In a lot of ways, an electric car seems an ideal choice for people who have been in the being alive business for a long time. Maintenance is less complex, the cars are quiet and easy to drive, and they can be charged right at home. EVs and older people seem like a great match, and generally they are. That’s part of why the choice of a Volkswagen ID.4 seems great for the Martins, a couple in their 70s who recently made a road trip in their EV to take 79-year-old Mr.Martin to a hospital for some medical appointments. Along the way, they stopped at an Electrify America (EA) charging station, and that was the start of a long ordeal that revealed a significant problem with EV charging.
The Electrify America charging station was in Athens, Alabama, the only one in that town of 30,000 or so, and was situated, as many of these charging stations are, behind a Walmart. The station was about 165 miles from where the Martins started, and they still had a way to go to get to their hotel near the hospital. They pulled into the charging station about 10:30 in the morning, planning on staying there the 30 to 45 minutes or so it would take to charge up their car using one of the station’s three “ultra” or “hyper-fast” DC chargers.
Things seemed to go wrong pretty much from the very start. As Javene Martin told me, when they plugged in the charging cable, the charging status light on her ID.4 “went from green to red right after we plugged it in,” and charging stopped pretty much before it could even start. Realizing something was amiss, Javene called Electrify America support, who rebooted the charger, but to no avail.
Javene decided to try a different charger, so she attempted to unplug the cable from her car, but it wouldn’t release.
“I found the emergency release in the back of the car,” she told me, “but it wouldn’t budge. I thought maybe because I was a 73-year-old woman and just not able to pull it hard enough, but it just wouldn’t release.” Javene told me she tried “pulling, prying, and cussing” but could not get the charger out of the socket.
The issue wasn’t Javene’s pulling ability. That cable was well and truly stuck. She kept calling Electrify America support for help, eventually calling them every hour on the hour (“Bless their little hearts,” she added) but they proved to be of little actual help, despite cycling power on the charger remotely. She reached out to the Volkswagen dealership she got the car from, but they proved to be no help at all, saying the issue was with the charger and it wasn’t their problem. While they may be technically correct, Javene did note that “a little sympathy would have gone a long way.”
A shocking amount of time had passed with the Martins’ car stuck to this cable. Electrify America eventually escalated their support to reach out to a technician to go there in person, but the only one they could get on a Saturday was about four hours away in Knoxville, Tennessee. Mrs. Matin told me EA gave them an estimate of 5 pm for the tech’s arrival – seven hours since this all began – but he didn’t actually arrive until around 8 pm because of issues getting a proper work order number from EA, without which, the tech could not get paid, again according to Javene’s talk with the tech.
Mr. Martin took an Uber to the hotel, as he was not in a condition to remain waiting with the car. Javene stayed to wait for the technician, who finally arrived about 9 pm, and she told me that the tech solved the problem with a very sophisticated, high-tech tool: a crowbar.
Yes, that’s the solution to how to deal with these cutting-edge electric car and fast-charging DC charger issues: you crowbar the crap out of them. Once the cable was finally freed from the car, what happened was pretty visually evident, as you can see here:
The charger had welded itself to the car.
And yes, that’s literally welded, as in arc welded, where an arc of electricity melts metals together. In this case, it looks like the heavy DC+ pin was welded into its corresponding socket, which makes sense as the DC pins are the ones that carry all the current on a fast DC charger.
Based on Javene’s description of events, this likely happened almost immediately upon plugging the charger in, when that light went from green to red. Something happened that caused the pin and socket to arc and get so hot they literally melted together, which is also why the emergency release did nothing: the cable and connector were welded together.
Interestingly, the damage to the ID.4’s charging and electrical systems seem to be limited to the physical damage at the charging port; once freed, the car was able to be driven to a slower Level 2 charger at a hotel, which uses AC power and a different set of pins, so it was able to charge. Eventually, the Martins got the car to their son in Chattanooga, who was able to charge it alongside his own VW ID.4.
So, the big question here is how does this happen, and why, and why aren’t there better safeguards in place to prevent this? Checking EV forums, it becomes clear that this wasn’t an isolated incident; similar situations of cables welding themselves to ports have definitely occurred before. There are forum posts of a Ford Mach-e owner who had their car get welded via the DC+ pin, just like the Martins.
In the case of the Mach-e, there was some telltale smoke, which the Martins didn’t encounter. There’s another post about a Mercedes-Benz EQS 450 at an Electrify America charger that, while it wasn’t stuck as such, had their charging port ruined from melted metal slag left on the pins. Here’s another similar example with a Volvo XC40 and an Electrify America charger, again on the DC+ pin. Here’s yet another incident with an Electrify America charger, this time melting the pins on a Kia EV9.
