Ford EV Charging Partner Electrify America Outlines New Quality Pledge

[Ming]

See my reply above.
Put a button in the app right on the same page as charger to report issues.
They make it hard to report issues IMO

there should be a call button on the charger themselves.
even better, the charger should have self-diagnosis capability and report back status every once a while.
even without any of those, they can easily monitor the usage of the chargers, if one is not being used but other chargers at the stations get high usage, then they should know something's wrong.

those 20,000 tests are just wasting money for a PR article.

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[Blue highway]

So about this pledge...

• No availability targets or measures - Check
• No response time to outage targets or measures - Check
• Are they hiring or contracting more repair people - No Check
• Are they building an inventory of spares to speed fixes - No Check
• Are they doing anything to identify root cause of outages - No Check
• Are they doing anything to improve reliability - No Check

For me, this article has had the opposite effect of its intent. It has pointed out that they are doing nothing of substance to improve.

 

[buzznwood]

I pasted the Baker location picture from the Ford Authority story that's not from the press release from EA.
Still a cool location I wish they all looked like this. Working correctly is just a bonus

Agree on the looks it is the reason why you will see it appear in lots of promo images, but that station seems to spend more time down than up and in a constant upgrade which is a very poor look for a supposed flagship station.

It is in a key location for people that will traveling along the I15 and should be the template EA use for future interstate charging stations with it being just of the freeway, covered and not stuffed in the far corner of a Walmart carpark that is crowed with locals charging.

But then you take one look at the tesla super charger station that is right next to it and EA have a very long way to go.

 

[HuntingPudel]

We get a couple of the CP250's that'll do about 70kW max on the MME here, but thats it. Two EA stations in the area where I have seen 150kW+ on. Chargepoint has a lot of slow chargers around like 50kW (125A or roughly 42kW max on the MME I see).

The closest CP DCFC units near to my home are 50-ish KW units at a shopping center’s underground garage. They have all been broken since before I got my MME. Their L2 units all seem functional in the same garage and the SuperChargers for Brand T in the open air lot above all seem to function. ?‍?

 

[gordonf238]

The general impression I get is that most of these third-party charging solutions have been built by companies that took government incentives to build a nationwide charging network. I don't get the impression that they're building them at a pace that can keep up with EV sales, nor do they seem to be maintained/supported as such.

When I see a Tesla supercharger, I see a dozen stalls, with plenty of availability. Obviously, comparing that to third party EV chargers, the demand simply isn't there (yet) to warranty a dozen stalls, since Tesla ownership easily eclipses all of the other EV vehicles right now.

Still, in my experience, driving in the northeast, it's not uncommon to find fast chargers occupied, and waiting to use one is something to be expected.

Ford and GM should really fund a partner company that can build and maintain a network comparable to Tesla's. Realistically, that will never happen. As of now, we're left with a patchwork of state, city, local, and third-party chargers of varying KW output, and varying degrees of availability and maintenance.

 

[Logal727]

I keep seeing Baker in here and thought Baker, Nevada, which I was like WOW, they put one there?? But no, it's Baker, California. Disappointing because Great Basin National Park is pretty cool, but it's in the middle of absolutely nowhere.

 

[RickMachE]

So about this pledge...

• No availability targets or measures - Check
• No response time to outage targets or measures - Check
• Are they hiring or contracting more repair people - No Check
• Are they building an inventory of spares to speed fixes - No Check
• Are they doing anything to identify root cause of outages - No Check
• Are they doing anything to improve reliability - No Check

For me, this article has had the opposite effect of its intent. It has pointed out that they are doing nothing of substance to improve.

Yeah, because every press release from every company always includes their internal targets, criteria, etc.

 

[Blue highway]

I recently let EA know about the second of 3 chargers at the location nearest to me being unavailable. They now have had 2 out for weeks. A twitter reply indicated that they are waiting on parts. While they wait, their value, revenue and reputation are degrading. Some sniffing around makes me think they have a cash flow issue right now. I suspect that they were counting on the US Senate sending them the piles of cash that were just approved, but arriving a while ago.

The longer this goes on with multiple stations down, the less people will trust in EA. Their leadership has to know this.

