Porsche Taycan 4S – My Experience At A Charging Station - SuperCars.net

ron_b

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daveo4EV

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{sigh} - it's sad that all EV owners can't get along - I'll stomp out dis-information about Tesla on Porsche forums - but at the end of the day I'm customer of both companies and believe strongly EV's need to be part of the mix of personal transportation going forward…

the main reason superchargers are "patrolled" is to prevent the parking stalls from being taken up by gasoline cars - sometimes unknowingly and other times as a 'statement' from anti-EV enthusiasts - however I understand this can easily be mis-construed as Tesla tribalism…

we need a unified charging network - and there should not be different standards - Tesla should make a CCS adapter - and over time covert the supercharger network to CCS connectors - in Europe the connector is already the same and I believe it's a much easier task to eventually just make the stations work for any car willing to pay the charging fee's…

at the moment I would enjoy that because the supercharger network's reliability is much better than any of the other CCS charging networks and the competition would do everyone a little good…

but I'm not optimistic that will happen any time soon which makes me sad.

Both camps have pro's and con's and represent stepping stones in the EV evolution…
 

MassDriver

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From my understanding of Tesla's SuperCharger architecture all of the "smarts" are in the car (i.e. allowed to supercharge, reporting time/duration for billing, etc.) so problem #1, its not a simple "change the plug" kind of operation. So either Tesla has to document the "in car" spec and a certification program, including some minimum hardware which manufacturers will take years to implement, or they have to do significant SuperCharger upgrades to pull intelligence back into the SuperCharger (i.e. add touch screen and phone controls, add card swipes/NFC support, etc.). Problem #2 is adding support resources to handle calls from drivers of other manufacturers vehicles when something isn't working, resources to troubleshoot, etc. #1 and #2 together are a lot of work for minimal cash, complicates their infrastructure and slows down innovation as they have to wait for other manufacturers. Rule 1 in Elon's book is minimize external dependencies/shorten supply chain to zero.

Problem #3 is from the business side they have no incentive to give up a huge Tesla selling point, which is the widespread SuperCharger availability, reliability and charging speed vs everyone else.

At the end of the day its pretty much 3 strikes and it won't happen. Elon is building a business that happens to be good for the planet, rather than doing things that are good for the planet that just happen to be a business. Don't get the order confused :)

Best bet is for someone with a large existing footprint and a related business to get interested. Petro Canada has taken some steps here (brings in some business to their convenience stores), but now that the "corridor" is done the question will be do they continue rolling out to other locations and get to a usable density to get places other than coast to coast. And they have work to do yet on realizing the full potential of their charging infrastructure in all locations (they're supposed to be capable of 200 or 350 kW depending on location however Don was seeing 50 to less than 200 on his cross Canada trip I believe).
 
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daveo4EV

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@MassDriver - I think you're correct - but the smarts are not "in the car" - they assume the car can contact the cloud - or the super charger can contact the cloud - and the whole thing is managed by having the car-plug identify the car, and then the car/network decide to let the charge proceed - they designed the system from day 1 to be "plug & pay/play" - i.e. the chargers are stupid, but backed by a cloud service that controls charging

the assume the car has a fairly common but fully functional PC grade computer with software that can be easily modified, updated, and maintained vs. the more lock it down early and minimize the computer cost approach of existing supply chains - each Tesla has effectively a Linus grade computer running a general purpose OS with fairly open and modern software platform - so they can easily implement apps with a full time internet connect to do cloud based things that are beyond the planning capabilities of existing car manufactures…so the smarts are as you say "not in the charger" - but rather it's a distributed system that relies on specific nodes communicating with a master cloud service to controls the charging network in this case…

yes vendors would need to have their car be able to interact with the superchargers - but the technical details are subordinate to business agreement - i.e. if there was a business agreement the technical issues would be solved, quickly, easily - as it's just a matter of engineering which is fairly straight forward vs. the egos & business case which is more elusive…

at the end of the day it's all just electricity - DC electricity to boot - so we know it can be done - the fact that the physics are the same and the technical issues really are not that complex - it's actually a tragedy that the businesses are so myopic that they are not engaging on the correct solution…

fast chargers should work for all EV's - period - end of story - anything less is unacceptable - and technical difference can be overcome - at the moment both sides are pursuing a plan that some how than can have an advantage, when in fact the advantage would be everyone to be on the same playing field so that EV adoption at scale could be accelerated…

there is equal blame on both sides of this current artificial technical chasm to go around…so please don't claim I'm an Elon Fan boy or Porsche apologist - they can make it work if they wanted to - right now they perceived it's in their best interest not to pursue it - when in fact for their customers it would be better if it all just worked…
 
