daveo4EV
Well-Known Member
- First Name
- David
- Joined
- Jan 28, 2019
- Threads
- 160
- Messages
- 5,809
- Reaction score
- 8,642
- Location
- Santa Cruz
- Vehicles
- Cayenne Hybrid, 911(s) GT3/Convertable
- Thread starter
- #1
Team,
as you know I have been no fan of Electrify America - and highly critical of their charging network and it’s interaction with my Taycan - my personal success rate with EA has been very very low, with me personally discovering new failure modes that boggle the mind…
hold on to your hats
stay in your seats
and prepare yourself for the 1st report by @daveo4EV that the Electrify America network worked flawlessly for me this past weekend.
this past weekend PCA GGR held their early fall event at thunderhill - being couped up since mid-march I decided I would drive my Taycan to a location where I was guarenteed a receptive audience - a PCA Track event where friends and well wishers would all certainly gush over my beauty and appreciate the opportunity for some up close time with this marvelous vehicle. It also provided me an opportunity to “test” a road trip in a relatively safe environment - Thunderhill is far enough from me to be interesting, but not awkward if things don’t go well - and there is good charging infrastructure on the way from Santa Cruz area to Willows, CA…
The trip provide my 1st flawless EA stop…
Well i think I know, but will need to do more testing and trial/error to see but I think I stumbled onto a perfectly logical, but poor user experience as to why I’ve had sooo much trouble unlocking my plugs at the end of my charging session.
The root cause is Porsche’s overly aggressive implementation of the vehicle auto-lock/unlock behaviors. And in particular the setting that had by default to only unlock the driver’s door…
I have my 2020 Taycan set to only unlock the driver’s door - this leaves the other 3 doors locked most of the time. When the doors are locked - Porsche also ”locks” the charge point so that people can not remove the charging connector…
could it be that when the passenger door is locked that the lock on the passenger side charge point (the fast DC side) is also locked?
this time I made sure to fully unlock the car, hitting the key fob unlock an excessive number of times - and volia the charge port released with NO issues!!!
I’d love confirmation or additonal data - I was going to do some testing around this theory myself, but for some reason I’ve lost access to my Taycan so I have no access to a vehicle to test…
in any case I thought I’d share my first great EA/Taycan charging experience and let everyone know I’m not just a bad-news guys - I try and stick to the facts. And this time the facts are great…
I think Porsche should change the software to have charge ports unlocked when ever the driver’s door is unlocked or passenger door - I believe if my theory is correct few if any people would successfully associate a locked passenger door with the reason they can not unplug from EA - also pepole traveling in pairs (like porsche does all it’s testing) would never encounter this problem…a simple software tweak and this problem could disappear if my theory is correct.
as you know I have been no fan of Electrify America - and highly critical of their charging network and it’s interaction with my Taycan - my personal success rate with EA has been very very low, with me personally discovering new failure modes that boggle the mind…
hold on to your hats
stay in your seats
and prepare yourself for the 1st report by @daveo4EV that the Electrify America network worked flawlessly for me this past weekend.
this past weekend PCA GGR held their early fall event at thunderhill - being couped up since mid-march I decided I would drive my Taycan to a location where I was guarenteed a receptive audience - a PCA Track event where friends and well wishers would all certainly gush over my beauty and appreciate the opportunity for some up close time with this marvelous vehicle. It also provided me an opportunity to “test” a road trip in a relatively safe environment - Thunderhill is far enough from me to be interesting, but not awkward if things don’t go well - and there is good charging infrastructure on the way from Santa Cruz area to Willows, CA…
The trip provide my 1st flawless EA stop…
- I visited the EA charging stop at Nut Tree mall in Vacaville, CA - it’s next to the Tesla Supercharger location I’m very very familiar with
- I parked
- I plugged in
- I activated the charging session via the Porsche Connect app
- the car charged for 30 minutes - from xx% to 92%
- maximum charge rate observed was 78 kW during the session
- I was parked at a labled 350 kW station
- I’m choosing to overlook this “flaw” and going with the fact that the charge session worked
- move on nothing to see here - yes it was slower than Tesla and no where near max rate
- I’m going to give Porsche/EA the win here - just move on....
- and I went to unplug - and OMG it worked the first time, the plug came right out!!!! A miracle, a legit miracle
- I proceeded with my weekend and the car behaved marvelously and achieved a great efficiency and range result on the return trip.
Well i think I know, but will need to do more testing and trial/error to see but I think I stumbled onto a perfectly logical, but poor user experience as to why I’ve had sooo much trouble unlocking my plugs at the end of my charging session.
The root cause is Porsche’s overly aggressive implementation of the vehicle auto-lock/unlock behaviors. And in particular the setting that had by default to only unlock the driver’s door…
I have my 2020 Taycan set to only unlock the driver’s door - this leaves the other 3 doors locked most of the time. When the doors are locked - Porsche also ”locks” the charge point so that people can not remove the charging connector…
could it be that when the passenger door is locked that the lock on the passenger side charge point (the fast DC side) is also locked?
this time I made sure to fully unlock the car, hitting the key fob unlock an excessive number of times - and volia the charge port released with NO issues!!!
I’d love confirmation or additonal data - I was going to do some testing around this theory myself, but for some reason I’ve lost access to my Taycan so I have no access to a vehicle to test…
in any case I thought I’d share my first great EA/Taycan charging experience and let everyone know I’m not just a bad-news guys - I try and stick to the facts. And this time the facts are great…
I think Porsche should change the software to have charge ports unlocked when ever the driver’s door is unlocked or passenger door - I believe if my theory is correct few if any people would successfully associate a locked passenger door with the reason they can not unplug from EA - also pepole traveling in pairs (like porsche does all it’s testing) would never encounter this problem…a simple software tweak and this problem could disappear if my theory is correct.
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