Tesla remains an enigma. After announcing he was effectively “open sourcing” his Tesla Model S, apparently Mr. Musk feels it is appropriate to actively “disable” cars that have been wrecked until they can be proven safe, to his satisfaction, by a Tesla inspection. Mr. Peter Rutman, who cachinged out $50,000 for a salvaged Tesla, was treated woefully by the wider media who paternalistically labelled the entire affair a matter of caveat emptor – buyer beware.
I assume most of our viewers know how the salvage trade works. Basically, you wreck your Tesla. The only ones authorized to repair Tesla’s are Tesla. The insurance company contacts Tesla for a repair estimate. On receiving it (in shock) they almost always total the car. Simple aluminum body repairs ARE expensive, but not that expensive. This is going to drive insurance for Tesla Model S vehicles through the roof. Within a year, it will undoubtedly be the most expensive car in the world to insure.
But after they have “totalled it” they pay the owner, and gain title to the wreck. Traditionally, they sell these wrecks with a “salvage” title and there is a ready market for them among those who either repair them or part them out, depending on condition. Mr. Rutman paid a pretty penny at one of these auctions for a very modestly damaged Model S and attempted to make the body work repairs himself. Little did he know that Tesla was actually going to turn the car off – disable it from afar or that they even could.
And just how was he supposed to “beware”? The salvage trade has been going on for decades. Repairing or parting out wrecks is an already established facet of the automotive ecosphere. If you DO repair the car, it carries the “salvage” title forward, so no one need be misled that this is a new car or an undamaged car. But it usually trades at a discount because of this salvage history.
Tesla wants to still control the car. To make sure it is safe????? What???? Actually, they still want to charge somebody something for the repairs. And they don’t really want a market developing for used Tesla parts. Not part of the business model.
This tends to support the National Association of Automobile Dealers claim that having the dealers who make the repairs and the manufacturer be one and the same diminishes consumer choice and leads to monopolitic practices. And it is not at all clear that Tesla is winning this battle. The Iowa ruling stands and now this week Michigan actually enacted further law to bolster the dealers position there.
But the central issue is that Tesla has open sourced nothing. This was sheer pablum for the media. It is interesting to note that the Tesla spokesperson who addressed this issue of the salvaged Tesla, Simon Sproule, resigned the very week after. Sproule was recruited from Renault-Nissan just this past April and is moving on to British marque Aston Martin.
One of our more cherished visions for Tesla has to do with the Supercharger network. Their performance there has been disappointing. Recall we called for them to combine fast charging with convenience stores, though using an upscale model, as a way of funding these charge stations. 160,000 gasoline stops can’t be wrong. Actually the number ONE way to become a millionair in the U.S. today is through convenience store ownership. If nothing else, you can always sell out to Alimentation Couche-Tard Inc. This Canadian company operates over 15,000 convenience stores worldwide, grows 20% per year and has an operating margin of 35%. It’s a fantastic business.
We saw a looming standards battle over fast charging. The key to electric vehicle adoption, many would have us believe, centers on infrastructure buildout. We don’t think Level II charging infrastructure scratches that itch. But if you could charge in 20-30 minutes, perhaps. That means fast charge. Unfortunately, we don’t even have a common lingua franca to talk about the subject. Japan and TEPCO proposed the Charge de Move or CHAdeMO standard. The Society of Automotive Engineers has a proposed COMBO standard extending J1772 via Revision B to include a DC charging option. And Tesla has an entirely different supercharger standard it uses on its cars.
A year ago, we predicted that General Motors, BMW, and even Nissan would have to kiss the technologically superior ring and take a knee, signing on to help support the TEsla supercharger network. None have. And at this point we think the window of opportunity may have passed. Tesla is heroically closed with their open sourced “all our patent are belong to you” information about the supercharger network. And no one has “negotiated” anything.
As the SAE combo has so few charge stations we can essentially declare this initiative dead on arrival.
Tesla’s supercharger count is pretty impressive. At this writing they claim 118 stations in North America, 74 in Europe, and 24 in Asia.
We’ve been critical of Nissan for announcing over and over again that their dealers would all have CHAdeMO hookups when in reality none had. But things have changed. Not all Nissan dealers do, but many HAVE added fast charging. Indeed, through all of this, CHAdeMO has just kept plugging away. CHAdeMO was formed by The Tokyo Electric Power Company, Nissan, Mitsubishi and Subaru. Toyota later joined as its fifth executive member. As of October 7, 2014, the CHAdeMO Association web site states that there are 2,129 DC Quick Chargers installed in Japan, 1327 in Europe, 731 in the USA and 54 elsewhere.
Having been through all the many and varied standards wars on the way to the Internet, I can tell you that it is actually RARE and even UNLIKELY for the best technology to win. It’s all about adoption and it is usually about having an “open” standard and a very low price. CHAdeMO has qualified. It uses very simple and easy to implement CAN communications and it is easy to design and qualify. And at this point, with 4187 stations, against Tesla’s 216, it appears to be over.
And it may be that Tesla has already read the writing on the wall. They had very quietly offered a $1000 option for Tesla, a CHAdeMO adapter. It’s among the most popular options for the car as it turns out.
Just this week, they have dropped the price drastically to $450 from the $1000 they were asking last week when we checked. But it is now “COMING SOON” whereas it had been readily available. What do YOU think it means????
Tesla has had a nasty spat with Chinese officials who were offended at Tesla’s characterization of their own CHinese fast charging standard as being incomplete. The Chinese insisted that it WAS complete and Tesla would be in compliance with it if they wanted to sell cars there. Tesla, who is counting on large sales numbers from China, immediately noted that “yes, we are, will, were, or something…whatever YOU think it means.” All our charge ports are belong to YOU China.
Europe has been particularly interesting to watch. The EU officials all noted that all CHAdeMO would be banned as of 2018. This appears to have set off a CHAdeMO installation frenzy/mania across the continent. And at a current count of 1327 sport nearly twice the CHAdeMO installations in half the land mass of the U.S at 731. I would say by the end of 2015 you would not be able to throw a dead cat out an upstairs window in the EU without a pretty good chance of hitting a CHAdeMO station at least a glancing blow. That is, if you are at least middling competent at throwing dead cats.
CHAdeMO is currently limited to 500V and 125 amps or 62.5KW. Is that enough? Probably not. But you do not have to be faster than the Jaguar to survive. You just have to be faster than at least one of the other villagers. If history holds, after it wins, we will see additions and appendages to the decided standard. CHAdeMO part Duh can’t be far away. A 200A version would sport 100kw and that would charge a 50kw pack in 30 minutes. Will Tesla be better? What difference does it make. Most of us won’t be driving Teslas.
Their latest move is the Tesla D – which of course stands for part Duh. Another prediction we blew badly. Instead of an upscale sports car, or a GenIII reveal, they have added dual drive to the ModelS. This is a very curious move. Automobiles currently average a sprightly 8.2 second zero to 60 time, which is quite an approvement over the 1975 averge of 14 seconds. Part of THAT increase is due to the retirement of the VW Superbeetle. But a 3.2 second zero to 60?
The Model S was sworn and sealed as a $55,000 followup to the $109,000 Tesla Roadster. THEY NEVER SOLD A SINGLE CAR at $55,000. Mine, which doesn’t even sport a sunroof, came in at $107,000. The problem I, and anyone purchasing a Model S faces, is that if you can afford an $80,000 car, why would you want the WEENY version??? And so we think you’ll find that same logic holds true. If you can afford $107,000 for an electric car, you can also afford $133,000 which is where the Model D very quickly takes you nicely equipped.
Who would want ONE failing motor/transmission when you can have TWO to service? And the other advantage is of course the extra 10 mile range????
The autonomous driving sensors just kills me. According to a recent survey, 44% of car buyers would indeed be interested in some level of autonomous control. ??? For what? But worse, why would ANY automotive manufacturer want to elbow their way into the courtroom to have part in every disputed automobile accident to help determine whether the driver did it or the car? This is litigatory lunacy. In any event, whatever Elon is taking, I’d like to experiment with just a couple of times in the evenings…
The net effect is a higher priced Model S, larger margins per car, and fewer unit sales.
And so our focus moves toward CHAdeMO. To date, the DIY community has been entirely left out of the fast charge debate. At EVTV, we have experimented with charging both the batteries and the cars at higher rates. I’m uncertain as to the effect on the Lithium Nickle Cobalt Manganese Aluminum cells coming into fashion at Tesla. But for LiFePo4 cells, I can assure you with some confidence that up to about 3C, they just don’t care. No apparent effect of any kind and typically a temperature increase of 10F. They don’t apparently notice it at all. And they charge to 95% of max in that time before heating really begins.
But we’ve been entirely left out of the party.
That cannot be allowed to stand. This week we have added the very high quality Yazaki version of the CHAdeMO DC charging inlet to our offerings in the online store. Click on the image left to check it out. At $895, it’s a bit proud. But it appears to be best of breed and that’s kind of how we roll here.
In this week’s episode our Lisbon contingent, Paulo and Celso, demonstrate their new JLD505 device, a kind of miniBMS that measures voltage and current and offers three interfaces, USB, CAN, and BLUETOOTH. It also sports two digital inputs and two digital outputs. I would hope to have it in production within six weeks.
With a JLD505, the Yazaki inlet, two Gigavac contactors, and a bit of software, you can basically roll up to a CHAdeMO station and water your horse like a Rock star. And I have both the spec, and the Leaf capture data in hand for this one. The outcome is pretty much a done deal. For probably less than $1400 in kit you can drive cross country to the next EVCCON.
