6 ms·

Why are so many EV charging stations broken in California?

38 points by lxm 3y ago

JumpCrisscross 3y ago
“[California] chose not to require that charger companies meet performance standards as it doled out $1 billion in subsidies, grants and other assistance to charger companies, with billions more on the way…no financial penalties for poor reliability were included in its subsidy and grant contracts, and no mechanisms for enforcement were set up. … Another big problem: A lack of comprehensive data…The government can’t even agree how many chargers there are in California. … Pasquale Romano left his job last fall as chief executive at ChargePoint, the nation’s largest charger company measured by total installations. ChargePoint’s board paid him more than $31 million over the last three years, plus stock options that vest this month valued at $44.8 million.“
- deleted 3y ago
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- ethbr1 3y ago
  It's insane that you still see things like this in procurement / grants. Assume bad faith and put as many checks as you can efficiently include. In this case, centralized registration and random operation auditing seems a minor expense, relative to the amount of money spent. Build a broken incentive structure, shame on you when the outcomes aren't as desired... :(
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > a broken incentive structure, shame on you when the outcomes aren't as desired What’s surprising is the lack of course correction. The California Energy Commission should threaten to sue, to claw back funds for non-performing chargers. Instead, they haven’t even changed the way they distribute new funds.
  - xxpor 3y ago
    Then compliance costs spiral out of control. This is why this kind of stuff should be done with state capacity. Make it a normal employer employee relationship.
  - mopenstein 3y ago
    Anecdotally, I was traveling in Maryland and struck up a conversation with a fella that worked for the state weights and measurements. He was going around checking gas pump accuracy. He said years go between when pumps are checked.
    - ethbr1 3y ago
      Balancing efficiency in auditing is fascinating to me. It always seems to boil down to "likelihood of auditing" vs "penalties for failing audit." In single-business industries (e.g. selling gas), I'd imagine penalties are highly effective. A gas station banned from selling gas because they were caught mis-measuring amounts isn't much of a gas station!
      - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        > always seems to boil down to "likelihood of auditing" vs "penalties for failing audit." California can’t even figure out how many chargers have been built. They know some aren’t working, they just can’t or won’t do anything about it. There doesn’t seem to be a downside to taking that money and putting up kaput chargers.
- com2kid 3y ago
  One figures that wanting to make money would be a sufficient motivation for companies to maintain their equipment. With anything even remotely resembling competent leadership, having the government pay for you to setup infrastructure that provides you with reoccurring revenue is a dream position to be in. Yet somehow.... here we are.
  - stetrain 3y ago
    Right now fast chargers are very expensive to build and install, and the return on investment just from selling electricity isn't great unless it's actually used many times per day. I think a lot of these charging providers make most of their money by installing the charger when it's paid for by grants, businesses, etc. rather than from the ongoing business of charging cars. Tesla reduces up front costs with vertical integration instead of buying chargers from third party suppliers like other charging companies do. They also have their own fleet of cars and data on where chargers are needed, so most of their chargers get decent utilization. That said I think part of why Tesla is doing deals to get more cars on their network is to increase that utilization even farther at more remote chargers that might currently be losing money on their books.
    - com2kid 3y ago
      > Right now fast chargers are very expensive to build and install, and the return on investment just from selling electricity isn't great unless it's actually used many times per day. It is funny, I have a friend running a fast charger business in another country, and he is making plenty of money w/o needing any government grants to get started. They are vertically integrated from doing HW design, software (they tried outsourcing that, it went badly), to managing physical locations. They are also expanding slowly and only doing installations where it makes financial sense.
      - stetrain 3y ago
        Sounds like they are doing things right. Do they also provide any other amenities that might drive revenue like vending, coffee, etc?
- _ea1k 3y ago
  It is astonishing how much money has been doled out to executives at these charging companies, while the company fundamentals have been extremely weak. It is hard to justify compensation packages like that.
  - flerchin 3y ago
    If we pay them more, it's clearly wasteful. If we pay them less, do we expect better results?
    - _ea1k 3y ago
      In the most recent quarter, Chargepoint had $367M in cash and cash equivalents. These large compensation packages suck a surprising amount of working capital out of businesses that already do not have huge runways. I'd expect better results if they focused on saving cash and building the business in a lower cost manner. They are early stage businesses and losses are expected, but they need to focus on the long term and long term compensation plans.