So what is going on here? Don’t these cables and ports have ways of checking if things are actually melting together?
There actually are a number of safeguards that are designed to protect this. I reached out to Jonathan Hair, an electric vehicle powertrain systems engineer for Ford, and he told me about some of the safeguards:
The PP (proximity) pin on the J1772 is supposed to be “last to make, first to break” in connection. It makes sure the connector is fully seated. if that breaks it should stop charging immediately to prevent an arc.
Also, there is a reason most cars have little flappy doors to protect the DCFC contacts. They want to keep them clean. some high impedance connection, that forms over time, will make it hot and could drive a failure like this.
Jonathan also mentioned that many automakers use thermistors in their pins to monitor the temperature, and if it goes higher than is safe, derate the power draw. I reached out to Volkswagen to see if they use such thermistors, and was told that yes, VWs have two thermistors, one for each DC pin, and it was noted that both the car and the charger are monitoring temperature and will stop the charging session if an overtemperature situation is occurring or if the temperature differential between the DC pins is too great.
Volkswagen is looking into this as we speak, and Electrify America is in the loop as well. So far, VW nor EA has a final answer, but I do have this statement from Volkswagen:
“We are fully committed to the safety of our customers. We are continuing to investigate the details of this incident.”
For what it’s worth, this does seem more like a charging/Electrify America issue than a Volkswagen issue specifically, especially because there are a number of reports of extremely similar events happening at EA stations with other makes of car.
Whatever is happening here, this is a big deal, and the Martins’ situation really couldn’t have made that more clear. A couple in their 70s, in the process of taking one of them to a hospital for medical appointments, is trapped at a charger for over 10 hours with no way to get their car free? That’s just not acceptable in any context. This isn’t even an EV issue, really; if a gas station pump trapped a combustion car for 10 hours, that’d be just as big a deal.
EV chargers take a lot of abuse and are subject to challenging conditions of weather and use. DC fast chargers are pumping a hell of a lot of energy through those cables, and wear and tear on those plugs and cables can have some pretty severe consequences, as we see here.
This is a serious problem that needs to be addressed. There’s not always a crowbar around to save the day, after all.
“This isn’t even an EV issue, really; if a gas station pump trapped a combustion car for 10 hours, that’d be just as big a deal.”
Yes, it would. But usually gas stations are manned. You wouldn’t wait 10 hours for help. Maybe the onsite person can’t help, but you can bet they’ll be calling the manager/owner right away (rather than have a pump down). And since nozzles don’t lock onto the car, it should be easier to get one out.
Yeah, and the physics of pumping gas wouldn’t cause this. We’ve had 100+ years to make gas delivery reliable in spite of constant abuse from the elements and uncaring customers. We haven’t had that kind of time for EV chargers, and we don’t have a good enough understanding of failure modes or the required regulations to ensure decent uptime and safety.
Jason is right that older people getting stuck at a gas station for 10 hours would be a story, but this is 100% an Electrify America issue, which makes it an EV issue even if the car itself wasn’t really at fault here.
Are EA charging and Spirit Airlines owned and run by the same people? I was thinking this could be a good way to have your own portable fast charger that just goes everywhere with you.
Electrify America and CCS. Well, more Electrify America. There’s the issue. Say what you want about Tesla but their chargers work.
Was the technician named Gordon Freeman?
No Richard Pryer
How much to include a crow bar with the tire/tool kit? Asking for a friend.
They won’t sell you a crowbar but you can subscribe to one for a nominal monthly fee.
Many EAs station are behind wal-marts, so obtaining a crowbar should be easy. I’m not sure I’d want to handle a steel bar to pry out a high-voltage cable, though.
I guess the high current pin was damage before and when the system started to deliver power instantly had a problem and shut off. But then it was already too late. So the safety systems worked. The support systems (humans to service the things) obviously are not in place.
Too bad we don’t have a lot of people around who can do simple things for a low price. Instead we need to get people from 4+ hours away to look after a … electrical connection.
Seems more a logistics problem here. Chargers will fail over time. From wear, tear, weather, abuse, use and what not. Having to wait a full working day sounds like there is no contingency plan.
Perhaps it’s Electrify America’s fault for choosing a name with the initials “EA”.
It could be considered a side-effect of the constant pursuit of high-capacity batteries that fully charge at incredible speeds. Keep moving an increasing amount of energy over a decreasing period of time, and you start pushing some extreme limits.
