We dog on Electrify America a lot because, well, they’ve historically deserved it. The EV charging company is out there trying to show that things are going better and, yeah, it’s doing better. But “better” in this case is still not perfect.
The CDK Global ransomware attack will be studied for years to come as a major disaster. Was it an avoidable disaster? Perhaps. The company was sold in 2022 to a private equity firm and we’re likely to find out, as we have with Boeing, exactly how that’s gone.
Speaking of businesses in trouble, Polestar has finally put out its 2023 financials and they don’t look great. Who knew that having a car designer as the head of your company couldn’t work? Doesn’t that always work? Obviously, Polestar has yet to catch up with Tesla, but at least Polestar isn’t spewing toxic gas into the skies above the Bay Area (at least as far as I know).
It’s Friday, so that means it’s the final Morning Dump for the next couple of days. Let’s do it. (Also, it’s going to be late this morning because we’re short Peter and have a bunch of random stuff going on, apologies for this mostly afternoon dump, we’ll make up for it with some fun updates today).
Electrify America Is Better Than It Used To Be, And That’s Not Nothing
Following Dieselgate, Volkswagen shifted hard into electric cars and managed to convince a judge that it should be allowed to take some of the massive judgment against the company and roll it into a changing network. That network became Electrify America, the biggest competitor to Tesla’s Superchargers.
That’s not what happened. Terrible uptime and constant issues resulted in car companies being so fed up with Electrify America that pretty much everyone, including VW brands, decided to switch over to Tesla’s NACS standard from the CCS standard that Electrify America was designed to serve.
In my personal experience, I’ve used countless EA stations and had issues roughly half the time, ranging from malfunctioning chargers to long waits. Lately? The wait times are still long, which is also a quirk of where I live, but charger uptime has been better, and EA’s plug-to-charge improvements have meant more seamless payments.
According to the company and analysts, via Automotive News, that isn’t anecdotal.
Just 9 percent of EV charging attempts failed on the Electrify America network in the first quarter of this year, compared with 11 percent in the first quarter of 2022 and 2023, according to a J.D. Power analysis.
Electrify America’s improvement aligns with most of the charging industry, said Brent Gruber, managing director of the electric vehicle experience at J.D. Power.
It’s a “small improvement but heading in the right direction,” he said.
By comparison, Tesla’s supercharger network works 95% of the time or better. Still, it’s an improvement.
Part of EA’s problem was that it expanded so fast as it tried to grab as much land as possible, meaning it relied on a lot of third-party software to get going quickly. The company says improvements will include more chargers at some locations, improved software that’s built in-house (Software!), and easier payment.
It’ll be better for everyone if EA can deliver on these goals as it’s still one of the largest providers in the United States with nearly 1,000 sites.
Can We Blame Private Equity For The Ransomware Attack?
A lot of you wanted to talk about the role of private equity in the troubles that media companies and YouTube operations have had, and, sure, there’s a lot to mine there.
Is PE always the bad guy? Not always. In industries outside of media there are a lot of examples of PE helping, like when Dell Computers used PE to take his company private and rebuild it in the wake of huge changes in consumer preferences around PCs. There are more examples, but that one sticks in my mind because Michael Dell built his company out of a dorm room at UT Austin and I… accomplished slightly less in my UT dorm.
I bring all this up because the CDK Global ransomware attack is still a major issue and the fallout is likely going to be huge. An industry insider mentioned to me that the company has been much worse to work with since it was sold to a PE firm called Brookfield Business Partners. The reason? This person claimed internal gutting of smart in-house folks and replacing them with third-parties.
It’s true that the company was sold to Brookfield Business Partners and some partners in April of 2022 for about $8.3 billion. From the PE firm’s own press release on the acquisition:
With annual revenue of $1.7 billion, CDK Global is a leading provider of technology services and software solutions that help automotive dealers and manufacturers run their businesses more efficiently. The Company’s best-in-class dealer management software plays a critical role in connecting every aspect of a dealership’s operations and providing solutions to help these customers grow their businesses.
“CDK Global is a high-quality and highly cash generative technology services and software business with a leading market position and strong fundamentals,” commented Doug Bayerd, Managing Director, Brookfield Business Partners. “We are excited to grow our technology footprint with the acquisition of CDK Global, and we look forward to leveraging our operating capabilities to build on the Company’s track record of providing best-in-class customer service and innovation.”
Is that what happened? Better reporting will flush this out, but a quick look at Glassdoor reveals some potential issues. Here’s one from a claimed software engineer:
CDK Global recently let me go. The leadership does not understand the infrastructure of our portfolio. To save their jobs, they find a scapegoat, somebody who dares to speak the truth. I would not recommend this company to any of my friends.
