GerryAZ said:
I am sorry, I was wrong. I cannot believe there are so many cars that lock the J1772 connector to the car even when not actually charging--what a stupid design. Maybe the automatic locking explains why I saw several EVgo combination stations with latches broken on the CCS cables. At least Nissan gives us the option to configure this in settings. I am fortunate that I will rarely need to use public charging now since I have the 62 kWh version. I was using public charging daily toward the end with the 2015 (a few weak cells were greatly limiting useable range, but not bad enough to qualify for replacement under the battery defect warranty), but never ran into cars with the charging cable locked even when not charging.
Yes, it's ridiculous and might be the cause of so many BMW i3 drivers having problems w/their stupid plug lock mechanism which ALWAYS puts on unnecessary lock/unlock cycles for each J1772 charge. And, if people come by to check attempt to use force on the J1772 handle button, that puts mechanical stress on the i3's pin and mechanism.
I don't recall off the top of my head about charging lock behavior for the Porsche Cayenne PHEV (we had a couple of those). I'd guess it's the same mistake as e-Golf.
Also, back to e-Golf, years ago, while at Drive Electric Week (or whatever the former name was) EVent at De Anza College in Cupertino, they had a bunch of those round commercial GE Wattstations and free L2 charging for attendees. We plugged in a waiting e-Golf but the car hit some error/compat problem w/the station and refused to charge on it. The plug got locked so we were stuck. We couldn't try again and the plug was now locked up to a non-charging car.
Fortunately, we found the driver who was a Plugshare employee at the time. He said the e-Golf is buggy and he'd have to charge elsewhere. He also wanted to disable the mechanism by taking it apart and removing the pin. We tried again after he unlocked his car and port, to no avail.
As for broken CCS latches, beats me. I'm guessing it's due to people dropping the handle or user error in not knowing they need to stop charging via the charger, network's app (if applicable) or on the car side, before attempting to unlatch. After all, you don't need to do that on many vehicles w/J1772 AC charging.
There is also the potential issue of mechanical stress from the weight of the cable and handle. They range from heavier to MUCH heavier (esp. the liquid cooled cables on EA CCS stations) than what you have for J1772 30 amp charging.
Yeah, a bunch of the vehicles I mentioned are CA/CARB compliance cars so you might not encounter them in AZ. I'm in CA and there are many hundreds of EVs/PHEVs in my work registry (to facilitate plug sharing). IIRC, there are over 300 Teslas in that registry as it is.
Re: stupid plug locks, Teslas also stupidly leave their proprietary handle locked like a parasite even when done charging when plugged into a Tesla wall connector if the key/phone as key isn't nearby. We have a bunch of Tesla WCs and the drivers have to ping other Tesla drivers via Slack to unlock their plug so that they can plug in adjacent waiting Teslas/their own Tesla. There is NO option for the driver to change this behavior.
Also, if you remotely unlock the port, there's a timeout (maybe 30 or 60 seconds) where it relocks itself. So, the other person needs to be at the vehicle at the time of unlock. All of this is true of Model S, X and 3 as of March 2020. I can't speak to Y.
Fortunately, for J1772, only the Tesla's J1772 adapter is locked to the car and their adapter cannot physically lock the J1772 handle to it.