“She kept calling Electrify America support for help, eventually calling them every hour on the hour (“Bless their little hearts,” she added)”
Daaayuuuuummmm.. That is the elderly Southern lady equivalent to calling them the “C” word. The “little” elevates it from F-bomb level.
I had the same thought. “Bless their hearts” is how a polite person from the south says “They’re a F’in idiot”.
I wonder if the sensors would help in a situation like this, I mean, if what they do is monitor the temperature during the charging process. In this case, the charging process didnt even start, it was an immediate failure on contact, there might not have been enough time to even register that something was wrong. I mean, this welding incident probably happened in the same length of time it takes for the sensor to trip, split second
I’d say this was probably more like a lightening strike rather than a gradual over heating problem
These top shot puns are INSANE. What a time to be alive and read the Autopian.
All the EV owners suddenly rush out to buy a crowbar to keep in the car at all times.
What size bolt cutter is appropriate to use on the cable in case the pry bar doesn’t work? We can market a carry-along kit with both methods included. Guaranteed to free your car or your money back!
That’s when you carry a battery-powered angle grinder in case the bolt cutter snaps while trying to free the pry bar.
Cutting an electrical cable like that will weld you to the charger. The one across the street.
This sounds like the smoothest charging session ever at an EA charger.
Guessing the designers were all young chaps in their 20s who really slam in the plugs.
Get to live to 40 and plugs are gently pushed in, because ease and grace are the way to go.
But if the plugs and software are designed to be slammed in it is entirely possible that the juice tries to flow before the plug is entirely seated — cue sparks, welds and just now explosions.
Hence the proximity pin, which prevents this from happening.
“The PP (proximity) pin on the J1772 is supposed to be “last to make, first to break” in connection. It makes sure the connector is fully seated. if that breaks it should stop charging immediately to prevent an arc.”
I’m new to EVs but haven’t heard a lot of great things about EA stations so maybe this is on brand for them. Too bad. Doesn’t really help trying to get people into EVs.
Maybe just a loose port leading to arcing? I’m surprised they don’t have arc detection/mitigation builtin in some fashion. DCFC pushes some serious juice.
Maybe they are buying their parts from Harbour Freight
The cables and connectors at those ea stations are often in terirble shape. I’ve seen some that appear to have been run over. Often they are laying on the ground exposed to weather for periods of time. All the communication is done though the j1772 part of the ccs cable it’s possible there was a slight gap in the terminals from wear or corrosion that caused an arc. I believe they run an impedance check to verify connectivity on the dc pins but may have widen the profile for this as different vehicles have had problems charging.
I suspect Walmarts ev charging station build out is partially from poor service from ea and the store employees being helpless too help.
At least they were not trapped IN the car for 10 hours.
EA’s reputation is consistent. What I find alarming is that the poor couple had to travel what, some 200 miles to get to a hospital? I guess there are still some remote enough areas in the U.S. that would be the case, but I didn’t get the impression that someone that buys a new EV would live at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. America Last in healthcare! Fix it ya Bastards!
No we will be ignorant and sickly cuz Freedom. /s
Huntsville has a fairly large hospital so it’s possible they were there for specialty care
It’s not necessarily the case they had to go 200 miles to get to any hospital, but rather needed to go to 200 miles to this specific hospital because of a specialist that was only available there.
Though, given the current and massive spate of rural hospital closures, it’s indeed quite possible that they had to drive that far to get to *a* hospital, period. Perhaps not necessarily in that particular region but there are indeed areas in the U.S. (other than the Southwest and some of the Midwest where everything is remote as heck) where one would have to drive triple-digit miles to get to the nearest hospital.
All else aside, our healthcare system is bad and access certainly isn’t getting better.
True but better than 6-9 month waiting kinda sucks at the universal health care contries
Funny that most everyone I know or who lives in (over 20 people) or has visited a ‘universal’ health care country has never had a 6 or 9 month wait for anything. Having said that in our freedumb country I have waited 4 months to see a cardiologist, 6 month for a dermatologist and yet they somehow can deliver the bill with startling accuracy and speed.
My kid had to go to the emergency room at a hospital in Paris. He had a large-ish deep cut on his leg from a fall at school and would need stitches. A doctor saw him immediately, shots were administered and the leg was stitched up. Madame at the payment desk had terrible news. Since we didn’t have a Carte Vitale (which means we were not enrolled in the French health insurance system) we would have to pay the full price. I was worried because she was very somber about the whole thing. She presented the bill. It was…140 euros.
