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Comment by mayama | Hacker News Reader

The issue is maintaining already installed chargers. Lot of chargers are either physically broken or rated for low charging rate because something inside is broken. And no one fixing it in months. Changing the connector won't fix the issue when chargers are not fixed for months on end.

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People, especially techie types here on HN, tend to simply forget or not know to begin with just how many service technicians and laborers are necessary to keep all this tech running.

Just because you can imagine it does not mean it's possible, folks.

The problem really is the companies. EA essentially rushed their product out the door knowingly with substandard (both in quality and actual standardization) that's led to their issues.

They are simply not built to last and their bespokeness leads them to be difficult to repair.

This isn't a case of oversimplifying, especially considering we can look across the street at a company who is doing exactly what we're asking for.

You do realize EA isn’t making their own chargers, and sources their chargers from multiple vendors, right?

https://media.electrifyamerica.com/en-us/releases/21

> Reston, VA (April 17, 2018) – Electrify America announced today it has selected key charging equipment suppliers – ABB, BTC Power, Efacec and Signet – to jointly deploy its new ultra-fast electric vehicle (EV) charging systems throughout the United States.

Yes, that's _exactly_ the issue. When they need to service a station, they need just the right parts. That's also from 2018. There a lot of chargers built before then. I read an article not too long ago where the new CEO was explaining that the reliability issue is, essentially, they rushed to get the first generations of chargers out so fast that they had to source parts from everywhere and they weren't all well tested and there are a lot of different types.

The result is that each station is basically bespoke and they have to find just the right replacement parts to fix a broken station. The result is that you have to send a technician out to find the broken part and then wait to get a replacement instead of the technician having replacement parts on hand (because there are too many that it might be).

That's why they are ripping out old stations and replacing them with new ones.

Contrast this with Tesla who built everything in-house and has an exceptional service record with their charging network. Vertical integration has its perks.

The point is that you can use the well-maintained Tesla brand chargers with more cars.

What happens to those well-maintained chargers when more/all cars start using the Tesla standard for charging?

Tesla makes money and has made most EVs out there. I doubt the remaining customer base is large enough for the other companies to make a profit.

In only 11 years Tesla built the world's best EV charging network to cover the entire US interstate system, highways, major cities, important destinations, and more recently even medium and small cities.

I'm confident Tesla can expand their network to cope with additional demand and in a relatively short amount of time. Expanding an existing site is usually a lot faster and cheaper as well.

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