    - rightbyte 3y ago
      Higher profits is better results, so I guess yes?
    - JohnFen 3y ago
      > If we pay them less, do we expect better results? Sometimes, yes. Not speaking about the charging field specifically, but in general there seems to be a compensation level past which you begin to attract less desirable candidates.
      - _ea1k 3y ago
        To some extent, we've developed a system that rewards people for being able to pump the stock. It isn't always a bad thing, but it seems to be going pretty badly for most SPACs.
  - foobarian 3y ago
    If you don't pay them that much money, then you'll only be able to attract low-quality talent who won't be good at their job. /s
szaroubi 3y ago
https://archive.ph/20240124135252/https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2024-01-24/california-ev-charging-stations-broken https://archive.ph/20240124135252/https://www.latimes.com/en...
downrightmike 3y ago
Ultimately EVs are good, but they are too short sighted. If Cali wants to make real impact, they need to bring back light rail. It is completely wasteful to basically require everyone have a car, because there is no real alternative. This whole EV push is just FUD from car companies to give a partial solution that won't really work in the long run, but keeps making them lots of money.
- stetrain 3y ago
  The answer is both. Public transit to reduce the number of car miles needed, and EVs to replace the car miles that remain since the basic structure, zoning, and layout of a lot of homes and businesses in the US is not conducive to public transit replacing all or even most car miles driven. EVs are also great for all sorts of vehicles. Delivery vans, buses, garbage trucks, and local/regional trucking aren't easily replaceable with rail but will benefit from EVs. Even if we put huge emphasis on building out public transit, EVs can still be deployed faster. Converting a substantial amount of commuter miles to public transit is a great project but will take many decades.
  - trgn 3y ago
    It is indeed both, they're not mutually exclusive. electric cars also increase quality of life for everybody having to suffer the cars in their neighborhoods. They're much more quiet and don't pollute the local environment. Charging stations are also not nearly as trashy as a gas station.
    - downrightmike 3y ago
      Tire particles are also among the largest known sources of microplastic pollution with research completed in San Francisco Bay identifying nearly 50 percent of microplastic fibers that entered the Bay as vehicle tire wear. Need to get rid of tires.
      - trgn 3y ago
        fair enough, EVs pollute less than ICEs, still an improvement imho
blakesterz 3y ago
I guess it's not a problem unique to California? https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/16/23833337/ev-charging-unreliable-worsening-survey-jd-power https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/16/23833337/ev-charging-unre... The survey also identified the worst place to charge: Miami-Port Saint Lucie-Fort Lauderdale metropolitan area, with a 35 percent chargeless visit rate. That compares to a not-as-bad 29 percent rate in the Seattle-Tacoma, Denver-Aurora, and Dallas-Fort Worth metro areas. The least-abhorrent place to charge is the Cleveland-Akron-Canton metro area, with just a 12-percent failure rate amongst those who attempted to charge their EVs.
- ryandrake 3y ago
  This is pretty mind boggling. Imagine if 1 out of 8 gas stations had all the pumps broken. There'd be riots! And that's the best case city for EV charging?
  - bombcar 3y ago
    They'd just go out of business and close down. These charging things are unmanned and unmonitored and clearly nobody cares.
    - smileysteve 3y ago
      It's myopic / counter intuitive; An example near me is a Live/Work/Play development that put chargers congregated together in an open area away from businesses. Another example is an old mall, that has a struggling food court, with chargers the longest walk away. What's weird is that chargers started with the Nissan Bolt/Leaf with a concept of businesses/malls will put chargers up to encourage visitors to shop - or of cracker barrel (https://investor.crackerbarrel.com/news-releases/news-release-details/cracker-barrel-expands-comfort-zone-electric-vehicle-drivers https://investor.crackerbarrel.com/news-releases/news-releas...) locations. But it seems charger networks have ignored that gas stations don't make money on gas, but make money on convenience stores and have gone unmanned, even as significant numbers of new vehicles are sold.
_ea1k 3y ago
> Distressed by the state of the public charger system, automobile companies have struck agreements with Tesla to use its Superchargers. The details are yet to be announced. No word on what percentage of Tesla chargers non-Tesla cars will be able to use, how much it will cost The announcements promise > 15k stalls. That is basically every v3/v4 station. Why does he pretend that he doesn't know this when he purports to cover the EV industry. Oh, just another piece of rubbish by Russ Mitchell, the world's worst EV salesman. He "[...] covers the epic transition to electric vehicles" but somehow only finds negative things to say, especially about the largest manufacturer of EVs. Weird.
- darth_avocado 3y ago
  > how much it will cost I have seen non Tesla cars already charge at Tesla Superchargers, how do they not know how much it will cost?
  - _ea1k 3y ago
    Good point, there are some stations that support magic dock now. There are even a couple of those in California.
- jeffbee 3y ago