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ron_b

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Well, I don't want to get bogged down on Tesla's biases or such, but I would say to your #1 point @MassDriver that I believe the car has very little to do with the auditing. It would simply give a VIN or such with some kind of private key public key encryption to make it hard for the system to be hacked. Electrify America is supposedly close to having plug it in and charge support as well, it will require either new vehicles or perhaps doable with software updates to sufficiently flexible vehicles. The articles I read on Electrify America said the support would be in the next generation Audi. Although plug in and charge would certainly be convenient, if the app works reliably I am totally fine with that. I personally have had no problems with the Electrify America app on starting charge sessions for my Bolt EV. I do have more concerns with the Charging NA App, but I'll cross that bridge when it comes.
I agree with @daveo4EV that you would not want the car to provide session details, much better having the charger do that. If they do want to charge by the kilowatt you want the kilowatt as measured by the charger not including the losses in the cable and in the car not to mention the added risk of a hacked vehicle.
 


daveo4EV

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it kills me as a software engineer to attempt to use the EA network - and see that the EA charger "knows" it's plugged in to the car - and the car "knows" it's plugged into the EA charger - and both just sit there waiting for me to attempt to "start" the charging sessions using some unknown number of buggy sub-systems to attempt to get the charger to pump electrons…something for which I have had far less success than @ron_b

how hard would it be for the EA station say to offer a 90 or 120 sec. grace period after the car is plugged in say at a 25-50 kW rate - and if I don't complete the "station" activation in that grace period it shuts down - there is nearly 30-50 seconds of charge-station to vehicle handshaking and session start up latency where no electricity is transferred - if I could activate the charge session in that grace period charging would continue, if not it would shut down - the customer experience would be vastly better, and the incremental cost of un-activated sessions to EA would have to be minuscule…

if could even sit there int he early parts of the session pumping like 1.44 kw and only ramp up _AFTER_ payment has been confirmed - but it would move all the "complex negotiation" to right after the plug lands in the charging port - and by the time the customer has completed payment the car and the charger are "ready to go" and get going with the charging session.

get the charge session going as quickly/easily as possible - and trust that the customer will get the payment sorted out while the car and charger start the session - that means you:
  1. drive up
  2. plug-in
  3. car & charger start negotiating and beginning the low KW grace period charging session - minimal KWh's flow but the connection is established and the car and the station are "ready" to ramp up at a moment's notice…
  4. and customer completes the payment process in parallel of the car starting the charging session while walking away from the vehicle
  5. BONUS ROUND POINTS: car knows where it's at - knows what charging station(s) are potentially plugged into it based on gps location - car software sends a push notification to your phone that provides a short-cut menu for you to simply select the charger ID from a short list of potential chargers not in use - and click continue…to "continue" the charging session - along with a count-down showing you how long you have to complete the activation process
    1. even better the list of potential charging stations could be shortened to the one that are "in the grace" period currently - mostly common one and only one will be in that state - and you simply approve that station for payment and charging ramps up as you're walking away…
my humble suggestion is that this would be a vastly improved customer experience without requiring "new" charging hardware on al the EV's - and once you have "new" EV's with new ID based charging hardware this can all be seamlessly surpassed for the new and improved plug & pay/play model

but OMG - you plug in the cable, charging station shows it's plugged into the car, and the car's screen lights up and knows it plugged into the station - and both just sit there with their thumb up their asses like they don't know what it is you want them to do....all over a trivial amount of potential revenue in the first 2 or 3 minutes…

it drives me nuts - and is a terrible no good crappy and fault ridden customer experience that doesn't have to be that way if someone just took a little time to think about it - no one who actually uses one of these chargers would design it to work this way if they were forced to live with it on a daily basis…or during a family road trip with actual family members in tow…and wondering why it's taking 15 minutes to get the $190k EV to start charging while they are all hungry and want to go to the bathroom during the stop…
 
