technical challenge in this space.
  - teagoat 3y ago
    You keep a credit card on file in your Tesla account. The supercharger recognizes your car and it automatically charges your card.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

LovinFossilFuel 3y ago

[dead]

ZeroGravitas 3y ago

[flagged]

madsbuch 3y ago
It would seem to be the solution to keeping the chargers running?
isykt 3y ago
Yeah. The other day I got a stale donut from Tim Horton’s, so I cancelled my doctor’s appointment at TGH. If Canada can’t even serve fresh donuts, how can I expect them to provide competent medical care? It’s the same people.
ipaddr 3y ago
It's already the largest generating station in the world.
voisin 3y ago
I am pretty sure the people building nuclear plants are different from the people who maintain EV chargers. Canada has a small population but not that small, eh?

voisin 3y ago

I’ve had the misfortune of driving through northern Ontario five times in the last four years and I am embarrassed that it is a vital link in our country. The distances between Sault Ste Marie and Thunder Bay and then Thunder Bay and Kenora or Winnipeg are devoid of any form of amenity, have terrible cell reception, and are poorly maintained in winter despite the traffic. If poor weather hits you can easily add 25-40% to your already long 8-9 hour drive, and have no option to split the drive. The few motels that exist in the podunk villages on the way are often boarded up out of season, and the temperatures get so low in the winter that sleeping in the car to break up the drive could literally be a matter of freezing to death.

ojbyrne 3y ago
Having also driven that route (Ottawa-Winnipeg) several times, there's an easy solution that solves the lack of infrastructure in that area (but also does not reflect well on Canada) - cross the border.
- voisin 3y ago
  That’s often the easy solution in Canada. Want cheaper flights? Drive over the border and fly from there. Want guaranteed (but expensive) health care, just cross the border. Want cheap gas and groceries, just cross the border. We as a country need to figure this shit out.
  - yuppie_scum 3y ago
    Wait til you find out about the stuff you can get from China!

cs702 3y ago

More precisely, charger outages have left non-Tesla EV drivers stranded. Tesla chargers have had no outages, so Tesla EV drivers are A-OK.

Jemm 3y ago

Ontario, where most of the millions of immigrants wind up. Zero money spent building infrastructure, most of the province is uninhabitable or even reachable by anything other than sea planes or ski planes.