As of last night, Mark Wiesheimer was effectively charging using a Lear charger, our recently released CANDue CAN board, and a piece of software I wrote without ever having a wired up Lear charger in the room with me. He could command the current level, the CV voltage, and the termination by laptop and once set, unplug the laptop and forget. Last week, I purchased a Chevy Volt version of this OEM quality 3.3 kw Lear charger on eBay for $445 plus shipping.
By the middle of next year, I expect to have a Leaf inverter and motor turning on its own dedicated test bench and be selling Leaf drive trains here at EVTV.
And this morning I’ve released a software program for the CANDue that lets you log CAN data, at any speed and from two ports simultaneously, to a microSD card that you will have a hard time finding at any size under 2 GIGABYTES. You can download it here. Rock on WaynesWorld.
While you are at it, have a peek at our latest version of the CANDue User Manual.
Basically, based on Collin Kidder’s excellent library work in developing GEVCU, we find ourselves in the enviable position that Arduino and CAN just ain’t no thang anymore. We can whip stuff out in a few days. And that IS the CANopener to access the treasure chest in the junk pile.
THAT’s what I’ve been on about for two years now with the GEVCU development. If we develop CAN tools, and learn a bit about CAN, we can access the good OEM quality components, and make MUCH improved cars at MUCH less expense. So we applaud Tesla’s move to 3.2 seconds and a 155 mph top end. More wrecks quicker. And once known that you can’t rebuild the cars and use them, the wrecks should go for a song at auction.
They are just not repairable according to Elon Musk and Tesla. Not if we are to be SAFE. Safe from what? From Tesla?
Our cars may still belong to Tesla. But before it’s over, all their PARTS are going to belong to us. I’m trying to picture a 1962 Metropolitan D – D standing for DUAL Tesla motors.
I can assure you if I’m driving it, it will be zero to 60 – sometime later this afternoon…or maybe not… And I will be the one driving the car, not Elon Musk, Tesla, or an Arduino.
While the ChaDeMo standard may allow up to 62 kWh charge rate at 125A, the units Nissan is installing at their dealers in the US top out at 44kWh at 120A. I have yet to see a charge exceed 106A even with a low state of charge, so the real world experience falls well shy of the maximums described in the standard.
It is disappointing that Tesla would throw the kill switch on cars that ‘unapproved’ people have fixed. Musk comes from a software background. The software industry invented the idea of selling a license to use rather than outright ownership to their products. Maybe Musk likes the licensing non-ownership model better than really selling and transferring all ownership rights to the cars driver. The only entity that should be able to declare a car unroadworthy is your local government when you take it in for annual inspection.
First, I will say that I fully support the right of people like Otmar Ebenhoech who want to do crazy project with their salvaged Teslas ( http://cafeelectric.com/stretchla/ ). Eventually I think Tesla will be forced to provide parts and I certainly hope Tesla comes around on that. That said, if Otmar crashes his Tesla powered Vanagon and there is a huge fire, it won’t be a media worthy event because gasoline cars burn every day. But if someone repairs their salvaged Tesla, doesn’t replace the airbags, has a wreck, and dies, that will be a very media heavy event. It won’t matter that the car was a salvage. We all remember how the media reacted to a few Tesla fires on video early on, and my feeling is (for right or wrong) Tesla is trying to avoid that happening again, even if it means they have swung too far over to the non-support side. If you are going to claim you are selling the safest sedan in the world, you can’t have exceptions to that popping up in print.
Separate from this, I don’t see the SuperChargers as an either/or thing. If you had a Beta player, you couldn’t play a VHS tape. But a Tesla is going to be able to fill up anywhere. The China charging standard is derived from the European one, and should be relatively easy for Tesla to support. I’m on the waiting list for the reduced price CHAdeMO adapter. I don’t doubt that it will ship ‘eventually’ given there are some in the wild already. 🙂
Never really been much of a “commenter”, but to co-opt one phrase from another generation, “If the video is too long, you’re too….”
…..old ?, uptight ?, constipated, perhaps ? Often informative, usually educational, and always entertaining, Jack does these videos on his own time, and on HIS own dime. While I personally have not bought, built, or converted an EV, when it happens, it
will be because of these videos, and those contributed by his fellow travelers. I defy you to watch the May 22, 2009 video without
getting fired up about EVs in general, and building one, in particular. Some of you should probably go back, and take a look.
Oddly, the thing that stands out about encountering a Model S around Central Florida, is that beyond fine looks, it DOESN’T
stand out, anymore. Just a car, doing what cars do, quietly, and without gasoline.
My two cents says “Keep on keeping on !”
Absolutely agree Randal: Jack and Brian: from my point of view be as long winded and curmudgeonly as you like and accept my thanks too for your efforts
I have never understood today’s fascination about the quest for high speed vehicles. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate having the ability to merge in to the freeway without having to wait for a large opening. I bought a brand new1965 Dodge Coronet 500 (TorqueFlite), with a 426 wedge and highway rear end, not so much cause it was fast, and fast it was, but mainly for durability, for when I obtain a vehicle, I plan to keep it, especially when I spend good ducats on it.
And if it wasn’t for a good looking blond, that talked me in to letting her drive it, and smashing it up, I would still own it today, that was one tough Chrysler drive train . But I guess not tough enough to survive a number 10 blonde’s quest for power.
But when one looks at automobile advertizing on television today, and if one wouldn’t know better, you would think we have an Autobahn like Germany, or live in the Montana mountains, or going through mud holes on the way home with Viagra in our pockets, hoping to get lucky. The fact is, most of us drive to work or to the grocery/hardware store, and the common speed limit is 45, so what is this all about.
Well first of all, most average cars today pretty much look alike, and for a good reason, its the quest for better mileage. If you can keep wind resistance down, mileage goes up, and there are only so many ways to do that, just look at an aircraft. In the sixties I could tell you what make, model and year of about every car on the road, today I’d be hard pressed to identify make, never mind year and model.
And so now we give the potential new car customer a fantasy about what he/she could do, if you just spend your hard earned ducats on our all wheel, internet of all things, auto steering, and auto braking miracle of a vehicle, you will be elevated to the neighborhood genius. Just think you can go to your local watering hole, get good and stiff, get in to the car and say “drive me home James”, and if you crash for some reason, you can say “Officer I wasn’t driving, James was”.
I know this was just hypothetical, but never the less it seems where it’s going, and as Jack mentioned, it will be interesting to see who will take the liability for this fantasy.
Do you think by deciding what cars to activate and deactivate, and in the absence of case law, Tesla has accepted liability for all the Tesla cars they sell? Are they responsible for all of them, running or wrecked? How about the liability for all the parts, working correctly or defective. Oh My!, is this what the CEO intended?
It will be interesting to see how they handle the insurance for ‘their’ universal, self-driving autos, especially if it’s “all” their responsibility. You know and I know the class-action Lawyers have just been waiting for a gravel boat like this one. Elon, Son, I know you want to change the World; but, you may need to slow a bit and let the systems and the brains catch up.
Really looking forward to seeing the Leaf inverter and motor development. Put one in the Doka?
OEM batteries, driveline and other electric parts have already started to raise their heads in the DIY market (Leaf, Volt). Making all salvaged Teslas part cars, well.. That’s not such a bad thing since you can’t really buy parts 2nd hand and fit them to your non wrecked Tesla (hell, even seatbelt tensioners are coded to a car nowadays).
They have indeed started to raise their heads. The problem is in using them. The batteries aren’t too bad, but the rest are all CAN controlled and need development for DIY applications before we can use them. The companies of course are just myopically opposed to releasing any information that might make these parts useful. Ok, we’ll do it ourselves.
Jack Rickard
I’ve read some about this salvage case, but I’m still not clear on how/why the vehicle was disabled. I’ve read some opinions that the car does this automatically in a hard collision, like airbag deployment. Jack seems to be saying that Tesla did this remotely, after the fact. At what point? When they were informed of the salvage title? Anybody have a link to where this is spelled out?
Two somewhat different scenarios. At least the automatic disable is somewhat plausible and would seem legal as long as Tesla would provide a reset procedure (with no strings attached). But to take deliberate action to disable something you don’t own seems blatant beyond belief.
There is a pyro-tech breaker device on the Tesla that activates in the event of an accident and disconnects the 12 volt battery. The Tesla is just a big computer-with-tires, it is running Ubuntu Linux and has several internal ethernet addresses to talk to major subsystems. It has a built-in cell phone card for access to the outside world. All the controls are powered by the 12V battery, so when it goes down the car is dead.
The chargers are on the CAN bus and won’t function unless given the go-ahead from the main controller. Tesla just has to send the no-go for a VIN over the cell network and their car is disabled from charging.
You might get lucky and remove the SIM card before they turn it off, but who wants to spend $25k or more to buy a salvage car and take that risk? i want to help reverse engineer these bastards but can’t afford that sort of entry fee for the privilege of all that hard work…
Hey Jack, I just wanted to comment as to what you said about some complaining about the show being too long. It’s your show, make it as long as you like. If they don’t like it they can stop it, pause it, turn it off, go watch Seinfeld reruns, whatever. I have a hard time understanding why anyone would complain about how long a show is seeing as how they can stop it at any point though I do understand there are those that can complain about anything. As for me, I will watch the show whether it is 3 hours or 30 minutes and I’m grateful for all the info I get from EVTV. Thank you for the show, your doing just fine.