  That's a core behavior of the LA Times. They have a guy dedicated to trashing EVs. They have a guy dedicated to trashing high-speed rail. They have a guy dedicated to writing FUD about solar, wind, and lithium batteries. But anyway, it remains to be seen whether the perceived superiority of the supercharger network survives its initial contact with cars from makes other than Tesla.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- jcampbell1 3y ago
  What is the role of the 4th estate if not to hold the government accountable for how they spend forcibly taken money from the citizenry.
zyang 3y ago
I noticed many inoperable chargepoint chargers are due to the broken plug clip - it's a plastic clip that snaps easily when exposed to weather. It's truly poor design and even worse maintenance.
- jrmg 3y ago
  You can generally still use if the unit is otherwise undamaged. Plug it in, then lift/prise the remaining ‘thumb press’ part of the plug up.
  - robocat 3y ago
    > prise Use a knife for extra style points.
- kccqzy 3y ago
  And I have noticed that when the chargers are broken in this manner, Tesla vehicles are still able to charge due to the J1772 adapter being able to sidestep the issue. It's mainly because for Tesla connectors, the latch is on the car's side, so a cheap adapter simulates the latch on the J1772 side.
- stetrain 3y ago
  Yep, it's a seemingly silly thing but the physical external latch is one of the biggest downsides of the J-1772 / CCS Combo 1 cables compared to NACS. Europe's version of the AC charging connector (Type 2 Mennekes) and DC connector (CCS Combo 2) both use an internal vehicle-side latching mechanism like Tesla's connector and seem to have fewer reliability issues with the connectors themselves.
evrimoztamur 3y ago
There was a Technology Connections video on YouTube that I can’t find right now, so feel free to link it. He was basically talking about the fact that a lot of the infrastructure that we have surrounding gas pumps in stations being missing from EV chargers is not necessarily something that’s sustainable, and more so a presently lacking feature to prevent damage and other issues. He posits that as EV gets more popular security and amenities will be mandatory, and EV charging parks will look more like our present day gas stations. In the transition period, we are probably going to see chargers moving away from dedicated locations and into existing gas stations.
- ajmurmann 3y ago
  I understand that a lot of gas station revenue comes from selling stuff other than gas. I am somewhat surprised that gas stations didn't jump on EV chargers immediately, since charging takes a while and those customers might be more likely to make other purchases while waiting.
  - jewayne 3y ago
    Most of the Superchargers in the Cleveland area are at gas stations -- Sheetz, in particular.
  - logifail 3y ago
    > I am somewhat surprised that gas stations didn't jump on EV chargers immediately, since charging takes a while and those customers might be more likely to make other purchases while waiting At least in this part of Europe, there is simply not enough space at most gas stations for any significant proportion of vehicles to spend more than five minutes there.
    - HillRat 3y ago
      One medium to long-term strategy for most of Europe I've seen discussed is to move charging to the streetside and connect it in as a residential utility play with consumer ties -- in other words, chargers that could be used in "residential mode," where the resident just charges their vehicle directly, or in "consumer mode," where non-residents swipe a credit card and the resident gets an additional credit on the power usage.
hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
The article mentions this, but a lot of people don't realize that Electrify America was essentially set up as government-mandated punishment for VW for diesel-gate. Thus, it's not surprising their incentives aren't aligned to provide a great customer experience, as opposed to Tesla who basically views their Supercharging network as an extension of their cars and brand.
- tomtheelder 3y ago
  Absolutely, and you can clearly see that there are other providers with better incentives. I live in SoCal and drive an EV. I don’t even bother with EA chargers, but the EVGo stations around me are extremely reliable and plentiful.
- ActionHank 3y ago
  > as opposed to Tesla who basically views their Supercharging network as an extension of their cars and brand So they recall their chargers en masse every few months?
  - _ea1k 3y ago
    Kind of? They are software upgradable, and I get the feeling that software upgrades are fairly common. They also have recently had upgrades to support the upcoming NACS->CCS adapters as well as to natively support NACS enabled cars. They aren't recalls, though as this kind of thing doesn't happen with supercharger updates: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/13/nhtsa-asks-tesla-why-it-didnt-initiate-a-recall-after-safety-related-software-update.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/13/nhtsa-asks-tesla-why-it-didn...
  - stetrain 3y ago
    If you mean push software updates to them then yeah, they probably do.
  - m3kw9 3y ago
    When did we start calling software updates recalls?
andrewmcwatters 3y ago
Shouldn't automotive refuel and recharge stations all be governed by Weights and Measures departments across the nation? Why are these giant glorified USB chargers not subject to the same regulatory pressures yet?
- kotaKat 3y ago
  Honestly... that's not a bad idea. There are all sorts of EVSE testing apparatus on the market, surely we can have W&M ensure that electricity dispensing equipment are providing properly metered power at precise prices.
