CCS charging station reliability / interoperability

DonTom

DonTom

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I was surprised when I first heard that Rivian had their own charging network. And I wondered why they did that.

Are their chargers as reliable as are Tesla Superchargers? I assume they are.

I have wondered if the main reason CCS is so unreliable is because they have so many different types of EVs to charge. Seems CCS runs a very complicated program which usually means a lot of bugs that effect only a few vehicles along with other issues. Like the CP .18 version that would not charge Energica motorcycles. Now the new .22 CP FW version works well with Energica, but now perhaps not with some other make, etc.

I assume they have a reason for updates one after the other.

-Don- Reno, NV

​

 
There is probably truth to the fact that because non-Tesla chargers have to deal with so many different brands of vehicles that there may be issues related to compatibility (certainly there are examples of chargers not working with specific brands of vehicles -- or bikes). I think most of the time, however, it's other things like credit card readers, network failures, cut cables, or just plain old slow charging, which I suspect it due to either overheating in the charger or just plain old component failure. And yes, sometimes the software just plain old crashes. I've been to EA stations where the station is either on the blue screen of death or a windows boot screen. Why they can't have their machines operate in a failsafe mode where they at least always reboot to a working state (even if that state simply states that a hardware failure is been detected and the station is unavailable) I don't know (although my guess is that they were rushed to market and it will take 2-3 generations of typical product development cycles to work out the most serious issues).

As for whether Rivian stations are more reliable, I'm not aware of any data on that. The number of sites is still relatively small, and the limited number of vehicles using them means there probably isn't a ton of statistics yet.
 
DonTom said:
I was surprised when I first heard that Rivian had their own charging network. And I wondered why they did that.

Are their chargers as reliable as are Tesla Superchargers? I assume they are.

I have wondered if the main reason CCS is so unreliable is because they have so many different types of EVs to charge. Seems CCS runs a very complicated program which usually means a lot of bugs that effect only a few vehicles along with other issues. Like the CP .18 version that would not charge Energica motorcycles. Now the new .22 CP FW version works well with Energica, but now perhaps not with some other make, etc.

I assume they have a reason for updates one after the other.

-Don- Reno, NV

​

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I suggest following @RateYourCharge on Twitter. They do weekly/monthly reports discussing the reliability of different networks. Though the Rivian network is currently lump in with "Other Networks", they do indicate that RAN is nearly as reliable as the Tesla network.

I've only attempted to use the network twice. The first was flawless, but the second the whole site was down. I do get the impression that was a fluke, and there was a technician already on-site when we showed up. It was back online the next day.
 
lpickup said:
or just plain old slow charging,
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Perhaps most slow charging is not because of the charger, but things such as EV battery temp that perhaps many EV owners do not understand.

My Energicas have a battery temp light. When it is blue, the battery is too cold. When it is green, it is perfect. When yellow, it is just a bit on the warm side. Red is dangerous hot for the battery.

When blue or red, wait until it warms up or cools off. It will not accept a charge at all. I have yet to see either red or blue. But last year, on a Zero, I was stuck in Carson City for hours on a hot day. It was 105°F. that day and the battery would not accept any charge. Zeros have no battery temp indication.

With my Energicas, when green, it will charge fast, up to 25 KW. When yellow, it will charge slowly, perhaps half that when at the same SOC. That is with a normal CCS charger.

So far, I have only seen green and yellow. Yellow is common after a CCS charge on a warm day. And it can stay yellow all the way until the next charge 130 miles later. But only on a warm day or from a lot of aggressive riding.

I know Tesla does a good job of controlling battery temp and the navigation system should ALWAYS be used before a supercharge, even when you KNOW where the charge station is located. A couple of miles before getting there, the screen will mention how it is preparing the battery temp for a super charge. That will speed the charge up. Probably a lot of Tesla owners do not know things like that and if they do not do such, the charge will be slower than it should be.

Unfortunately, they have no decent ways (yet) to control battery temp in a motorcycle.

When I was using a Tesla Magic Dock, it would only charge at 8KW when green, but that is probably a semi-incompatibly issue. Tesla Superchargers probably do not know how to charge Energia batteries, but at least it worked somewhat. I assume if Magic Dock becomes common, they will fix that issue.
 
