Source: https://insideevs.com/news/531301/ev-morning-vw-ionity-more/ Diess criticizes IONITY Now, we wouldn’t normally be dropping a news story in about a LinkedIn post, but VW boss Herbert Diess has publicly denounced the charging experience offered by IONITY, and this is something you don’t see every week! In the LinkedIn post, Diess describes a recent charging experience on a drive he took in an iD.3 Pro S. What he encountered on the IONITY network was a number of units either broken or unavailable. He also noted the lack of restrooms and facilities. He ended his post with the scathing comment, loosely translated as ‘this is anything but a premium charging experience, IONITY!’ This could well be a public slap, while much bigger negotiations are proceeding in the background in terms of investment in charging networks. So what is Diess doing to fix the problem(s). Bob Wilson
Lighting a fire under them? Public criticism from the big boss has got to really sting, and I have no doubt that Ionity got a more detailed report that wasn't public. I can't say a lot about Ionity, but the problems he encountered aren't that much different than the problems people encounter at EA. And while things seem to be getting better, EA isn't at all transparent about explaining to us what the problems are, and how they intend to solve them. For example, is the problem an insufficient number of service techs in the field? Problems with spare parts? Faulty design of some component that is prone to fail? We just don't know. My own personal experience has been that I have never had trouble getting a charge. But if they have 8 cabinets at a location, there might be one or two that are just down for some reason, but those are easy to avoid as it is obvious before you even try and plug in. Sometimes people report unusually low charge rates (30kW) - I personally suspect a failure of the cable cooling causes the unit to derate to a power level that it can deliver without the cable cooling - I am interested in seeing if those reports subside when the weather starts to get cooler. The more serious issues that I sometimes see reported are where an *entire* site is down for some reason. While it doesn't happen often, I do see people report this from time to time. As a driver, the best you can do is check the status of the upcoming stations while you are still charging just to try and prevent nasty surprises. Diess did also complain about a lack of amenities at some chargers - I can see that in some cases that would be a huge issue. Most of the chargers I have used are in the parking lot of a big box store or a convenience store - while you might not have all the amenities that you might want, you still have the basics. Even the superchargers where we live are in the parking lots of convenience stores - that gives you access to bathrooms and snacks. Maybe this complaint is more specific to some Ionity locations.
EA seems to be siting at Walmart supercenters as fast as they can throw 'em up. Those are going to become the next big "travel plazas", perhaps. _H*
