I had a near miss incident with my Bolt EUV at an EA station in Champaign, Illinois last year. The Bolt is legendary for its 55 kW peak DCFC speed. But as I was watching this station ramp up, it blew past 55, jumping up to 62, then 67 before I quickly hit stop. Fortunately the car was fine, but I’ve never experienced that anywhere else. I now actively avoid EA unless there’s literally nothing else available
@@BensEcoAdvntr I've heard about this happening before. I may be remembering when you told alout it happening to your car, but I have heard of this. I'm glad you got it unplugged before any damage occurred. The battery probably would have been fine with more power, but I'm sure the wiring is not sized for more than about 55 because they wouldn't spend the extra money for beefier wire if they didn't need to.
Arc fault detection would catch that but if it's slow a lot of damage would be done with such high energy. Another thing that's important is vdroop reading on the plug itself. If more than a few watts is wasted on the connector it will overheat. afaik they only can do vdroop on the whole cable assembly right now which is a lot of dissipation.
You can CLEARLY see that the plug was not seated correctly- see all the little "half moons" on the EA handle plug? So, it appears that the pins may have been bent, likely in the vehicle, and when plugged in, it had some some issues after that- you can see it got hot and melted those impressions in the charger handle plug that match the pins on the vehicle.
@@dianewallace6064I’ve seen oddly sabotaged charger plugs before. So I always take a quick peak. I had one with what looks like expanding foam completely filling the connector. Had another one that looked like an oily mess.
The connection was not secure in some way or the metal was not clean enough to the vehicle pins hot or neutral. Any arc at 400 volts will cause a terrible amount of damage in a second. These connectors on the charge stations are worn items and the port on the car should be free of debris and contacts in good condition
Many of the plugs and sockets have temperature sensors in them. If a thermal rise is detected they are supposed to signal a power reduction or cut off. Either there was none installed here or it malfunctioned.
@@randycarter2001 The temperature sensor could be working perfectly and this still is possible. From the description of the incident, it sounds like it was a near immediate arcing and likely not an overheat situation.. Just one second of arcing at these voltage and amperages would have done this damage. Of course there is safety systems that monitors for this as well and probably cut charging off quickly, but it's not immediate maybe a half second or a second of this arcing before the cutoff caused this damage had it gone on longer, the whole damn car could have caught on fire from the melting plastic.
@@Crazypostman- seems like a terminal may have broken off in the last car which used this charger? Guess we need to carry tags warning others about suspect connectors. Look at this stuff before you plug in, people. Know what a good one looks like, and make sure the plastic around the pins hasn’t previously been preheated/melted, especially as charging speeds and power increase as we go forward.
@@lashlarue59 If it's actively arcing, you don't want to get close to it with that much power. Look for emergency shut off on the station. Safety system should automatically cut it off, but those can fail, I suppose. Don't be anywhere near it if 1000 volts was arcing at 500 amps. That's why these stations ramp up power slowly over 10 or 20 seconds. So a fault can be discovered before it reaches full power.
Not practical, energy hungry and produces high frequency magnetic fields. You cannot transfer that amount of power without large inductor coils adding more cost and weight.
@WOFFY-qc9te I've watched a few documentaries over magnetic resonance wireless charging, The efficiencies are near equivalent now, There is going to be extra per vehicle costs to add the coils, this is true. They can even bury the coil in asphalt and it doesn't affect the efficiencies making it near vandal proof.
@ The systems on busses are far from being suitable for cars. Addition weight and recourses for the inductor, also the systems would be using high frequency so if you have pacemaker your best keeping away. Also there are problems with stray eddy current fields inducing heat from magnetic hysteresis just like an induction stove/hob. The whole idea is impractical. Just because it exists does not make it useable. .
@@joelaichner3025 There could always be more unseen damage, But it looks like just replacing the charge port should do it. The charge port can be replaced as one unit, so theoretically it could be a quick fix If there's one available and doesn't have to be ordered.
Yeah, luckily it didn't burn high enough to damage the level 2 part. Had this connection failure and arcing occurred on a NACS plug, you definitely wouldn't have had level 2 access because it's all one thing that would have been melted. Thankfully this kind of event is very rare. Even for EA. I haven't really heard of this happening On a Tesla supercharger yet, but it Could still happen anywhere. People leave the plug on the ground and It gets a rock or dirt or something in it and messes the connection up. Then you have arcing and melting. So it could happen anywhere.