The average cost for an MRI at a private clinic in London (which means you can get one next week, if you want) is 363 pounds. The average price in the USA is over $2000. Yes, you’ll wait in the UK if you want it for almost free from the NHS, but I would point out that 363 pounds is far less than most deductibles in our miraculous freedumb health system.
Are thousands of people dying in the streets in civilized countries around the world with universal health care because of wait times? They are not.
Oh, yes, I actually had to wait 4 months for my first appointment with my cardiologist just last spring, gah.
Lol, all too true about the speed with which they deliver the bills (& also somehow still have bills that only show up months or even years later. Some acquaintances, a college professor and a white-collar professional, with good health insurance, had a baby born prematurely who had to spend several weeks in NICU; they kept getting bills (& of course paying them) for such a long time afterwards that they actually got some bills while they were celebrating their baby’s 5th birthday!!)
Who told you that? Nobody I know who has lived in or currently lives in countries with universal health care (even those hamstrung by politicians with vested interests in privatization) has ever experienced those wait times you claim.
Meanwhile, I myself (as well as countless family members & friends) have had multiple-month wait times (yes, some as long as 9 to 10 months) for appointments right here in the good ol’ U.S.
To be sure, there are only so many medical professionals to go around so there’ll always be some modicum of waiting time everywhere…
Anyway, yeah, it’s been pointed out many times that for-profit health care will *always* focus on the bottom line ($$) while good (as in not being hamstrung as mentioned above) universal health care will be focused on outcomes (that is, the well-being of the people being treated.)
That’s the kind of crap they tell you to justify ripping you off. I’ve never met someone from a country with universal health care who would trade places with our system.
Broken leg on vacation in London was set, handed crutches, sent home in less than 2 hours. Cost zero dollars.
That is right-wing propaganda.
I recently moved to a country supposedly notorious for long wait times and poor outcomes. I found a family doctor across the street from my house and got an appointment 2 days after I contacted them. My spouse found a dentist a 15-minute walk from my house and was seen the same day.
In the US, I paid $1,360 a month in insurance premiums alone for myself. The surgeon who operated on me for a common procedure was scheduling 5 months out (first contact in November, surgery in April), and that is costing me $7,500 out of pocket in coinsurance. My spouse’s procedures used to take hours on the phone fighting my insurance and the doctor’s scheduling office to get approval and scheduled 3+ months out. I used to get procedures for a disabling condition and stopped because the benefits didn’t outweigh the cost and annoyance of getting them approved. My primary care doctor scheduled 9+ months out for regular checkups, and her practice group was dropped by many insurance plans altogether several times over the years over reimbursement costs, so thousands of people lost access to their PCPs overnight because the practice typically won’t book people without coverage even if they can afford the $250 for a visit.
Mental health professionals are dumping insurance coverage altogether and going cash only with “superbills” you have to submit to your insurance yourself and try to get your money back after paying the doc yourself. There is a massive shortage in those specialties and access is abysmal. Months and months out, if you can find a practice that isn’t full up.
My meds cost about $5,700 per month at retail if you don’t have insurance. One rx alone costs $3,600 for 8 doses and one $1,200 for one monthly dose. And if you do have insurance, most plans won’t cover the meds unless you and your doc and your pharmacist fight tooth and nail to get preauthorization. If you’re lucky they will allow (and force) you to take less effective meds before they allow a review of the more expensive ones, even if they know you’ve already tried them and they didn’t work (they have the records of those attempts because they paid for them!)
Insurance premiums go up 10-20% and coverage goes down every year. Nothing increases that fast. And ACA premiums are set to double next year because evidently our elected officials believe their constituents shouldn’t have care.
How’s that for access?
This is in two major metropoles with medical centres all over the place, not a rural area devoid of doctors.
I have 25 years of records and hundreds of thousands of dollars spent to show you how great access to care is in the US. Come over to my place, I’ll buy you beers, you’ll give me a ride in that awesome vehicross, and I’ll show you the records.
Might not be no hospital but my Dad had to go to a Veterans Hospital and while not 200 miles was still 60 miles.
Hope he got the care he needed.
“She reached out to the Volkswagen dealership she got the car from, but they proved to be no help at all, saying the issue was with the charger and it wasn’t their problem. While they may be technically correct”…
It’s still technically a VWoA problem:
“Electrify America, LLC is an electric vehicle DC fast-charging network in the United States, with more than 950 stations and over 4,250 DC fast charging connectors as of August 2024. It is a subsidiary of Volkswagen Group of America, established in late 2016 by the automaker as part of its efforts to offset emissions in the wake of the Volkswagen emissions scandal.”