DonTom said:
Perhaps most slow charging is not because of the charger, but things such as EV battery temp that perhaps many EV owners do not understand.

My Energicas have a battery temp light. When it is blue, the battery is too cold. When it is green, it is perfect. When yellow, it is just a bit on the warm side. Red is dangerous hot for the battery.

When blue or red, wait until it warms up or cools off. It will not accept a charge at all. I have yet to see either red or blue. But last year, on a Zero, I was stuck in Carson City for hours on a hot day. It was 105°F. that day and the battery would not accept any charge. Zeros have no battery temp indication.

With my Energicas, when green, it will charge fast, up to 25 KW. When yellow, it will charge slowly, perhaps half that when at the same SOC. That is with a normal CCS charger.

So far, I have only seen green and yellow. Yellow is common after a CCS charge on a warm day. And it can stay yellow all the way until the next charge 130 miles later. But only on a warm day or from a lot of aggressive riding.

I know Tesla does a good job of controlling battery temp and the navigation system should ALWAYS be used before a supercharge, even when you KNOW where the charge station is located. A couple of miles before getting there, the screen will mention how it is preparing the battery temp for a super charge. That will speed the charge up. Probably a lot of Tesla owners do not know things like that and if they do not do such, the charge will be slower than it should be.

Unfortunately, they have no decent ways (yet) to control battery temp in a motorcycle.

When I was using a Tesla Magic Dock, it would only charge at 8KW when green, but that is probably a semi-incompatibly issue. Tesla Superchargers probably do not know how to charge Energia batteries, but at least it worked somewhat. I assume if Magic Dock becomes common, they will fix that issue.
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We're probably getting off topic (might want to start a new thread on Rivian reliability), but a few comments:

Yes, many people are unfamiliar with the need for batter conditioning and other factors (SOC) that may impact charging speed. One of the first posts on this forum was about that very subject. However, slow charging is definitely a real issue and I believe quite common. Typically caused by one or more charging modules in the charger going down (I suspect more often than not this is due to overheating). This is very evident at Tesla Superchargers as you typically see charge rates which are even multiples of 18kW when charging is limited.

It seems like the simple color coded indicator light on your bike works well for the purpose and conveys the needed information nicely. I do wish cars and/or charging stations had something similar.

As for whether Superchargers "know how to charge your bike", that's probably not the exact cause. The vehicle/bike is actually in control of the charging session, requesting a certain amount of current or voltage, and all the charging station doing is doing its best to comply with the request. Now it's possible that a communication issue prevented the bike from communicating its request, or the Supercharger didn't communicate its capability properly. It adds a bit of complexity, but it is nice to have either the station or vehicle indicate the requested current/voltage and the actual delivered current/voltage, then it becomes clear whether it's the vehicle or station that's limiting the session (I suppose you could still do this with a simple indicator light, but would you believe it without the actual numbers?)
 
lpickup said:
The vehicle/bike is actually in control of the charging session, requesting a certain amount of current or voltage, and all the charging station doing is doing its best to comply with the request.
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Then, why will I always get three times the KW if I charge at a real CCS a mile away? I have never had it charge as slow anywhere on any CCS charger as I did with the Magic Dock. And I had a green battery temp light then before as well as after the charge, which should have allowed the fastest charging. And at least one other who charged an Energica on a Magic Dock noticed the same thing.

It may be "doing its best to comply", but its best was not very good. Even when my battery indicator is yellow, I get more KW out of other chargers than I did with Magic Dock with a green light.

-Don- Reno, NV
 
DonTom said:
Then, why will I always get three times the KW if I charge at a real CCS a mile away? I have never had it charge as slow anywhere on any CCS charger as I did with the Magic Dock.
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Like I said, either the Supercharger is failing to advertise it's full capability properly, or the bike is seeing something over the protocol that makes it cut back on the power (or mis-interpreting the Supercharger's capability). Impossible to say without seeing the actual messages being transferred.

