"System Meltdown - DC Fast Charging in America" - Video by Kyle of Out of Spec

[Tooney]

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[tigerbalm]

Noticeably worse than my experiences at IONITY in Europe. Something up with EA.

 

[David Bennett]

Noticeably worse than my experiences at IONITY in Europe. Something up with EA.

Same here, Ionity has always given me faultless plug and charge with speeds in excess of 240kW until limited by the car.

 

[Tooney]

Kyle says reliability of DC fast chargers much better in Europe. He says European fast chargers are newer models, easier to maintain, than most of what is installed in North America.

Kyle has finally caught up with @daveo4EV

 

[gnop1950]

I haven't had any issues as yet, but I've only charged away from home a few times. I have to admit I'm not really a fan of the Out of Spec channel and this doesn't seem to be one of their better videos. IMO the threads on charging on this forum are much more useful/informative than the posted video.

 

[thecoloradokid]

There is absolutely no new information in this video, and the fact that it goes on for an hour and thirty minutes is a testament to a lack of new interesting content to post. Anyone who drives a CCS compatible vehicle knows that the Electrify America has significant challenges, and that the CCS infrastructure in the US needs a lot of work.

Out of Spec has turned into a big commercial for Kyle's new Rivian - since he has to "pay the bill" for jumping over thousands of earlier reservation holders because he got access to a Friends and Family program due to his Youtube "fame." The channel is also a big commercial for Kyle's new Model S. I am pretty sure that most of the new content posted lately includes him, or his team, showing off his personal fleet of vehicles while doing daily mundane things.

While I find the recent inventory of content tedious, and boring, he is obviously he is doing something right if he is buying multiple new cars this year. This video, however, I categorize at the same level of the Schmee person who thankfully has lost favor when posting content about Taycan's.

 

[JimBob]

For all the criticism, he has a better chance of raising the public profile of the poor quality of CCS fast charging than the posts here. Without that profile, history says it is unlikely that much will improve.

 

[ThePaddyWan]

For all the criticism, he has a better chance of raising the public profile of the poor quality of CCS fast charging than the posts here. Without that profile, history says it is unlikely that much will improve.

Very true, every bit helps. The fast charging vendors are very well of their issues and incentivized to fix things quickly, as they're not making any revenue from the broken units and it adds to the frustration in the customer base who will eventually look elsewhere.

For me, I'm willing try to move our car if a particular charger isn't working, but, when there's problems for all the stations at a location, it becomes frustrating and feels low effort. I had that happen to me this weekend. Only one charger was working (at 38kw) and occupied, the other three were unavailable. The L2 plug was showing working, but I only gained 1kwH in the 15 minutes I plugged in. I ended up leaving and took a mental note to avoid that location unless I have no choice. There were no physical signs warning us of those issues, it's something you have to figure out from the reading the panel, looking charging app and/or plugshare. Most people do not want to deal with that and just want things to work and not going to accept having to research every single charging stop.

 

[ciaranob]

..............
While I find the recent inventory of content tedious, and boring, he is obviously he is doing something right if he is buying multiple new cars this year. This video, however, I categorize at the same level of the Schmee person who thankfully has lost favor when posting content about Taycan's.

Yep amazes, me how people jump on vids or posts like this and assume its truly (US) universal. Zero issues in my 8+ months of ownership with multiple visits to 7 separate locations across Texas - again a physical area the size of France.

That said I am not naive enough to suggest that the 'wave' of upcoming new electric vehicles about to wash over us (well there may be a wee bit of a lag there!), is not going to impact accessibility, use and maintenance of said charging sites but from what I've read over the last 8 months, the worst examples are for very specific regions in the US and by no means does it appear (to me) to be a truly nationwide issue for EA in particular.

But probably just shot myself in the foot !

 

[thecoloradokid]

For all the criticism, he has a better chance of raising the public profile of the poor quality of CCS fast charging than the posts here. Without that profile, history says it is unlikely that much will improve.

I agree to a point. These types of videos just feed public frustration on the internet, and does little to move the needle for actual improved uptime.

What Kyle, and others on Youtube do not understand is that real progress is made by partnering with local government to help drive expansion of the charging networks, and to press for improvement on performance. I would bet that for all of Kyle's contacts within the EV world, he knows absolutely no one in any state government, nor does he know anyone in any capacity that has the ability to help spend the Volkswagen diesel gate settlement money.