Oh F*ck. VW for the win then? They sure are a pile of excrement lately
It is a VWoA problem, but the dealer technically isn’t owned by VW. The dealership sells VW vehicles, but VW does not own the dealership. In this country, unless the laws change, the dealership owns VW.
If that VW dealer expects to sell any cars people need to have confidence in VW products and VW customer service, especially for the cars they sell. Even if a VW charger welding itself to a VW EV isn’t technically in their wheelhouse the optics are terrible, who wants to buy their cars if things like that are going to happen? Had it been a Tesla charger they could have pointed fingers but in this case the fingers only point at VW.
I think it would have been in their best interest to help somehow, especially since the car was sold by them. “Javene did note that “a little sympathy would have gone a long way.” Was that too much of an ask?
Ok, the pp pin only helps when its an issue with whether the plug is fully inserted or not. It would not be effected by high impedance or arcing on DC+ for other reasons. The thermistor is only helpful once it registers temp. In the case of instantaneous arcing it’s possible you get localized temps that can weld but it still takes a second to get to the thermister.
The thermistors may have worked in this case to stop the charging (maybe thats what triggered thw red light) bur not soon enough to stop the arcweld.
Seems like they could put FFT arcfault detection on the DC. Or maybe they did and that’s what tripped the relight and still wasn’t fast enough.
Ironically I suspect a software update might prevent this. If the system is trying to deliver current before the connection has been made, then this seems like bad programming.
I am pro electrification but this makes me glad I can just pull up to the next pump of flammable liquid and be on my way.
Yeah as much hate as Tesla gets if I go on a road trip and have to use DC fast chargers I will try and stop at Tesla chargers since I got the Volvo supplied plug adapter (which is made by Tesla if if I am not mistaken) to use the super charger on my Polestar. Have heard a lot of horry stories from Electrify America and other types of DC fast chargers.
A VW charger (Electrify America), a VW dealership, a VW vehicle… all useless.
I mean VW is the cause of death for the diesel engine, looks like they are working some of that German magic on the EV world too.
Pretty sure that’s been the plan all along.
Well the dealership is not necessarily a VW owned dealership. That’s kind of like making McDonald’s responsible for your local convenience store being out of Coke Classic.
OK Iwill do that /s
Update: after reading this story, Tesla announced they will now offer a matching stainless steel Charger Release Object (a CRO bar) for $2500 with every cybertruck purchase.
But they will hide it in the car so you can’t find it when you need it.
I’d be interested in knowing what safeguards the technician had while using the crowbar? Was it insulated, or just the garden variety Gordon Freeman crowbar of Half-Life fame? This could certainly be a don’t-try-this-at-home moment since the electrical faults aren’t always evident.
Yeah I was going to make a comment on damn now I need to carry a crowbar in my Polestar. But I am assuming the tech Loto’ed the charger and made sure it was turned off before prying the connector out. I also wonder if they removed the HV disconnect from the VW before prying?
Extremely low risk. The charging station cable will not be energized. The charger and the car need to have an initial handshake conversation, once both the car and charger agree only then is power supplied. The charger and car are in constant communication. If communication stops (which is what the VW did when it refused to charge), the charger de-energizes immediately.
Heck, you could just drop a DC fast charger cable end into a bucket of water and nothing would happen. There is no power.
AC chargers go through the same handshake for charging as well. Until the car and charger talk to one another, the AC cable has zero power.
I should mention that you should not unplug a DC fast charger before stopping the charging station session. That is asking for a nasty and dangerous power arc. Cars are supposed to have a lock to prevent you being able to do this when the charger is on.
I farm out my electrical projects to experts since I’m afraid of releasing the magic white smoke and then my stuff never works again. I’ll happily weld and wrench all day, but keep me away from troubleshooting electrical issues.
I get it totally. Amusingly, I am horrified of welders – they just seem crazy dangerous. While I am quite comfortable working with electrical projects.
What about them seems dangerous (other than the sparks and intense UV radiation)? Unless you’re using a fancy TIG welder that can do AC, they generally operate at roughly 15-20V DC. They are dangerous from the perspective of how many things I’ve accidentally caught on fire including my shirt once, but I’ve never been worried about any electricity related danger, at least when they’re fully assembled and working properly.
It ain’t the volts, it’s the amps that getcha. And welders can source a metric buttload of amps.
Welder here. We are.
You’re putting a lot of faith in safeguards that just partially failed.
That is what gloves are for.
I wonder if you can just disconnect power
To make it safer to remove the cable, probably, but once it’s welded it’s not going to get loose with no power 🙁