I'm certainly not saying something's not broken, or that it isn't the Supercharger's or bike's problem, but it's not a case of the Supercharger not knowing how to charge the bike, because that's just not how charging works. The vehicle is always in control of the charging parameters, not the charging station (although the charging station may impose lower limits, for example if it detects a temperature issue in the connector or something like that).
 
lpickup said:
The vehicle is always in control of the charging parameters, not the charging station (although the charging station may impose lower limits, for example if it detects a temperature issue in the connector or something like that).
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If the bike is in full control of the chare rate, it makes no sense at all. In the electric motorcycle forums, others have tried the other Magic Dock that is located in Scott's Valley. They also got an 8 KW charge rate, the lowest charge rate they ever saw as well.

-Don- Reno, NV
 
Why doesn't it make sense? There is some kind of miscommunication such that either the bike "hears" that the Supercharger is only capable of 8kW or the Supercharger "hears" that the bike is only requesting 8kW. And if that's the case (some kind of protocol mixup), then I would expect exactly the behavior that you describe: all bikes are having the same problem. For example (and the problem is probably not this simple, but it illustrates the concept), if the Supercharger states its maximum current is 625A as a binary number (0b1001110001), but the bike is only programmed to accept an 9-bit value for max charge current, because all current charging stations (even the 350kW stations) max out at about 375A, which can be represented in 9 bits), then the bike may see the Supercharger current limit as 0b01110001, which is only 113A. This would still be 34kW (more than the 8 kW you are seeing), but illustrates the kind of communications protocol mixup that could happen (reminds me of the early days with my original IBM PC -- when we upgraded from 128K to 640K of RAM, the Visicalc program we used never expected to ever see more than 512K RAM, and when represented in binary, 640 is 0b1010000000, but if you are only looking for 9 bits, you would miss the first '1' and interpret the amount of RAM as 128K -- it took us quite awhile to figure out why Visicalc wasn't using any of that brand new memory we installed!)

The only other thing that I can think might be happening is that if the bike's battery architecture is such that the pack voltage is too low for the Supercharger to operate correctly, although I don't think this is likely. Do you know what the pack voltage is for the Energica? I'm not aware that the Supercharger has a minimum voltage that it can supply, but I guess that's a possibility.
 
What I didn't think made sense is that the bike would only request 8KW.

The Energica's uses 81 Lithium cells in series (81S) which is a nominal 300V, and a full charge of 4.1V per cell is (x 81 =) 332V. When it gets down to 280V, the bike gives begins the warning to charge the battery (below 40% SOC).

-Don- Reno, NV
 
DonTom said:
What I didn't think made sense is that the bike would only request 8KW.
Click to expand...
It would either be because it (incorrectly) "heard" the Supercharger say that "I can give you up to 8kW" and the bike said, yes, give me 8kW, or, the bike said give me 80kW (or whatever it's capable of accepting) and the Supercharger (incorrectly) "heard" 8kW. Again, this is just speculation without actually sniffing the handshaking messages, but one or the other is incorrectly interpreting the communications. This is especially likely if as you say other Energica owners are reporting the exact same behavior. Something in the software on one side or the other is not interpreting a message correctly.
 
lpickup said:
It would either be because it (incorrectly) "heard" the Supercharger say that "I can give you up to 8kW" and the bike said, yes, give me 8kW, or, the bike said give me 80kW (or whatever it's capable of accepting) and the Supercharger (incorrectly) "heard" 8kW. Again, this is just speculation without actually sniffing the handshaking messages, but one or the other is incorrectly interpreting the communications. This is especially likely if as you say other Energica owners are reporting the exact same behavior. Something in the software on one side or the other is not interpreting a message correctly.
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I wonder if the opposite has ever happened where a fastcharger has charged a smaller battery at several times what it is capable of --which could be dangerous.

-Don- Reno,NV
 
I would be very surprised if there were not breakers (or software equivalents) that ensured that the vehicle is not receiving too high a current or voltage, but yeah, very good point!

I've built my own charging station and while technically the station advertises its maximum power level, the actual policy is "trust but verify" meaning that even though you may advertise a 30A current limit to the vehicle, you still measure it and shut the session down if the vehicle starts to pull more (it will actually let the limit be exceeded for 0.5 seconds to account for an initial surge). With AC charging, you don't really have to worry about the charging station "over-supplying" the vehicle because the vehicle is drawing power into it. But with a DC charger, the charging station most definitely is either pumping (or trying to pump) a set amount of current, or holding the voltage at a set level which may be inappropriately high if there is a miscommunication.
 
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