  - andrewmcwatters 3y ago
    I'm sure it'll happen eventually. Regulation lags I suppose, and mainstream uptake is still small for now.
- ajmurmann 3y ago
  It's like we forgot in the last ~30 years how to do useful regulation. I am inclined to blame this on the Republicans trying to starve the government to death instead of having lean, but well-executed regulations and the Democrats seeming mostly focused on environmental stuff.
andix 3y ago
In Europe I've barely seen any broken chargers. Off course sometimes there is a charger out of service, or some random issue. Most of the time this is shown in an app/car navigation, so you don't even go there. But in general they do work as advertised. But we also have a different connector (type 2/ccs instead of type 1/ccs), that seems to be less error prone. And for AC charging usually you need to bring your own cable (which gets locked by the car and the charger). Vandalism also doesn't seem to be such a big issue like in the US.
anonporridge 3y ago
Because all infrastructure in California is crumbling with a population in decline (currently at 2015/16 levels) with the prop 13 landed class parasitically sucking the productive class dry with increasingly burdensome rents, taxes, and cost of living?
- alephnerd 3y ago
  > Because all infrastructure in California is crumbling If you think CA infra is trash, wait till you visit the East Coast. There is so much infra construction across California with highway expansions, rail expansions, etc. Anyhow, it's Electrify America's chargers that are the ones that are broken due to VW's incompetence in the EV space.
- lxm 3y ago
  Maybe a biased source but California homeowners tend to be in the middle when you rank areas by the length of homeownership, median length being 13 years https://www.nar.realtor/blogs/economists-outlook/how-long-do-homeowners-stay-in-their-homes https://www.nar.realtor/blogs/economists-outlook/how-long-do... Any sale would reset the assessed value of the property.
  - anonporridge 3y ago
    This is a case where average might be more useful the median. If the richest real estate owners (top 1% own 13% of all US real estate) have a longer average ownership period, then that will have a disproportionate effect on the local market, because they own so much of it.
Buttons840 3y ago
How does a business that doesn't provide any service say in business? From the article: > How did the state-subsidized public charger system end up so problematic? California’s policies are at least partly to blame. The state chose not to require that charger companies meet performance standards as it doled out $1 billion in subsidies, grants and other assistance to charger companies, with billions more on the way. There it is. I suppose one silver lining with this "just build chargers, any chargers will do" approach is the faulty locations that currently exist can be made reliable in time, at least the space is reserved. The state just needs to fix their broken incentives.
mbesto 3y ago
The EV charging station (i.e. not at my home) situation is abysmal. I get the idea is that eventually every parking lot you're in has one, but there are still concerns. Here was my recent experience in Houston: - staying at a family members apartment building. cool I see there is a chargepoint station in the building. the building admin (1) didn't know if there was one (2) where it was (3) how to get access to it. finally another admin told me where it was. Okay now I need a chargepoint app. Downloaded. Oops, that chargepoint account needs to be linked to a resident of the apartment. Fail, on to the next. - Okay now I go to a movie and turns out there is a 50 kW charger in the parking. It's an EVGo. I drive up because I have no way of knowing whether it's being used or not. Parking lot is super busy and guess what - the EVGo charging block is just slammed in the middle of the standard parking lot and 3 of 4 parking spots that the power cables can reach are consumed by non-EVs. Only one car is actually charging. - So I'm now 20 min late for my movie. I find a 6 kW charging station (24 hours to get 50% of my battery) on the other side of the building, and its in a corporate parking garage. I use the first chargepoint and says the connector isn't working. Turns out there is a small piece of plastic that has broken on 2 of the 4 charging cables. So I'm on my 3rd cable when it finally works. I'm now charging at a measily 6 kW. 2 min later I get a message saying "if you stay past 7pm, the charge goes from $1.50/hr to $25/hr"...wtf? - Temperature drops to below freezing overnight and now my battery is degrading quite a bit. I have to stop at a Supercharger to get home to Austin. Awesome...250 kW tesla supercharger, will only take an estimated 8 minutes. Nope - it's super busy and turns out that it can only deliver 45 kW because there are 20 other Tesla's using the service. So now it's 25 minutes to charge my battery.
- stetrain 3y ago
  Plugshare is a great site/app for checking on weird chargers that you don't know exactly where they are and if they are working. The only chargers I actually trust to be there and working are Tesla Superchargers or actual public Chargepoint stations that I have checked on Plugshare. Those dinky 6kW chargers in parking garages installed by the city or whatever are nice bonuses when you come across them and they work, but definitely not worth planning around unless you are really desperate for a charge.
6R1M0R4CL3 3y ago
california is a socialist-injected bankrupt state that takes money hard-earned by people to redistribute it to people that did not work. welcome to socialism : tell us what you need, we will tell you how to life without it.