Here’s another one:
Morale is awful at this point. Reorg after reorg and massive layoffs for years now. People are nervous, frustrated, and unmotivated. The org has been restructured and thinned out so many times that it’s just not clear anymore what your place is as an individual contributor or as part of a team. HR is a joke. They’re constantly trying to pull the wool over everyone’s eyes or spin negative changes into sugary positives. They’ve eliminated any forum for communication on the Portal. We used to have a feature where we could post questions and HR would respond. They started just not responding, and eventually disabled the feature all together. Employees don’t have a voice other than during BK’s town halls, which are a major improvement over prior town halls.
Again, these are anonymous thoughts, and you’d expect complaints on Glassdoor, but it looks like the nature of the complaints about constant layoffs is consistent across these reviews of the company by claimed ex-employees.
Polestar Continues To Suffer In Tough EV Environment
Sales for EVs are up and will likely continue to go up, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy for companies out here that don’t have a ton of cash or some sort of built-in advantage.
The company has finally released its revised FY 2023 numbers, months after it was supposed to, and it’s not great.
Polestar reported revenue of $2.38 billion for fiscal year 2023, down 3% from $2.45 billion from 2022, citing higher discounts and lower sales of carbon credits.
The company reported a gross loss of $414.7 million for the year, compared with a gross profit of 98.4 million a year earlier.
The EV maker said after an analysis conducted in 2023, it had to lower the value of its assets related to its Polestar 2 model by $329.7 million, resulting in an impairment charge of $240.5 million.
I like the Polestar 3 and am excited to see future products, but Polestar has yet to find that one thing that’ll give them an edge in a crowded space.
Tesla In Trouble For Passing Bad Gas
Against my better judgment and lacking a Lactaid I had a couple of slices of bad pizza at a friend’s house last night, so who am I to judge someone passing bad gas?
If I lived in the Bay Area near Tesla’s Fremont facility I might feel differently.
From the local CBS affiliate:
Tesla must fix air quality problems at its electric vehicle manufacturing facility in the San Francisco Bay Area after racking up more than 100 violations for allegedly releasing toxic emissions into the atmosphere over the last five years, an air quality board said Tuesday.
The Bay Area Air Quality Management District planned to issue a written abatement order later this week after Tuesday’s announcement. Each of the 112 violations can emit hundreds of pounds of illegal air pollution, the board said.
That sucks. Fix that.
What I’m Listening To This Morning
My faith in institutions and in the future of this country, well, that faith is being tested, my friends. Of course, I’m talking about the failure of rookie-ish phenom Ronel Blanco to get into the final round of MLB All Star voting. Just make it make sense. To cheer me up, my dark horse pick for song of the summer has been remixed! Enjoy this dancier take on Waxahatchee’s “Right Back To It” by SOFTT.
The Big Question
What’s the song of summer?
“Elected” by Alice Cooper:
“I’m your top prime cut of meat, I’m your choice,
I wanna be elected,
I’m your yankee doodle dandy in a gold Rolls Royce,
I wanna be elected…..”
The metric of ‘9% of charging attempts fail’ is misleading and understates the true problems of EA. That way of measuring things neglects the substantial number of out-of-service charging stations at which nobody is obviously making an attempt to charge. That number is significant. It’s also very common to have inexplicable slow charging at EA stations, which would not count as a ‘failure’. A better measure of quality would be, what is the uptime of chargers, and what is the percentage of charging events that work perfectly? What is the mean time to repair of stations that are broken?
edit: the Astros are a perfectly cromulent team.
Thanks for the chance to listen to that meth’d up version of that Waxahatchee song, but I think I’ll crawl back to the original version for a while.
Oh, and that’s sad news about CDK Global. Ugh, as if we need another reminder that private equity firms are money- and resource-sucking ghouls only interested in looting a company to fill their own pockets with cash.
I once applied for a position at a company that makes charging stations for Electrify America, they asked me about my experience in industrial coatings as their products have to survive very harsh conditions. The interviewer then told me they have to last at least 5 years, I could barely hold in my laughter.
It’d be nice if the Bay Area AQMD press release gave more details on what ‘toxic gases’ the Telsa plant is getting dinged for releasing – depending on what it is, ‘hundreds of pounds’ could be an acute threat, or a nothing-burger. Considering that the two things they are requiring Tesla to do are…
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… my opinion is firmly in the ‘this is a nothing-burger’ camp. I’m sure they’ve violated some esoteric AQMD statute or another, and this press release is meant to scare Tesla into compliance, but I strongly dislike that a government agency would use words like ‘toxic air contaminants’ and ‘risk to public health’ which would (rightly!) alarm local residents – then give those folks no further information to be able to judge the risk for themselves. Should they plan to sell their houses? Just ignore it? Run like hell right now? How are they to know?
