[DeaneG]

We drove the roughly 500 miles from San Diego to San Jose again yesterday, through California's central valley desert / farmland, and had a lot of trouble with Electrify America charging stations along I-5. Of the 12 charging stations we tried (over five locations), we had five that got stuck in the "initializing" phase when connected to the vehicle. Two others started charging but stopped almost instantly with charging faults. The remaining five worked fine.

It's unsettling to arrive at a charging stop 100 miles from anywhere that has three charging stations, find that the first two stations don't work, and hoping the third will.

This 60% failure rate is worse than our first trip that had me feeling pretty good about CCS charging. Are there still compatibility issues with EA (signet) chargers and the XC40? One charger that failed for me with the "initializing" problem worked for ID.4 cars both before and after my failed attempt.

I'll say that I definitely had VW-Porsche-Audi jealousy when my Xc40 wouldn't charge and those others seemed to work just fine.

 

[Seattleman]

Did you try calling EA customer service? Were they able to troubleshoot and fix it? I've had problems with EA charging and their tech support was able to get it resolved. Sometimes EA charging works if you initiate it from their app. Sometimes it works if you start with the EA card in the iPhone app. I agree, it is frustrating!

 

[DeaneG]

Did you try calling EA customer service? Were they able to troubleshoot and fix it? I've had problems with EA charging and their tech support was able to get it resolved. Sometimes EA charging works if you initiate it from their app. Sometimes it works if you start with the EA card in the iPhone app. I agree, it is frustrating!

I didn't call EA while attempting. As long as there was one more charger to try, I just moved there and tried again. I did find that the phone-NFC method of starting a charge worked only half the time (android in case it makes a difference), so I gave up on that and used the app-slider method to initiate, which always worked. Most of the time I never got to this step as the charger screen would just get stuck "initializing" upon plugging in my car. I'll call or message EA today. A terrible experience on this leg of the journey.

 

[DeaneG]

Just called EA - of course the CSR was very apologetic and nice. His recommendation was to slightly lift the cable when plugging in, and holding it lifted through the "initialization" phase. Sounds like pin contact on the upper half of the connector can be iffy but is only needed during initialization.

 

[DeaneG]

Two other gripes: 1) What is EA's blank blue screen with the "continue" button for? All it seems to do is obscure whether the charger is working or not. 2) EA's android app freezes most of the time when charging fails, have to stop and restart the app.

 

[340driver]

Just called EA - of course the CSR was very apologetic and nice. His recommendation was to slightly lift the cable when plugging in, and holding it lifted through the "initialization" phase. Sounds like pin contact on the upper half of the connector can be iffy but is only needed during initialization.

A Popular You Tube personnel Kris Rifa who has done many reviews and test with XC40 Recharge has mentioned numerous times how he has to hold up on the handle to get initializing working at many of the different chargers he has been using. At least that agrees with what EA has told you.

 

[DeaneG]

A Popular You Tube personnel Kris Rifa who has done many reviews and test with XC40 Recharge has mentioned numerous times how he has to hold up on the handle to get initializing working at many of the different chargers he has been using. At least that agrees with what EA has told you.

Thanks - that's reassuring. After yesterday's trouble I didn't want to take a road trip in the car ever again. That CCS connector really is a kludge compared to Tesla's, but at least it can handle 800V charging - I don't think Tesla's connector has the necessary creepage and clearance distances for more than 400V.

 

[arijaycomet]

RE: Handle pull up — we actually have this issue with a Level 2 AC charger at home. We have the XC40 and the Polestar 2, and this cable is a 3rd party one from Amazon that is NEMA 14-50 to J1772. It can handle 40A max which is perfect for my home setup. On my wife’s XC40 I must really slam it in hard, I’ve never had it fail, but my wife says she’s had the issue of having to hold it up. Well, a few weeks ago I got my Polestar 2 and starting having the issue, told wife, she told me the trick (i had seen it from Kris/YouTube but it didnt even dawn on me). Yep, that fixed the issue!

So I hate to say it but as others have said… those heavy CCS chargers seem to have more weight and seem to often need this. I never had this problem with the few times I DC Fast charged either Porsche Taycan, or the Audi eTron SUV that i owned— but i admit i only DC fast charged those cars a half dozen times collectively; never road tripped with them. Glad you were able to get it working— i really hope the issue was just the cable weight and not inherent issues with the EA+Volvo combo. :/

 

[DeaneG]

... i really hope the issue was just the cable weight and not inherent issues with the EA+Volvo combo. :/

Me too! But I'm thinking it may be a problem inherent in the CCS2 Combo connector spec. In the category of half-baked rumors, a guy charging his ID4 next to me said that he'd met an Electrify America engineer who said that they were going to replace the cables on all their chargers to solve some charging problems. Don't know if this is true or false, or if it already happened or will never happen.

BTW I've never had connection integrity issues with a J1772 charger at home (Blink, Clipper Creek, Chargepoint Home Flex) on different cars (Leaf, Kia Soul, and our XC40). They've always worked perfectly with a nice click into place.

 

[arijaycomet]

BTW I've never had connection integrity issues with a J1772 charger at home (Blink, Clipper Creek, Chargepoint Home Flex) on different cars (Leaf, Kia Soul, and our XC40). They've always worked perfectly with a nice click into place.

Same with me, which is why it surprised me to have this issue on the CMA platform cars. We’ve not had these issues and I’ve had similar list of chargers/cars as you (Schneider Electric, Tesla HPWC, ChargePoint Home, current Amazon cable, etc) (Leaf, Teslas, Taycans, Audi PHEV, Audi BEV, Mini BEV, etc etc) — and of all those combos I’ve never once had an issue with a charger J1772 handle. Only CCS and only really with the CMA cars (XC40/Polestar).

My wife is on the XC40 Facebook group, I am not but I linger here, so collectively, we have “all the data” LOL. She said on the FB group someone had the “lift/hold” issue with a L2/J1772 which is what solved our problems. And it sounds like a few YouTubers have had CCS/L3 charging as discussed above. So while I’d hope EA fixes whatever they need to fix, i still fear there may be some inherent CMA-platform Volvo issue here … maybe…. Speculating —

 

[SeattleCat]

Did you let ea know the chargers were down?

 

[DeaneG]

Did you let ea know the chargers were down?

While I was charging, I reported three of the seven that failed for us. Gave up after reporting three as I had switched to expletives by then and it was beginning to show in my "reports". Sounds like a total of five of the seven failures were this connector issue and might have been solved by supporting the cable. The other two were different - charging initiated but then stopped immediately after starting.

 

[SeattleCat]

I had the start and immediately stop behavior back in May and June. I thought they had resolved that problem but it seems not.

 

[DeaneG]

BTW I checked the "Contact Me" box in each of my charge-failure reports; no one contacted me.