The charge plug locking mechanism revisited

See this post for details. Yesterday I was charging at a Fastned station to test out an issue with harmonics. That went fine. Fastned here is a provider doing only high power charging and only at stations along the highways. Their equipment is supplied by ABB. What never happened before, I was bitten by this issue. One can argue (and I am one who does!) that the pin lock mechanism, and especially the micro-switch is a flimsy design. However, the plugs at those Fastned designs are simply insane. The thing is so long and the cable is so heavy that even my never-had-this-problem-in-three-years ZOE not only had a hard time locking the plug until I supported it while it tried, but the force pried the switch open after it was locked, already charging and I slowly let go. Immediate interruption of the charging process, BCI level 1 (just retry)  and after three tree times red nose and BCI level 2, rain dance ™ required. What a pain in the behind! In the end I repositioned the car and “draped” the cable in a way it sort of supported itself more or less and then all was dandy, see picture.

This is two rather lousy designs conspiring together to not make things work. What on earth were they thinking?

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