Why won't my EV charging start? Hunting the real cause

What car, and where is it failing? Home L2 and DC fast charging fail in completely different ways. On DC, most of mine have been the station. The handshake never finishes, and the charger gives you some generic "session could not be started" message that tells you nothing. There's a stall at EA Scranton that's been doing that for months - I just skip it now. If it fails on AC everywhere, not just at one charger, that's when I'd start suspecting the car.

Hard to say much without knowing the car or which chargers. If any of these were dealer chargers I wouldn't look any further, that's your answer

The equipment fails more often than people want to admit. Last winter an Electrify America unit wouldn't even release the connector from my car at the end of a session, and support was useless. Compared to that, a session that never starts is the mild version. At home it's almost always been me forgetting that the Q5e defaults to timer mode... plugged in, cable locked, nothing happening until midnight.

No dealer chargers. One was an EA at a Walmart and one was a ChargePoint DC unit at a grocery store. At the EA the next stall over worked. At the ChargePoint I tried twice and then gave up and went home.

Second Rivian. Every failed start I've had was at EA. Superchargers with the adapter have been close to perfect

One failed EA stall and one failed ChargePoint DC unit isn't much of a pattern. If the stall next to it worked, it wasn't your car. If you have other networks near you, you might want to branch out beyond EA.

PlugShare helps if people near you actually post. Out where I am, half the chargers in the apps just show no status at all, so you don't find out until you're standing there.

Yeah, I ran into that at Tenaya Lodge near Yosemite. The apps didn't say anything was wrong, but the car wouldn't charge on their L2 or on the Tesla destination chargers with the adapter. A Supercharger on the way home worked fine. Still not sure if it was their chargers or my car.

Could be neither. At my first Supercharger the Toyota app kept kicking me back to "Setup Wallet" even after I'd added a card, so I never even got a Start Charging button. The charger was fine, the car was fine, the app just wouldn't cooperate.

At the EA in Rock Springs I had three stalls fail three different ways. The last one charged for a bit, stopped, and then wouldn't let go of the cable. All it said was "Charging Station Error, see owners manual." Pretty sure that one wasn't the car.

The "charged for a bit, stopped" one is what I kept getting on EA and ChargePoint. It would run a few minutes and then drop, and sometimes it took 2 or 3 tries before a session actually stuck. EVgo was the only network that never did that to me. It costs about twice as much, but at this point I'd pay that just so I'm not standing there replugging.

Funny, EVgo is the one network I'd be careful about. One day I went through four of their stations. An old 50 kW unit started and then failed right away. One new 350 kW unit showed a connection error, and the other one failed while it was negotiating with the car. The only one that worked was an older 100 kW charger. Other cars were charging fine on those same stalls, so I'm pretty sure it was a handshake problem with my car specifically. I wouldn't plan a trip around EVgo.

Did you swipe after the cable was already in? On Electrify Canada that order failed for me almost every time. Starting the session in the app first, then plugging in right away, has worked 100% of the time since. My guess is there's a timeout while the car and charger are authorizing, and plugging in second avoids it, but that's just my theory.

The timeout theory fits what I saw on Superchargers with an adapter. On my Bolt some stops worked fine, and Yemassee and Jacksonville kept timing out. The app sometimes said the car wasn't detected. Pushing the cable all the way in and holding the connector up during the handshake didn't change anything. A2Z said 2019/2020 Bolts need a GM update for the lock around the adapter coupler, so if you're on an adapter, check that before you blame the station.

Does that update matter on Magic Dock stalls too, or only with your own adapter? Mine's a 2020 and I had the same thing happen at a Magic Dock site that was listed as Bolt-compatible. It sat on "charging is initiating" with some buzzing for a minute or two, then went to "unable to charge." Same result on two stalls there, so I figured it was the car, but I never found out what.

Hyundai here, and I'm also stuck on the "was it the car or the chargers" question. In Chattanooga I tried at least 6 ChargePoint and Blink stations and every one gave me "Charging Unsuccessful." Then a Supercharger filled it up in about 30 minutes with no trouble, and home L2 has been fine since. I still don't really know what was going on with those.

Not sure about the GM update, but I had a similar thing on Magic Dock with my Ioniq 5. Sessions would end after a few minutes with "Charging completed due to settings" even with the limit at 100%. Hyundai support had me do a hard reset of Bluelink and after that it charged well enough to get me out of a small town. I still haven't had it looked at, so I can't say what the actual cause was.

Ioniq 5 here, and the first time it happened to me was at a Tesla site and then an EA, both "charging unsuccessful." I was half convinced it was the ICCU. A full shutdown and restart of the car got it to connect at the next Tesla stop, so that's the first thing I try now before blaming anything.