38 points by lxm 3y ago

“[California] chose not to require that charger companies meet performance standards as it doled out $1 billion in subsidies, grants and other assistance to charger companies, with billions more on the way…no financial penalties for poor reliability were included in its subsidy and grant contracts, and no mechanisms for enforcement were set up. … Another big problem: A lack of comprehensive data…The government can’t even agree how many chargers there are in California. … Pasquale Romano left his job last fall as chief executive at ChargePoint, the nation’s largest charger company measured by total installations. ChargePoint’s board paid him more than $31 million over the last three years, plus stock options that vest this month valued at $44.8 million.“

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
ethbr1 3y ago
It's insane that you still see things like this in procurement / grants. Assume bad faith and put as many checks as you can efficiently include. In this case, centralized registration and random operation auditing seems a minor expense, relative to the amount of money spent. Build a broken incentive structure, shame on you when the outcomes aren't as desired... :(
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > a broken incentive structure, shame on you when the outcomes aren't as desired What’s surprising is the lack of course correction. The California Energy Commission should threaten to sue, to claw back funds for non-performing chargers. Instead, they haven’t even changed the way they distribute new funds.
- xxpor 3y ago
  Then compliance costs spiral out of control. This is why this kind of stuff should be done with state capacity. Make it a normal employer employee relationship.
- mopenstein 3y ago
  Anecdotally, I was traveling in Maryland and struck up a conversation with a fella that worked for the state weights and measurements. He was going around checking gas pump accuracy. He said years go between when pumps are checked.
  - ethbr1 3y ago
    Balancing efficiency in auditing is fascinating to me. It always seems to boil down to "likelihood of auditing" vs "penalties for failing audit." In single-business industries (e.g. selling gas), I'd imagine penalties are highly effective. A gas station banned from selling gas because they were caught mis-measuring amounts isn't much of a gas station!
    - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
      > always seems to boil down to "likelihood of auditing" vs "penalties for failing audit." California can’t even figure out how many chargers have been built. They know some aren’t working, they just can’t or won’t do anything about it. There doesn’t seem to be a downside to taking that money and putting up kaput chargers.
com2kid 3y ago
One figures that wanting to make money would be a sufficient motivation for companies to maintain their equipment. With anything even remotely resembling competent leadership, having the government pay for you to setup infrastructure that provides you with reoccurring revenue is a dream position to be in. Yet somehow.... here we are.
- stetrain 3y ago
  Right now fast chargers are very expensive to build and install, and the return on investment just from selling electricity isn't great unless it's actually used many times per day. I think a lot of these charging providers make most of their money by installing the charger when it's paid for by grants, businesses, etc. rather than from the ongoing business of charging cars. Tesla reduces up front costs with vertical integration instead of buying chargers from third party suppliers like other charging companies do. They also have their own fleet of cars and data on where chargers are needed, so most of their chargers get decent utilization. That said I think part of why Tesla is doing deals to get more cars on their network is to increase that utilization even farther at more remote chargers that might currently be losing money on their books.
  - com2kid 3y ago
    > Right now fast chargers are very expensive to build and install, and the return on investment just from selling electricity isn't great unless it's actually used many times per day. It is funny, I have a friend running a fast charger business in another country, and he is making plenty of money w/o needing any government grants to get started. They are vertically integrated from doing HW design, software (they tried outsourcing that, it went badly), to managing physical locations. They are also expanding slowly and only doing installations where it makes financial sense.
    - stetrain 3y ago
      Sounds like they are doing things right. Do they also provide any other amenities that might drive revenue like vending, coffee, etc?
_ea1k 3y ago
It is astonishing how much money has been doled out to executives at these charging companies, while the company fundamentals have been extremely weak. It is hard to justify compensation packages like that.
- flerchin 3y ago
  If we pay them more, it's clearly wasteful. If we pay them less, do we expect better results?
  - _ea1k 3y ago
    In the most recent quarter, Chargepoint had $367M in cash and cash equivalents. These large compensation packages suck a surprising amount of working capital out of businesses that already do not have huge runways. I'd expect better results if they focused on saving cash and building the business in a lower cost manner. They are early stage businesses and losses are expected, but they need to focus on the long term and long term compensation plans.
  - rightbyte 3y ago
    Higher profits is better results, so I guess yes?
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    > If we pay them less, do we expect better results? Sometimes, yes. Not speaking about the charging field specifically, but in general there seems to be a compensation level past which you begin to attract less desirable candidates.
    - _ea1k 3y ago
      To some extent, we've developed a system that rewards people for being able to pump the stock. It isn't always a bad thing, but it seems to be going pretty badly for most SPACs.
- foobarian 3y ago
  If you don't pay them that much money, then you'll only be able to attract low-quality talent who won't be good at their job. /s

szaroubi 3y ago

https://archive.ph/20240124135252/https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2024-01-24/california-ev-charging-stations-broken https://archive.ph/20240124135252/https://www.latimes.com/en...

