Potential Safety Concern With Cables
Electrify America tonight announced that the company is voluntarily shutting down the majority of their fast chargers at the recommendation of a supplier of high-powered charging cables used in their equipment. The company said that the 150 kW – 350 kW chargers that are equipped with HUBER+SUHNER supplied liquid-cooled cables are being disabled while a potential safety issue is investigated.
Giovanni Palazzo, president and CEO of Electrify America said, “The safety of our customers is our highest priority. Out of an abundance of caution, Electrify America is shutting down all of our stations that use the HUBER+SUHNER high-powered cables until we can confirm that they can be operated safely. We are confident that HUBER+SUHNER will investigate and resolve this issue as quickly as possible.”
About 90 sites remain open with limited availability. Most are restricted to only one CHAdeMO port. Some sites may have a 50 kW CCS port that is not affected by the issue. A list of charger availability is in the Electrify America Announcement (PDF).
Customer Support to Provide Updates
PlugInSites reached out to Electrify America to ask if there are any specific actions that they are putting in place to help EV drivers who may be caught unprepared when they arrive at a site and cannot charge.
“Related to the current situation with our voluntary disablement of some chargers to allow time to investigate a potential safety concern from one of our parts suppliers, we have already updated our phone lines to provide callers both during support hours and after hours with updates on the situation. Electrify America is also notifying drivers using third party applications to notify them of the voluntary disablement of some of the chargers at our stations.”
For drivers needing help, be aware that the Electrify America customer support line is open only 16 hours a day, currently.
“Our customer support line is currently open 7 days a week from 7 am – 11 pm EST. As we expand our public charging network footprint, we also have plans to expand our customer support to 24/7/365, which we expect to happen in the coming months.”
Thankfully, Electrify America is being cautious regarding users’ safety in this matter. Let’s hope it can be resolved quickly.
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