19.2kW charger fix for EA charging and Plug & Charge

[andrewket]

That's very curious. Why would one have to wait a week for the payment processing bit to work properly?

The certificate that IDs the car either needs to be added to EA’s Auth system and/or propagated across the network.

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[blulite]

I assume there’s one or more arcane weekly batch jobs involved?

Nope, once a week they give the hamsters (the little guys make the electricity) time off the wheel. They receive their new instructions during that break.

 

[TurboBear]

Nope, once a week they give the hamsters (the little guys make the electricity) time off the wheel. They receive their new instructions during that break.

This also explains the inconsistent charging speeds.

 

[cometguy]

So for those of you with 2021 Taycans, does the Porsche Plug & Charge software really work at all Electrify America stations now, without the need to use a cellphone for anything in order to quickly charge?

 

[andrewket]

So for those of you with 2021 Taycans, does the Porsche Plug & Charge software really work at all Electrify America stations now, without the need to use a cellphone for anything in order to quickly charge?

I don't know that any single owner knows the answer to that question. An engineer at EA somewhere does. We have a few data points that P&C is now working at a few locations. Until there are more of us with the update and we use additional EA sites, the best I think we can say is that it looks promising.

With respect to the customer experience, yes -- you plug in and the car starts charging. You don't have to use an app, touch the screen, etc.

 

[kort]

So for those of you with 2021 Taycans, does the Porsche Plug & Charge software really work at all Electrify America stations now, without the need to use a cellphone for anything in order to quickly charge?

in theory yes, however it is my understand that not all of the EA chargers are plug and charge capable. so if you encounter one of those then I suppose you would need the app to initiate a charge. don't ask me how one knows if the unit is plug and charge capable because I couldn't tell you.

 

[blulite]

My car got updated yesterday, and I've tested charging at SIGNET charger. IT WORKS! The SIGNET charger that I went to is a brand new installation, so we may start seeing more of them.

My experience with the dealer was a little different than has been reported here. My service advisor had a complete package that he had to review with me both before and after the update. He couldn't give me the package, but he was very patient reviewing the process with me. All the details were covered, no surprises:

1. I was warned that the PCM would be reset, and he needed to confirm that I was aware and I would be ok with it. The reset did occur, and most things came back as expected. It was good to run through the car setup now (instead of day #1 of ownership when I was unsure what all the settings meant).
2. He had to confirm that I had problems with SIGNET chargers. He had a picture of exactly what a SIGNET charger looks like to confirm.
3. When I returned to pick up the car, he let me know PnC was now available.
4. I was told PnC could take 1-2 weeks to work, as they had to push my new certificate to the network. So this confirms that we are getting a new certificate and that it does take some time to get out on the network.
5. I can try the PnC immediately, but if I get a failure at the charger, I am to disable PnC in the PCM then try the charging session via the Connect App on the iPhone. If I leave PnC enabled, it could mess up communication and make charging fail. Once the cert is out on the network, this issue should go away.

All in all, I am pleased with this experience. Porsche seems to have their stuff together on this one. It's not completely ready for prime time as there are some caveats about the distribution of certificates that the average owner might not be able to follow. But for those of us that care to get in the weeds a bit, this is a great solution.

I can't wait until PnC works as a final close to this event.

Apparently, all SIGNET chargers look the same. Here are a couple of pictures that I snapped today from my demon charging unit that started my problems:

 

[SWORDER]

My car got updated yesterday, and I've tested charging at SIGNET charger. IT WORKS! The SIGNET charger that I went to is a brand new installation, so we may start seeing more of them.

I was going to post about my experience today but Blulite pretty much covered the critical points. His experience matched my own. Looking forward to trying out Plug and Charge after waiting one or two weeks.