downrightmike 3y ago

Ultimately EVs are good, but they are too short sighted. If Cali wants to make real impact, they need to bring back light rail. It is completely wasteful to basically require everyone have a car, because there is no real alternative. This whole EV push is just FUD from car companies to give a partial solution that won't really work in the long run, but keeps making them lots of money.

stetrain 3y ago
The answer is both. Public transit to reduce the number of car miles needed, and EVs to replace the car miles that remain since the basic structure, zoning, and layout of a lot of homes and businesses in the US is not conducive to public transit replacing all or even most car miles driven. EVs are also great for all sorts of vehicles. Delivery vans, buses, garbage trucks, and local/regional trucking aren't easily replaceable with rail but will benefit from EVs. Even if we put huge emphasis on building out public transit, EVs can still be deployed faster. Converting a substantial amount of commuter miles to public transit is a great project but will take many decades.
- trgn 3y ago
  It is indeed both, they're not mutually exclusive. electric cars also increase quality of life for everybody having to suffer the cars in their neighborhoods. They're much more quiet and don't pollute the local environment. Charging stations are also not nearly as trashy as a gas station.
  - downrightmike 3y ago
    Tire particles are also among the largest known sources of microplastic pollution with research completed in San Francisco Bay identifying nearly 50 percent of microplastic fibers that entered the Bay as vehicle tire wear. Need to get rid of tires.
    - trgn 3y ago
      fair enough, EVs pollute less than ICEs, still an improvement imho

blakesterz 3y ago

I guess it's not a problem unique to California? https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/16/23833337/ev-charging-unreliable-worsening-survey-jd-power https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/16/23833337/ev-charging-unre... The survey also identified the worst place to charge: Miami-Port Saint Lucie-Fort Lauderdale metropolitan area, with a 35 percent chargeless visit rate. That compares to a not-as-bad 29 percent rate in the Seattle-Tacoma, Denver-Aurora, and Dallas-Fort Worth metro areas. The least-abhorrent place to charge is the Cleveland-Akron-Canton metro area, with just a 12-percent failure rate amongst those who attempted to charge their EVs.

ryandrake 3y ago
This is pretty mind boggling. Imagine if 1 out of 8 gas stations had all the pumps broken. There'd be riots! And that's the best case city for EV charging?
- bombcar 3y ago
  They'd just go out of business and close down. These charging things are unmanned and unmonitored and clearly nobody cares.
  - smileysteve 3y ago
    It's myopic / counter intuitive; An example near me is a Live/Work/Play development that put chargers congregated together in an open area away from businesses. Another example is an old mall, that has a struggling food court, with chargers the longest walk away. What's weird is that chargers started with the Nissan Bolt/Leaf with a concept of businesses/malls will put chargers up to encourage visitors to shop - or of cracker barrel (https://investor.crackerbarrel.com/news-releases/news-release-details/cracker-barrel-expands-comfort-zone-electric-vehicle-drivers https://investor.crackerbarrel.com/news-releases/news-releas...) locations. But it seems charger networks have ignored that gas stations don't make money on gas, but make money on convenience stores and have gone unmanned, even as significant numbers of new vehicles are sold.

_ea1k 3y ago

> Distressed by the state of the public charger system, automobile companies have struck agreements with Tesla to use its Superchargers. The details are yet to be announced. No word on what percentage of Tesla chargers non-Tesla cars will be able to use, how much it will cost The announcements promise > 15k stalls. That is basically every v3/v4 station. Why does he pretend that he doesn't know this when he purports to cover the EV industry. Oh, just another piece of rubbish by Russ Mitchell, the world's worst EV salesman. He "[...] covers the epic transition to electric vehicles" but somehow only finds negative things to say, especially about the largest manufacturer of EVs. Weird.

darth_avocado 3y ago
> how much it will cost I have seen non Tesla cars already charge at Tesla Superchargers, how do they not know how much it will cost?
- _ea1k 3y ago
  Good point, there are some stations that support magic dock now. There are even a couple of those in California.
jeffbee 3y ago
That's a core behavior of the LA Times. They have a guy dedicated to trashing EVs. They have a guy dedicated to trashing high-speed rail. They have a guy dedicated to writing FUD about solar, wind, and lithium batteries. But anyway, it remains to be seen whether the perceived superiority of the supercharger network survives its initial contact with cars from makes other than Tesla.
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jcampbell1 3y ago
What is the role of the 4th estate if not to hold the government accountable for how they spend forcibly taken money from the citizenry.