There are some clues. They used the term ‘harmful precursor organic compounds’ in the press release somewhere – that leads me to believe that all of this is over paint booth filters that aren’t working as well as they should. BFD. Slap Tesla with a nonconformance fine, make them fix it, but don’t spew this alarmist nonsense in public. BAAQMD: go back to kindergarten and read ‘The Boy who Cried Wolf’ for at least one good reason why to follow my advice.
I agree, the regulatory agency shouldn’t throw the toxic word around without disclosing the actual substance by name. Failure to do so is irresponsible on their part and will cause potentially exposed citizens to make uninformed decisions and have overreactions. This announcement is most likely aimed at publically shaming Tesla rather than the regulatory agency doing their job of protecting the environment and citizens. Fortunately none of the regulatory agencies I deal with at work make alarmist announcements like this.
https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/24780608/20240502-accusation-pdf.pdf
Without trying to dig up each of the infractions, it looks like precursor organic compounds (which end up with ozone being the final product that would likely concern locals) were the main thing. They also mention toxic air contaminants, but it sounds like that makes up a smaller portion of the 112 infractions. They don’t get into which specific TACs, which is frustrating, but it’s pretty typical for industrial pollutants to be broadly categorized like this.
That’s what they’ve been trying with the previous infractions. Since it sounds like the infractions are for the same issues repeatedly recurring, they’re forcing them to create and adhere to a compliance plan. This is very normal procedure, but Tesla gets a lot of press. It’s not really the fault of a regulatory agency that it’s getting outsized attention from the public and the media.
A lot of those toxic compounds in CA are glues and paints. Having worked with PPG in CA and the constant violations of air quality they caused (trust me, it isn’t a nothing burger. I would not, as an engineer, work in those plants given the fumes coming off)…. I expect that likewise Teslas violations are paint fume related. Which tbh… could still be nothing burgers depending on scale, but also ala PPG, could be rather serious.
Oh, I don’t mean to imply this is nothing. I just mean that they’ve already tried the slap on the wrist and had to move on to the next solution. I also wasn’t as clear as I meant to be that broadly categorizing things like the POCs and TACs is normal procedure.
I don’t know what kind of capture/filtration systems Tesla has in place, but most of the 112 violations are probably downtime for those systems without idling the processes or working beyond the system’s capacity. Either way, the fix is likely pretty straightforward: work within the specifications of your exhaust scrubbers (or whatever system) and only while they are operational and/or install larger/more of them to increase capacity/uptime.
I’m glad I read the entire post instead of depending on the summary, or I would have assumed Elon Muskariot was giving a speech to the guys over on Sand Hill Road thanking them for their support.
That’s a timely comment on Electrify America’s charging network. Just yesterday, Rivian held its first Investor Day event. One of the issues they raised was their own charging network and plans for expansion. Their network is tiny at this point, but it has 99% uptime. Yup, 99%. They had expected numerous companies and investment into the space, given we’re headed for a “100%” electrified future, but that just hasn’t happened. We’re going to need as many charging stations as there currently are gas stations.
Well, they’ve decided they’re going to fill that void. They build their own hardware, unlike EA, EvGo and others, which gives them complete control over the network, repairs, parts, etc. Surprisingly, they’ve found that only a few charges per day on any given unit makes that unit profitable, which flies in the face of all the ‘we have to find a way to make public charging profitable’ arguments you may read. Again, they manufacture their own equipment, which makes the difference. They are planning to open their network to all manufacturers later this year, and to rapidly expand that network. They purchased the company “A Better Route Planner” (great app, btw), and have integrated it directly into their in-car software stack. It uses a ranking system based on telemetry to assign a grade to each station. This drives customers to the stations (from all providers) with the highest scores, and thus rewards companies doing well, and punishes those that need to do a lot of work, while improving the public charging experience for owners of their vehicles and anyone that uses the app. win/win.
We’re unlikely to get that many. Gas is a low-margin method to get people in to sell the much higher margin items inside the convenience store. The numbers will vary depending on location, but it’s likely that a good number of EVs – probably the majority – will do most of their charging at home. Without stops for gas driving traffic, there will be fewer stations clustered around suburban traffic signals. Interstate plazas will be around for long-distance travelers and high-density areas will still have stations serving people who can’t charge at home, but a whole lot of drivers won’t set foot in a refueling station more than a few times a year, if that. And no stop means (probably) no snack. Maybe the rising obesity rate will reverse a little.