Worth trying a restart first, noted. Mine was Kia Connect hanging on "authenticating" at the first stop on a trip, and I never did figure out if it was the app or the car. ChargePoint worked instead, so I just moved on.

Did the restart fix it with Plug and Charge on, or were you starting from the app? Mine just says "Charging Failed" at some stations with the toggle on, and I can't tell if a restart would touch the certificate side.

Mine was an Ionity stall in France, paid as a guest through the QR code. After payment the screen just said "Charging is delayed until power is available" and nothing ever started. I couldn't tell if it was the stall or the guest payment flow, since the page doesn't even tell you which of the four stalls is yours. Has anyone had that message clear up on its own if they just waited?

Bolt here too, and I usually need two or three tries at public chargers. Scan the QR, plug in, wait on the handshake, get "Unable to Charge," unplug and retry, and it normally starts the second or third time. Is that a Bolt thing, or does it happen with every EV? Never been sure if I'm doing something wrong.

Mine does the same on a 2020, stuck on "initiating" until it times out. I pulled my calibration IDs with an OBD dongle and ran the VIN on the AC Delco TDS site. The HPCM2 shows out of date, and the Chevy warranty site lists an open HPCM2 calibration update. Might be worth checking your VIN for that before you blame yourself.

Does that HPCM2 update apply to a 2017 too? Mine would cut out partway through sessions, sometimes after 15 to 30 minutes, on Blink and ChargePoint DC, and eventually it stopped charging everywhere. Never thought to check the calibration IDs.

Same kind of day with my Bolt on EVgo. One stall said "Initializing," started charging, then quit about 10 seconds later with no error at all. Another threw "Error 57: Communication Error" and it stayed after I unplugged, waited, and replugged. Did you have Plug and Charge turned on for any of those four? I'm wondering if it's making the handshake worse.

Renting a Bolt right now and it's the same for me. Four attempts, two never completed, and the other two only worked after I downloaded the network's app and called the number on the charger. The Teslas I've rented never gave me any trouble, so I'd guess it's not every EV.

Same car here, a brand-new Ioniq 5. Mine showed "charging unsuccessful" at home and at public chargers while driving totally normally. The dealer scanned it and found P1E0111, and said the ICCU has to be replaced. If a full restart doesn't clear it at the next stop, I'd ask whoever scans it to check for that code.

Mine's a 2025 Ioniq 5 with about 7k miles and it's doing the same thing on L2 at my apartment and my office, where other EVs charge fine every day. The app shows around 3 kW and it keeps cutting in and out. The service center said it charged fine on their chargers, and the dealer says the ICCU might be starting to go but they can't do anything until it fully fails. Did yours throw that P1E0111 code right away, or only after it had gotten worse?

Another one for the ICCU pile. Mine (2022 Ioniq 5, UK) showed up as the home charger tripping the breaker. The car would recognise the charger and click like it was about to start, then the charger tripped, with no warning on the dash. Public AC units failed too, but a DC one worked. The garage charged £150 for diagnostics and then rang to say the ICCU needs replacing. If you get the "charging unsuccessful" thing on AC but DC is fine, I'd ask them to check that before blaming the chargers.

Another 2025 Ioniq 5 here. It charged fine at home three times, then went to "Charging unsuccessful" on everything I tried, Supercharger included. Dealer found an ICCU fault and the part is backordered about 3 weeks. Did anyone get a loaner or anything while waiting?

Mine's an Ioniq 5 under the ICCU recall, and it never threw a hard failure like most of these. At home on a Tesla L2 wall charger it would sometimes take up to 10 minutes to start. About 1 in 5 attempts failed outright, and a few times it took 4 or 5 replugs. Since I got all the recall updates done, it starts immediately with no errors. If yours is covered, I'd get the updates done before anything else.

Mine ended up being the car too, a 2020 Kia Soul EV. A fast charger worked fine one day, then the next one would start and go straight to "finish charge" over and over, even after the station got rebooted. Red cable light, but the blue charging light never came on. Then home L1 failed overnight as well. Turned out to be the onboard charger and I'm waiting on the part.

Good to know it can be the onboard charger. I drove Colorado to Tennessee in April and only one ChargePoint unit gave me any trouble, everything else worked. I wrote it off as the station, but now I'm wondering if I should have tried a second stall before deciding that.

Funny how many of these end up with a different answer than the first one. My dealer ruled out the ICCU and blamed corrosion on the main battery connectors. It came back about twelve days later and left me stranded, so I'm not convinced that was the whole story.

Related, I'd say try a second stall, but also check whether it's actually the payment step failing. At EA with my CCS adapter, the card reader rejected my card a few times in a row before it finally went through on a later try, and the app wallet card failed too. Once a session started it charged fine, so I'd call that the station side and not the car.