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CYC or D2N2 website and services down

2K views 44 replies 10 participants last post by  Little_discourage 
#1 ·
Hi,

Today tried to charge at a D2N2 charger and it did not respond. Later at home tried CYC and D2N2 websites, both down.

Anyone else?
 
#12 ·
You see CPS/CYC and their other brands are supposed to have had a plan in place to make them work offline for everyone by keeping a whitelist database of RFID Cards. The problem isn't only that there are some crazy people who choose to use their terrible app, but also that most of the locations around me haven't updated this whitelist since some time in 2015!

I'm curious. If people here on the forums could decide who the Scottish contract would go to to replace Chargemaster, which company would you pick to take over the network?
 
#13 ·
You see CPS/CYC and their other brands are supposed to have had a plan in place to make them work offline for everyone by keeping a whitelist database of RFID Cards. The problem isn't only that there are some crazy people who choose to use their terrible app, but also that most of the locations around me haven't updated this whitelist since some time in 2015!

I'm curious. If people here on the forums could decide who the Scottish contract would go to to replace Chargemaster, which company would you pick to take over the network?
Probably a Scottish based startup.
 
#15 ·
Instavolt only do rapids. But the Chargepoint brand that they're a part of could be a safe bet. They're big over in the US and I have had a pretty positive experience with them both there, and the few they have in the UK too.

One of the rumors I have heard is that they're in talks with the people behind Geniepoint. I personally wouldn't have a problem with that as they're pretty good at keeping their network going from what I've seen, though I'm sure some wouldn't like having to top up an account.
 
#17 ·
The problem id have with it is that they already have a large swathe of council/area contracts and it's an eggs in baskets scenario. Moving to Engenie or a Scot startup would be best. Yes a monopoly but a gov run would be the best way as prices could stay cheap and would mean less faffing around in some respects. An NGO of sorts?
 
#19 ·
This was a complete disaster (thankfully not for me as I had plenty of charge). CPS doing a great job at maintaining the units and opening large hubs across central belt Scotland but what is the point if the entire system goes down. Must have been people stranded across Scotland (particularly those doing the NC500).

Met a guy on his first long trip after buying a leaf stranded at the new charging hub in Falkirk. His family did not look best pleased with him. This was despite both me and him having an RFID card. The CYC network in Scotland should be treated the same as an essential utilty.
 
#20 ·
This was a complete disaster (thankfully not for me as I had plenty of charge). CPS doing a great job at maintaining the units and opening large hubs across central belt Scotland but what is the point if the entire system goes down. Must have been people stranded across Scotland (particularly those doing the NC500).

Met a guy on his first long trip after buying a leaf stranded at the new charging hub in Falkirk. His family did not look best pleased with him. This was despite both me and him having an RFID card. The CYC network in Scotland should be treated the same as an essential utilty.
Must admit I can't find myself trusting an oil company, beyond petroleum or whatever greenwash they cover themselves with, to deliver an electric car charging back office. Case in point is the lack of maintenance of the whitelists.
 
#23 ·
Their server is still down. RFID Access has improved so I don't know if they have remotely pushed whitelists out to some of the chargers in the past couple of days but the app still isn't working and I've met a couple who only had the app and would have been stranded if it wasn't for me sticking around and letting them grab a charge from my card since they still apparently aren't answering calls either.
 
#24 ·
IMO this falls into the category of why the Rapid network across the country should just be nationalised and centralised.
Failovers would all be in place for things like this and it should be at the least now a legal requirement that if signal or backend systems fail, you have to go to freevend.

if the network went to freevend while it was down do you think they would fix it a bit quicker? Hell yeah as they'd be losing revenue straight away.

I hope they at least have the decency for Polar Plus members to cancel this months subscription cost, but doubt it.
 
#25 ·
Looks like i got lucky with this as we were driving home from Edinburgh on Saturday, and the wife was pissed as we ended up stopping four times... Sheriffhall chargers were completely dead, drove to Straiton, ETron and Tesla plugged in and abandoned, drove to Hermiston gait, Leaf charging, decided not to wait, finally got plugged in at Ingliston and noticed the charger was in "free vend" mode but didnt really think anything of it, and charged up.
Had that last charger not worked due to the CPS network being dead she'd have been fuming :eek:
 
#28 ·
The problem is the contract was so poor to begin with.
CYC/Polar didnt care about maintaining the kit if they didn't get some money for it.

Newer contracts are sticking them to taking onboard the Maintenance in some areas and obviously some costs for this come from the new charges coming into force.

Lax contracts have led to this but CYC should have still stayed ontop of repairs. Even cleaning the units is a thing they couldn't be bothered to do or an annual service on each one....
 
#30 ·
I generally find the CPS are great and well maintained, yes there a CCS outlet with broken pins that took 4 months to fix but in my limited experience that the exception.
If you look at the great work that Angus, Dundee, Aberdeenshire council do and speak to staff that are central to these efforts, the outcome is amazingly good.
For a back office outage to result in the majority of the chargers down, no upto date whitelist nor a free vend is pis£ poor and undermines the efforts of a lot of committed and hardworking staff.
 
#33 · (Edited)
I generally find the CPS are great and well maintained, yes there a CCS outlet with broken pins that took 4 months to fix but in my limited experience that the exception.
If you look at the great work that Angus, Dundee, Aberdeenshire council do and speak to staff that are central to these efforts, the outcome is amazingly good.
For a back office outage to result in the majority of the chargers down, no upto date whitelist nor a free vend is pis£ poor and undermines the efforts of a lot of committed and hardworking staff.
Depends entirely where you drive. If you drive in Dundee, Ayrshire and the areas you've mentioned it's probably pretty good. But try up north or over on the West Coast and its a nightmare. Check Zap Map and Plugshare to see if you can make it to Oban, Tobermory, etc in a short range EV...

I looked a while ago when I still had the Ion and came to the conclusion that such a journey from Lanarkshire to these western coast isles was basically impossible as there was a single string of individual chargers I would have to follow and nearly all of them were broken or offline (some for months) and the ones that weren't were single units in remote locations that should they let me down would strand me. So the attempted journey was abandoned and the ICE was taken...

Now I have a Leaf and double the range I could probably manage the journey but it would still be fraught with having to dodge all the dodgy chargers and queue for the single charger at each site... CPS really is not up to snuff in remote areas unless you have a really long range EV that allows you to skip 2 or even 3 charging stops with comfort to find the one that actually works. Sorry if I sound negative but I've been let down too often by remote CPS chargers.
 
#35 ·
All seemed to be running fine again yesterday using an RFID card. Generally I find CPS pretty good. Been using them across central belt (most regulay from Troon to Edinburgh or Edinburgh to Bathgate) and have always been able to get a good charge. The LAs are really stepping up too with CPS charging hubs in Kilmarnock, Falkirk, Dundee and wallyford all being set up recently. These big installs all have new kit and are likely to be well maintained. Can't afford to have nationwide outages like on Saturday though.
 
#36 ·
wallyford
What's the deal at Wallyford now? I used to plug in to the rapid there on a pretty much weekly basis prior to COVID-19. The last time I passed through the rapid charger was completely removed and the remaining 22kW AC Posts were all blocked off. If there's a new hub now I'm not seeing it on Zap Map and have since just been avoiding the place recently. Would be good if it's true and there is a new charging hub to come soon.
 
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