The charging cable or charging plug is stuck in the charging station. What to do. The solution is usually not far away. Find the answer here.

Almost every EV driver encounters it at some point while charging: your charging cable is stuck in the charging station. How do you get the charging cable out of the charging station again?

Finished charging and... quickly back on the road. However, sometimes this is not possible because the charging cable gets stuck in the charging station. To get it out, nine times out of ten the following is the solution.

What's going on if the charging cable is stuck in the charging station?

To know what to do, let's first clarify how the connector, in a nutshell, is put together. And how it locks into the charging station.

In addition to the poles, the charging connector also has several small openings - left, right, top, bottom. One of these recesses will serve to lock the plug into the charging station. The locking component of the latter is normally equipped with some kind of little pallet that fits exactly through one of the recesses. This little pallet or pin is activated electronically, via a coil, as soon as the charging plug enters the charging station.

The solution: how to remove the charging cable from the charging station?

Usually, the cause of a stuck charging cable in a charging station lies in the small pin that (sometimes due to slightly incorrect use of the plug) cannot be removed from its recess. Since it is controlled electronically, the solution is to temporarily cut the power.

Taking the power off and back on can have the desired effect. The pallet gets a new impulse and will then be able to (completely) disappear from the recess.

But beware: sometimes the charging plug is still stuck. This is because the plug must physically move backwards, forwards, upwards, downwards, to the left or to the right in order to get the pin out of the recess.

Therefore: if the charging plug is stuck, do not only disconnect the charging station from the power supply, but also gently move the plug back and forth. If necessary, repeat this a few more times. In nine out of ten cases, the plug will still come out of the charging station... And you can then energetically hit the road again.

And then just this:

How do you remove power from the charging station?

Above we described that you can usually get a stuck charging plug out of the charging station quickly by disconnecting the power (in combination with fiddling with the plug). But how do you reset or unplug the charging station?

A home charging station can usually be reset via your charging card, or by taking the power off through the meter box. GreenFlux and E-Flux subscription holders can have the lock remotely unlocked only if they own an Alfen charging station. For a public charging station, you will have to ask the operator to do this. Usually this request can be made remotely, for example via an intercom.

Also good to know if the charging plug is stuck

Also good to know, because it may be the solution for a charging cable that is stuck in the charging station, is the following.

Please note that you can only end a charging session with the same charging card you started with. Are you using a different one by mistake? Then the solution is not to switch off the power temporarily, but to get the right card again.

Is the charging cable stuck in the car? A quick solution to try first is to unlock the car. Does this still not help and do you have a Type 2 plug with a lock? Even then it is best to try the combination of disconnecting power, briefly starting the car and stopping it again, along with some gentle prying of the plug.