4 ms·

Correct. There is nothing about fair weather that makes California's EV chargers particularly bad. They are all bad. It is a harder problem than the EV industry

Correct. There is nothing about fair weather that makes California's EV chargers particularly bad. They are all bad. It is a harder problem than the EV industry boosters want you to believe. Coupling and decoupling a load of hundreds of kilowatts to and from the grid presents significant life safety issues and the people who make the equipment are biased towards having the equipment fail open at the slightest whiff of a fault.

logifail 3y ago
> Coupling and decoupling a load of hundreds of kilowatts to and from the grid presents significant life safety issues [..] Am I the only one who read that bit and immediately started thinking of all the things that can - and very occasionally do - go wrong when refueling an ICE vehicle?
cduzz 3y ago
It's a mixture of different problems. L2 charging is pretty simple -- connect to existing AC grid, let people charge slowly. Needs to be everywhere (light poles) and needs to be robust and inexpensive. L3 charging is hideously complex -- you're dumping 5-10 single families of power into a cord, outside in the driving rain. You're getting billed as a commercial utility consumer where you're charged at your 95th percentile current draw for any given month, and you're paying commercial power rates. People will get mad if you vaporize their husband or hurt their car. But -- Tesla seems to have done L2 and L3 at scale. Other companies such as electrify america seem to be examples of malicious compliance or, at best, absolute incompetence.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
_ea1k 3y ago
Yeah, I saw a video recently where an EVGo stall was down because someone had reported a cracked connector. They are pretty quick to just disable things until they can have it inspected, and this can be the case even when the other cable might be fine. It isn't an easy business right now.

logifail 3y ago

> Coupling and decoupling a load of hundreds of kilowatts to and from the grid presents significant life safety issues [..] Am I the only one who read that bit and immediately started thinking of all the things that can - and very occasionally do - go wrong when refueling an ICE vehicle?

cduzz 3y ago

It's a mixture of different problems. L2 charging is pretty simple -- connect to existing AC grid, let people charge slowly. Needs to be everywhere (light poles) and needs to be robust and inexpensive. L3 charging is hideously complex -- you're dumping 5-10 single families of power into a cord, outside in the driving rain. You're getting billed as a commercial utility consumer where you're charged at your 95th percentile current draw for any given month, and you're paying commercial power rates. People will get mad if you vaporize their husband or hurt their car. But -- Tesla seems to have done L2 and L3 at scale. Other companies such as electrify america seem to be examples of malicious compliance or, at best, absolute incompetence.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

_ea1k 3y ago

Yeah, I saw a video recently where an EVGo stall was down because someone had reported a cracked connector. They are pretty quick to just disable things until they can have it inspected, and this can be the case even when the other cable might be fine. It isn't an easy business right now.