David Clark
I agree with the comments on show length. No one is holding us prisoner to the show. We can choose to watch part or all of the show when it suits us.
I typically watch part of the show, cherry picking what interests me the most. I rarely watch the entire show.
I second that about the show length, make it as long as needed, it beats watching crap on television by a mile. Matter of fact your show needs to be shown on “How Its Made”.
I’ve watched the show in small doses through the week, sometimes finishing up on Friday.
I have watched the show since the beginning and am always a little sad when the music starts playing. Some of the shows are pretty long but always entertaining and informative. Sometimes I pause and watch in segments but usually, just get a cup of coffee and sit down for the duration. Keep up the good work Jack, no complaints here!
If your interested in the plugs used for the various charging standards this brochure from Phoenix Contact shows them:
https://www.phoenixcontact.com/assets/downloads_ed/global/web_dwl_promotion/Bro_E-Mobility_Eng_low.pdf
This is where I discovered that the Chinese went their own way with their EV charging standards. ChaDeMo is not included in the Phoenix Contact offerings.
P.S. I’m rather partial toward the J1772 handle on page 12.
I’ve been watching the Chinese standard for some time. It is theoretically over 150 kW so unlike the SAE or Menenkes franken plugs, it isn’t obsolete on introduction. There are stories of roll out on a vast scale which will utterly dwarf US and European efforts. It is a key part of adoption in China where most people live in apartment blocks. It just might be the fulcrum for a global shift in the centre of gravity of car design, with mass domestic adoption of EVs providing economies of scale thus enabling Chinese makers to wipe the floor with Western manufacturers in the EV space (and thus eventually in the whole automotive industry). The Japanese did it to the once-dominant Swiss watch industry in the 70s and 80s (look up “quartz crisis” in Wikipedia).
http://www.chademo.com/wp/usmap/
Here is the current map of the CHAdeMO stations in the US. There are some big holes where even the Level 2 chargers are sparse where I live.
I could see adding this ‘option’ to my electric truck in the future, in addition to some extra batteries to make it the only vehicle I would need. Being able to charge a battery pack in under an hour would be great, even if it would make a 5 hour trip in an ICE become an 7 hour trip in an EV. The problem I would have is that it burns through the cycle life of your battery pack pretty quick if you are frequently making long distance trips.
I would like to see it be sold as an ‘all-in-one’ kit with all the parts you need to make it work.
Then you have no problem at all. As we have reported in the past, I can detect no evidence of damage to LiFePo4 cells whatsoever charging at a 3C (20 minute) charge rate to 95% of capacity. More widely disseminated reports are now piling up that in LiMN02 and LiNiCoMNAL cells they are finding no damage as well. The damage from fast charging was always a theory and to my way of thinking, always a questionable one. Evidence appears to be mounting that the “damage” just isn’t what was originally predicted. You are very unlikely to achieve a 3C rate from a CHAdeMO charge station in any event. More likely 1C which means an hour charging, which when travelling and comparing to a six hour charge J1772, again crosses one of those perceptual thresholds. I can do an hour. I can’t do six hours unless it is the end of the day and part of an overnight stay.
Jack Rickard
The CHAdeMO stations around these parts top out at about 400V and 120A. They won’t go above 120A even if you have a lower voltage. So you’d need 40Ah cells for 3C, but more likely you’ll have 60Ah for 2C or 100A for little over 1C. Also you pretty much need to be rocking AC and high voltage. A DC setup with low voltage and huge cells will have you charging for a very long time, even with CHAdeMO.
In general, the CHAdeMO chargers only charge to 80% by default and it’s also been generally accepted that quick charges are in fact better for your back than slow charges, so the net effect on your pack life should be rather low. Especially if you can keep the pack at optimal temperature during charge (above freezing and something like below 100F).
Amazing. Where do you get such information Jarkko. By DEFAULT the CHAdeMO chargers don’t charge AT ALL. And the reason I say that is that the control of charge current (CC) constant voltage (CV) and the termination point/current, are all ENTIRELY a function of the car, not the charger. The charger advises what its current and voltage limits are, and the car requests what it wants from the charger. So the brains of the charger are actually in the car. If the car wants to charge to 80%, that’s what is done. If the car wants to charge to 20%, that’s what is done. And if the car wants to overcharge itself and burn itself to the ground, that is what is done. The CHAdeMO charge station doesn’t have a “default” amount of charge.
The car can also not a maximum number of minutes to charge if you would rather do it that way.
The net effect on your pack will be a function of what we put in the software, and what you as vehicle owner put in for the parameters. We’re likely to be more permissive in this respect, than NISSAN for example.
Jack RIckard
Jack,
Jarkko probably gets his information from experience. I have over 150 QC’s on my LEAF and both Blink and Nissan Sumito ChaDeMo units do indeed implement either % charge limits or time limits. My experience is that the car is not in full control of the process. A QC unit programmed to stop at 80% charge stops charging at anything between 70-75% SOC not 80%. If the car controlled this it would get to the SOC % it wanted to.
Blink units halt at 80% by default, but there are menu options to override to 90% or 100%.
The Nissan units at Nissan HQ stop at 80%.
The Nissan units at Mapco stations in Nashville stop after 30 minutes or full charge whichever occurs first.
No matter what I do at a 80% limited Nissan QC unit, it is not possible to charge the car anymore.
WIth 240v AC charging the car is indeed in control of charging. With DC fast charging the charging station has a greater degree of control.
No matter what you do at a 80% limited Nissan QC unit, it is not possible to charge the car anymore. So what did you do to try to get it to charge any more? Specifically.
Jack Rickard
Hi Jack,
If I press the start button on the QC unit it will not charge anymore. I also pressed the timer override in the car, but that only seems to apply to 240v charging.
JP
Ok, pressing buttons on the charge station or on the timer override on the car isn’t “doing” anything. The statement stands, we are just talking about two different things. The CAR is commanding the charge, and it is doing so with some very specific CAN bus statements. I’m expecting you to respond with what CAN message you spoofed or injected that the charge station failed to respond to. You are telling me about buttons you pushed. We have a disconnect here.
The CAR commands the charge process. I suppose the charger COULD have some sort of limits coded into it, but it has no way of knowing whether the car is 20% charged or 80% charged except from what the CAR tells it so that is very unlikely. It has to be able to handle DIFFERENT cars. So the car is in charge, not the charger.
When you are correcting me with direct experience, we’re looking for what CAN messages you sent, not how many turtles you saw. IF the CAR is limiting you to 80% charge, I can believe that. That they don’t let you “override” it with button pushes I can believe. That does not mean the charge station is responsible. It is more comfirmation that it is a limitation of the vehicle.
I was taking exception to the statement that the charge stations charge to 80% by default. It is extremely unlikely that this is the case, or that the charge station would know, beyond what is reported specifically by the car to the charger. Your confirmation that he is correct and I am in error based on your ability to push buttons, is a little bizarre.
We intend a setup for DIY car builders to do CHAdeMO. I would be very interested to learn of such limitations, so we can code around them. But that’s not what I’m hearing. I’m hearing of observations of the process and the user controls. The limitations you all experience are most likely part of the vehicle firmware. The charge station is doing precisely what the car tells it to do.
Jack Rickard
I do actually appreciate the “report from the field” but I’m very frustrated as it is so very vague yet replete with conclusions but no data to indicate those conclusions.
If you charged your car at two DIFFERENT charge stations and indeed got a different result, that’s a data point. And a curious one.
Turning that around that I’m wanting you to “hand me” data you don’t have access to is perverse. You’ve both made some unsubstatiated claims and drawn some rather wild conclusions from very little data of any kind. And you and Jarkko brought it up, not I.
As I say, it is some indication if you get a different result using the same car on two different chargers. I still won’t jump to any wild conclusions as to WHAT it indicates exactly, but it is a very interesting observation.
Jack Rickard
Jack,
Indeed I’ve used, oh, about 9 different CHAdeMO stations within the last two weeks, not all of which have been of the same type, and the end result from a charge is most definitely not exactly the same on each station. It may end at 80% or it may end at 77%. Or something else. It may also be that the stations reports 80%, but once you get on the road the car says 71% SOC. Also some stations will let you do the trick of restarting your charge after the inital charge to 80%, but some will not. So it would seem that there are definitive differences. Or the car does things more or less randomly. I’ve also entertained the idea that it might be because the Hall device or whatever they use in the car to measure SOC in combination with voltages is so badly off or reports inaccurate readings as temperatures change, that it might cause this behaviour. But then again, that’s just an idea. It may not have any credit. I’ll get much better data on the DIY system later.
Meant to say you’ll get better data on the DIY system later. I don’t currently see a need for CHAdeMO in my other two EVs, since I got this one. Both of those vehicles would require a bigger pack and a AC system to be useful for longer distances.
Indeed, I speak from the user experience of using CHAdeMO quick charge stations. If we start nitpicking about what is a charger in this scenario, I’d have to say that it is the combination of the charge station and the vehicle, both of which have a say in what current is sent to where and when. True, the car will inform the station what SOC it think it is at any given time and what current it would like to receive, but that is not to say that the charge station would always comply. It will limit current to it’s own maximum and stop if it overheats. Sometimes they don’t reach 80% even if set to, but I can’t tell who told who. C-Zero uses car AC to cool the pack, so overheating is unlikely cause.
