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Same in Germany. So many broken chargers for weeks. Read through the article, but I still don't know why so many are broken and stay broken, it says "So what w

Same in Germany. So many broken chargers for weeks. Read through the article, but I still don't know why so many are broken and stay broken, it says "So what was wrong with these particular machines? It could be one of many things—a broken part, a power issue, a defective connector." I don't need an article to answer why are chargers broken if the answer is "Could be one of many things, ...". Why are gasoline stations mostly never broken and chargers broken all the time? (from my limited EV experience in Germany). Why are they unrepaired? That would be journalism.

arcanemachiner 3y ago
> Why are gasoline stations mostly never broken and chargers broken all the time? I mean... One of these technologies does have a 100 year head start on the other.
- viraptor 3y ago
  Still, I see a single "out of order" pump every once in a while and then a few days later it's working again. The question seems more "why are they allowed to stay broken?"
  - trimethylpurine 3y ago
    Because gas customers are greater in number, regular, more frequent, and higher paying. Just guessing.
    - viraptor 3y ago
      Regardless, that's most likely leased spaces. If they don't make money, they lose money. And they seem to be off for a significant amount of time given that everyone seems to have a first hand story about it.
      - trimethylpurine 3y ago
        That's true, but I doubt people charging their car represent the bulk of their income. The government pays companies to build new stations. Fixing old ones means your techs are tied up, and you're able to bid on fewer projects, which means less revenue. Again, I'm guessing, but it seems like a decent explanation.
        jonkho 3y ago
        Why is government paying subsidies to build charging stations? Must imply they are not a profitable endeavor to begin with. Otherwise entrepreneurs would be all crawling over for the opportunity. If there is no money in it, it will be left to rot.
        atlantic 3y ago
        Green energies in general are heavily subsidized, whereas conventional fossil fuels are heavily taxed. Without these measures, there would be no transition to alternative power sources, because economically they are nonsensical.
        viraptor 3y ago
        > whereas conventional fossil fuels are heavily taxed Hahaha... I wish. https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2023/08/24/fossil-fuel-subsidies-surged-to-record-7-trillion https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2023/08/24/fossil-fuel... > fossil-fuel subsidies rose by $2 trillion over the past two years as explicit subsidies (undercharging for supply costs) more than doubled to $1.3 trillion
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
- pxmpxm 3y ago
  You you talking about electricity or gasoline?
al_borland 3y ago
Gas stations have attendants. When payment doesn’t work, a person can go tell someone and still pay. When a pump has an issue it can be switch off when it first happens. If it’s an easy fix, it can be done right there. If it’s not an easy fix they can schedule a repair. These charging stations were built with a business model of set-it-and-forget-it. This doesn’t work. It should have been obvious this wouldn’t work, but I’m sure companies were blinded by the apparent simplicity of the business and the idea of being first to market. This seems like a fairly easy problem to solve for charging stations that are in the parking lot of a business. Provide training and resources for people at those business, and it can work much like the gas station model. This reminds me of the roll out of NFC payments. Companies had it, but it was always broken and they didn’t bother to fix it right away, as it wasn’t deemed critical, since everyone had another form of payment and people using NFC was rare. It was years before I felt comfortable enough to go somewhere without a physical credit card as a back up. It seems electric chargers are treated with the same, “nice to have, but not critical” attitude.
- rcbdev 3y ago
  In Germany and Austria many gas stations do not have attendants... (Avanti, Turmöl, etc.) I have never once experienced an issue with these in my entire life.
  - RamblingCTO 3y ago
    To be fair, this technology is probably simpler and way more mature than EV.
    - fragmede 3y ago
      way more mature, sure, but simpler? it has to vend a liquid and measure its amount and then charge you at the pump a specific amount. whereas the EV chargers are a cable and an Internet connection.
      - matt-attack 3y ago
tbyehl 3y ago
My special talents are disappearing that thing which was just in my hand and pulling up to the out-of-order gas pump without realizing before I've exited the car. Malfunctioning pumps are everywhere but they don't have much impact — there are other pumps, and all the occupied pumps will cycle customers in just a few minutes, and if you must move on to the next station, you almost certainly are able and won't experience further problems.
ploxiln 3y ago
Besides Tesla, all the other companies operating charger networks don't really care if they work. The purpose of the other charging stations/networks is for press releases, advertisements, government lawsuit settlements, etc. If it takes some more money and effort to fix malfunctions, and redesign some parts to address observed flaws, well that's not in the budget for this project, which isn't profitable anyway. They're not trying to be competitive in the charging market. This is the second time this market dynamic has happened. Only Tesla was really trying to make a actually good EV that people want. Despite all of Tesla's and Musk's faults ... the other car manufacturers were not trying. Critics often said that BMW or VW or any car company could start making way better EVs than Tesla, with better fitment and support, and destroy Tesla in a couple of years. But it took 10+ years for the other car companies to bring competitive models, enough time for Tesla carve dominant market share, and mature. GM made an EV in the late 90s, but it was a compliance car only available for lease in California, and GM famously destroyed them all at the end of the lease, though many wanted to buy them. It just really did not want to sell EVs. Anyway, it'll be another 5 years before there are competitive EV charging networks, until then it seems you need a rich unstable obsessive guy, to do something crazy like try to make a good EV charging network. Later the MBAs will figure it out.
gniv 3y ago
> Read through the article, but I still don't know why so many are broken and stay broken, Exactly. I was expecting some insights into federal subsidies and bad incentives. Or maybe rushing to be the first on the market, getting the best locations while cutting corners on quality. Or a shortage of qualified technicians. Still don't know what's wrong.
- pxmpxm 3y ago
  > I was expecting some insights into federal subsidies and bad incentives. I would bet a large amount of money on that - there are green subsidies for building the chargers and keeping them built, but the actual operation (selling electricity) is a money losing proposition and a business that doesn't make any sense. So mostly broken chargers is a way to maximize green subsidy for an otherwise unviable business model. Compare that to a gas station that makes money actually selling the gasoline, with an obvious incentive to keep the infrastructure functional.
rasz 3y ago
Chargers in Germany are build for compliance, not to make money.
1234letshaveatw 3y ago
no kidding. I read over 120 newspaper articles: why journalism is broken... :)
sheepshear 3y ago
The incentive reason is that rushing to market is more lucrative than waiting for a reliable product. The technical reason is that these early prospecters simply lack the capability to do sufficient reliability engineering. It would be a boring article.