Even my BS android phones will reduce charging speeds or drop to a trickle charge if it detects unstable charging voltage/current. The charger should have detected this and disconnected before major damage occurred.
@@tellucas It's likely the safety systems were functioning and cut it off quickly, my guess would be from the description of the person. 1/2 sec - 1 sec. The voltage and amperage is just so high an arc blast is going to do instant damage. Had it kept on going for 10+ seconds, it could have melted the whole charge port and started a fire.
Way back when Nixon folded to OPEC and there was a big push for EVs, so called engineers and scientists just chose to ignore resistance. EA can provide up to 350 watts, amperage squared times resistance yields the loss in watts. It may be that the arc did not cause the melting but the melting caused the arc. 350 squared is 122,500. In order to keep the loss at the resistance point, below 1500 watts, like an electric frying pan one has to have a contact resistance lower than 0.00054 ohms. Good luck with that when you have contacts exposed to the weather, especially in areas where calcium chloride is used for dust and snow/ice control. The race for fast charging is going to ruin what little use full size, medium range, EVs have. I have been working on EVs for over 60 years, there is no such thing as a free lunch.
350 kW plug used hundreds of times is a recipe for disaster, why the system did not disconnect quicker, the colour of the scorch from the arc tells me that that arc was present for a while. It is not just the damage to the plug and sockets the vehicles charging systems has be exposed to abnormally high transients and stress. As mentioned in the comments Arc flash is deadly, you may walk away from it but in a short while you will be hurting, vaporised copper if inhaled means you will be dead in a few days.
@WOFFY-qc9te We all know how slow those machines are when you try to use the touchscreen. If the safety systems are operating off the same processing, it probably arked far longer than it should have before it shut off.
@@Crazypostman Correct, that charger was defective by not detecting the transient, temperature detection takes too long, that was a badly designed system. I have some experience with * 1000 Amp industrial motor inverters and they will detect a problem in a quarter of a cycle and do something about it. 800v EV chargers and ridiculous amperage through a mass produced over optimised connector is asking for trouble. Any industrial kit handling that amount of angry pixies would be built more robustly and with good mechanical interlocks and arc shields. Sooner or later someone is going to get a seriouse arc flash and that is the worst way to die. I know of someone who was speaking with his mate in emergency care, he had survived the flash not knowing that he would be dead from copper poisoning the following day.
Thank god evgo ionna and all these other networks are building out at a fast rate ea has been a trainwreck from the beginning vw doesn't really care about the network so maintenance is not really done properly
@ What less parts? WTF do you think is a lot simpler? The guy would have been totally SOL if was a NACS connector that melted, whereas the 2 extra pins for AC in the J1772 is what allows him to level 2 AC charge while waiting for parts and repair. The less plastic in a smaller NACS adapter is not an advantage, that is cost cutting. Not sharing pins for AC and DC is is actually simpler and less liable to problems due to software f!@$#-ups. After all the communications pins are basically the same purpose in NACS and CCS. Stop worshipping Leon and your nose is brown.
I had a near miss incident with my Bolt EUV at an EA station in Champaign, Illinois last year. The Bolt is legendary for its 55 kW peak DCFC speed. But as I was watching this station ramp up, it blew past 55, jumping up to 62, then 67 before I quickly hit stop. Fortunately the car was fine, but I’ve never experienced that anywhere else. I now actively avoid EA unless there’s literally nothing else available
@@BensEcoAdvntr I've heard about this happening before. I may be remembering when you told alout it happening to your car, but I have heard of this. I'm glad you got it unplugged before any damage occurred. The battery probably would have been fine with more power, but I'm sure the wiring is not sized for more than about 55 because they wouldn't spend the extra money for beefier wire if they didn't need to.
Car and charger are both preparing for tesla plug
@@DoingthingswithDANand that plug has only one layer of isolation at the contacts.
Arc fault detection would catch that but if it's slow a lot of damage would be done with such high energy. Another thing that's important is vdroop reading on the plug itself. If more than a few watts is wasted on the connector it will overheat. afaik they only can do vdroop on the whole cable assembly right now which is a lot of dissipation.
You can CLEARLY see that the plug was not seated correctly- see all the little "half moons" on the EA handle plug? So, it appears that the pins may have been bent, likely in the vehicle, and when plugged in, it had some some issues after that- you can see it got hot and melted those impressions in the charger handle plug that match the pins on the vehicle.
Always inspect the chargers cable inlet before use. If using an adapter check every connection point.