By default CHAdeMO stations here will charge you to about 80% (reported by the car naturally), unless you try to change the target SOC using the buttons on the station. I haven’t yet encountered a station which would allow me to set over 80% SOC on initial charge. However, if you keep your car plugged in after the 80% charge, restart the charging process using the buttons on the station without changing any settings, it will start charging from that 80% up to as long as you have time to stand by, but it does get very slow. Slowness here forced by the vehicle, most likely.
In a DIY vehicle it might be possible to charge as fast as possible, but even then, at a rather fast amperage, you’d reach the end of your CC phase rather soon, I fear. Like at about 80% SOC, or even lower than that. Probably a lot sooner than when using a slow L1 or L2 charger at home. The faster you charge the sooner you’ll probably hit your high voltage limit and either have to stop or reduce current. So you can’t get to 100% at full blast not matter what. You could lie to the charge station that you’re at 60% even though you’re at 95%, but it wouldn’t do you much good because you couldn’t just go about receiving 120A up to 100% anyway. But it would enable you to be in control, true.
Jarkko – you are FURIOUSLY typing yourself smart. It doesn’t work. Why do you think you would reach the end of your CC phase rather soon, like about 80%???? Do you have ANY data to support this other than what you have read in the forums and typed yourself.?????
I HAVE DEMONSTRATED THIS ON CAMERA ON VIDEO at least twice. We reached 95% SOC at the CV voltage doing 3C. And our temperature increased a whopping 10 degrees fahrenheit.
We will be lucky to get 1C out of a CHAdeMO. And you guys are reading turtles. The car absolutely commands the voltage and the reduction in current when it reaches voltage. It’s in the CHAdeMO spec.
It is true that in theory the CHAdeMO charge station could simply refuse to produce that current or voltage in some sort of current limiting to save itself from overheating I suppose. But you have no data to indicate that other than your car didn’t charge beyond 80%. It’s your car doing that – not the CHAdeMO.
The car builders were certain that fast charging would damage their batteries and that limiting fast charge to 80% SOC would somehow lessen this effect. As in the case of the Leaf they only let you charge to 20 kW in a 24 kW pack anyway, this is hysterical. You wind up with 80% of 83%.
We don’t have to do that. We’ll have it set for some default values. But you will have to set your CV and your CC and the current at which you terminate the charge process. If in PRACTICE the charge station deviates from the specification, I would love to hear about it. But Im not hearing that. I’m hearing your frustration at not being able to go beyond 80%. It’s your car most likely limiting that. And if you build your own car, you won’t have to put up with all that.
You can take exception to the statement that charging stations charge to 80% by default all you want, but the reality is that they do impose limits.
Here is a photo of the Nissan HQ DC Fast Charger I took this morning.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/wjsgz0lfx3f8nvi/IMG_20141020_073131287-dc80percent.jpg?dl=0
It clearly states that the available charge is 80%. The reality is that this morning it stopped at 74.9% SOC so that would tell me the DC station is making an educated guess as to the charge level. During charging the DC Unit shows the % charge level it believes my car is at, which is typically 2-8% overstated. You are right to indicate that the DC unit doesn’t know with any precision what the charge level is, but it does cut off the charge when it feels its time to, not when the car decides its time to.
If I drive to my local Nissan dealer and plug into a unit with an identical model number there is no such limit and the car charges to full if left long enough. Its firmware is programmed to charge until full without charge limits.
The only difference is where I plug in – nothing changed with the car, the car isn’t asking for more or less from the DC unit, it gets what the DC unit is programmed to deliver. The car clearly isn’t in full control of the process. There is joint control occurring here.
As for the CAN bus messages you look for, you won’t get them here, I don’t have the tools to monitor the bus on your behalf. No turtles occurred or observed, just my experience. This is an experience based report. Ignore it or denigrate it if you wish. You are free to develop your ChaDeMo units for your enthusiasts to install in their vehicles from the technical information at your disposal, and you are also free to ignore what real world limitations the DC units will try to impose on your vehcile(s).
Be thankful that Jarkko and I have alerted you for the need to understand in more detail what the DC units in the field are programmed to do. Apologies if my inability to hand the technical details to you leaves you non plussed.
Jack,
True enough, I don’t have CHAdeMO in my DIY so I can’t do the real world test on this. I merely based this on the fact that in the usual CC/CV charge you do leave some charge on the table if you stop as soon as you reach your target voltage. I didn’t recall you reaching 95% at 3C. My memory served me wrong, although I’m quite sure I’ve seen that paint dry. If I end up on a forum I’ll usually end up disagreeing with the natives. So, yes, caught on thinking a little there, but not really frustrated on anything. I knew what I was buying, which was pretty much a full car for the price of the pack. Pack which doesn’t probably have as good cells as the latest LiFePO4s, so they might not take that 3C up to 95% anyway. Then again they might, since I don’t really know. Anywho, thanks to this car I could sell my Diesel and go gas free.
“Turning that around that I’m wanting you to “hand me” data you don’t have access to is perverse.”
No it’s not perverse. The only reason I said this is because you indicated you were expecting me to provide CAN messages.
“I’m expecting you to respond with what CAN message you spoofed or injected that the charge station failed to respond to. You are telling me about buttons you pushed. ”
Sorry I can’t provide you with what you are looking for.
BTW my observations go beyond two charging stations. I charge at over a dozen in the Middle Tennessee area.
I observe charge limits at some DC units and not others, it isn’t random its deliberate. eVgo have had custom firmware provided by Nissan in the last few months that has changed the behavior of the charging stations it is assuming responsibility for at 7 area MAPCO gas stations. Instead of an 80% charge limit that was initially implemented they have implemented a 30 minute limit (plus they added some branding with Logos etc). Nissan dealers are required to deliver new LEAF’s to customers fully charged, so as a result their DC Units have no limits implemented.
For your purposes it maybe valuable to get feedback from some of the first users of the Tesla ChaDeMo adapter which I believe has just started being delivered. It is quite possible that the DC units installed to date have been optimized around the LEAF. Now there are other types of vehicle using them, it will be interesting to see if and how charge limits are implemented with other vehicle types.
You may not want to accept that %SOC charge limits have been implemented by DC Fast chargers in the field, or cite insufficient data points to support such an assertion. Be that as it may, I’m only trying to let you know that what Jarkko observed and reported appears to be true despite your arguments to the contrary.
From what I can gather, the CHAdeMO specification says nothing about the charger limiting output to 80% or anything like that. Technically it is supposed to listen to what the car tells it that the car wants. However, theory and practice can be two very different things. The specification basically says “trust the car.” The charger is likely free to do whatever it wants. It could limit you to 80% or 30 minutes or anything that the charger owner decides. Now, since the charger itself has zero idea of the current state of charge its only hope of cutting your car off early is to look at the reported remaining battery power and target voltage and use this to get an idea of where your battery is sitting. Thus, an enterprising vehicle system should be able to lie in order to trick the charger into giving it a 95% charge. You can bet your life savings that a Nissan Leaf does not lie to chademo chargers. I, however, have no qualms about doing it. So, this is likely a case where DIY systems will be superior to the OEM systems since we’ll be able to fudge the numbers to trick the chargers to give us more juice than it normally would. But, I have no proof that this will work. Time will tell.
Nice summary CollinK
Thanks for chiming in.
Jack,
Would a CAN log of the Quick Charge port on a Leaf in the wild be of any use at this point, or is the CHAdeMO spec good enough to experiment with?
I’ve been watching the shop cam off and on and it looks like it has been an exciting weekend at EVTV Garage.
Partying like Rock Stars. Kevin Smith and Nathan Knoppenburger of Illuminati are down. Nathan is buying our GreenVan and we’ve been ogling the linear motor/generator they have just procured for Illuminati to generate electricity from potholes.
They want to do some work at EVTV, so I have them setting up the RInehart P100DX inverter with the Siemens motor on the newest test bench.
Rock On – Wayne’s World.
Jack RIckard
Jack,
It looks like quite a bit of activity has been going on at the garage in the evenings and week ends. I see Jessie working late and you at the bench quite a bit lately. Watched the motor and transmission being pulled out of the Ford SUV a couple weeks ago, on I believe a Saturday and now Kevin and Nathan this week end, pretty cool.
Rock On!
Randy
Nothing special. Jesse was working on installing a CHAdeMO inlet where the VW emblem is on the front of the green THING. I was just going through some problem children GEVCU’s and reloading them with the latest software and testing them. Nate and Kevin were working on the vantage GreenVan they have purchased from us and are taking home tomorrow. And I had them clean off the dual Siemens bench and hook up the Rinehart Motion Systems inverter with some switches and a pot and so forth so we can start testing that unit and doing the GEVCU object module to control the Rinehart controller.
Playing with EVS. You know. Get liquored up. Play with some high voltage. Go for a drive.
Jack Rickard
Jack… In this weeks show you mentioned a “Solar Patio” idea. Can you give us a update on the solar system you had installed on the roof of EVTV? It would be interesting to learn how many kw you are pulling down!
Ok. I’ll try to video something on that this week.
Jack
I 2nd the solar updater. What are you getting in real world watts. What was the first bill like from power provider? Did the rebate check ever come?
We did get the rebate check. We did pay the installer. We are getting power. It depends on the sun of course. But I’m very pleased with it. I think the peak day was 154 kWh. As we have a theoretical DC output somewhat under 25 kW, and in this zone about 4.5 hours of good sun, I find this remarkable.
Solar is a lot better than it was when I put in my first 15 kW system in 1998.
