Unsuccessful using a2z adapter at Tesla supercharging station

[MrMetlHed]

I'm sure this won't help you, but I tested my A2Z adapter at a Supercharger without any problems here in Phoenix while really making sure everything was seated properly. Then at one in California (https://maps.app.goo.gl/npnK9oUqgkBuDjaR8) I could not for the life of me get it started. I thought I had everything seated correctly but it'd fail after trying to start for a minute.

Luckily there was another SuperCharger across the street, so I went over to that one. I put the Tesla plug into the adapter and just jammed the holy hell out of it into the concrete as hard as I could and engaged the lock. That seemed to do it, never had a problem after that.

Not sure if I just didn't have it put in all the way at the other SuperCharger, but for the next several stops on a road trip no problems. It's worth really giving it a go on making sure it's all smashed together properly.

Sponsored

 

[Riviaenz]

which chargers? Not all superchargers are open to non teslas

This is what I’ve discovered too. The Supercharger hype was overwhelming only to discover in practice, at least in our area, that fewer than 40% of available Superchargers are compatible even with the Telsa Adapter that Rivian shipped. I turned off the ”Adapter Needed” option in maps but noticed a lot of Superchargers sites I’ve seen were not showing up. I turned off “Hide Incompatible” and they appeared. Turns out even v3 and NEW v3 deployments (in the last 9 months) are considered incompatible too. I thought it was only v1 and v2 (150kW units and slower) that wouldn’t work. Turns out many 250kW units are considered incompatible.

 

[electrictaco]

I just got my A2Z Typhoon Pro adapter and may have had the same or similar issue. The first time, it timed out because I needed to update my credit card on file with Rivian through the mobile app. Subsequent attempts would time out after a minute or 3.

Finally, I pulled up the charging station in the Rivian mobile app (while I was connected). My station showed as "in use" but when I selected it, there was START CHARGER BUTTON. That worked, but was not the plug-n-play experience I was expecting.

Tesla Superchargers require a "cool down" when there's any error on the station. If you encounter something, it's best to unplug and then wait 30s. I've had errors persist if I unplug and replug too quickly.

 

[Semibruce]

Tesla Superchargers require a "cool down" when there's any error on the station. If you encounter something, it's best to unplug and then wait 30s. I've had errors persist if I unplug and replug too quickly.

But the start charger button overrides the cool down period ? I actually did wait for 30 sec, or close to that, a few times.

All I know is that clicking the Start Charger button fixed the issue immediately WHILE PLUGGED IN. Perhaps the new Typhoon adapter has a problem with the automatic handshake. (I'll test this again next weekend.) This workaround could be helpful to others in a similar situation.

 

[SANZC02]

This is what I’ve discovered too. The Supercharger hype was overwhelming only to discover in practice, at least in our area, that fewer than 40% of available Superchargers are compatible even with the Telsa Adapter than Rivian shipped. I turned off the ”Adapter Needed” option in maps but noticed a lot of Superchargers sites I’ve seen were not showing up. I turned off “Hide Incompatible” and they appeared. Turns out even v3 and NEW v3 deployments (in the last 9 months) are considered incompatible too. I thought it was only v1 and v2 (150kW units and slower) that wouldn’t work. Turns out many 250kW units are considered incompatible.

Yes, I thought it would be all V3/V4 chargers but have found that any stations that had V2 or older chargers where they mixed in newer V3 or V4 chargers are not available. There have also been people that have confirmed some newer stations that are only V3 are not open to NACS as well. Not really sure how they decide what ones to open. Someone speculated it was non-busy sites but there are several around me in SoCal that are crazy busy and open to NACS.

I will say planning a long round the country trip in a couple of months and there are lots of Supercharger showing in ABRP on many legs of my journey.

 

[UnsungZero_OldTimeAdMan]

This is what I’ve discovered too. The Supercharger hype was overwhelming only to discover in practice, at least in our area, that fewer than 40% of available Superchargers are compatible even with the Telsa Adapter than Rivian shipped. I turned off the ”Adapter Needed” option in maps but noticed a lot of Superchargers sites I’ve seen were not showing up. I turned off “Hide Incompatible” and they appeared. Turns out even v3 and NEW v3 deployments (in the last 9 months) are considered incompatible too. I thought it was only v1 and v2 (150kW units and slower) that wouldn’t work. Turns out many 250kW units are considered incompatible.

V3 and up have potential of working with non-Teslas. However, out of these only the ones that Teslas has opened to Ford/Rivian will charge your Rivian (including Magicdock). Rivan and Tesla never said or implied that all V3+ would be open to Rivians. Not sure why so many are getting the idea. The sites that are open to Rivians are the ones that show up in the R1's nav, Rivian app and Tesla app (when account is set up as a non-Tesla).

 

[Riviaenz]

V3 and up have potential of working with non-Teslas. However, out of these only the ones that Teslas has opened to Ford/Rivian will charge your Rivian (including Magicdock). Rivan and Tesla never said or implied that all V3+ would be open to Rivians. Not sure why so many are getting the idea. The sites that are open to Rivians are the ones that show up in the R1's nav, Rivian app and Tesla app (when account is set up as a non-Tesla).

