Anatomy of any almost failed Electrify America charging session…

[daveo4EV]

I have provided this eMail to my local Porsche dealer and requested they contact Porsche North America with my experience…

summary: this was my 2nd successful EA charging experience (out of 16 attempt) - but it was almost a failure due to plug-release issues…

my Taycan is fully patched at this time with latest software updates…

we're not done yet!!!

Team,

This is _NOT_ a complaint - but it is data regarding customer experience when attempting to use an Electrify America charging station in San Jose. It is my hope you can provide feedback directly to Porsche North America to continue to push for improvements in this space - based on my experience last night - we are not done yet with fixing cord release bugs for common customer scenarios with Electrify America.

Steps to Reproduce the problem

• Pulled into the Electrify America charging stations @ [address goes here] @ [time stamp here] Sept. 1st, 2020
• Plugged in the CCS plug/cord into the Taycan for EA charger #200191-01
  • Note: plug orientation is 90 degrees “off axis” from plug orientation - cable is thick and hard to wrangle - plug ergonomics are horrible - heavy and difficult to re-orient - This is unique to this charger since the charger equipment is not parallel to parking stall
• FAIL: Multi-attempts (3 or more) to start a charging session with the “Charge America” app (the required app for access to the free/included charging provided to US Taycan owners - I was unable to begin a charging session using the Charge America app - “Charge America” app listed 200191-01 as the charger I was attempting to start
  • I gave up on the charge America app - and then decide to use the Electrify America app to start the charging session
• SUCCESS - I was able to use my iPhone's wireless NFC Electrify America “virtual” card to start the charging session - this was a GREAT experience and world class
  • NOTE for Dealer/Sales/Service: Electrify America has buried the “digital RFID” account card to be added to the AppleWallet in their User Interface - this would be a great tip/trick to walk new customer through to make it easier to start charging sessions - contact me and I can share screen shots showing you exactly how to do this for new customer training
    • Customer presents their phone to the EA charger - it starts the charging session wirelessly - just like ApplePay @ merchant -great experience!
  • Charging Session started - and the vehicle began charging at the expected charge rate - yeah - SUCCESSS!!!!!!
  • 09/01/2020 [time stamp here]
• Charging Session Data:
  • Charger #200191-01
  • Connector #1
  • Total paid: $16.63
  • Session ID: [sessionID here]
  • End state of charge: 93%
  • Total energy delivered: 18 kWh
  • Max charging rate: 103.05 kW
  • Charging time: 00:15:47
  • Grace period: 07:50 min
  • Paid idle time: 00:00
• I am writing to you because of the 07:50 min idle time - this 7:50 was spent attempting to unlock/remove the CCS charging cable once I had stopped the charging session - the Taycan would not release the CCS plug!
• Steps I followed as part of this charging session
  • Pulled into the EA parking stall
  • Put the Taycan into Park - but I did NOT turn off the vehicle via the “power/ignition switch” - this may be important - see later
  • Exit the vehicle - plug in the CCS plug-cord into the passenger side charging port
  • Argue with the Charge America app for 3-7 minutes - give up in frustration and decide to use the Electrify America application
  • Use EA Wallet virtual/digital card to start the charging session - great experience!!!
  • Returns to vehicle - hang out in super comfy seats and catch up on work eMail
    • Charge from 56% to 93% in less than 16 minutes - fast charging for the win- great!!!
    • Great charge rate - excellent speed & quality
  • Personally decide that 93% is enough
  • Exit the vehicle (note car is still “on” - I have not turned it off)
  • Walk around to the passenger side of the vehicle
    • NOTE: car is still charging - charge button LED is green!! Indicating charging session in progress
  • Press the “stop” button on the EA charger equipment
  • EA charger takes a moment to stop the charging session
    • Charging session stops- as expected.
  • NOTE: passenger charging button LED now turns “solid white” from “green”
  • Return to passenger side of the vehicle
    • Fail to be able to remove the plug for 5-6 minutes
      • Get frustrated that EA America is showing a count down clock for accruing of idle fees - this adds urgency and frustration to this whole process - customer experience rating = awful
      • It’s not my fault I”m idle in the charging stall if the plug won’t release
    • The vehicle will _NOT_ release the lock on the CCS plug
    • Press the button with the white LED multiple times - plug is still “locked in place”
    • Get frustrated
      • Have internal dialog with one self about how superior Tesla’s supercharging experience is
      • Question the german’s love of complexity
      • Consider torching the Taycan right then and there
      • And then remember that you love Porsche - calm down - collect yourself - remember how awesome your GT3 is on track
      • Remind yourself these are 1st world problems and that in the grand scheme of things you are a fortunate individual
  • Leave the plug in the port
  • Walk around to the driver’s side of the vehicle
  • Press and hold the power/ignition button - wait for the main console to show the shutdown animation
  • Return to passenger side of the vehicle
    • Attempt again to release the CCS plug
      • Fail…repeat your frustration chant documented above
      • Presss the charge button (with the solid white LED) one more time
      • HEAR THE lock release!!!!
      • SUCCESS - CCS plug releases I return the plug to the charger my car is now free to drive!!
    • Breath a sigh of relief that you beat the 10 min idle timing ($1.00/min charges for idle)

Why am I sharing this?