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ron_b

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it kills me as a software engineer to attempt to use the EA network - and see that the EA charger "knows" it's plugged in to the car - and the car "knows" it's plugged into the EA charger - and both just sit there waiting for me to attempt to "start" the charging sessions using some unknown number of buggy sub-systems to attempt to get the charger to pump electrons…something for which I have had far less success than @ron_b

how hard would it be for the EA station say to offer a 90 or 120 sec. grace period after the car is plugged in say at a 25-50 kW rate - and if I don't complete the "station" activation in that grace period it shuts down - there is nearly 30-50 seconds of charge-station to vehicle handshaking and session start up latency where no electricity is transferred - if I could activate the charge session in that grace period charging would continue, if not it would shut down - the customer experience would be vastly better, and the incremental cost of un-activated sessions to EA would have to be minuscule…

if could even sit there int he early parts of the session pumping like 1.44 kw and only ramp up _AFTER_ payment has been confirmed - but it would move all the "complex negotiation" to right after the plug lands in the charging port - and by the time the customer has completed payment the car and the charger are "ready to go" and get going with the charging session.

get the charge session going as quickly/easily as possible - and trust that the customer will get the payment sorted out while the car and charger start the session - that means you:
  1. drive up
  2. plug-in
  3. car & charger start negotiating and beginning the low KW grace period charging session - minimal KWh's flow but the connection is established and the car and the station are "ready" to ramp up at a moment's notice…
  4. and customer completes the payment process in parallel of the car starting the charging session while walking away from the vehicle
  5. BONUS ROUND POINTS: car knows where it's at - knows what charging station(s) are potentially plugged into it based on gps location - car software sends a push notification to your phone that provides a short-cut menu for you to simply select the charger ID from a short list of potential chargers not in use - and click continue…to "continue" the charging session - along with a count-down showing you how long you have to complete the activation process
my humble suggestion is that this would be a vastly improved customer experience without requiring "new" charging hardware on al the EV's - and once you have "new" EV's with new ID based charging hardware this can all be seamlessly surpassed for the new and improved plug & pay/play model

but OMG - you plug in the cable, charging station shows it's plugged into the car, and the car's screen lights up and knows it plugged into the station - and both just sit there with their thumb up their asses like they don't know what it is you want them to do....all over a trivial amount of potential revenue in the first 2 or 3 minutes…

it drives me nuts - and is a terrible no good crappy and fault ridden customer experience that doesn't have to be that way if someone just took a little time to think about it - no one who actually uses one of these chargers would design it to work this way if they were forced to live with it on a daily basis…or during a family road trip with actual family members in tow…and wondering why it's taking 15 minutes to get the $190k EV to start charging while they are all hungry and want to go to the bathroom during the stop…
Well I understand your suggestion and see merrits in it; however, the backhanded person in me says people may game the system never actually trytto pay and either unplug/replug or jump to another charger. I know that you don't see that happening but I know how many times my Bolt EV was unplugged by a Hybrid vehicle wanting to charge at my workplace. :oops: EV owners are not all to 100% honest folks.

With EA I tend to open the app while driving towards the station, when arriving I start the session before getting out of my car then I plug in and the session begins. The same technique works with EVgo. I understand that failures can occur, but I'm not sure that providing grace period power is the solution, though it is a very creative idea.
 
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daveo4EV

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you can address people "gaming" the system by making the potential amount of kWh's trival by simply controlling the flow of electrons - while people are not trust worthy (I agree 100%) - they also are rarely stupid - if you made the potential "win" by gaming the system inconsequential gaming the system would yield trivial results and not be worth the time and hassle

it's also true that. a substantial amount of time passes between payment authorization and car/charge negotiations that have nothing to do with actual power being transferred to the car (communication and protocol negotiation) - at the moment all of this is done in serial - by moving the that process to shortly after "plug insertion" you parallelize that time and essentially pre-process that "delay" out of the customer experience…

as it stands now I as the customer pay the cost to:

a) plug in
b) what ever time it takes to get payment dealt with
c) waiting to see if the car actually starts to charge
d) see that electrons are actually flowing after the 30-90 seconds of charger/car communication handshakes

having step c happen in parallel with step b will greatly reduce the total time it take before the car starts to charge

step "c" is also when charging most often fails as step "c" can not be successfully completed at broken chargers- at the moment the customer does not find that out until after step "b" - and then resolution requires returning to step "a"…the design sucks - and is simply irredeemable and is not customer focused - it's revenue focused…