arcanemachiner 3y ago

> Why are gasoline stations mostly never broken and chargers broken all the time? I mean... One of these technologies does have a 100 year head start on the other.

viraptor 3y ago
Still, I see a single "out of order" pump every once in a while and then a few days later it's working again. The question seems more "why are they allowed to stay broken?"
- trimethylpurine 3y ago
  Because gas customers are greater in number, regular, more frequent, and higher paying. Just guessing.
  - viraptor 3y ago
    Regardless, that's most likely leased spaces. If they don't make money, they lose money. And they seem to be off for a significant amount of time given that everyone seems to have a first hand story about it.
    - trimethylpurine 3y ago
      That's true, but I doubt people charging their car represent the bulk of their income. The government pays companies to build new stations. Fixing old ones means your techs are tied up, and you're able to bid on fewer projects, which means less revenue. Again, I'm guessing, but it seems like a decent explanation.
      - jonkho 3y ago
        Why is government paying subsidies to build charging stations? Must imply they are not a profitable endeavor to begin with. Otherwise entrepreneurs would be all crawling over for the opportunity. If there is no money in it, it will be left to rot.
        atlantic 3y ago
        Green energies in general are heavily subsidized, whereas conventional fossil fuels are heavily taxed. Without these measures, there would be no transition to alternative power sources, because economically they are nonsensical.
        viraptor 3y ago
        > whereas conventional fossil fuels are heavily taxed Hahaha... I wish. https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2023/08/24/fossil-fuel-subsidies-surged-to-record-7-trillion https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2023/08/24/fossil-fuel... > fossil-fuel subsidies rose by $2 trillion over the past two years as explicit subsidies (undercharging for supply costs) more than doubled to $1.3 trillion
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
pxmpxm 3y ago
You you talking about electricity or gasoline?