A few other minor bullet points for those going through the same process:

• Very few people relatively speaking have the 19.2kW onboard charger so don't be surprised if your repair team initially tells you that your car is already up to date. When they do, point them to the following. It doesn't mean anything to us, but it means something to them:
  • Porsche Bulletin: 2120
  • prms-2639739
  • on board charger firmware: 1256 or higher
• Porsche won't install the necessary patch unless they can reproduce the problem. You should report one of the following problems:
  • Plug and Charge option fails to appear on Battery screen: This is the quickest and easiest for them to confirm.
  • Unable to Plug and Charge at EA: If you use this as your problem, they'll drive your car to an EA charger to confirm. They'll drive it to EA again after the update and attempt to charge using P&C. It'll fail, of course, because it takes a week or two for your data to be reflected in the system. These trips they make to EA will add a day to the process so if you go this route, make sure you have a loaner.
• Make sure your service advisor has your username and password, as well as the four digit security code you chose at signup. Having this information makes their work easier.
• I always drive with Privacy Mode turned on (I don't use the Connect app). During your one to two week post-install waiting period, make sure it's turned off. Having it turned on may prevent the car from chatting with Porsche's servers. Once P&C is working for you, you can turn it back on.

Excited to get this working. Good luck to you all!

 

[chrisk]

• Porsche won't install the necessary patch unless they can reproduce the problem.

They know there is a bug and they have a fix but they would not authorize the repair unless they reproduce the bug that they already know it exists?

What kind of customer service is this?...

But that was the same with the power loss patch. They had the fix ready, and they would only install it to clients that experienced the issue. They released to all only after being investigated by NHTSA.

 

[SWORDER]

They know there is a bug and they have a fix but they would not authorize the repair unless they reproduce the bug that they already know it exists?

What kind of customer service is this?...

But that was the same with the power loss patch. They had the fix ready, and they would only install it to clients that experienced the issue. They released to all only after being investigated by NHTSA.

Yeah, this caught me off guard too. I thought it was more like computer software, where you just bring everything up to the latest patch level. But it's not.

They went out of their way to tell me that the customer has to be specific about the problem he's experiencing, it has to be reproduced, and then there are several steps they have to take internally, setting up special tickets with Porsche etc. It's not quite as simple as one would think.

Porsche of San Diego is one of the largest dealers in the nation by volume, and I was the first customer to request this particular patch. So it really isn't routine for them just yet. No one I spoke with was even aware that there was a problem with the 19.2kW charger at all -- much less the specifics of the corrupt digital certificate.

 

[whitex]

I was told PnC could take 1-2 weeks to work, as they had to push my new certificate to the network. So this confirms that we are getting a new certificate and that it does take some time to get out on the network.

I don't get how such a solution scales. Every new car needs to have their certificate uploaded to every charger? So 20 years from now, each charger will store millions of certificates locally, one for each car, and the list will keep on growing indefinitely as most cars taken off the road will never be reported to the charging company? Someone really screwed up in the PnC design, or they are explaining it wrong to customers. Imagine if every time a new HTTPS certificate was generated for a new website, that website could not be viewed until said certificate is uploaded to every browser in the world.

 

[kort]

I don't get how such a solution scales. Every new car needs to have their certificate uploaded to every charger? So 20 years from now, each charger will store millions of certificates locally, one for each car, and the list will keep on growing indefinitely as most cars taken off the road will never be reported to the charging company? Someone really screwed up in the PnC design, or they are explaining it wrong to customers. Imagine if every time a new HTTPS certificate was generated for a new website, that website could not be viewed until said certificate is uploaded to every browser in the world.

after all the bad experiences that I had trying to charge the car PnC, while nice to have isn't all that important to me, if I need to use the app to get charged it is OK as long as I can depend on getting a charge.

 

[satchurator]

I don't get how such a solution scales. Every new car needs to have their certificate uploaded to every charger? So 20 years from now, each charger will store millions of certificates locally, one for each car, and the list will keep on growing indefinitely as most cars taken off the road will never be reported to the charging company?