I don’t know as that’s true. A significant amount of charging will be done at home. Sure, charging takes longer than the pump, but it’s really going to depend on how quickly we can charge and how often we charge at stations. But charging stations for gas stations probably aren’t a 1:1 swap. Maybe more charging than gas on commonly-traveled routes and less charging in and around population centers, since you won’t have as many local fill-ups?
And, yes, ABRP is fantastic. I didn’t realize it was integrated into the Rivians.
Depends on where you are. My neighborhood (city, mostly single-family & duplex houses vintage 1910-1960), probably 10% have useable garages, not counting garages (like mine) that are being used for workshops/storage instead of cars. No garages at the 4-8 unit apartments, though a few have 120V outlets for block heaters in the parking lot, powered by their respective apartment. Most people park in the street.
There are absolutely a number of factors at play, and I’ve definitely oversimplified. But even removing 10% of the local users (those 120V outlets might make it 20% or so, and charging at workplaces could reduce the demand even more, and a shift to EVs could mean more charging solutions at apts and houses) means that it won’t take that long before the number of charging stations needed in residential areas will be lower than the number of gas pumps currently there.
Yeah Drew, you’re not wrong, and I was being slightly hyperbolic to make my point. However, as JunkerDave points out, you have so many people living in situations where home charging is not possible, that you will need a lot of ‘extra’ public charging infrastructure to support them. The Hyundai Ioniq 5 charges from 10-80% in 18 minutes, which is blazing fast. Charge times will continue to come down, but until we reach the point that all vehicles can charge at the same time it takes to pump a tank full of gas, say 5 minutes, we will need ‘extra’ stations to accommodate the throughput of vehicles.
99% uptime is still pretty bad. It means 4 whole days of down time a year. We don’t accept that from software, infrastructure, or utilities.
I can’t tell if you’re joking. I hope you are. But, if you are not, you are talking about a single charger out of a set of 6-12 at any given site being down. I’d like to know what the downtime is on pumps at stations, as I have many times pulled into a station to find one or more pumps out of order. 99% uptime is excellent.
Oooooh, I love ABRP. That’s a good get.
So, I’ve mentioned before that I did some work with several of the EV charging companies before, including EA. Most of these charging companies utilize a variety of third-party software packages and then try to make something to integrate them all (like companies across industries do). From that project I saw that some companies were better (Charge point) at integration than others (EA), and I don’t have high hopes that EA is suddenly going to become self-aware enough to realize that they may well be their own problem.
Dirty Laundry by Don Henley. For every election year lately.
Granted, I’m a novice with long-distance EV use and a sample of 1, but the only times I’ve ever had any issues with EA chargers was the one time I pulled up to the Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, KY to see the chargers – chargers I used no less than 10 days prior – COMPLETELY GONE. poof. vanished.
Yeah, was it on me to check and see if EA had scheduled charger replacement? Probably. But that was the first and only pucker moment I’ve had since making longer road trips starting earlier this year.
Excellent Freudian slip. EA charging station status is very changeable.
I’m surprised it’s that bad. That means 1 out of 20 times you try to charge at a Tesla charger it doesn’t work. Imagine if that happened at gas stations, and the next gas station was 100 miles down the road.
I guess it might not be as bad if that’s just one bad port out eight or something so it’s more like finding one bad gas pump but being able to pull to the next one and have it work.
I feel like there’s probably a pump handle with a bag over it at at least 1/20 gas stations.
I find interesting the Electrify America number, because on my experience there is always at least 1 station down or glitchy when you try to use it, and the app may not report that. That’s why Plugshare is a blessing when you are on a road trip.
The most reliable to me other than Tesla Supercharging stations, is Chargepoint, never had an issue either L2 or Fast Charging. Just tap and go.
Song of the summer? Espresso – Sabrina Carpenter
I agree. I call BS on EA. There seems to always been at least one down charger. At the mall here there is a big EA charging station with 14 chargers so a ton of cars go there. They are all 350kw chargers. One time earlier this year I went there and 5 of the 14 were broken! I don’t get it. It’s just a glorified extension cord.
I’ll probably just continue listening to the hundreds of songs I have “favorited” on Apple Music playing on shuffle. From my morning running errands:
Formula 400 – Spellbound
Rolling Stones – Live with Me
Iron Maiden – Hallowed by thy Name (live)
Echo and the Bunnymen – The Killing Moon
Supertramp – Breakfast in America
LA Guns – Rip and Tear
Cactus – Let Me Swim
Type O Negative – The Dream is Dead
Clutch – Mountain of Bone
It didn’t even find the 90’s hip hop on there during this block.
