Near disaster, but is it charger(s) or car? (UPDATE: it's the car)

Botox

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More info. Still waiting for the part, but I had to drive up to Portland again, and on the way back I stopped at an EVgo charger just to see how a real charge session would go.

Since EVgo's chargers are 400V, and I'd briefly charged at two before, I figured it would go OK.

And it did, for about 15 minutes. After that, I received a weird "Charging error" from the Porsche Connect app, and the entire EVgo charger shut off. It was totally dead...although the app still had me connected and charging.

EVgo wasn't able to contact the charger to determine what happened, but was able to stop my session.

But I'm a bit afraid that whatever charging problem I'm having with 800V chargers is also happening, in a different way, with 400V Fast DC chargers.

It's certainly weird.
Are you turning your car off before charging? If you don’t it will cause error after awhile, as I have personally learned. Must do that extra move as opposed to a Tesla
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dnanian

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Are you turning your car off before charging? If you don’t it will cause error after awhile, as I have personally learned. Must do that extra move as opposed to a Tesla
Yes, this wasn't a problem with what I was doing. The HV Booster was defective.
 

louv

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Are you turning your car off before charging? If you don’t it will cause error after awhile, as I have personally learned. Must do that extra move as opposed to a Tesla
In my experience, some charging stations won’t let you start a session successfully if the car is on. (But none gave useful error messages!). Some would work, though.

Eventually I got in the habit of turning the car off before starting every charging session.

But, then after it started, I *always* turned the car back on, and I sat in it waiting, write blog entries, reading email.

Your mileage may vary.
 

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Good to know you can turn it back on post charging start. I was a bit worried about that as that is when I’ll check email, catch up on WhatsApp etc. Thanks
 

TK-421

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In my experience, some charging stations won’t let you start a session successfully if the car is on. (But none gave useful error messages!). Some would work, though.

Eventually I got in the habit of turning the car off before starting every charging session.

But, then after it started, I *always* turned the car back on, and I sat in it waiting, write blog entries, reading email.

Your mileage may vary.
My EXACT experience at charge America locations in FLorida.
 


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dnanian

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So, to help wrap this particular adventure up, I set up a drive up to Ipswich, MA (Little Wolf Coffee FTW, not to mention the Clam Box) and then to Seabrook, NH, arriving with a SOC around 12%.

Before I left, I checked with Electrify America to ensure the 350kW chargers were working, and they indicated they were, so - Adventure Ho! Because if they weren't, I'd be in some trouble.

Arrived to find a repair truck (same repairman you talked to, @louv - he was working on charger 2, one of the two 350kW chargers), so I was rather concerned, but charger 3 is 350kW and was free.

Plugged in, initiated charging and - hey! look at that! - it worked, and not just a little:


Porsche Taycan Near disaster, but is it charger(s) or car? (UPDATE: it's the car) UNADJUSTEDNONRAW_thumb_632c


It went significantly higher than that, up to about 266kW, and I went from 12 to 83% in 18 minutes.

Well and truly fixed.

Repair guy verified that EA has been doing updates to all these chargers recently, so hopefully things'll be getting better soon network-wide.

Also, got some interesting shots of the internals:


Porsche Taycan Near disaster, but is it charger(s) or car? (UPDATE: it's the car) UNADJUSTEDNONRAW_thumb_6328
Porsche Taycan Near disaster, but is it charger(s) or car? (UPDATE: it's the car) UNADJUSTEDNONRAW_thumb_632d
Porsche Taycan Near disaster, but is it charger(s) or car? (UPDATE: it's the car) UNADJUSTEDNONRAW_thumb_6326


FYI - in order to reduce the diameter of the cables, and decrease the heat produced by the resistance of the thinner wire, the cables are actually actively liquid cooled, and one thing that takes out the chargers -- including unit 4, here, which means out of the four chargers only two were working, even though EA said all were -- is being out of coolant.

So, this case, at least, is closed.
 


daveo4EV

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also they are running Windows 7 as the base OS for the charging control software/screen/POS system - again what could do wrong?
 

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snstevens

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I took a road trip with my new Taycan 4S from Seattle to Bellingham and stopped at EA chargers along the way (circuitous route - not I-5) in Monroe, Lake Stevens, and Mt Vernon. Each station had issues and in two cases I was unable to do any charging. At Mt Vernon I finally was able to charge on a 150KW charger. All day long the 350KW chargers were not working.

I did call EA from each station and while they tried to help it was "No Joy!" all day long. I would like to contact Porsche directly but don't want to waste my time talking to the wrong folks. Does anyone know the right point of contact at Porsche to express my frustration?
 

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I took a road trip with my new Taycan 4S from Seattle to Bellingham and stopped at EA chargers along the way (circuitous route - not I-5) in Monroe, Lake Stevens, and Mt Vernon. Each station had issues and in two cases I was unable to do any charging. At Mt Vernon I finally was able to charge on a 150KW charger. All day long the 350KW chargers were not working.

I did call EA from each station and while they tried to help it was "No Joy!" all day long. I would like to contact Porsche directly but don't want to waste my time talking to the wrong folks. Does anyone know the right point of contact at Porsche to express my frustration?
Yikes, scary to hear this.
 

PanameraFrank

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My car is coming in 2 months. You guys aren't filling me with confidence!
I mean, the 150 kWh chargers are generally fairly reliable in my experience. So really if you just plan on longer stops, it should be fine. Just don't plan on getting these 15-20 minute supercharging stops that Porsche advertised.
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