This is extremely unlikely and is probably just details unknown-to or misunderstood by the dealer. Any of the techies following will understand public key encryption and chain of trust. If there is certificate validation at the Charger level, it would most likely be checking only for a trusted certificate signing authority. Your web browser has a similar store of tens (not millions) of these signing Certificate Authorities.
If there is checking of the individual certificate, that’s more likely to be in the dialog between centralized EA systems and Porsche systems - it would be EA and/or Porsche centrally managing that list of individual certs for validation.
As for the week delay, that’s probably a conservative number accounting for various manual steps along with batch processes. E.g. Technician at dealership implements fix, updates service ticket that communicates back to Porsche. Porsche employee then might have to react to that service ticket to provision that certificate identity, and then a (say) 24-hour cycle batch process would convey that data to a production system. Add in a weekend, and you easily have 3-4 days minimum turnaround, and with the potential complication of a major setback if the owner tries PnC prematurely, so let’s be conservative and round up to a week to be safe. There’s your 1 week wait time.

This is all speculation on my part, but informed by experience with similar systems in other industries. I welcome other tech folks to weigh in on the plausibility of my explanation.

 

[andrewket]

I don't get how such a solution scales. Every new car needs to have their certificate uploaded to every charger? So 20 years from now, each charger will store millions of certificates locally, one for each car, and the list will keep on growing indefinitely as most cars taken off the road will never be reported to the charging company? Someone really screwed up in the PnC design, or they are explaining it wrong to customers. Imagine if every time a new HTTPS certificate was generated for a new website, that website could not be viewed until said certificate is uploaded to every browser in the world.

My educated guess (I have significant professional experience in this area) is that this is a one-off process for the US 2021 Taycans with the 19.2kW chargers. When the 19.2kW option was temporary suspended and we were informed P&C would not work for us it was reported that the chargers contained a "bad certificate". The keys for these certs, if done correctly, should be stored in hardware and should be difficult to access and perhaps replace.

My guess is part of the software update we're receiving is also either 1) generating a new cert or 2) capturing the bad certificate so that it can be uploaded to EA and subsequently becomes valid. My guess is #2. If they had the ability to generate new certs, they would do it in a way that it is chained to a root that EA already trusts (as you suggest in your HTTPS/TLS example above.) This is how public key encryption mechanisms scale. EA would only need to accept one certificate from Porsche. Porsche would be able to issue certs to individual cars without EA's further involvement. Because of the delay, my guess is #2 - and they are special casing the certs in our cars on the network. It's a less expensive work around to the problem than physically replacing our chargers or potentially exposing cryptographic tools to the dealers. It will work, but it's fragile for sure. It doesn't scale, but it doesn't need to. The number of US 2021's with 19.2kW's chargers is likely <1000.. maybe even <250 ?

 

[whitex]

This is extremely unlikely and is probably just details unknown-to or misunderstood by the dealer. Any of the techies following will understand public key encryption and chain of trust. If there is certificate validation at the Charger level, it would most likely be checking only for a trusted certificate signing authority. Your web browser has a similar store of tens (not millions) of these signing Certificate Authorities.
If there is checking of the individual certificate, that’s more likely to be in the dialog between centralized EA systems and Porsche systems - it would be EA and/or Porsche centrally managing that list of individual certs for validation.
As for the week delay, that’s probably a conservative number accounting for various manual steps along with batch processes. E.g. Technician at dealership implements fix, updates service ticket that communicates back to Porsche. Porsche employee then might have to react to that service ticket to provision that certificate identity, and then a (say) 24-hour cycle batch process would convey that data to a production system. Add in a weekend, and you easily have 3-4 days minimum turnaround, and with the potential complication of a major setback if the owner tries PnC prematurely, so let’s be conservative and round up to a week to be safe. There’s your 1 week wait time.

This is all speculation on my part, but informed by experience with similar systems in other industries. I welcome other tech folks to weigh in on the plausibility of my explanation.

So your vote is on I said in the latter part of the post - they are explaining it wrong to the customers.

I wonder how this works then someone sells their PnC enabled car. How does the old owner instantly sever the link to their payment account as soon as they hand over the keys to the new person. Perhaps EA hasn't thought of this yet, with PnC being new, and not many second hand PnC enabled cars out there yet. I would not be at all surprised if today the new owner gets some period of time during which they can charge on the old owners account.

Personally I think they could have designed it so much better, so it just works from the second the certificate is installed on the car. This problem has been solved in other industries already.

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