That’s my point - the whole Supercharger opening up to non-Tesla craze was more hype than actual benefit. In practice it isn’t as great as was pitched when fewer than half of Supercharger sites are actually available. There are plenty of 250kW v3 sites in our region as I can see by Rivian nav (haven’t seen any v4 around us) but when I enable “Hide Incompatible” most vanish. There are plenty more EA, Flo, ChargePoint, and EVConnect. It just seems like it’d be more of a hassle to rely on them on a long trip. We just had a great 3200 mile road trip towing our R-Pod to Banff and touring other National Parks without needing Tesla Superchargers (didn’t have the adapter). All sites visited had working units with great performance and easily accessible with a trailer. The few Supercharger sites we did see were all positioned in such a way that pulling in with a trailer would have been difficult at best or required to unhitch.

Besides being underwhelming in terms of support (available for NACS compatible cars) the couple of times we had stopped at a Magic Dock site on another trip it took trying 3 different chargers at one of the sites to get one that worked. At the second Magic Dock site we tried we got lucky on the first attempt but then I noticed a Tesla try one and move to another charger. I didn’t talk to them (Tesla folk seem less social than Rivian or other EV drivers when stopping for some juice).

 

[Riviaenz]

Yes, I thought it would be all V3/V4 chargers but have found that any stations that had V2 or older chargers where they mixed in newer V3 or V4 chargers are not available. There have also been people that have confirmed some newer stations that are only V3 are not open to NACS as well. Not really sure how they decide what ones to open. Someone speculated it was non-busy sites but there are several around me in SoCal that are crazy busy and open to NACS.

I will say planning a long round the country trip in a couple of months and there are lots of Supercharger showing in ABRP on many legs of my journey.

I’ve dabbled a bit in ABRP and recently linked our Rivian to my ABRP account. I do enjoy the extra stats/details that ABRP provides over Rivian’s onboard data in the Powertrain app. I’ve not seen in the ABRP app if there’s a way to check for compatible Tesla sites only. It would actually be a hinderance to map out routes expecting Tesla Superchargers if ABRP or other tools don’t actually filter out incompatible Superchargers.

 

[UnsungZero_OldTimeAdMan]

That’s my point - the whole Supercharger opening up to non-Tesla craze was more hype than actual benefit. In practice it isn’t as great as was pitched when fewer than half of Supercharger sites are actually available. There are plenty of 250kW v3 sites in our region as I can see by Rivian nav (haven’t seen any v4 around us) but when I enable “Hide Incompatible” most vanish. There are plenty more EA, Flo, ChargePoint, and EVConnect. It just seems like it’d be more of a hassle to rely on them on a long trip. We just had a great 3200 mile road trip towing our R-Pod to Banff and touring other National Parks without needing Tesla Superchargers (didn’t have the adapter). All sites visited had working units with great performance and easily accessible with a trailer. The few Supercharger sites we did see were all positioned in such a way that pulling in with a trailer would have been difficult at best or required to unhitch.

Besides being underwhelming in terms of support (available for NACS compatible cars) the couple of times we had stopped at a Magic Dock site on another trip it took trying 3 different chargers at one of the sites to get one that worked. At the second Magic Dock site we tried we got lucky on the first attempt but then I noticed a Tesla try one and move to another charger. I didn’t talk to them (Tesla folk seem less social than Rivian or other EV drivers when stopping for some juice).

Experiences are personal and subjective. Your own experience may not reflect that of others. Where you live and where you go, may not align with each of the networks. For my own use case, it's been a game changer. 10+ post Supercharger sites with no lines vs unreliable 4-6 post EA sites with lines unless early morning or well past midnight. In context of infrastructure, we are still in early days of electrification. Having more charging opportunities is always better.

 

[SANZC02]

I’ve dabbled a bit in ABRP and recently linked our Rivian to my ABRP account. I do enjoy the extra stats/details that ABRP provides over Rivian’s onboard data in the Powertrain app. I’ve not seen in the ABRP app if there’s a way to check for compatible Tesla sites only. It would actually be a hinderance to map out routes expecting Tesla Superchargers if ABRP or other tools don’t actually filter out incompatible Superchargers.

There are settings in ABRP where you can tell it what networks you want to use. If you set the vehicle up it shows the stations for that vehicle.

You can test it. Create a Rivian vehicle profile and a Tesla vehicle profile. When you select Rivian it only shows you the Superchargers open to Rivian. When you shift to the Tesla it shows ones available to it.

I have both and use ABRP when traveling in each vehicle. I also will just open the app choose the proper vehicle and browse the map in an area I plan to be in to see what charging is available in that area.

 

[NC-Rivian]

Experiences are personal and subjective. Your own experience may not reflect that of others. Where you live and where you go, may not align with each of the networks. For my own use case, it's been a game changer. 10+ post Supercharger sites with no lines vs unreliable 4-6 post EA sites with lines unless early morning or well past midnight. In context of infrastructure, we are still in early days of electrification. Having more charging opportunities is always better.

If even a percentage of Tesla SC's are available, that in itself is a boon to over the road travel. It's pretty easy to go to tesla.com's charging page and filter to available-with-adapter NACS sites.

