Charging Station Reliability Sucks More Ass Than Expected
It seems as if every week some EV-driving friend talks about inoperable public charging stations on social media, prompting questions about how bad public charging networks could actually be. Well, a team of researchers largely affiliated with the University of California Berkeley’s Department of Bioengineering have finally decided to quantify these woes. The study’s small, but still interesting, as it evaluated every public piece of Level 3 CCS EV service equipment (EVSE) in the Bay Area – all 657 systems across 181 charging stations at the time of the study. Now, the researchers’ criteria for a charger being functional was pretty simple, either a charger could charge a car for two minutes or be charging someone else’s plugged-in vehicle to be deemed functional. Pretty logical, not a crazy high bar, yet charging stations still came up short. According to the study, 22.7 percent of EVSEs were inoperable due to some sort of malfunction. Leading malfunctions include 47 instances of payment system failure, 42 instances of charge initiation failure, 24 instances of an error message on-screen, and 23 instances of a blank or non-responsive screen. Add in seven connection errors and six broken connectors, and a pretty poor portrait is painted. Of equal annoyance are a reported 32 EVSEs where the cable wouldn’t reach the port on the car. What sort of car was too big for these charging stations? The Chevrolet Bolt, a small car with a tiny front overhang and a charge port on the left front fender. There’s literally no good reason why any CCS cable should be too short to charge a Bolt. For anyone with no EV experience, imagine that you drive a car that requires premium gasoline and nearly a quarter of all pumps don’t offer 91 octane or higher. Public charging station companies really need to step their game up to provide reliable, easy-to-use charging services. I know this might sound all “you had one job,” but charging station companies do have one job and they’re not doing so well at it.
Solid State Batteries Might Be Getting Closer
Mind you, new technologies like 800-volt architectures and advanced batteries should make charging a bit less of a pain. Solid Energy is a proponent of solid-state batteries and has just unveiled a functional production line for solid-state batteries. Well color me impressed. According to Automotive News, the Boulder-based battery company will use the production line to produce test batteries, some of which will stay internal and some of which may go to the likes of Ford and BMW by the end of this year. While this seems like a seriously rapid timeline, mass production isn’t expected to start for another four years or so. Plenty of time to tweak sulphide-based chemistry, perfect QC, and develop vehicles that can best use solid-state tech. While I’m feeling a bit cautious about this timeline as solid state batteries always seem to be five years away, I’d be pleased to see someone crack the formula. Traditional lithium-ion batteries are egregiously heavy, and light long-range EVs do sound quite wonderful.
NHTSA Probes Broncos Going Boom
When functioning properly, Ford’s 2.7-liter turbocharged V6 is a wonderful engine. Torque-rich, capable, efficient, generally effortless. Key operator being “when functioning properly.” A bunch of Bronco SUV owners are having a really bad time with Ford’s 2.7-liter V6, and it’s enough to raise the eyebrows of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. It turns out that some of these Broncos are suffering catastrophic engine failure at rather low mileage. Bronco6G forum user Lucchese has a neat post breaking down the 50 reported V6 engine failures forum members have experienced so far. Keep in mind that this is a fairly small data sample (forum user + delivered + engine failure + posted about it), but it’s definitely still worth mentioning. The NHTSA thinks it has found a likely culprit – possible valvetrain failure is cited in the ODI resume. If engine failures are prominent enough to prompt a recall, 25,538 Broncos could be affected. We’ll have more on this story later along with some epic carnage photos, but until then, sit tight.
Bentley Fights Wellness With The Letter S
In the world of performance cars, S is generally a fairly good letter. Not as hard-edged as R or SV or a number, S typically denotes a trim that focuses on driving enjoyment instead of just pure numbers. A little bit more speed than base, a little bit more manageable than loaded. It looks like Bentley’s now hopping aboard the S train with the new Continental GT and GTC S models. Both of these S cars start with a basic four-liter turbocharged V8, then add a touch of noise, some handling improvements, and a dash of visual flair. Let’s start with the noise. While the turbocharged V8 makes the same 542 horsepower (404 kW) and 568 lb.-ft. (770 Nm) as in the base car, it now breathes through a standard sports exhaust system. Is this the Hamptons equivalent of putting a giant N1 can muffler on your D16Y8-powered 1.6-liter Honda Civic? Perhaps. Moving on to the handling, electrically-actuated active anti-roll bars come as standard equipment, a nice bit of kit to have when you’re trying to wrestle this much mass. Add in black exterior trim, unique wheels, suede-style interior bits like the seat inserts and steering wheel, and a few S emblems, and you have what Bentley considers the counterpart to its “wellness” of its Azure line of cars. It’s a bit visually-loud, but when has Bentley ever been subtle?