I would do a happy dance when EA's biggest problem became people gaming the grace period session and easily implement fixes to mitigate that problem - at the moment that would be such a high class problem to have that I'd take it any day over the current system...EA should wish for that problem and work day and night to achieve that "problem" - because then they have won and have a robust system that is successfully starting too many charging sessions (current not the problem they are facing) - when that is their biggest problem they can legitimately claim success and the ease with which they can then "solve" their now biggest problem is trivial and easily foreseen.

raise your hand if you feel EA is successfully starting too many charging sessions and that tiny 2 or 3 minutes of "free" electricity is a threat to their business model that must be fixed - and that electricity is only "free" if the customer can't/does-not complete the activation - well that can be tracked and quantified and investigated as to "why" is that happening - and it might drive introspection inside their payment and business model as to why 80% of their grace period sessions don't "convert" to full payment sessions - now that I have data I can work the problem and measure results - the 2 or 3 minutes of electricity would _NOT_ be free if the customer successfully continues the session - having those sessions "on the books" and logged and tracked would be valuable data as to the quality and reliability of their chargers

EA could even make it such that charging sessions that begin at plug-in and never "reach" the grace period Phase - could now be logged, because that means there was a problem starting a session that someone tried to start and for some reason the charging session never got far enough to be a candidate to "approve" continuing the session for approved payment - again valuable data as to the reliability and current state of chargers on their network with no need for "customers" to "report" a station is broken - the stations would effectively "self" report by simply logging when ever they are plugged in and never complete the startup process far enough to learn that the car or the station can't actually perform a charging session due to various failures - again valuable data showing them if their network is actually working - with no need for any customer sourced data to make that determination…

a simple ratio of attempted sessions vs. approved sessions would tell them all they need to know…and as long as that ratio is a large number they are failing - the goal would be to approach "1" - every possible session was approved for billing and charging continued…if their ratio is greater than 1 then there are potential charging sessions that never got started - now we can ask why? and drill into that data…

Tuesday July 21st, 2020 - report to the CEO - network wide station conversion rate ratio 11.003 (10,200 attempted sessions, 927 successfully converted grace periods) - hmmm number is way bigger than 1 - our network still sucks - calls his managers and says - dig into the data - why are there 8000 or so failed attempted sessions on Tuesday…fix it!!!

Tuesday July 22nd, 2021 - report to the CEO -network wide station conversion rate ratio 1.0369 (20576 attempted charging sessions, 19843 successfully converted grace period sessions) - hmm not bad - only about 700 failed/gamed charging sessions but we're nearly at 1 for successful charging sessions - good job - you all get bonus! now let's see more detail on those 700 failures - are they just noise, or to they represent actual problems that still need fixing.

right now they are mostly clueless and they have no idea how many people simply give up or the station simply doesn't work.

I'm willing to bet right now they are no where near "1" - and they have very poor insight as to what the actual ratio is…or even how often someone tries and just gives up (i.e. potential business walking away).

EA should be prioritizing customer experience and getting the charging session going as seamlessly and fast as possible - if that approach requires some optimization to improve potential revenue gaps they'd be in a much better place to address those problems if more people could simply get a charging session to work and start…

at the moment I have to go through the entire payment processing process to find out the charging session can't even be started - wouldn't it be better to find that out first, and only request people provide payment after the charger and the car have verified the whole process will actually work?
 
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daveo4EV

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bonus bonus idea - no change required to car software for push notification
  1. drive up
  2. plug in
  3. grace period starts - charger and car immediately begin working on the problem of communicating and getting ready to charge…with out waiting for the payment approval - any actual charging that take place will be "trivial" just enough to keep the car thinking it's working…
  4. launch EA/porsche app
  5. app checks gps location - downloads a list of nearby chargers currently "in the grace/start-up" period - probably only one given actual use cases…
  6. asks you to "approve" one of the chargers on the list
  7. you put the phone away and walk to the bathroom while your Taycan ramps up charging to a glorious 270 kW…
don't need new charging hardware on the car -just someone with a clue to actually design the system.

raise your hand if you think that is a better experience. I sure do.
 

