Electrify America is getting far too much money and is using it to effectively anti-sell EVs with their janky, broken, and insecure infrastructure. Their funding comes from government subsidies and traditional automakers making reparations for emissions scandals (Volkswagen, $2B). This network is basically being built out of malicious compliance, without reasonable desires to make it good and reliable...<p>My mind will only change when I see new generation EA DCFC post & charger that's designed for scale, high stall reliability, and a mean-time between service to rival that of Tesla's supercharger network.
They wanted to saw off a charging cable??? With potential juice on both sides (grid and car with fried electronics)?<p>You could not pay me enough money to do that even if “switched off”
Looking forward to a teardown of an EA charger by someone familiar with power circuits. I wonder if they are shorting primary to secondary and getting 2400V AC straight into their car battery... Probably welding the plug to the car too.
Worked in that industry for 2 years making big chargers. The electronic latch that locks the plug into the vehicle is IMHO the single stupidest (even dangerous) thing. Anything unexpected goes wrong and you can't unplug the cable and you are stranded. I have no idea why any vehicle manufacturer would put this on their car.
Ok, wow, another day, more bad news regarding EA?<p><a href="https://old.reddit.com/r/electricvehicles/comments/10o33jo/electrify_america_chargers_have_been_hacked/" rel="nofollow">https://old.reddit.com/r/electricvehicles/comments/10o33jo/e...</a>
I will never buy a Tesla, but the CCS network is pretty garbage in the U.S. right now. EA regularly has outages, their newer models (which I have not used) fry vehicles or fail in cold weather, I've only heard bad things about EVGo but never used them.<p>Fortunately I stick to home (Metro Boston) and haven't had any serious problems with ChargePoint stations heading up to Mount Desert Island in Maine, the farthest trips I've done.
My first thought that one side or the other is failing to follow some part of the charging standard and it's hard to tell which. Then I saw that it has happened with Rivian <i>and</i> Ford <i>and</i> Chevy vehicles, so it's pretty clearly on the charger side. Never used EA and now I suspect I never will. They're just evil or incompetent or both. I had initial issues with billing on EVgo but otherwise they've been fine, and I've never had much problem with Chargepoint (except for rarity of compatible L3). That plus L2 at home has been quite sufficient.
The reports are consistent with the EA cabs doing something that are causing the packs to blow their pyrofuses. The only thing that really makes sense is some kind of transient DC overvoltage. The problem with pyrofuses is that they are slow. They will stop some kind of catastrophic event like a battery fire, but they are too slow to prevent damage.<p>Having seen inside their cabinets, I wouldn't plug into one if you paid me. Building a reliable charging network is apparently only a secondary business goal of Electrify America.
This is particularly disturbing because often EA chargers are the only reliable fast chargers around for CCS, so it's not like you can just avoid them for another network on a long trip.
One often over looked aspect of EVs are their relative fragility compared to a ICE vehicle. I see it as an analog/digital divide. You can get an ICE to temporarily run with all sorts of deficits, incorrect inputs, or hacks. It will still kinda work. EVs are way more digital. If one thing in the chain breaks the bit flips to false and you're done until the tow truck comes and an expert with special, secret knowledge and tools can disassemble it and flip the bit back to true so to speak.