Jack Rickard
Jack,
I think something was lost in the translation. When Mr. Websters says “body” sounds like he really meant …”corpse”
Mike
I have left a spare high current terminal in the Civic for the Chademo kit when it comes
VIVA long and boring!
Rock on Jack! Very informative article.
Anna,
I am moving to Hawaii… do you have any ideas about outriggers?
The chatter about CHAdeMO and Chinese chargers is intriguing. If I change out the 200 amp meter base in my home with a 400 amp base that would only take me up to the 100 kW range. It’ll take a sea-change of attitudes with utilities and contractors to get infrastructure up to the 150 kW range as well as the economies of scale that only come with high numbers in parts production.
Yes, that highlights the problem quite well. 100kW of charging is 833A at 120V, 417A at 240V, and still 131A at 440 3-phase. Really level 3 charging is only feasible on 3-phase power. It just takes too many amps otherwise. There are very few people in the US who have access to 3-phase power. It is nearly unheard of to have it in residential locations. You pretty much need industrial property to get it. Even then, I believe NEC dictates a 25% buffer for your breaker and wire rating. So that’s 164A rating for the breaker and wiring. That’s very heavy even for industrial use. I work in an industrial building and the largest non-main breaker we have is a 100A breaker for a giant CNC mill. A level 3 charger might use as much or more power than our mill!
So, I think it might prove difficult to find the infrastructure in the US right now. There are ideas to put L3 chargers at current gas stations but the vast majority of stations are split 240V just like houses – they don’t have enough capacity to install even one L3 charger. I hear that it is more common in Europe for houses to actually be on the 3-phase lines but they only hook up to a single phase. This might mean that businesses are the same way and could more easily get the proper service. Maybe that’s why Europe is so covered in CHAdeMO chargers whereas the US comparatively has very few.
Collin.
In Middle Tennessee they have gone beyond the concept of gas stations installs and have installed 7 CHAdeMo stations at 7 MAPCO/BP stations in the Nashville area. They are installed at pre-existing gas stations, not new builds. The site of the DC unit is awkward at some of the locations. At least one of the gas stations has existed for over 20 years, while some are clearly recent.
As far as I am aware all of them have automatic car washes, I know some automatic car washes require a 125 Amp supply. It could be CHAdeMo is only readily install-able at gas stations with car washes.
You are at the heart of the melon Collin. I’ve been chanting this for three years. Basically the batteries already do fast charging, and in the case of LiFepo4 cells, have done so quite readily for years. But where are you going to get that much POWER????
And it gets worse. In most utility areas, if your use of 3 phase at your peak is outside of a very specific ration to your total 3phase use, you can have HEROIC surcharges on your electric bill.
So how do you get 200 or 300 amps of power at 300 to 400 volts? Well, we do it routinely with BATTERIES.
Next item. Why does a 3 phase Chademo charge station that can do 125 amps start at $55,000??? Yes, they do go as low as $15,000 for weeny 25kw versions. Valery Mitzikove sells a 25 kW ONBOARD charger for $3500. And we have enjoyed Soliton1 controllers that do 1000 amps at up to 360 volts in the $3000 range. So what’s the difference in electronics between a Soliton and a battery charger – apparenty a single inductor.
This then was the concept behind the PulsaR, which I fronted with $20,000 cash to develop. The guy doing it freaked out wandering off in seven directions at once with no adult supervision and it took me 2 1/2 years to get the money back….Only by the grace of George Hamstra at Netgain did I get it then.
In the face of all this, we are up to 731 Chademo charge stations in the U.S. Europe is admittedly far ahead at 1374. But compared to Tesla’s 114 currently in the U.S., Chademo has walked away with it.
That’s kind of good. It is an open CAN based standard we can develop to. And the only model that makes sense is a battery bank with a controller based charger on the front of it. You can then charge the battery bank more slowly using normal chargers and 240v split phase, and/or solar. And if you want to spend enough on solar, on solar alone.
This is the only model that gets us up past 100kw usefully and practically that I can see. The current Chademo sets will serve as long as we are driving on 22kWh packs. But if this is really going to 50 and 85 kWh, that’s where we have to go with fast charge.
I intend to do first a simple kit to add CHAdeMO charge capabilities to any DIY car.
Second step is a charger/controller to BE a CHAdeMO charger – only fed from direct DC – a battery pack.
Third step is to backend the battery bank for solar.
I’ve got most of the pieces laying around in my shop. JLD505. A large inductor. Some bit parts. The CHAdeMO charge plug is kind of pricey.
Ultimate irony. We have ZERO CHAdeMO here within 100 miles. And I don’t need it or need to go anywhere frankly. If I was going far enough to need one, I’d take a helicopter or airplane.
But we’ll do it. But its largely because I don’t see anyone else attempting it with a significant shot at success.
Elon/Tesla/SolarCity SHOULD have done it Ding Dongs and Ho’Ho’s akimbo. But their promises of open systems appear to be a scam.
Probably lucky for us. By not coming to terms with the other OEMs they leave a vacuum for CHAdeMO and we will get to play too.
So it might be a good thing long term.
Jack Rickard
Once again, it’s all about the batteries. There are storage solutions using spinning rotors that can deliver staggering wattage but the physical challenges make that even more expensive than a huge battery bank.
There are still more challenges further out though. How many vehicles per hour can you service with a battery-backed CHAdeMO? Or maybe better stated at how many miles of range can you dispense per day? Trying to match the numbers for even a modest gasoline filling station still leads to a daunting need for incoming grid power. Fortunately once vehicle range gets to a certain size, the vast majority of charging is done at home so that helps the equation. And once vehicle range gets past the 1-day driving range of any sane person, even road-trip charging doesn’t have to happen in 20 minutes. It can be done over the course of several hours at or near a MOtel.
I am somewhat taken aback by the steep price of CHAdeMO stations. It really isn’t worth that kind of money. I suspect some of it is for liability reasons (they are very high power and a mistake could involve french-fried humans), some of it is low volume, and some of it is greed (who doesn’t want to make a bunch of money per unit?) So, I see great potential for someone to swoop in and create a cheaper system. Really I see no reason that L3 chargers should not be possible sub-$10,000 even for 100kW units. Basically all it is is a 3-phase inverter running in regen mode. We already have 3-phase motor controllers capable of doing 100kW driving. How much more difficult is it really to do it backward/regen as well? So, why couldn’t a Rinehart controller running backward be used with a little magic to be a chademo station? Heck, the DMOC645 will do 53kW continuous. That’s still a pretty respectable amount of power. Of course, doing this en masse would be stupid but it could be viable for testing. I know that EMW already has the capability to make their hardware become a chademo charger. So, it seems like things are quickly heading toward an open source chademo charger that isn’t $50,000. I think that their stuff tops out around 25-33kw so the DMOC and RMS controllers beat it in the power dept but I don’t know what happens if you try to run a motor inverter backward really hard for a long time.
Along Collin’s controller note, The UQM Powerphase Select 145 does 85kW continuous and their Powerphase HD150 does 100kW continuous (on paper), so the tech is out there.
This is all true, but assumes the presence of 3 phase power. I don’t have it and it is heroically expensive to get it. Then, if my peak use is too far out of line with my average three-phase use, they have rather heroic surcharges.
Charging from a battery, we don’t need all that. A simple PWM chopper controller and a coil will do. I have a used Soliton 1 here that will do 360volts and 1000 amps. We really need to do up to 500v of course, but I would say 200 amps would be plenty. The CHAdeMO association claims the current connectors are good to 200 amps and foresee amending teh spec from the current 125 amp limit to grow to 200 amps. That is 100kw potentially. The only place I can see getting that kind of power is a battery bank.
When I was talking to Solar One about doing some selling for them I spent some time with other salesmen with the organization. I was told that lobbyist here in sunny AZ were trying to get it made illegal to attach a battery bank to any grid tie system. Sound like they are trying to nip-in-the-bud any way to avoid their “Heroic” charges for peak usages above one’s average. This year during peak load at ASU the sun covered the 25 Mega-watts of solar panels. During that 30 minutes ASU racked up an additional $250,000 power bill for the year. After you gasp and clutch the pearls realize that running a school for 85,000 students uses about $4 million electric bill per month. I suspect within two years they will justify a really big sulfur-lithium utility smoothing pack.
I believe you. But picture GRID to ordinary 220vac CHARGER to battery bank. Now picture solar to charge controller to battery bank. Now picture battery bank to CHAdeMO charge station to car.
A couple of things show up here. As long as the 220vac charger is isolated, we don’t need isolation. It’s a floating pack both in the car and in the box.
Second, we’re not grid tied. There is no path back through the isolated charger to power the grid with solar. The solar is only used to charge the pack. And the grid and charger are only used to augment the solar.
Indeed, I see this model in places where there is no electrical service at all. In that event, you need a much larger “awning” to keep that battery box charged up. But it should work fine up to some traffic load. That’s simply a function of solar array and battery bank size.
Batteries are the only source I know of for these immense and brief power draws. And we already have 75% of this rig in our cars now. No solar of course. But we’re running the rest of it every day.
Jack Rickard
Jack Rickard
Yes, it does assume the availability of 3-phase power which isn’t available hardly anywhere in the US. I do have it but still will face the same thing you mentioned – you get charged based on peak usage. Though, there are some advantages to having a stamping plant – we’re used to big surges when presses and mills turn on so the charger isn’t really outside the normal realm of loads we’d experience. Besides, a running press uses basically as much power as an L3 charger. So, I don’t think that using an L3 charger will really affect the rate too much for me.