Bitching on Youtube is fine, but real progress happens with government pushing Electrify America to be better. For example, EA would have to maintain a much higher uptime figure if it wants to tap into the pool of new money for new charger installation. Government setting up conditions like this is what we need.

Just my two cents on the matter. I know some people are rabid "keep government out of our daily lives" types, but I truly believe that improvement will come with additional government regulation.

 

[Visceral]

Consider how Kyle's monetization works. He get's a better comp for anything over 20 minutes and it does improve with every ad-break. He does get some engagement with his long diatribes and long sporty drives with passengers, which is mostly entertaining in how they turn green and angry with each corner and Kyle keeps on talking... through.... four .... more... ad ... breaks.....

I do appreciate his hustle. 99% of folks out there aren't hustling like he is. But I never want to ride in a car he's driving.

 

[ciaranob]

Consider how Kyle's monetization works. He get's a better comp for anything over 20 minutes and it does improve with every ad-break. He does get some engagement with his long diatribes and long sporty drives with passengers, which is mostly entertaining in how they turn green and angry with each corner and Kyle keeps on talking... through.... four .... more... ad ... breaks.....

I do appreciate his hustle. 99% of folks out there aren't hustling like he is. But I never want to ride in a car he's driving.

Ha, indeed, first thing I noticed on pulling up the vid was the density of ad breaks

 

[jkjjpc]

Kyle’s videos’ used to be interesting, now they are too long and mostly rants to gain views. I rarely find any of his videos worth the time to watch.

 

[Deleted member 7736]

(snip) and the fact that it goes on for an hour and thirty minutes is a testament to a lack of new interesting content to post.

I clicked on the video and as soon as I realized it was an hour and a half long I turned it off. I have no interest in watching anyone's YT videos for that long. There's something to be said for being able to succinctly make a point.

Now, I'm assuming that he's criticizing the reliability of EA chargers. I have to agree with that sentiment after this weekend's trip from the SF bay area to LA and back. I had to make a couple of stops each way to charge, plus a couple more stops at an EA station at a Walmart in the LA area. Without exception, every single time I stopped, half the chargers were unavailable or generated an error when trying to connect to them to charge. The only thing saving me was that they weren't busy, so I was able to move around to a few chargers until I finally found one that worked. But that was only half the issue. Even if I was "lucky" enough to get one of the 350kW chargers to connect and initiate a charge, the best I ever got out of it was 200kW for a couple of minutes, before dropping down to ~150kW. The ~150kW chargers never put out more than ~100kW.

Seems to me that EA has lots of incentives to build charging stations, but no incentive to keep them operational.

 

[ciaranob]

I clicked on the video and as soon as I realized it was an hour and a half long I turned it off. I have no interest in watching anyone's YT videos for that long. There's something to be said for being able to succinctly make a point.

Now, I'm assuming that he's criticizing the reliability of EA chargers. I have to agree with that sentiment after this weekend's trip from the SF bay area to LA and back. I had to make a couple of stops each way to charge, plus a couple more stops at an EA station at a Walmart in the LA area. Without exception, every single time I stopped, half the chargers were unavailable or generated an error when trying to connect to them to charge. The only thing saving me was that they weren't busy, so I was able to move around to a few chargers until I finally found one that worked. But that was only half the issue. Even if I was "lucky" enough to get one of the 350kW chargers to connect and initiate a charge, the best I ever got out of it was 200kW for a couple of minutes, before dropping down to ~150kW. The ~150kW chargers never put out more than ~100kW.

Seems to me that EA has lots of incentives to build charging stations, but no incentive to keep them operational.

As per my post above certain areas of the country (in the US) seem far worse than others (based on reading forum posts over last 1.5 years from users spread across the country).

CA TBH seems to top the list from what I've read to date in respect poor experiences - way back with Daveo4ev's and other's experiences in 2020-2021.

By contrast despite a few glitches and one or two bad experience re chargers out of operation, the majority of Taycan reports from TX seem to be polar opposite to CA. Not sure if related to rates of use i.e. much higher EV sales and use in different States like CA or if related to early builds/implementations (charging stations and cars) vs later builds or what.

I've seen individual units being serviced by contractors 3 times at TX EA chargers out of 24 visits to date - again not sure how EA's business model setup w.r.t. maintenance if by State with local codes/requirements to meet a std. or national with national std. etc.

Regardless of above would be nice to see consistency no doubt but perhaps still early days.

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