Wow, I've never inspected them. I will now.
@@dianewallace6064I’ve seen oddly sabotaged charger plugs before. So I always take a quick peak. I had one with what looks like expanding foam completely filling the connector. Had another one that looked like an oily mess.
That’ll be the next thing . Intentional dirt in the plug causing issues. If it’s not one thing it’s another!
"I'm not an electrician, I just play one on..."
If you hear the mini gun on a Warthog plane it just might be your car charger cable melting 🫠
@@MrSleepProductionsInc Exactly!
Thanks for this story. Now I know what sound I need to listen for. 😂
@@J0j0m10 Yeah, if you ever hear any bzzzzzzzt crackle pop Bzzzzt You might want to unplug the car
@@CrazypostmanI’m not sure I want to be reaching for the handle if I heard those sounds 😮
@@ronb4633 Definitely not. That's a lot of volts and amps. 💀
As many vids as I've seen about Electrify America chargers over the last five or six years, If I could afford an EV, I wouldn't stop at one.
The connection was not secure in some way or the metal was not clean enough to the vehicle pins hot or neutral. Any arc at 400 volts will cause a terrible amount of damage in a second. These connectors on the charge stations are worn items and the port on the car should be free of debris and contacts in good condition
@@cool2180 Yep, this is what I suspect.
One of the hi power pins was loos, it ark.
Many of the plugs and sockets have temperature sensors in them. If a thermal rise is detected they are supposed to signal a power reduction or cut off. Either there was none installed here or it malfunctioned.
@@randycarter2001 The temperature sensor could be working perfectly and this still is possible. From the description of the incident, it sounds like it was a near immediate arcing and likely not an overheat situation.. Just one second of arcing at these voltage and amperages would have done this damage. Of course there is safety systems that monitors for this as well and probably cut charging off quickly, but it's not immediate maybe a half second or a second of this arcing before the cutoff caused this damage had it gone on longer, the whole damn car could have caught on fire from the melting plastic.
@@Crazypostman- seems like a terminal may have broken off in the last car which used this charger? Guess we need to carry tags warning others about suspect connectors. Look at this stuff before you plug in, people. Know what a good one looks like, and make sure the plastic around the pins hasn’t previously been preheated/melted, especially as charging speeds and power increase as we go forward.
@@dennislyon5412 Always great advice to do a quick visual inspection.
@@dennislyon5412probably not easy to do…..especially after 6pm when it starts getting dark.
@@mjg1544- flashlight in phone? Worth using.
Arcing with that amperage can be dangerous (or dead) if you are near the charge port when it happens. Nice message.
This is why plugs like this should have 2 layers of isolation. Like you see it has at 6:28.
I've been driving a Tesla since 2014 never had an issue like this and super charge ALOT. That experience would really put me off of EA.
When something arc's like that; how do you unplug it from the car without killing yourself?
@@lashlarue59 If it's actively arcing, you don't want to get close to it with that much power. Look for emergency shut off on the station. Safety system should automatically cut it off, but those can fail, I suppose. Don't be anywhere near it if 1000 volts was arcing at 500 amps. That's why these stations ramp up power slowly over 10 or 20 seconds. So a fault can be discovered before it reaches full power.
@@Crazypostman Thanks for the tip!
it's time for wireless charging, these problems would not exist
@@MadawaskaObservatory YES!!!!!!
Not practical, energy hungry and produces high frequency magnetic fields. You cannot transfer that amount of power without large inductor coils adding more cost and weight.
@WOFFY-qc9te Not quite. It actually might be cheaper. Look it up. There are 300KW wireless transfer system already in existence.
@WOFFY-qc9te I've watched a few documentaries over magnetic resonance wireless charging, The efficiencies are near equivalent now, There is going to be extra per vehicle costs to add the coils, this is true. They can even bury the coil in asphalt and it doesn't affect the efficiencies making it near vandal proof.
@ The systems on busses are far from being suitable for cars. Addition weight and recourses for the inductor, also the systems would be using high frequency so if you have pacemaker your best keeping away. Also there are problems with stray eddy current fields inducing heat from magnetic hysteresis just like an induction stove/hob. The whole idea is impractical. Just because it exists does not make it useable. .
Should be a quick fix ? Back on the road in 30 minutes ? Or 30 days
@@joelaichner3025 There could always be more unseen damage, But it looks like just replacing the charge port should do it. The charge port can be replaced as one unit, so theoretically it could be a quick fix If there's one available and doesn't have to be ordered.