Elsewhere, in most of the rest of the US, it’d be a big problem. Yes, batteries can alleviate that but then you have the added expense of all the batteries. I guess I’m in the minority having easy access to the power so to me batteries seem like an unnecessary expense. Elsewhere I can see how it would make sense to use the batteries to buffer the load. That’d work fine for cases where the expected number of vehicles per day is less than 4. I suppose both approaches are going to be necessary in the future.
For Jack it seems like 154kwh of solar charging would be sufficient to charge several cars per day. That would be pretty handy. But, what about the cost of the cells? At some point doesn’t all that hardware add back up to basically the cost of the OEM chademo chargers?
The light commercial building I work in has at least 4 circuits of 208V 3 phase at 200 amps each. For our 480V need we have a 75KVA transformer on one of those circuits. A hotel we installed a prototype generator in had average usage of 400 KW with peak somewhere around 700kW mostly from the large AC system. 3 phase is everywhere, it’s just on the top of the poles, as Jack mentioned, the Utilities make it difficult/costly to get it in buildings that didn’t get it during original construction.
Here’s a copy of our local eletricity company’s price list in Finland (and in Finnish):
http://www.porienergia.fi/Global/Hinnastot/Myyntihinnat%201.6.2014.pdf
As you can see, up to 3 x 63A at 230VAC is the same price. Most, if not all, houses have three phase power. All of it usable at will.
It turns out that the greatest number of CHAdeMO stations in Finland have been installed at “ABC Asemat”. It’s a gas station chain, but not really. Their sites have always had a restaurant, a small store and in most cases also a bigger 24×7 grocery store. Outside they have a gas station, most of which are “cold” automat only stations, with no gas paid inside. They don’t even compete with gas prices. They’re generally the most expensive choice in the neighbourhood. Most of the charge stations are free of charge. A cup of coffee will more than cover the electricity. The are without exception 120A 400VDC models. When the gas runs out they’re business will not change at all. It’s the way to go.
fascinating show this week. those new batteries are just remarkable. Enjoyed the technical presentation too.
Good afternoon Jack,
Enjoyed the show as always. As for Michigan law on direct sales by manufacturers the law was unchanged by the current legislation. So basically that portion was the same, and just carried forward. State Rep. Mike Shirkey who chairs the science and tech committee is a personal friend, the current bill is clarifying some of the relationship between the manufacturer and the dealer. For example before this legislation the mfg could demand that the dealers eat documentation fees in certain deals. He assured me that direct manufacturer sales will be taken up by the house in a later date, which as he said is a much more difficult discussion weighing the pros and cons of franchising. Mr. Shirkey also stated that Tesla’s communication’s machine is slightly misrepresenting the current legislation for their benefit.
Jack,
Any estimates of when the JLD505 will be offered?
Thanks,
Randy
Paulo is still testing the JLD505 with a couple of last minute issues. The Institutio des Enginerias or whatever it is called has just resumed classes a few weeks ago, and he’s kind of got both hands full in several directions. And Celso is off to Amsterdam playing ski bunny with the red power boat and Anne. Note that the hurrier we go, the behinder we get.
Jack
Hey, I hope I’m wrong. But in this week’s EVTV episode, the anchor showed us solutions to prevent driving off with the EVSE plugged into the EV. I think both solutions require that the EVSE is supplying AC to the EV. But in my EV, the EVSE AC output shuts off when my batteries get full, even though my EVSE is still plugged in. IMO its better to use the proximity and/or pilot signals to interact with the motor controller than to use the presence or absence of AC.
Well, we don’t exactly have an anchor. But the fat boy showed the use of an AVC2 relay on the Yellow thing to disable the inverter. When the plug is connected to the port, a combination of the pilot signal and the latch is required to activate teh relay. It is not at all dependent on the presence of AC.
For the Green Thing, it doesn’t have the AVC2 and so we were showing the use of a voltmeter with relay to detect the AC.
Finally, we have quite a variety of EVSE here at EVTV. In all cases, the CHARGER discontinues charging when the batteries are full, but they still have AC from the EVSE in every case. It is present until the latch pin is raised and at that point AC is cut off before you even pull it out of the connector. In most cases there is an audible “clunk” sound from the EVSE you can clearly hear when you remove the plug.
Now, how do you know your EVSE cuts off the AC when the batteries are fully charged? And indeed how does the EVSE know?
It IS possible to have the charger disconnect the relay for the pilot signal, changing the resistance and voltage level and causing the EVSE to do this. But none of our chargers are that advanced.
Jack Rickard
Jack, he meant if you had been outside and not sitting inside, the car would have had no chance to get away.
With J1772 you have got proximity to disable the car but with plain power sockets …
I have seen with airplanes and space rockets a piece of read tape with a ding-dong on one end and something useful at the other end the vessel wont go away until you pull the red tape to remove the something useful.
Imagine a “Jack” (phono connector or “Klinkenstecker” as we call them in germany). With a stereo connector you could even play J1772 but why not combine it with a theft protection and fire alarm?
Cheers
Peter and Karin
As the EV space spreads out over the waters, much like the charging plug, I use to attach the bilge plug to the boat ignition keys. Of course we don’t know ANYONE that has EVER launched a boat without installing the bilge plug. 🙂
Actually, I HAVE seen somebody launch a boat without the bilge plug. It takes just long enough to really get some water onboard that there’s not much you can do about it. You’re usually well away from teh dock before you notice that things are riding a little lower than normal.
He did make it back, with water up to the gunnels. We had to really back the trailer down into the water and about six of us wrestle it into position, then hook up the winch, and in the end wound up bailing with 5 gallon buckets for 30 minutes before we could get it actually pulled up into position. What a mess.
And of course really brown nasty river water. Very lucky not to have sunk it entirely. Fortunately it was not me, but the lesson was learned vicariously.
Jack Rickard
So if you’re not the anchor, then are you the “host” :^) BTW, this episode was the first I’ve seen, and I find it entertaining and informative, but a little long winded for the time I have available. I does, however, do a good job at feeding my EV addition (for better or worse).
Ah, you are right. the AVC2 has no AC connections, so its relay is purely prox/pilot activated. I agree, that would work.
As for using the JDL volt meter on the J1772 AC input to detect plug-in, indeed my EV does signal back to the EVSE when my batteries are full using the pilot signal, and this indeed caused both the Blink Level 2 and the Juice Box (the only 2 EVSE’s I’ve tried so far) to disconnect AC from the vehicle (which I can tell from an AC powered LED inside the vehicle). My EV has my own custom-made PCB which sits between the J1772 inlet and my PFC-30 charger while controlling an AC contactor feeding the AC input to the PFC. It wasn’t absolutely necessary for my vehicle-side interface to tell the EVSE that the charge was done using the pilot signal, but I decided to do this because it can trigger the public EVSEs to text my cell phone that my vehicle is charged. If the EVSEs detect end-of-charge by looking its AC output current, then perhaps I don’t need to signal the EVSE using the pilot signal. But then, what if I’m using that AC for battery heaters – then the EVSE wouldn’t know I’m at end-of-charge (but of course my method wouldn’t allow battery heating after end-of-charge).
I suppose my method is non-standard and if so, perhaps AC detection is a valid method for “standard” interfaces. But nonetheless, if the EVSE looses grid power, and one were to only use AC power to detect plug-in, then even with a “standard” interface, an EV would think the plug is out and its safe to drive, when its not. However, I would hope the proximity (or pilot) signals would still be valid even with EVSE not receiving grid power.
I was pulling your leg about the anchor thing. Yes, I’m the boat anchor. We’re not much given to titles here. I’m supposed to be the head guy, but they make me clean the bathrooms so I’m never quite sure.
Long winded? It’s back. I must truly be long winded. That’s it. We’re going to do a 20 minute show this week. It will cut my work load to a 1/10th. We just had a big running discussion about my long windedness.
We’ll try to go on short wind. And I’ll try to talk real fast like I’m from New Jersey or something.
As to J1772, you have a lot of swing thoughts going on in that golf game there pard. The rule around here is that it’s YOUR car, take my advice and do it however you want to. But you were calling me out on a strategy for disabling the car that wouldn’t work. Now as I understand it, it won’t work with the PCBoard YOU built. If you built it, you can change it. So I’m a little lost here on the correction to the error of my ways.
We have a voltmeter that is normally thought of as enabling relay control based on DC voltage. I was pointing out it would work on AC just as well and on the Green Thing, we could use THAT to disable the car and keep me from yanking the cord out by the roots by driving away with it still connected. This isn’t typing myself smart or theorizing. I just ripped one out by the roots the week before – rather horribly actually.
The fuel connector on the THING is on the right front side of the vehicle, completely out of sight of the driver.
In any event, it is my belief that the decision to disconnect AC, is NORMALLY a function of the car end of the proximity signal. It can of course be overriden by the latch on the connector. And I suppose the GFI as well. But in normal operation, we would still see AC after charging with any equipment we are using here. In fact, the AVC2 MAY INDEED signal to turn off the AC. I don’t think so. I think I hear the wall clunk when I disconnect the cable. But if it does, then we have an AVC2 to work with and dont need the AC voltmeter.
Long story short, it’s your car and you can work it to suit you. The four range control digital voltmeter will detect AC just as well as DC. Your mileage may vary.