zyang 3y ago

I noticed many inoperable chargepoint chargers are due to the broken plug clip - it's a plastic clip that snaps easily when exposed to weather. It's truly poor design and even worse maintenance.

jrmg 3y ago
You can generally still use if the unit is otherwise undamaged. Plug it in, then lift/prise the remaining ‘thumb press’ part of the plug up.
- robocat 3y ago
  > prise Use a knife for extra style points.
kccqzy 3y ago
And I have noticed that when the chargers are broken in this manner, Tesla vehicles are still able to charge due to the J1772 adapter being able to sidestep the issue. It's mainly because for Tesla connectors, the latch is on the car's side, so a cheap adapter simulates the latch on the J1772 side.
stetrain 3y ago
Yep, it's a seemingly silly thing but the physical external latch is one of the biggest downsides of the J-1772 / CCS Combo 1 cables compared to NACS. Europe's version of the AC charging connector (Type 2 Mennekes) and DC connector (CCS Combo 2) both use an internal vehicle-side latching mechanism like Tesla's connector and seem to have fewer reliability issues with the connectors themselves.

evrimoztamur 3y ago

There was a Technology Connections video on YouTube that I can’t find right now, so feel free to link it. He was basically talking about the fact that a lot of the infrastructure that we have surrounding gas pumps in stations being missing from EV chargers is not necessarily something that’s sustainable, and more so a presently lacking feature to prevent damage and other issues. He posits that as EV gets more popular security and amenities will be mandatory, and EV charging parks will look more like our present day gas stations. In the transition period, we are probably going to see chargers moving away from dedicated locations and into existing gas stations.

ajmurmann 3y ago
I understand that a lot of gas station revenue comes from selling stuff other than gas. I am somewhat surprised that gas stations didn't jump on EV chargers immediately, since charging takes a while and those customers might be more likely to make other purchases while waiting.
- jewayne 3y ago
  Most of the Superchargers in the Cleveland area are at gas stations -- Sheetz, in particular.
- logifail 3y ago
  > I am somewhat surprised that gas stations didn't jump on EV chargers immediately, since charging takes a while and those customers might be more likely to make other purchases while waiting At least in this part of Europe, there is simply not enough space at most gas stations for any significant proportion of vehicles to spend more than five minutes there.
  - HillRat 3y ago
    One medium to long-term strategy for most of Europe I've seen discussed is to move charging to the streetside and connect it in as a residential utility play with consumer ties -- in other words, chargers that could be used in "residential mode," where the resident just charges their vehicle directly, or in "consumer mode," where non-residents swipe a credit card and the resident gets an additional credit on the power usage.

hn_throwaway_99 3y ago

The article mentions this, but a lot of people don't realize that Electrify America was essentially set up as government-mandated punishment for VW for diesel-gate. Thus, it's not surprising their incentives aren't aligned to provide a great customer experience, as opposed to Tesla who basically views their Supercharging network as an extension of their cars and brand.

tomtheelder 3y ago
Absolutely, and you can clearly see that there are other providers with better incentives. I live in SoCal and drive an EV. I don’t even bother with EA chargers, but the EVGo stations around me are extremely reliable and plentiful.
ActionHank 3y ago
> as opposed to Tesla who basically views their Supercharging network as an extension of their cars and brand So they recall their chargers en masse every few months?
- _ea1k 3y ago
  Kind of? They are software upgradable, and I get the feeling that software upgrades are fairly common. They also have recently had upgrades to support the upcoming NACS->CCS adapters as well as to natively support NACS enabled cars. They aren't recalls, though as this kind of thing doesn't happen with supercharger updates: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/13/nhtsa-asks-tesla-why-it-didnt-initiate-a-recall-after-safety-related-software-update.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/13/nhtsa-asks-tesla-why-it-didn...
- stetrain 3y ago
  If you mean push software updates to them then yeah, they probably do.
- m3kw9 3y ago
  When did we start calling software updates recalls?

andrewmcwatters 3y ago

Shouldn't automotive refuel and recharge stations all be governed by Weights and Measures departments across the nation? Why are these giant glorified USB chargers not subject to the same regulatory pressures yet?

