% !Always check the public EVSE plug's metal-prongs before inserting in your EV! %
http://www.sgvtribune.com/2017/10/08/can-a-public-charging-station-damage-your-electric-car-the-answer-you-didnt-want-to-hear/ Can a public charging station damage your electric car? The answer you didn’t want to hear October 8, 2017 Steve Scauzillo I never knew that a charging station can damage your car. Hard to believe. But it’s true. A few weekends ago I was driving my Kia Soul EV (actually, it’s my wife’s car) in Pasadena. We were going to get a quick bite at Settebello on Colorado Boulevard in the Playhouse District. I pulled into the public parking lot off Union Street east of El Molino Avenue and thought I got lucky. One of the charging stations was open, the Clipper Creek, 240-volt machine. I’ve used this charging station for years so I was very familiar with it. This time, I tried charging the Kia and the plug arm would not click into the car’s charging port. I tried it again. Nothing Just then, a woman in a metallic blue BMW i3 (also all electric) drove up and told me “Oh, I just tried that. It doesn’t work,” she said. But she wasn’t sure what went wrong. She wondered if her car was malfunctioning. Well, I had plenty of charge to get home so I didn’t worry about it. Until I went to plug in in my garage and nothing. Then the dreaded error message popped up on the dashboard screen. Something about “check your charging system.” I took it to CarPros Kia in Glendale the next morning They have an electric car mechanic they hired from Seattle. He figured it out in five minutes. One of the metal prongs in the car’s charging port was bent by the broken charging arm of the public charging station I used the night before. The arm had been chipped, the charging end’s metal prongs were fused over, forming a kind of battering ram as it was inserted into my car. “There are probably a lot of other people whose car was damaged,” my mechanic told me. “I’ve seen this before.” I believe the same thing happened to the woman in the electric BMW. But since I didn’t get her number I could not reach her to tell her. Not many people know about this danger lurking in public charging stations. I had never heard of a charging station that can actually damage your car’s charging system. It took five days but my car was fixed. The mechanic had ordered a part from South Korea and installed it, recharged my car and everything works great again. What would’ve been a $500 repair didn’t cost me any money since it was covered under warranty. I called Joel Levin, executive director of Plug-In America, an electric car advocacy group in Los Angeles. He hadn’t heard of charging stations getting old and damaging your car. If you own an EV or a plug-in hybrid, be careful of old charging stations. Look at the charger arm to make sure the metal prongs are straight and not bent or covered in plastic. Don’t plug in your car if the charger arm looks sketchy ... [© sgvtribune.com] For EVLN EV-newswire posts use: http://evdl.org/evln/ {brucedp.neocities.org} -- Sent from: http://electric-vehicle-discussion-list.413529.n4.nabble.com/ _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org Please discuss EV drag racing at NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)