Jack Rickard
Our family pulled up to a launch ramp one time only to find it blocked off by a guy with a tow truck. We were confused as to what he was doing blocking the ramp with the tow truck. A guy took the cable from the truck and then walked into the water and dove in. A few minutes later they began to winch the cable back in. First, out comes a pickup truck, then we notice that there is a boat on a trailer attached. All of this was fully submerged when we arrived and we had no idea it was there. After talking with a few of the other observers we found out that they guy forgot to put in the plug. He had driven away, but then came back to put it on the trailer to pull it out, but it was too heavy with all the water and then the boat just pulled the truck down the ramp with it until it was all under water.
CollinK,
Here’s a product you, and anyone else who has 3-phase power available, could be interested in:
http://www.evtec.ch/c5website/index.php/en/products/move_and_charge/
It’s a portable CHAdeMO “charger”, which I’ve been told should be around 5000€.
Unobtainium. Did you try to buy one?
There are some FANTASTIC products on the Internet Jarkko. Unfortunately, most of them are startups looking for funding. All insisting that they are not, but of course you can’t buy one “just yet.”
Coming soon to an Internet near you.
Let me know if these appear to actually be available….
Jack,
What did the folks at EVTEC reply to you?
Here’s another similar product from another company, apparently they’ve struck a deal with Volkswagen to supply these to their dealers:
http://www.ies-synergy.com/en/chargers/keywatt-charging-stations-power-modules/trolleys-electric-vehicles
Why is it you guys keep bringing me unobtainium, and then wanting to know that they told ME? What dd they tell YOU when you contacted them Jarkko?
Actually, you didn’t. You saw an unobtainium press release and wanted me to chase it down for you. Why don’t YOU go contact them and see if they will actually deliver one, and when, and at what price. Let us know. We’d be curious as well.
They’re in YOUR part of the world as I understand it.
Jack Rickard
This is hardly fruitful at this point, but I merely wanted to bring to your attention that products like this (might) exist. Especially since you don’t have certified CHAdeMO equipment to test your installation against. It’s a shame if they don’t actually have a product. The second supplier might be more believable, since they should be shipping those to Volkswagen, but I suppose they will then be frankenplug editions anyway. I don’t need a mobile CHAdeMO charger myself, so I won’t be asking them to sell me one.
As for the C-Zero/i-MiEV, I should really plot the voltage curve during charge to see if it reaches full voltge before cutting back the current, but it’s hardly relevant topic here. I don’t think I claimed that the CHAdeMO station would be the one limiting the current, but I’m quite sure they can cut you based on the SOC you report to them and they also may cut you based on time.
I know Jarkko. And I thank you. But my mailbox is just full of descriptions of unobtainium with the hope that I somehow have the time or energy to chase all of it down, when the contributor did not. You don’t have to BUY one to inquire about it. You’d rather I handle the work part. I get it. I just can’t do it unless it looks pretty promising. This looks like brochure work.
They may alread sell them. i don’t know. But I would be surprised. Ideas take a LOT of time and a LOT of work and usually a LOT of money to turn into products. The Internet is kind of unique in that in just a few minutes you can make a product look entirely real and really make it look much better than it ever would quite look if you really built it.
Matt Hauber originally contacted us to purchase advertising on EVTV. He had the most gorgeous looking online store of EV parts I have ever seen. He just kind of showed up at the shop one day and wanted to work with us at minimum wage. He was here six months. The ENTIRE store only existed online. He had NO products and had never sold ANY parts. I STLL wish our online store looked as good as his did.
Today, he has a real one at EVWEST. It DOES look better than ours I am afraid to report, but it isn’t even close to how good his original fictional one looked. And in truth, he doesn’t actually have most of the products listed in his store now. They stock almost nothing. The Pierburg pump, by contrast, has sold over 100 million units now and you can’t FIND them on the Internet. Similarly this LEAR charger is a honey and is showing up in electric cars from entirely different OEMs. I can’t find a SPEC sheet for it online.
And so it goes.
Yes, I’d love to have a portable CHAdeMO charger for 5000 euros. But just glancing at it, it isn’t worth an e-mail or a call. It doesnt’ exist.
I could be wrong…
Jack Rickard
Apropos the discussion of 80% charge, here is the Chademo protocol as summarised on the Chademo site. If I read it correctly the car decides when to terminate charge, not the charger. It looks like the charger expects a message from the car at 100ms intervals, I presume to guard against comms failure
http://www.chademo.com/05_protocol.html
Chademo charging.
Here in the UK there are identical “Ecotricity” (DBT) 106A rapid charging units that will take my car up to full charge if left alone Others of the same make will report I’m over 80% and stop but I’m three bars off the top charge. This came after a software upgrade on the rapid charging units leaving me with 8% less than the original charge level. This affects all Leafs I know of plus a Zoe owners car.
The SOC reported on the Chademo is not the SOC reported anywhere in the car. Whether instrumentation or Leaf Spy via the CANBUS.
The comms protocol does involve some sort of fudge factor or internal calibration differences somewhere.
.
I think you are all absolutely correct. No exceptions. Something else has to be fiddling numbers around.
.
So here’s a thought.
If I turn up urgently requiring a recharge… It’s 30 minutes to 80%. If not urgent but would like to, due to the need to cross a big distance after… It’s still seems to time to 30 minutes. A slower rate?
You’re probably not really imagining things but instead falling victim to how poorly humans judge relative time. The urgent charge probably takes something like 30-35 minutes and the less urgent charge probably takes 20-25 minutes. The difference can be hard to tell. As for why this happens, it is because charging tends to happen in a somewhat logarithmic curve – the majority of charging happens at first and it tapers off more and more as time goes on. The urgent charge might start at 70 amps and taper back to 5-10A before it terminates. The less urgent charge might start at 45A and taper down to 5-10A before terminating. Because the urgent charge started at a higher amperage, it was able to charge more of the pack more quickly. This makes it take less time than you’d expect. Eventually it catches up with the charge for the less-urgent times and they both proceed to the end point. You can kind of think of it sort of like how it happens when you fill your tires. If they are flat you can go from flat to 5psi very quickly. It takes more time to go from 5 to 10psi and more time to go from 10 to 15psi, and so on. So, if you took two tires, one at 0psi and one at 10psi and filled them both to 35psi you’d find that it takes X amount of time to fill the10psi tire and X * 1.2 time or something to fill the flat tire – not as big of a difference as most people might expect. Thus, if the two tire fillings or charges were done at different times and thus not directly comparable at the same time, it’d be very easy to feel like they took about the same amount of time. In fact, they did sort of take a comparable amount of time but the deeper charge really did take a little bit more time. That’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it.
The charge curve should be entirely a function of the software in the car. And I’ve found the young engineers doing such things overthink these cells hugely. Good job security, but heavy battery packs.
Jarkko and Mr. White insist that the charger is also cutting things back prematurely. It COULD. There really isn’t anything in the specification 1.0 even allowing for that. But it is certainly possible in software for it to limit to a specific number of minutes OR to take advantage of the vehicle reporting for a specific vehicle.
But the fast and slow thing is a vehicle function.
I take the charge curve pretty literally and charge right up to the CV voltage at full current and then start cutting back. Well in truth, since we are generally undercharging, in REALITY most of the time I charge at full bang right up to the CV and just cut it off.
But it is fairly trivial to modulate the current where when you reach CV you can actually quite quickly alter current to hold it there – especially with something like a multiprocessor controlling it.
There are alternate schools of thought. By way of example, I have tested several Chinese chargers recently and they are just SURE that it is better to start out at a low current for four or five minutes BEFORE going to full current. I simply don’t see any advantage at all. Yes, I do understand the theory of what they are trying to do there. No, I don’t think it needs to be done at all, nor do I think it accomplishes anything particularly useful.
Similarlly, Brusa has a multistage charging process that I think allows up to seven, or maybe its five separate charge stages. I love that at first and devised very elaborate schemes of charging hard, then resting, then charging slowly, then resting, etc. The batteries never exhibited any preference for ANY of that.
But you might be observing some software that charges max current to a certain voltage below CV, then 60% current to another voltage below CV, and then finally 40% current to CV. That’s the sort of charge curve these guys are devising. But I never see any papers showing how that actually accomplishes anything.
Bottom line, I believe someone WOULD write this nonsense. I just don’t believe it would matter.
In general, your car is entirely in charge of the charge process. Where we find chargers actually monkeying with the game to give you less, we’ll simply add options to report different values to the charger to get them to give you more. Kind of like a little war. We can do that up to a point. They COULD do things like just limiting the number of minutes you are connected, we could of course drop the connection and restart it as well. But it would take testing against those specific charge stations.
If you drive a Leaf, you don’t actually own the car. You charge it they way they coded it to charge. That’s the deal.
Got a handful of DCQCs in my area. Half the time I pull my Leaf of to a DCQC, the display says the unit is broken down and service requested. Repair takes weeks. If we want CHAdeMO to succeed, the EV enthusiast community will have to come up with a robust open source design.
This is actually a very serious problem. I made fun of Nikki Gordon-Broomstick for getting stranded in France with a pocketful of charge cards and of course a Google map – of all the disfunctional charging stations in France.
If you notice, I keep referring to something titled Ho-Ho’s and Ding Dongs and Big Gulps. This is a euphamism for a profit motive. Without it, the free chargers simply break down and are usually NEVER fixed. They are installed from largesse and industry enthusiasm, but that fades in the face of complaining users and vandalism – and from how rare it is to see someone actually use it.