MassDriver

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@MassDriver - I think you're correct - but the smarts are not "in the car" - they assume the car can contact the cloud - or the super charger can contact the cloud - and the whole thing is managed by having the car-plug identify the car, and then the car/network decide to let the charge proceed - they designed the system from day 1 to be "plug & pay/play" - i.e. the chargers are stupid, but backed by a cloud service that controls charging
The experience from Rich (Rich Rebuilds fame) getting supercharging turned off doesn't line up with a "cloud control" model; the cars didn't lose the ability to supercharge until an OTA car update. So to me that indicates that there is no "cloud" verification on charge connection. This isn't a bad design choice as it reduces complexity and points of failure in the charging workflow (i.e. prioritize people being able to charge so don't depend on off site comms, buffer charge records if there is a comm loss, recover once comms is re-established).

<snip>

yes vendors would need to have their car be able to interact with the superchargers - but the technical details are subordinate to business agreement - i.e. if there was a business agreement the technical issues would be solved, quickly, easily - as it's just a matter of engineering which is fairly straight forward vs. the egos & business case which is more elusive…
Agreed, and the key to a workable business agreement is both parties get (approximately) the same amount of value. Right now I'd assert that there isn't such a business case for Tesla. Will that change? Perhaps, through more non-Tesla EVs on the road making charging a highly profitable business, government regulation, or a sale of the supercharger infrastructure ("unlocking shareholder value" as some like to say).
 
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MassDriver

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Keep it simple and strip down the payment process; no need for grace periods and priming the flow of electrons with even more complex processes. I can go to the gas pump, tap my credit card, discount/loyalty card, and be pumping gas in 10 seconds with physical cards or electronic cards on my phone. I don't have to login to an app, establish where I am, pick a charger, all that's figured out because I just tapped on it.

I suspect that there are implementation edge cases/timing issues lurking in the charging standards, so there still may be "can't charge" situations happen where the charger and car never get to agreement that things are ready to charge. Lots of opinions here on what brings success (car on or car off, setup unit first then plug in vs plug in then setup unit, have fly 1/2 way down vs zipped all the way up, etc.). Having the standard be specific about what state each device must be in, then having the protocol be able to query for that state so directions can be given to get into the right state would be useful.
 

LonePalmBJ

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we need a unified charging network - and there should not be different standards - Tesla should make a CCS adapter - and over time covert the supercharger network to CCS connectors - in Europe the connector is already the same and I believe it's a much easier task to eventually just make the stations work for any car willing to pay the charging fee's…
I agree, but we are making progress. While it may seem slow and painful while we are in it, in product-evolution terms I think things are moving right along. Already the first big conflict - CHAdeMO vs the upstart CCS - has mostly been put to rest, with the death knell being Nissan's announcement this month about the Ariya. Also, Tesla is starting to use CCS natively in certain markets, and dieselgate has provided for unprecedented investment in infrastructure. I think the next domino to fall will be CCS Plug and Charge adoption following the IEC/ISO 15118 standard. Once that's in place, the move to consolidate on CCS should pick up even more momentum. Of course, China's relatively new ChaoJi standard adds yet another obstacle.
 

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That was very poor form for the article's author to simply leave his car in the Supercharger spot while he went to the mall. It's not actually a matter of "sacred real estate" where only Teslas may trod - it would have been equally poor form if it was a Tesla parked there and not charging.
 

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Of course, China's relatively new ChaoJi standard adds yet another obstacle.
Not what I've read. The standard is designed to unify Japanese, Chinese and eventually European CCS Type 2 standards. Why build "belt&road" highways across the Euro-Asian continent without a charging standard...

ChaoJi is also there to deliver much more power so tucks like this can fast charge:
Porsche Taycan Porsche Taycan 4S – My Experience At A Charging Station - SuperCars.net 1595494100429
 
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feye

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{sigh} - it's sad that all EV owners can't get along…
For years I had to read and listen to the abuse of t-fanboys over all the other car brands/manufactures/ICE drivers. Sorry, but for me the earth is torched. I wish t would disappear.
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