kotaKat 3y ago
Honestly... that's not a bad idea. There are all sorts of EVSE testing apparatus on the market, surely we can have W&M ensure that electricity dispensing equipment are providing properly metered power at precise prices.
- andrewmcwatters 3y ago
  I'm sure it'll happen eventually. Regulation lags I suppose, and mainstream uptake is still small for now.
ajmurmann 3y ago
It's like we forgot in the last ~30 years how to do useful regulation. I am inclined to blame this on the Republicans trying to starve the government to death instead of having lean, but well-executed regulations and the Democrats seeming mostly focused on environmental stuff.

andix 3y ago

In Europe I've barely seen any broken chargers. Off course sometimes there is a charger out of service, or some random issue. Most of the time this is shown in an app/car navigation, so you don't even go there. But in general they do work as advertised. But we also have a different connector (type 2/ccs instead of type 1/ccs), that seems to be less error prone. And for AC charging usually you need to bring your own cable (which gets locked by the car and the charger). Vandalism also doesn't seem to be such a big issue like in the US.

anonporridge 3y ago

Because all infrastructure in California is crumbling with a population in decline (currently at 2015/16 levels) with the prop 13 landed class parasitically sucking the productive class dry with increasingly burdensome rents, taxes, and cost of living?

alephnerd 3y ago
> Because all infrastructure in California is crumbling If you think CA infra is trash, wait till you visit the East Coast. There is so much infra construction across California with highway expansions, rail expansions, etc. Anyhow, it's Electrify America's chargers that are the ones that are broken due to VW's incompetence in the EV space.
lxm 3y ago
Maybe a biased source but California homeowners tend to be in the middle when you rank areas by the length of homeownership, median length being 13 years https://www.nar.realtor/blogs/economists-outlook/how-long-do-homeowners-stay-in-their-homes https://www.nar.realtor/blogs/economists-outlook/how-long-do... Any sale would reset the assessed value of the property.
- anonporridge 3y ago
  This is a case where average might be more useful the median. If the richest real estate owners (top 1% own 13% of all US real estate) have a longer average ownership period, then that will have a disproportionate effect on the local market, because they own so much of it.

Buttons840 3y ago

How does a business that doesn't provide any service say in business? From the article: > How did the state-subsidized public charger system end up so problematic? California’s policies are at least partly to blame. The state chose not to require that charger companies meet performance standards as it doled out $1 billion in subsidies, grants and other assistance to charger companies, with billions more on the way. There it is. I suppose one silver lining with this "just build chargers, any chargers will do" approach is the faulty locations that currently exist can be made reliable in time, at least the space is reserved. The state just needs to fix their broken incentives.

mbesto 3y ago

The EV charging station (i.e. not at my home) situation is abysmal. I get the idea is that eventually every parking lot you're in has one, but there are still concerns. Here was my recent experience in Houston: - staying at a family members apartment building. cool I see there is a chargepoint station in the building. the building admin (1) didn't know if there was one (2) where it was (3) how to get access to it. finally another admin told me where it was. Okay now I need a chargepoint app. Downloaded. Oops, that chargepoint account needs to be linked to a resident of the apartment. Fail, on to the next. - Okay now I go to a movie and turns out there is a 50 kW charger in the parking. It's an EVGo. I drive up because I have no way of knowing whether it's being used or not. Parking lot is super busy and guess what - the EVGo charging block is just slammed in the middle of the standard parking lot and 3 of 4 parking spots that the power cables can reach are consumed by non-EVs. Only one car is actually charging. - So I'm now 20 min late for my movie. I find a 6 kW charging station (24 hours to get 50% of my battery) on the other side of the building, and its in a corporate parking garage. I use the first chargepoint and says the connector isn't working. Turns out there is a small piece of plastic that has broken on 2 of the 4 charging cables. So I'm on my 3rd cable when it finally works. I'm now charging at a measily 6 kW. 2 min later I get a message saying "if you stay past 7pm, the charge goes from $1.50/hr to $25/hr"...wtf? - Temperature drops to below freezing overnight and now my battery is degrading quite a bit. I have to stop at a Supercharger to get home to Austin. Awesome...250 kW tesla supercharger, will only take an estimated 8 minutes. Nope - it's super busy and turns out that it can only deliver 45 kW because there are 20 other Tesla's using the service. So now it's 25 minutes to charge my battery.

stetrain 3y ago
Plugshare is a great site/app for checking on weird chargers that you don't know exactly where they are and if they are working. The only chargers I actually trust to be there and working are Tesla Superchargers or actual public Chargepoint stations that I have checked on Plugshare. Those dinky 6kW chargers in parking garages installed by the city or whatever are nice bonuses when you come across them and they work, but definitely not worth planning around unless you are really desperate for a charge.

6R1M0R4CL3 3y ago

california is a socialist-injected bankrupt state that takes money hard-earned by people to redistribute it to people that did not work. welcome to socialism : tell us what you need, we will tell you how to life without it.