Why exactly is the public charging network so flakey?

[TheDeuce]

I'm a well known supporter of the EV movement on these forums, and it's a tough slog sometimes because there are a lot of poor assumptions and misinformation made about the cars - as ever a new solution is a tough sell. That's fair enough, I expect and celebrate that people question what is new.

But one thing really rankles me is that of all the real challenges that EV adoption faces, there is one entirely inexplicable and ridiculous challenge, and that is the flakey and awkward nature of public chargers.

Why on earth is it that so many are unreliable? Why does it have to be so complicated to use some of them? I appreciate that public chargers are connected devices that need to process payments and authorise usage by user cards etc - but half the stuff in my house that has a plug is connected and controllable from anywhere in the world and it all just works. I've used chargers where they have refused to commence charging and upon calling the assistance number I've been told 'it just needs resetting, I'll do that now, please wait a few minutes and try again'.. Why does something so basic need a reset to function? It's not a supercomputer, how has it managed to tie itself in knots in the first place?

Tesla supercharger users need not reply, we know you're ok. But whilst you should rightly feel smug, the supercharger network is evidence that actually it can all work seamlessly consistently. Why can no other provider seem to achieve such a basic and reliable level of consistent functionality?

It's a real problem, but I can't quite get my head around why it has to be such a problem. It's not rocket science to authorise and begin a charging session.

Discuss...

[TheDeuce]

OutInTheShed said:

Because, thus far, very few people actually want public charging very often.

Until people routinely want it, and will happily pay the true cost for someone to make a proper business out of providing it, it will be mickey mouse.

I can't accept that. I know of modern high speed chargers that are consistently busy but still I hear complaints of them failing often. I hardly use public chargers myself but I reckon 20-30% of the ones I have used or tried to use have failed me in some way.

Tesla's network just works, why can't the other networks? This is not high tech stuff.

[TheDeuce]

DMZ said:

My guesstimate on the reset is that the payment software lost connection to the payment server because it’s using a flakey mobile connection and many TCP/IP stacks are a bit brain dead and hang in these types of situations. You’ll see that on your phone as well if you’re in a weak coverage area, you’ll need to reset apps to get them to talk to the network again. You can obviously work around this in software but this stuff is hard to test so you only see it intermittently in the field. And somehow or another it has become acceptable to call someone up instead of fixing it. Tbf the makers of chargers are probably not software companies so they made some naive mistakes at the start like relying on some Mickey Mouse outfit to provide the payment infrastructure.

Then on the chargers themselves, they do fail. I think the first gen chargers were quite unreliable but better these days. It seems no one thought of maintenance at the start either.

Then you have the protocol between the charger and the car that can mess things up too.

It sure as hell should work better than it is.

I hear you on the point about solidity of remote connection, but again... The Tesla network requires that too and makes it work.

I have noticed that my cars 4/5g connection is generally far better than my phone's, I suspect because it can use a larger loop to pickup the signal and boost it than a 6mm thick smartphone can afford. This should be true of chargers too surely? Or just extend the wired net connection to the petrol station/supermarket or whatever next door that also authorises card payments via the net faultlessly day in day out.

[TheDeuce]

LukeBrown66 said:

I would guess because the tech is very new and a lot of it has been rushed to sale.

I very briefly worked for a company linked to BP and eventually bought by them and their stuff was very poorly and cheaply made by minimum wage people and a company looking to cash in and make a quick buck, which they did as they were bought by BP, hundreds were thrown together a week, so imagine that over several countries and you have a very poorly built product, we had very few tools, were begging and borrowing stuff all the time. And the quality was not really even checked beyond simple on and off.

It was a joke, so it does not shock me that some chargers do not work or are flaky, a flashy panel and app is not even half the job, how much has this stuff been properly tested with multiple uses, in different weathers, with disrupted connections, been abused by users.

Plenty of companies were aching to get into the market as certain people were chomping at the bit to have charging stations notably hotels and mainly services, but that means you will get some very bad people trying to make the for a quick buck, which is why you might find such flaky quality.

I don't see that any of the tech in an EV charger is new or particularly complicated. I would expect that a firm producing the units wanting to be remotely competitive would pay fairly low wages for, essentially assembly work, and would need to produce hundreds of units a week.

I'm equally sure that the chaps on the production line for Tesla superchargers are not professors paid £300k a year, and that the production line makes hundreds of them a week. Yet, they work.

There has to be more to it than perfectly typical modern production levels of pay and interest.

[TheDeuce]

DMZ said:

TheDeuce said:

I hear you on the point about solidity of remote connection, but again... The Tesla network requires that too and makes it work.

I have noticed that my cars 4/5g connection is generally far better than my phone's, I suspect because it can use a larger loop to pickup the signal and boost it than a 6mm thick smartphone can afford. This should be true of chargers too surely? Or just extend the wired net connection to the petrol station/supermarket or whatever next door that also authorises card payments via the net faultlessly day in day out.

It’s not impossible to fix but I know from experience that it’s something that is often overlooked. Tesla is a software company and has been doing chargers for a long time so they have learnt. It could also be that with Tesla doing hubs, they wire a fixed internet connection to the hub. Most others at least started with chargers being dotted around the place so the charger manufacturers probably felt (correctly) that it would be a lot easier to use a mobile connection.

I’m speculating but seems like a plausible root cause.

I dunno... I use remotely deployed PLC's with sim cards to monitor some of our site kit and I have known for the last 15 years that it's a bit flakey. I think the issues are well enough known and I definitely wouldn't have gone that route for something that people turn up to several times a day and really need to just work. As I said, they might be 'dotted around the place' but nearly always adjacent to somewhere that already has a wired connection - not difficult to make a wired extension to the charger array.