Build electric vehicle repair facilities right at the charging stations , fully stocked for every mishap
People look , but rarely see . Look at the damned thing before you plug it in .
That is the future alright 😅
Wow, thanks, CP. I'm glad we can still level2 charge if this does happen.
Yeah, luckily it didn't burn high enough to damage the level 2 part. Had this connection failure and arcing occurred on a NACS plug, you definitely wouldn't have had level 2 access because it's all one thing that would have been melted. Thankfully this kind of event is very rare. Even for EA. I haven't really heard of this happening On a Tesla supercharger yet, but it Could still happen anywhere. People leave the plug on the ground and It gets a rock or dirt or something in it and messes the connection up. Then you have arcing and melting. So it could happen anywhere.
Just stick with Tesla SuperChargers.
Even my BS android phones will reduce charging speeds or drop to a trickle charge if it detects unstable charging voltage/current. The charger should have detected this and disconnected before major damage occurred.
@@tellucas It's likely the safety systems were functioning and cut it off quickly, my guess would be from the description of the person. 1/2 sec - 1 sec. The voltage and amperage is just so high an arc blast is going to do instant damage. Had it kept on going for 10+ seconds, it could have melted the whole charge port and started a fire.
Way back when Nixon folded to OPEC and there was a big push for EVs, so called engineers and scientists just chose to ignore resistance. EA can provide up to 350 watts, amperage squared times resistance yields the loss in watts. It may be that the arc did not cause the melting but the melting caused the arc. 350 squared is 122,500. In order to keep the loss at the resistance point, below 1500 watts, like an electric frying pan one has to have a contact resistance lower than 0.00054 ohms. Good luck with that when you have contacts exposed to the weather, especially in areas where calcium chloride is used for dust and snow/ice control. The race for fast charging is going to ruin what little use full size, medium range, EVs have. I have been working on EVs for over 60 years, there is no such thing as a free lunch.
350 kW plug used hundreds of times is a recipe for disaster, why the system did not disconnect quicker, the colour of the scorch from the arc tells me that that arc was present for a while. It is not just the damage to the plug and sockets the vehicles charging systems has be exposed to abnormally high transients and stress. As mentioned in the comments Arc flash is deadly, you may walk away from it but in a short while you will be hurting, vaporised copper if inhaled means you will be dead in a few days.
@WOFFY-qc9te We all know how slow those machines are when you try to use the touchscreen. If the safety systems are operating off the same processing, it probably arked far longer than it should have before it shut off.
@@Crazypostman Correct, that charger was defective by not detecting the transient, temperature detection takes too long, that was a badly designed system.
I have some experience with * 1000 Amp industrial motor inverters and they will detect a problem in a quarter of a cycle and do something about it. 800v EV chargers and ridiculous amperage through a mass produced over optimised connector is asking for trouble.
Any industrial kit handling that amount of angry pixies would be built more robustly and with good mechanical interlocks and arc shields.
Sooner or later someone is going to get a seriouse arc flash and that is the worst way to die.
I know of someone who was speaking with his mate in emergency care, he had survived the flash not knowing that he would be dead from copper poisoning the following day.
Oh, ouch…🫣
Bad connection. High resistance. Melts the connector.
Thank god evgo ionna and all these other networks are building out at a fast rate ea has been a trainwreck from the beginning vw doesn't really care about the network so maintenance is not really done properly
good
Jeez. Need a new vehicle now.
Hopefully it's not that bad for this person. A charge port can be replaced. Hopefully they give an update, but we may never know.
Well, that sucks. I'd also guess it was debris in the DC pins, but the plastic sheath around the DC pins could also have been cracked/broken.
NACS all around can’t get here soon enough.
Euro is CCS2 and this doesn’t happen. It’s just poor maintenance on EA part. This can still happen on a CCS to NACS
The NACS connector can be fouled up just the same as CCS connectors.
@ yes but it is a lot more simple and less parts that can cause issues
@ What less parts? WTF do you think is a lot simpler? The guy would have been totally SOL if was a NACS connector that melted, whereas the 2 extra pins for AC in the J1772 is what allows him to level 2 AC charge while waiting for parts and repair. The less plastic in a smaller NACS adapter is not an advantage, that is cost cutting. Not sharing pins for AC and DC is is actually simpler and less liable to problems due to software f!@$#-ups. After all the communications pins are basically the same purpose in NACS and CCS. Stop worshipping Leon and your nose is brown.