The Flush
Whelp, time to drop the lid on today’s edition of The Morning Dump. Welcome back to Monday, where every knuckled skinned in the garage is a potential conversation-opener for making your coworkers’ eyes glaze over. While I helped a friend prevent his project car and parts car from being crushed by suburban bylaw enforcement, I’m eager to hear what you got up to over the weekend. Lead photo credit: Chargepoint Your experience mirrors mine. We drove to Orlando a few weeks ago which would only require one stop for charging. However, because I don’t trust the chargers we took my wife’s ICE vehicle. I think a bigger issue than throwing errors is the poor charging cable design, as that’s permanent (I wonder if it’s an old design with those numbers?), plus the fact that a random resample of 10% revealed no change in operational state. The number of payment failures isn’t great either, as the payment systems for EVs is pretty irritating already. As well, looking at the paper, it looks like manufacturer/operater plays a role, with Electrify America having slightly better overall reliability. I wonder if location has anything to do with this as well? For example, San Francisco has a higher than average number of chargers per person than most places (maybe fewer per EV)–would maintenance be deferred more since there are more alternatives compared to smaller or more rural cities? On another note, I’d love for y’all to do a technical deep dive on battery chemistry and long-term degredation–I’m familiar with the general breakdown mechanisms of Li batteries, but I’d be curious how it differs from manufacturer to manufacturer and chemistry to chemistry. I owned a Volt for 4 years as my commuter- Filled it up twice a year with unleaded. Plugged in when I got home (36 mile each way commute) and when I got to the office (free charger!). Never once used a public charger- Full charge every night on my 120v plug that came with the car. 5 days a week driving- less than 20 bucks in power a week in energy costs… 13k miles per year in driving- not one mile from a public charger (ok- I did use 8-15 gallons of gas during that time though). Friend has a model 3, no fast charger at her home- Drives everywhere in the bay area- plugs in every night. Recoups a hundred miles or so every night, and it fills it up all the way every night when she only drives to work. After owning it for two years she finally drove it from SJ to LA to meet us at the beach, stopped once at a supercharger after 2.5 hours of driving for lunch got 250 miles in 30 min while eating. Made it to the beach in OC with charge to spare did the same on the way back (total charging cost both ways 56 dollars vs $6 a gallon for unleaded!). She can charge anywhere overnight that has a regular 120v plug- She literally has not been to a gas station for 2 years, and only to a supercharger twice… And its amazing how much money you save- you can afford plane tickets to fly places far away… Thats 2 people, with two cars- who have used a public charger (Gas Station) twice in a 2 year period. The thing to keep in mind is this: Under most but the most extreme weather conditions, you get roughly 3.5 miles per kW-hr on an EV (ymmv). A 12A 120V charger is a 1.44 kW charger. This means you can put about 5 miles an hour on your EV using a simple 120V outlet. Since the average driver drives 40 miles a day, they can easily replenish the battery while sleeping. Of course, some people have longer daily mileage. Some people don’t have access to a 120V outlet. All these things are true…. but infrastructure that exists TODAY can cover a large percentage of potential EV users needs TODAY. Car-b-ques are just as likely (if not more so) with thousands of gallons of fuel sitting around, leaking into our groundwater, but nobody is talking about how dangerous and un-scalable they are. Why is it only impossible when it is new? Why does the money only matter when it is new? Most charging companies have allocated more money and effort on (1), but not so much for (2). Seems similar to how our highway funds are used – there always seems to be money for new roads, but less for making sure our existing roads are well maintained. I’ve done service calls on solar arrays that have been down for months before anyone called us. You’d think people would occasionally glance at the nice, user-friendly app on their phone or at least notice that their electrical bill had gone way up, but they don’t always. If no-one is going out and periodically just, you know, looking at the chargers, there’s only so much the installer can do about it. The alternative is to pay the installer (or anyone really, you aren’t necessarily locked into your original installer when it comes to maintenance) to come out and periodically check on them. That’s an option too, but the installer isn’t going to do it out of the goodness of their heart. Hmmm.. You’d think a gas station would be the perfect use case for an emergency generator. You got a 70kW portable generator you can fit in your trunk? Nope. You got a 70kW genset that’ll fit in a parking spot? Nope. Generac makes a 70kW, 88kVA, 60Hz EPA certified stationary unit. It requires 21 quarts of oil, would eat 26.3m^3/hr of natural gas or 10.1 gallons of propane per hour, is 93″ x 40″ x 46″, weighs over 2,800lbs, can be heard two blocks away, and you can expect the initial cost to be over $30,000. Here in Quebec, the issue appears to be more about quantity vs quality of charging stations. EV’s and plug in hybrids are very popular here. There’s 15 houses on my street and 5 EV’s. As for the flush: I can’t, finally pulled the travel trailer out of hibernation and found out my water pump has pumped its last. BTW, it’s not only car engineers who find ways to make parts hard to reach and replace. “Fast” charging means HVDC – which is extremely touchy and requires insanely high and stable power. HVDC is extremely prone to arc flash hazards, which are lethal, and cause fires. I work routinely with HVDC – it is far more dangerous than similar voltage AC current. We do not take any chances with 300VDC, because DC is used to deliver significantly higher amperages. Your typical HVDC station is 500VDC at 125 AMPS. That is not ‘dangerous.’ That is ‘instantaneously lethal with a closed casket funeral.’ Your entire house has 220VAC 100A or 200A service, a total of 35kW usable after derating. That fast charging station is around or over 70kW after rectifier losses. Seventy, fucking, kilowatts. Two large houses worth of power. (But tell me again how ‘efficient’ they are.) In order to supply this for 2 fast charging stations, you need 480V 3ph service rated to 300A. How much power is that? That’s about how much power you typically would find in a medium sized datacenter. For the whole thing. Including the mechanicals. Over 140 kilowatts. It is an obscene amount of power. Except in the datacenter, we absolutely do not do ‘race to the bottom’ because this has severe safety implications. In the charging stations, they can just go into a gross failure mode and cut the AC input. So why spend money? And of course, any AC input fault knocks them into failure mode. Want to know how many times the 480V services goes out of phase or below voltage on a daily basis? Hint: data centers have instant-cutover battery backups to cover for generator gap for a reason. Last time I was in a position to monitor it, we averaged over 40 voltage drops (below 465V) and 3 phase desyncs, per day. Any time another big consumer on the 480V service cranked up their motor loads, voltage dropped like a rocket. If they had an equipment fault, it could trip phase down the line. And they’re using the absolute cheapest crap they can buy with a safety plan of ‘shut down everything at any problem.’ Of course they’re always broken! Contrast this with a gasoline pump. Sure, the fancy glass gravity pumps are long gone, but it’s still basically a very mechanical system. Mechanical systems don’t introduce sparks. They have a pump that basically draws the gas into a nearly purely mechanical system. There’s a check valve to hold gas in the pipes and reduce pump loads. A mechanical flow meter. For all those blinky lights and obnoxious advertising screens, fuel dispensers are still extremely mechanical. There’s just not much to break, and anything that does, is relatively simple (or an absolute nightmare because of digging up buried lines) to fix. Perversely, once I thought about it, I threw another Benjamin in and went agm. For added lightness and vibration resistance, you know. Plug-In hybrids are great for Fuel Economy but AWFUL for emissions. Depending on when the engine kicks on (like the freeway at 70mph) the cold start emissions will be atrocious. And the OEM has to build a vehicle with an expensive electric powertrain, and battery, and internal combustion engine (with an expensive CAT). No good. If anything, I think they’d reduce the total cold starts anyways. Short trips around town are battery-only, and longer trips are warmed up most of the time. So the number one problem with the move to EVs is not battery chemistry, or getting enough power to charge stations, or convincing people that EVs aren’t scary newfangled technology, it’s the entirely solved problem of taking money in exchange for goods and services?! If there were a reasonable alternative I’d say these companies deserve to fail. As it is, we’re probably stuck with them. This checks out: https://www.theautopian.com/live-david-sold-a-nice-lady-a-jeep-and-it-immediately-blew-up-shes-fine-jeep-isnt/ It’s like that with solar arrays—my company will certainly remotely monitor your array, and even come out on a regularly scheduled basis to give it a checkup and make sure everything is as it should be, making repairs if necessary. However, the customer needs to sign a contract that includes that service. We don’t do it for free. The company hosting the chargers replaced Blink with Chargepoint. The “new” chargers started seeing much higher usage, either by coincidence or because they actually worked, which meant they received more care and attention if anything did go wrong, which kept them available for more people to use them…and repeat again. I drive a Tesla, and will be leaving on a 3K+ mile road trip tomorrow. I very rarely (less than a handful of times in 7 years across two different Teslas) have to use non-Tesla chargers. When I’ve run into problems, it’s because a storm has knocked out power to an entire area (including the gas station pumps nearby), or because I’m at a high demand location with a limited number of chargers available (and even then, I’m almost always charging in 15 minutes). I have friends with other EVs who have had much more experience with poorly maintained chargers. There are some new vendors coming online who appear to be doing things better these days. They have higher speed chargers, better locations, and more reliable networks. Maintenance and monitoring isn’t optional, however.