 

[Riviaenz]

Experiences are personal and subjective. Your own experience may not reflect that of others. Where you live and where you go, may not align with each of the networks. For my own use case, it's been a game changer. 10+ post Supercharger sites with no lines vs unreliable 4-6 post EA sites with lines unless early morning or well past midnight. In context of infrastructure, we are still in early days of electrification. Having more charging opportunities is always better.

Experiences aren’t subjective, judging them is. For example, judging your experience with Superchargers “game changing” is subjective. My perspective is not just based on local or regional access for which fewer than 40% are accessible to non-Tesla (10 out of 27 sites within 60 miles - that’s not a subjective assessment btw) but also from a road trip perspective as it doesn’t help charging deserts (where it matters most for travel).

An easy one to quantifiably verify if you chose to recognize objective assessments by checking tesla.com, is Wyoming. A state worthy of Rivian adventures that we’ve traveled through a few times. It has 10 Supercharger sites. Only ONE (1) is accessible to non-Tesla. That’s 10% of available sites (objectively) and hardly what I would call “game changing” (subjective as you might consider it game changing). While it is in somewhat central Wyoming, it’s not really close to any major destinations in Wyoming - not even close to Cody, WY (Gateway to Yellowstone). By comparison EA has 6 sites, EVConnect has another 6, and 3 more sites across WY that serve all EVs (even Tesla). The 15 non Tesla sites vs. the 1 Supercharger site are what make EV travel possible through the state. Are those game changing perhaps?

Another state great for Rivian adventures, Utah, has 14/28 (50%) Superchargers open to non Teslas. They are at least better distributed to make a road trip passable with advance planning via Supercharger only if so inclined. Non Supercharger DCFC sites: >50.

Back to our experience traveling to Banff. Throughout the 3200 miles we traveled, we only came across 3 Supercharger sites. There were countless other DCFC that made the trip possible. Often times we had 3 or 4 choices of DCFC sites and brands within a mile of where we stopped to fast charge. Within the Banff, Glacier, Jasper, Kootenay, Yoho National Parks area there are more than 12 DCFC sites listed on PlugShare (non Supercharger). Within the same area there are only 3 Superchargers available for non-Tesla. And not one of them would have made a trip to the Columbia Icefields possible with our Rivian. We encountered another Rivian family in Canmore at a PetroCanada that had also made the same assessment having come down from Jasper. They chose to embark on their 2500 mile trip to Jasper & Banff without ordering a NACS adapter (they had just gotten their R1S 7 months ago) and realized half way through their trip they were totally fine without. The numbers don’t support the hype.

Plus how many Tesla sites support trailers? Not one of the Supercharger sites we saw would have permitted charging with a trailer without blocking at least half of the Superchargers. They wouldn’t have been practical even if they supported non-Tesla. Countless pull through sites and sites that allowed head in parking while still hitched up. Only a couple we tight.

Our non subjective experience at pull through:

The overall point is, while they do open up some routes for easier travel with a EV, there’s not nearly as many Superchargers available for Rivian or other EVs as the hype would lead you to believe.

 

[kbradley926]

If original Typhoon adapter, once plug is fully inserted and locked, the slider switch should fully cover “LOCK” imprinted on the body of switch. You can also verify by observing the wear marks on the plug. Is the wear line flush with adapter? Or you can try and pull the two apart. The adapter will not lock if plug isn’t fully inserted and switch not fully engaged. If plug is not fully inserted then the notch in the plug isn’t lined up with the locking tab, which would impede slider to go fully in the locked position (and "LOCK" would only be partially covered). Insert plug with one quick forceful motion, to overcome friction, and ensure best chance of full insertion.

Typhoon Pro instructions call for insertion of adapter first, to make insertion of NACS plug easier. Original Typhoon can be used same way.

In most cases, user error is cause for failure to charge. Next would be payment processing issue (either bad funding source or backend handshaking glitch). Bad adapter is possible but make sure it’s not the usual causes first. If at functional and supported Supercharger, very unusual for charging to fail.

Hard reset would be very last thing to try (not while plugged in).

I have tried ALL of the things. Still no luck. I am reaching out to A2Z for a new one

 

[kbradley926]

@kbradley926 - My A2Z Typhoon Pro just shipped so I can't help directly, but has it worked at any superchargers or are you using it for the first time on vacation? If it's consistently causing the charger to reset it really sounds like you have a malfunctioning adapter.

Also - the A2Z instructions have you plugging the adapter into the vehicle first and then plugging in the charging plug. Can you confirm that's what you're doing?

Here's the A2Z contact info - call them!

I agree, I believe it is malfunctioning. Called and LM, now will email.
Followed all instructions multiple attempts.

 

[kbradley926]

The first time I used mine it was near impossible to get locked. Try moving the lock in and out without the tesla charger inserted to get an idea of how far it should slide. I put so much force on it I thought it might break. But that did engage it and after that it worked fine and got easier to lock each time. I would suspect it just isn't fully locked.

I was thinking this too, but pushed and pushed and pushed. Got it, but it is as far as it can go. S

Sponsored