ChargePoint Charging Question

[JoeS]

kevin1956murray, that's not what I would call a positive response to your specific technical request. I'm rather put-off by their canned answer to you as they should have recognized that you are a technically-astute individual who is way past the owner's manual admonishments. Pity. Thanks for trying.

 

[kevin1956murray]

I also requested from Kasey at Chargepoint that now that the situation is at least a little bit understood, that maybe they could empower their phone help techs with some sort of remote "restart" command. The idea being that I could track my own sessions, and call Chargepoint Help when my MiEV was in a 1.1kW 'post pause' funk. (I used to do that early last spring, and them rebooting the station would get me back to 3kW.
But rebooting loses the station's historical data and the phone techs are not allowed to reboot anymore.)

Below is Chargepoint's reply. At least it is specific and to the point. I'm thinking the software/firmware must not be very easy to change. But Kasey does give a glimmer of hope for the future, if my MiEV ends up lasting that long.

From: Kasey S. (ChargePoint Support)

Oct 9, 10:26 MST

Hi Kevin,

Unfortunately, no. For broader business reasons, agents are no longer able to reboot stations.

We will do what we can to correct for your use case in future revisions of software, however at this time there is no workaround when you charge at power shared stations. The uniqueness of the BMS logic used in your iMiev makes this a specific use case that we have added to our road map to correct for.

Please let me know should you have any questions. I will go ahead and close this ticket out for us.
Have a great day!
Kasey Smith
Manager, Owner and Partner Support
Direct: 480-291-5381
ChargePoint | chargepoint.com | 877-850-4562

 

[kevin1956murray]

To avoid the low charge rate after a pause, I have been avoiding 'shared' Chargepoint stations. But this morning I was charging the MiEV at a 'shared' station (the only car there), and remarkably it went above 1.1kW after a pause. The pause was in the beginning of the 'ending taper', which unfortunately for my car that taper has been a shallow taper for several weeks now. I believe I have experienced battery degradation, since the car cannot seem to 'fill up' the final two ticks on the dash indicator. And my max guess-ommeter reading lately has been in the low 40s, even on 70 degree days.

Anyway, I'm thinking that maybe Chargepoint fixed something, since the rate after the pause returned to what it was before the pause. (See picture below.)

 

[kevin1956murray]

Chargepoint may have made a babystep in the direction of fixing/avoiding the low charge rate after a MiEV pauses at a shared station. Lately I have noticed that if the car pauses in the first hour or so of charging, it comes back at full 3kW rate. So I am thinking that Chargepoint may have edited the sharing software to not decrease power on "done" cars until after a certain time limit of charging (like maybe an hour).

The picture/trace below demonstrates this.

 

[JoeS]

Wow, two 'timeouts' in one charging session is rare! When I next see my friend I'll ask if they may have quietly slipped in a mod as part of a software update. I wonder if they do those remotely, as the cost of physically going to each charging station to do that would be cost-prohibitive IMO.

 

[kevin1956murray]

The "returning to 3kW within the first hour after pause" no longer seems to be working. So I hit up Chargepoint again, only to get the explicit reply below.

Your request (#ChargePoint Support) has been updated.
1856005: Low Charging Rate

Emily M. (ChargePoint Support)

Aug 17, 2020, 5:02 PM MST

Hello Kevin,

Yes, based off of what you say there is likely a communication issue with how our 3.3kwh stations connect with your vehicle. The issue is not widespread across other iMiEVs users and other vehicle makes are able to charge without problems at these stations. Because of this, ChargePoint cannot make any adjustments to our software since there is not enough evidence that it is our software causing the issue. Plus, changing our software for this one issue could potentially cause issues with how other vehicles' onboard chargers interact with our stations.

I am sorry that I cannot provide a better solution to this issue you are having using our service. My best recommendation is to avoid shared stations when possible and reach out to Mistubishi about any potential vehicle updates.
Kind regards,

Emily M.
ChargePoint Support
ChargePoint | Chargepoint.com | 888-758-4389