Otherwise, the new Judas Priest album is good, I’ll listen to that again at some point.
9% failure rate isn’t bad by VW standards 😛
The song of this summer? https://youtu.be/0XoO4QgTGq4?si=HIpq3Whe0qikRnpR
While I always love that band and you are spot on, I believe this is the summer song 2024. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=C7tydu_erZo
As someone born in 1973 and whose musical tastes were crystallized by the synthpop music of the 1980’s and earlier rock acts (The Who, The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin) routinely playing on top 40 and rock stations, I do not feel qualified to nominate a song of the summer as I gave up on most popular music around the time Clinton entered office. Every now and then something might slip through, but I tend to live in my own musical echo chamber of MP3’s ripped from my CD collection.
Since we are on The Autopian, I will nominate Cars by Gary Numan.
My song of the summer: Remi Wolf – Cinderella
https://youtu.be/_3pEI2k7BZ0?si=CQAjYpDeyO4F_VFe
Needs to be a law or something that the charger company needs to eat the cost of electricity if they can’t authenticate due to server issues or something. Like, sorry we can’t give you $1.25 in electricity due to our own incompetence so you’ll have to get stuck here for 15 hours waiting for a tow truck.
At this point these companies are just sponges for billions in federal subsidies that the average person gets zero benefit from.
Maybe they could unlock a free LVL2 charge cord if it detects an authentication failure.
Sorry we suck, here is enough joules to go to somewhere.
In my house, the song of the summer is either “Hot To Go” or “Not Like Us.”
Song of summer? Any of the beach boys songs
I Get Around in particular. I was 12 the summer of ’64 and this was..aspirational.
https://youtu.be/BchXkabxn4A?si=iqkjVwwFQQggBl2z
Tesla supercharger uptime is 99% and not 95%. I have seen 2 not working charging stall in 3 years. What I have seen with EA is that their new equipment has been much more reliable. There is a location near me at a grocery store that upgraded and their uptime improved greatly.
The problem with uptime is that Tesla states it as “Uptime of Supercharger sites reflect the average percentage of sites globally that had at least 50% of their daily capacity functional for the year.” EA says it’s up if any amount of power is delivered and what good is a DC Fast charger offering 25kwh of power?
I think they are reporting charge success rate, not uptime. Different things.
First, my shop is directly behind the Fremont facility, so that’s not great news.
Second, I have used the Supercharger hundreds of times and I’ve NEVER had a non functional plug in event. On the other hand, I tried charging at a Chargepoint location yesterday and went 0-3.
Green company Tesla has been fined for illegal dumping of hazardous waste multiple times prior. I can’t think of another company that I’ve swung so far in my estimation of and I can’t say I ever loved Tesla, though I admired what they were doing to popularize EVs, their battery control software, and clean designs (prior to the Model X).
Even before he took a hard right into crazytown, it was always pretty clear that Elon Musk was only using the environmental angle as a way to shut down criticism and blow pat roadblocks.
Who is Pat Roadblocks, and why is Elon blowing her?
Patrick.
So, Electrify America is at 91% and Tesla Supercharger is at 95%? If so, that’s a lot less daylight between the two than I expected
honestly, I would have thought it was a whole lot lower then that.
It’s not accurate, Tesla uptime was 99% in 2023.
There is a difference between up time and charge success rate.
Yes, because EA is saying a unit is up when it’s not able to process transactions, Tesla considers that an uptime issue. They are related in the way Tesla Superchargers are measured.
Just so you know. Tesla only reports on uptime per “site” and they consider a “site” as “up” if more than half of the chargers are working in that location. So, if a site has 6 out of 10 chargers working then it’s “up”.
Which means 100% site up time could mean anywhere from 51% to 100% of up time on an individual charger basis.
Also, the numbers mentioned in the post is charge success rate I think. Which is a measure of the number of successful charge attempts/total attempts. Which is a totally different measure then “up time”. For example, if a charger is up 99% of the time but the only charge attempted was when it was down (during that 1%) then it would have 0 successful charges in one attempt which is 0% charge success rate. Even with a 99% uptime.
TL/DR it’s possible that what was reported was indeed accurate.
Got it, I think, it’s the percentage of charge attempts that actually result in a successful charge. If someone ignores a particular charger or charging station and moves on because it’s clearly not working, that doesn’t count, since no charge was actually attempted?
I’m not sure how they would count that. Probably as an “unsuccessful charge” in order for the metric to have any meaning.
My main point was to try and defend what was reported in the article as potentially accurate as it appears to be a different metric then what my greek friend was comparing it to.