There still seems to be some scenarios for which when a fast charging session is completed where the Taycan will refuse to release the CCS lock. Steps required to work around this mess may not be obvious to most customers. This will lead to un-necessary technical support phone calls to EA and Porsche - and potentially expensive road side assistance in person support.

Porsche needs to further debug this process -it is unacceptable for the vehicle to “hold on to” the charging connector when as far as the customer is concerned the charging session is completed.

This process is BETTER than my previous experience with EA America - but was almost a failure because there are clearly still some corner cases where the CCS plug adapter will _NOT_ be released by the vehicle.

I did NOT have to resort to the manual release cord on the passenger side - so that is an improvement…

I am also sharing this as a tip/trick for your Taycan customers - the lock software may have something do with the vehicle being on/off at various points in the charging session - I almost never turn the Taycan “off” (habit from my Tesla days) - and this may be significant in the software stack as to tracking down some of the last bugs in failure to release scenarios.

This charging session was almost a fail - but eventually the vehicle released the plug. Was it because I turned off the car? We’ll never know. But it did release after vehicle shutdown.

I do not expect any direct action on your part, but would simply request you share with Porsche NA that they are not done yet. There are still horrible customer experience bugs in the latest software. I would like to believe this is of the utmost urgency - as if this were to happen on an actual trip and I was away from major metropolitan areas the customer experience here would be beyond bad, horrible, it would be downright terrible.

The other aspect to this that needs attention is the Taycan has a world class charging rate - 800 volt @ 270 kW - 22 minutes from 5% to 80% SOC - these are fantastic specifications and truly worthy world class charging times vs. competition - This charging advantage is 100% pointless if it takes 2-15 minutes to get the charging session started, and another 2-10 minutes to get the damm plug removed at the end of the charging session. Truly awful experience and time consuming largely invalidating the technical advantage of the Taycan’s superior battery/charging technology.

I’d be happy to work with anyone from Porsche to illuminate the customer experience in this space, and my suggestions as a 30 year software veteran and 7 year EV owner about areas of focus that need improvement.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

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[LonePalmBJ]

NOTE for Dealer/Sales/Service: Electrify America has buried the “digital RFID” account card to be added to the AppleWallet in their User Interface - this would be a great tip/trick to walk new customer through to make it easier to start charging sessions - contact me and I can share screen shots showing you exactly how to do this for new customer training

• Customer presents their phone to the EA charger - it starts the charging session wirelessly - just like ApplePay @ merchant -great experience!

Can you expound upon this? How does this work exactly? When you start the charger in this way does it still honor the "free" charging offered to US buyers, or are you paying per session?

 

[daveo4EV]

Can you expound upon this? How does this work exactly? When you start the charger in this way does it still honor the "free" charging offered to US buyers, or are you paying per session?

NO -_IF_ you start the session with the Electrify America app you will be billed for that session - but it is sometimes your only choice if the Charge America application isn't work and you need to charge.

 

[daveo4EV]

the EA station I used last night has a "NFC" reader - it's the wireless credit card reader you find at a lot of point of sale places these days.

I you have "added" your EA account virtual card to your AppleWallet - all you need to do is use the AppleWallet application on your phone to select your EA Account virtual card - and the station will read the card/accoutn from your phone wirelessly and start your charging session and billing your account

It's much easier/faster than using a normal credit card - but will bill your EA account as per the terms of your EA membership - but when you have no other way to start the charging session using the EA virtual RFID card is a pretty good option

this also works with other charging networks like Blink, EVGo, ChargePoint - all of which also support AppleWallet for account/billing/charge sessions.

Your phone _IS_ your RFID card for these charging networks if you add their account cards to your AppleWallet.

 

[daveo4EV]

https://www.taycanforum.com/forum/t...-virtual-rfid-card-to-your-applewallet….2275/

step by step instruction for getting your EA 'virtual RFID" card added to your AppleWallet…

 

[redrocket]

I have provided this eMail to my local Porsche dealer and requested they contact Porsche North America with my experience…

summary: this was my 2nd successful EA charging experience (out of 16 attempt) - but it was almost a failure due to plug-release issues…

my Taycan is fully patched at this time with latest software updates…

we're not done yet!!!

