Can't Come Quickly Enough - Porsche Partners with ABB Charging

the chargers that are most dysfunctional near me in Aptos are ABB chargers - so color me dubious that this is progress…

daveo4EV said:

the chargers that are most dysfunctional near me in Aptos are ABB chargers - so color me dubious that this is progress…

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Perhaps Porsche’s investment will improve them. Personally, I've never heard of ABB and I’m resistant to being held hostage by Electrify America’s hit-and-miss approach to maintenance and EV charging. Nothing like a little competition to get everyone to up their game.

Just more piece meal/patchwork charging infrastructure with no overall strategy. Would we have put gas pumps in bank parking lots and behind Taco Bell’s?

Torv said:

Perhaps Porsche’s investment will improve them. Personally, I've never heard of ABB and I’m resistant to being held hostage by Electrify America’s hit-and-miss approach to maintenance and EV charging. Nothing like a little competition to get everyone to up their game.

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ABB makes equipment, and EA operates it (along with chargers from other manufacturers). Porsche is simply buying interest down the stack.

Torv said:

Perhaps Porsche’s investment will improve them. Personally, I've never heard of ABB and I’m resistant to being held hostage by Electrify America’s hit-and-miss approach to maintenance and EV charging. Nothing like a little competition to get everyone to up their game.

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ABB is a huge player. They're a $30B company with 100,000 employees. They make a lot of things, including assembly robots and tons of other elements for the auto industry. ABB isn't a network nor are they competition to Electrify America. ABB was one of the four suppliers of DC Fast Chargers to the initial rollout of Electrify America. I'm not sure if it was an even split, but it may be that 25% of the initial EA footprint was ABB hardware. EA is now swapping out some of its early chargers though, including many of the ABBs.

daveo4EV said:

the chargers that are most dysfunctional near me in Aptos are ABB chargers - so color me dubious that this is progress…

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Perhaps after the deep freeze in December during which EA’s latest pick for chargers proved worthless, they are going back to the only chargers which were actually still worked, even if not perfectly.

Most of the robots on Taycan assembly line are also made by ABB.

Tomato said:

Most of the robots on Taycan assembly line are also made by ABB.

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They've been making industrial automation/robots for a very long time. EV chargers, not so much. Big companies, different divisions. Porsche investment is probably in the whole company, so not just chargers.

ABB = Always Been Broken

As far as I’m concerned , their name checks out

tutis said:

ABB = Always Been Broken

As far as I’m concerned , their name checks out

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My father worked with ABB robots in manufacturing before he retired a while ago. He's always talked highly about their industrial robots, as compared to other brands.

whitex said:

My father worked with ABB robots in manufacturing before he retired a while ago. He's always talked highly about their industrial robots, as compared to other brands.

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I only have experience with ABB's DC fast chargers. The software is terrible, slow. And they always have a problem of some kind; handshake not working, slow charging, or more generally charger offline. And it's not just with my car, I see many other customers struggling with their cars too at the fast chargers.

tutis said:

I only have experience with ABB's DC fast chargers. The software is terrible, slow. And they always have a problem of some kind; handshake not working, slow charging, or more generally charger offline. And it's not just with my car, I see many other customers struggling with their cars too at the fast chargers.

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I've been spoiled with Tesla supercharging which "just works", but recently caught this video where all the new EA chargers failed, with only the ABB units left operational.

whitex said:

I've been spoiled with Tesla supercharging which "just works", but recently caught this video where all the new EA chargers failed, with only the ABB units left operational.

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Haha, I'm sure the ABB guys are doing a little victory lap with this one. In my experience, whenever there's a broken DC charger somewhere, it's nearly always an ABB charger. They have a ton of those 50kW at supermarkets (e.g. LIDL, but others too); these are 90%+ broken. Don't take my word for it, search on charge map in Europe for 50kW chargers, look at photos of interface (ABB chargers have that smooth 'designed in MS Paint' look) and then check the comments; Like clockwork you'll see that they are broken every 2-3 weeks.

tutis said:

Haha, I'm sure the ABB guys are doing a little victory lap with this one. In my experience, whenever there's a broken DC charger somewhere, it's nearly always an ABB charger. They have a ton of those 50kW at supermarkets (e.g. LIDL, but others too); these are 90%+ broken. Don't take my word for it, search on charge map in Europe for 50kW chargers, look at photos of interface (ABB chargers have that smooth 'designed in MS Paint' look) and then check the comments; Like clockwork you'll see that they are broken every 2-3 weeks.

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Could it be that 90% broken is still industry best (i.e. the rest are more then 90% broken)?