THIS is the reason that the government pouring billions into chargers is heading for a fail. The plans the government is demanding require Maximum new chargers at Minimum cost. There is no consideration or planning whatsoever about fiscal sustainability in their plan outline for the states.

At the minute, most (all?) charging companies are financially failing. Many have run out of cash. There will be little or no maintenance driven by regulation if there is no way to pay for it.

sorry.

 

[MellowJohnny]

In this day and age why doesn't the charger diagnose itself and report issues back so that issue reporting isn't by a random check or user call-in? In fact, why doesn't the charger diagnose and fix the problems itself?

100% - every single useful metric is right at their finger tips. In fact if it was sophisticated enough it would flag issues to the Tech Teams before they happen. This is table stakes for most IoT systems of this caliber (my firm has done plenty of work in this area - we showed how an HVAC system can alert an imminent filter replacement by monitoring airflow...not too hard to do)

 

[AZBill]

EA needs a fleet of "fix it monkeys", not Ford "charge angels" that simply report when things are broken.

I spoke to a tech who was working on a new EVGO site, on Monday. He told me his company also services EA chargers. So the "fix it monkeys" are basically subcontractors.

He did tell me that EA is replacing circuit boards in all the older units, but there are shortages of those. He also mentioned upgrading them to 5G communications.

I have seen a number of chargers with broken CCS connectors, it seems those need to be replaced on a more regular basis.

I am looking forward to the expansion of EVGO, with funding help from GM, at least that should get some competition which will improve the number of sites and hopefully increase reliability.

 

[KevinS]

He did tell me that EA is replacing circuit boards in all the older units, but there are shortages of those. He also mentioned upgrading them to 5G communications.

That's a problem for the ChargePoint chargers too because their older equipment had 3G antennas.

https://www.thedrive.com/news/44138/the-3g-shutdown-could-put-some-ev-chargers-out-of-action

 

[Kamuelaflyer]

Electrify America <snip> has gifted both Ford Mustang Mach-E and Ford F-150 Lightning owners with free charging.

There was zero gifting involved in the 250 kWh each new MME owner gets. That "free" kWh was bought and paid for by the manufacturer whether that be Ford, Kia, or whomever.

As long as users provide proper feedback, and EA pay attention and act upon it, the testing is kind of redundant.

Agreed, but it shouldn't be necessary. EA and others should have the ability to know when a charge session has failed and the ability to act on that information without our input.

 

[LNFitz]

Where are individuals reporting the most issues geographically?


Ogallala and N Platte in NE. That is a big area without much backup. Im about to drive through that area and there is about 25-50% DCFC working and then there is speed of output. I can get more reliable info sometimes on the PlugCharge app than on the EA app.

 

[DadzBoyz]

OK.... Disclaimer: I am in software and systems development and only have 20+ years in it....

I love this part:
"Electrify America employs a team of engineers and software specialists in its Network Operations center, which monitors network performance 24 hours a day, seven days per week. Users can contact the company via its Customer Contact Center at all hours as well, which is there to answer questions or help with technical problems as they arise."

That is a summary paragraph covering 3 bullet points in Electrify America's statement.

When you read between the lines, you find what's not there. For all the wonderful things that they are saying that their "Network Operations Center" is doing, it does not say that the can or are monitoring the status or up-time of their charging stations. They're monitoring "network performance". Nowhere do they say that they have a centralized Operations Center that has line of sight to whether a charging station is up and running or not. Can they tell if that machine has a network connection? Looks like they can. Can they tell if there is power to that machine? That's the power network, so I would say...maybe. They can see if the Charger has power by whether or not it's responding to network calls. Can they tell if the machine has enough power to operate/charge a car? It really doesn't seem that they can tell.

If they had built sensors, device monitoring, device status code, etc., they could see if a charger is up and running. What I'm reading is, they don't have that so they have to send people out to check-up on the machines and ask customers to call in if there is a problem.

Come on, people (Electrify America). What are you doing? We can certainly tell what you're NOT doing.

P.S. @Ford Motor Company, do you ask these questions?

 

[DadzBoyz]

I've read more than one article about these government grants to put in new chargers. They get the grant money to put them in, but there is no budget to fix or maintain them.

Hmmm... Our government at work....

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