Unfortunately Porsche does not give a sh**. And they won’t ever, not until they have some skin in the game. Does not matter which shape or form, they need to have skin in the game for things to improve.

 

[daveo4EV]

@redrocket I unfortunately agree with you - perhaps some costly flat bedding of Taycan's over and over and over for this problem will approximate skin in the game.

in the mean time I'm not letting them off the hook - if this continues I'll rethink my ownership of the vehicle and partly have a pretty good case for a buy back - they are effectively bricking the car at the end of charging sessions.

 

[Td78]

I have provided this eMail to my local Porsche dealer and requested they contact Porsche North America with my experience…

David, do your Porsche and EA accounts use the same email address?

It sounds like you are having more problems than starting a charge. But my problems with starting a charge were completely eliminated when I deleted my EA account that had the email matching my Porsche account. I then created another account under a different email address.

Two different people with PCNA said that having the same email address associated with accounts at both Porsche and EA creates some kind of communication problem between the apps. (They actually told me I wasn’t allowed to have a EA account, but I resigned up under a new email address, which works fine.) I was highly skeptical about their proposed solution but it seems they were right.

 

[daveo4EV]

@Td78 that’s a great tip - I’ll look into the email address issue - yes both EA and PorscheID use the same eMail as an identifier…

 

[daveo4EV]

BTW: it’s STUPID, just plain STUPID to have a separate App for the ‘free’ charging - there should just be some way to ‘tag‘ an Existing EA account for free/30 minute sessions that is only enabled by business to business authorization where Porsche is in control of the tagging, but once Tagged the customer’s normal EA account enables the correct billing…

if one could find out why Porsche went the route of a completely separate App I betting it was some major compromise due to lack of understanding, planning or EA’s ability to provide teh correct solution…cause it’s not a customer focused solution.

It also is a piece of data that demonstrates to me that Porsche is not serious about this whole EV thing - and that EA is pretty 2nd rate as an organziation in that they couldn’t pony up the IT resources to provide a proper customer focused integration.

All in All their own network and their software/apps are pretty 2nd rate, buggy, and often times fail in the field…

I fully believe having the same eMail address could confuse the two different systems - and that is just further proof about what a bad job was done in this space:

1. that wouldn’t be a problem if this was properly integrated into the single EA system
2. I can’t believe no one thought about the customer using the same eMail for the two separate accounts

I can not imagine anyone with 1/2 a brain starting the conversation with - let’s give the customer two separate applications to accomplish the same thing - given them different development schedules - that way the two apps are never in sync or have the same feature set - and we feel it will be a great user experience - especially when the two apps are out of date with one another and disagree on what chargers exist, are functional, or can even start a charging session. but really that’s ok becuase if you are able to successfully start a charging session you’ll lose the car at the end of it when you can’t unplug it - it’s like dropping trash off at the curb and walking away…

pull in, plug-in, walk away, because your Taycan is no longer mobile once attached to an EA charging station - it’s like supergluing your fingers together - it’s a one way trip.

 

[RRVV17]

NO -_IF_ you start the session with the Electrify America app you will be billed for that session - but it is sometimes your only choice if the Charge America application isn't work and you need to charge.

@daveo4EV thanks for sharing all of your experiences, which have definitely taught me a thing or two on this forum. As a side comment, and I know it doesn't resolve or justify your underlying issues, when I experienced a handshake issue during my first trial at the local EA station, I simply called the EA toll free number and the representative remotely started the charging session. There should be no reason for you to have to pay for the sessions.

 

[daveo4EV]

I have a request into Porsche/EA to back out the charges - we’ll see how that goes.

 

[Toby Pennycuff]

NO -_IF_ you start the session with the Electrify America app you will be billed for that session - but it is sometimes your only choice if the Charge America application isn't work and you need to charge.

Dave,

The one added comment I would have is that if the ChargingAmerica app refuses to enable charging, your first resort should be to contact the ElectrifyAmercia Help Desk. When I have experienced failures with the "free" charging app from Porsche, the EA Help Desk folks have been great and initiated the free charge for me. I suspect that they will tire of that at some point (a corporate EA mandate), but it's worth it to make that call first as opposed to spending your own money to charge.

Just a thought.....

Toby

 

[Toby Pennycuff]

I have a request into Porsche/EA to back out the charges - we’ll see how that goes.

THAT request will be filed in the circular file!

 

[Fitzban]

NO -_IF_ you start the session with the Electrify America app you will be billed for that session - but it is sometimes your only choice if the Charge America application isn't work and you need to charge.

We have been initiating the charging session at the EA stations through the Porsche Connect app.
It's not that user friendly but has worked every time at the couple stations close to us. We had to find the station within the Porsche Connect app's "Explore" functionality (the my location button makes it a bit easier), then select the station to initiate charge session. We don't use the Charge NA app.

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