al_borland 3y ago

Gas stations have attendants. When payment doesn’t work, a person can go tell someone and still pay. When a pump has an issue it can be switch off when it first happens. If it’s an easy fix, it can be done right there. If it’s not an easy fix they can schedule a repair. These charging stations were built with a business model of set-it-and-forget-it. This doesn’t work. It should have been obvious this wouldn’t work, but I’m sure companies were blinded by the apparent simplicity of the business and the idea of being first to market. This seems like a fairly easy problem to solve for charging stations that are in the parking lot of a business. Provide training and resources for people at those business, and it can work much like the gas station model. This reminds me of the roll out of NFC payments. Companies had it, but it was always broken and they didn’t bother to fix it right away, as it wasn’t deemed critical, since everyone had another form of payment and people using NFC was rare. It was years before I felt comfortable enough to go somewhere without a physical credit card as a back up. It seems electric chargers are treated with the same, “nice to have, but not critical” attitude.

rcbdev 3y ago
In Germany and Austria many gas stations do not have attendants... (Avanti, Turmöl, etc.) I have never once experienced an issue with these in my entire life.
- RamblingCTO 3y ago
  To be fair, this technology is probably simpler and way more mature than EV.
  - fragmede 3y ago
    way more mature, sure, but simpler? it has to vend a liquid and measure its amount and then charge you at the pump a specific amount. whereas the EV chargers are a cable and an Internet connection.
    - matt-attack 3y ago

tbyehl 3y ago

My special talents are disappearing that thing which was just in my hand and pulling up to the out-of-order gas pump without realizing before I've exited the car. Malfunctioning pumps are everywhere but they don't have much impact — there are other pumps, and all the occupied pumps will cycle customers in just a few minutes, and if you must move on to the next station, you almost certainly are able and won't experience further problems.

ploxiln 3y ago

Besides Tesla, all the other companies operating charger networks don't really care if they work. The purpose of the other charging stations/networks is for press releases, advertisements, government lawsuit settlements, etc. If it takes some more money and effort to fix malfunctions, and redesign some parts to address observed flaws, well that's not in the budget for this project, which isn't profitable anyway. They're not trying to be competitive in the charging market. This is the second time this market dynamic has happened. Only Tesla was really trying to make a actually good EV that people want. Despite all of Tesla's and Musk's faults ... the other car manufacturers were not trying. Critics often said that BMW or VW or any car company could start making way better EVs than Tesla, with better fitment and support, and destroy Tesla in a couple of years. But it took 10+ years for the other car companies to bring competitive models, enough time for Tesla carve dominant market share, and mature. GM made an EV in the late 90s, but it was a compliance car only available for lease in California, and GM famously destroyed them all at the end of the lease, though many wanted to buy them. It just really did not want to sell EVs. Anyway, it'll be another 5 years before there are competitive EV charging networks, until then it seems you need a rich unstable obsessive guy, to do something crazy like try to make a good EV charging network. Later the MBAs will figure it out.

gniv 3y ago

> Read through the article, but I still don't know why so many are broken and stay broken, Exactly. I was expecting some insights into federal subsidies and bad incentives. Or maybe rushing to be the first on the market, getting the best locations while cutting corners on quality. Or a shortage of qualified technicians. Still don't know what's wrong.

pxmpxm 3y ago
> I was expecting some insights into federal subsidies and bad incentives. I would bet a large amount of money on that - there are green subsidies for building the chargers and keeping them built, but the actual operation (selling electricity) is a money losing proposition and a business that doesn't make any sense. So mostly broken chargers is a way to maximize green subsidy for an otherwise unviable business model. Compare that to a gas station that makes money actually selling the gasoline, with an obvious incentive to keep the infrastructure functional.

rasz 3y ago

Chargers in Germany are build for compliance, not to make money.

1234letshaveatw 3y ago

no kidding. I read over 120 newspaper articles: why journalism is broken... :)

sheepshear 3y ago

The incentive reason is that rushing to market is more lucrative than waiting for a reliable product. The technical reason is that these early prospecters simply lack the capability to do sufficient reliability engineering. It would be a boring article.