For FREE charging to make it, it still has to have some financial basis and some ONE to actually care whether it works. That looks like sounds like a convenience store owner who has large markups on the Big Gulps, Ding Dongs, Ho-Hos, and Funyums. He CARES that the charge station works so cars will keep on coming so he can keep selling them the stuff.
Obviously, there is not a density fo electric cars yet to actually support this. But it would be a great move for Elon Musk. But in the future, I think it will be the model. Funyums for solar electrons.
Jack Rickard
Couldn’t agree with you more Jack. EV Charging as a standalone business model is a nonstarter.
I frequent a MAPCO Gas station close to my workplace. I get a free fast charge and they often sell me $10 or so of stuff while I wait the 20 minutes. Breakfast biscuit, sandwich for lunch, coffee, six pack of Oktoberfest, etc.
Had the DCFC unit not been at that location, I would not have done a cent worth of business with them, there would be no incentive to stop there otherwise.
Noel,
Are you using the Nissan DCFC units by Sumitomo? I have found that the majority of time there is an error on the CHAdeMo’s screen simply pressing the small green “STOP” button for about 10 seconds does a soft reset and allows you to try again. Often errors are thrown due to folks not turning their car off before initiating a charge or they didn’t connect the plug fully causing a communication error.
NRG have sensibly switched the default buttons in Nashville so that green is start and red is stop, rather than the blue and green default config. NRG have also removed the emergency stop button since folks like to press that which does disable the unit for sure.
No. I’m using the ABB Terra SC. There were 7 installed since the beginning of the year in Salt Lake City. Greenlots is the payment system on many of them. Looks like a mix of hardware problems and data communication problems to the Greenlots server. My experience hasn’t been good and lots of negative feedback from other drivers on PlugShare. The 7 Tesla superchargers in southern Utah seem to be doing well.
Thought you might get a tickle out the following article that went up on Transport Evolved.
The article starts by stating “Tesla Motors would prefer you lease, rather than buy a Tesla electric car, since it ensures at the end of the lease period Tesla knows exactly where each and every car goes, ensuring quality and consistency in the used car market.”
https://transportevolved.com/2014/10/28/tesla-motors-offers-lower-cost-lease-rates-happiness-guarantee-model-s/?utm_campaign=coschedule&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=transportevolve&utm_content=Tesla%20Motors%20Offers%20Lower-Cost%20Lease%20Rates,%20Happiness%20Guarantee%20on%20Model%20S
As suspected, they don’t want you to own it. They want to own it. Before long Tesla “owners” will need to sign an EULA agreeing to buying a license to use, not own.
One might want to look up the definition of a “transmission” before complaining about Tesla…
I observed a CHAdeMO charge at 120A on my C-Zero and the vehicle’s maximum charge voltage of 360V was reached as early as 40% SOC. From there on it starts the Constant Voltage phase and holds the 360V voltage while lowering current aggressively. It would seem that i-MiEV’s and it’s iOn and C-Zero variants’ cells are inferior in this aspect. Their voltage rises so fast and so early, that they cannot be charged as fast as the new CALB cells which Jack tested to 95% SOC at 3C. Unless, of course, they have the charge voltage wrong and it could be set higher.
By the way, if you’re planning to charge CALB cells with CHAdeMO, I wouldn’t go above 114 cells, since the CHAdeMO stations I’ve encountered seem to top out at 400V (based on the sticker behind the stations).
Hi Jarkko: what was the ambient temperature and your guess at the battery temperature?
Let’s see if I can post two links:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/oaky3bch4k06q3d/pict_2014-11-05_10-13-08.png?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ulqjr6simao43yg/pict_2014-11-05_10-22-06.png?dl=0
The first screenshot is right before the quick charge and the second 7 minutes into it. The ambient temperature was around 10 degrees Celsius or so. Maybe a little less. But the battery was at 26 degrees before and 27 after charge.
Longer reply with links is awaiting moderation, but the pack was at 26 degrees Celsius. Ambient temperature 10 degrees or a little less.
Jarkko:
You kind of bring up an important point – but sideways. Please see this week’s video testing the CAM72FI cells at 3C charge rate.
You will notice a rather remarkable thing. We normally charge cells to 3.55 volts. But we hit 3.60 volts at 216 amps within 2AH of charging.
What’s going on?
Let’s see. Do you recall when we did cold weather discharge testing of the CA cells. The voltage DROPPED to below 3Volts there IMMEDIATELY. Then rose quite a bit as the cell warmed internally, then turned down. It was a completely different discharge curve than at 25C temperature.
It is similar at 216 amps. You see the charge curve you set up on your charger, is for a spec battery at a spec charge rate and a spec temperature. We advise that you UNDERCHARGE your cells a bit and we offer 3.55 per cell as a normal charge VOLTAGE.
There’s actually a guy online that goes by JRP that has never let a month pass for 3 years because he CAUGHT me in the act of being wrong – but I wouldn’t admit it. He to this day believes that is the case. It was just too hard to correct. What I said then, and repeat here is that THE CHARGE VOLTAGE DOESN’T ACTUALLY MATTER. He then extended this to six volts, after which the electrolyte starts to have some problems beginning at 4.3 volts, and so of course the CHARGE VOLTAGE DOES MATTER AND JACK DOESN’T KNOW WHAT HE’S TALKING ABOUT.
In truth, the voltage doesn’t matter. Because it is based on a LOT of things. We normally USE voltage to set up our charge procedure. But it’s not a real voltage, and it really doesn’t matter – up to the point where you carry this to extremes you never would, and then I suppose it DOES matter but since it isn’t a real scenario – IT STILL DOESN’T MATTER.
The 3.55 is based on a 1/3 or 1/2C charge rate at the book temperature of 25C. Without those elements, the 3.55 doesn’t actually make any sense. It’s like “bake your food at 350F”. What KIND of food. And for how long? Without those parameters, 350F doesn’t actually have any meaning on its own.
If you examine the graph accompanying the November 7 video, you will notice that it goes straight up, like always, when you first start applying power. It has the fammiliar “notch” at the beginning as the battery warms up. And then a long flat period where the voltage doesn’t change. And then it starts to turn up at the end and had we charged longer, like I’m guessing to about 72Ah, it would have turned up more sharply.
But what was the voltage? We were at 3.6 volts immediately. So were we done charging? No, we had just STARTED charging.
The SOC DOES matter. And the charge curve matters. But the voltage never did. It never was even a “real” voltage in that it never did represent state of charge. This is the fatal flaw at the heart of top balancing. They are not doing what they think they are doing. Because it is a very INDIRECT proxy for SOC. We bottom balance. The voltage on the steep part of the discharge curve has NO current going in, and NO current going out. It is a more DIRECT proxy for State of Charge (SOC).
So JRP – listen up (he still never misses a video) THE VOLTAGE DOESN’T MATTER. It never did.
How does this apply to fast charging. And I NOW see the problem you and Mr. White are having with CHAdeMO. The charging procedure at 125 amps MUST be different, and specifically different with regards to voltage, than it is at 15 amps. Indeed it will be at 50 amps.
And Nissan Leaf guys may have an even worse problem. Again, above about 4.3 volts you start having electrolyte breakdown issues. And they are charging to 4.2 volts at spec ANYWAY. So if you have to charge at higher voltages to do the same charge at 80 or 100 amps, there could be a problem. And if the charge algorithm in teh car doesn’t support this difference, I can see it cutting off early on you.
As you report it varies from one EVSE to another, I would ask what the currrent levels were on the differing EVSE, and I thinkn we have found the heart of your mystery – with no magic gyrations of the CHAdeMO spec. I think I see what’s going on now.
LiFePo4 cells have MUCH more headroom. Indeed, in the early days we tried to charge at 4.2 as well. Probably inherited from the earlier Lithium Cobalt batteries.
But at 25C and at charge current levels we could accomplish with a 3-6 kw charger, we find the “knee” of the charge curve is at about 3.5-3.7v. If we raise the temperature (like in Arizona – perhaps another mystery solved) or the charge rate (fast chargers), the target voltage must increase as well. I used 3.66 volts this week. Likely 3.75 would have gotten me closer to 72 amp hours. At rest afterwards, these cells quickly fell to 3.33vdc. This is somewhat below fully charged which is more like 3.37 or 3.38vdc.
So in doing CHAdeMO software, we will likely use 3.7v or so as our target voltage. 370volts on a 100 cell pack instead of 355volts at normal charge rates.
ANd it won’t harm the cells at all. The electrolyte decomposition is NOT linear. It starts somewhere higher than 4.3. which is what the 4.2 v limit was ever about in the first place.
I further think you will find that if you get the actual charge current rates, which will of course involve some work beyond “pressing the button again”, you will find that the 25-30 kw chargers mostly charge your vehicle, adn the 50 kw chargers mostly shut off early. FOR EXACTLY THE SAME REASON.
The CHAdeMO specification is for up to 500v. It is entirely possible that some EVSE limits this to 400volts due to the voltage available in 3 phase power locally.
But I’m delighted with your message and I think it dovetails very nicely with our tests of this week. I think it explains the mystery of the CHAdeMO short charging issue. It is a software problem in the car. They could change it. But the Lithium Manganese Spinel cells used in the Leaf (or Renault) really have to charge to 4.2 volts and you may be limited by JRP’s electrolyte breakdown as to what voltage and current levels your pack can accept.
Jack Rickard
Jack,
The i-MiEV & co charges it’s cells to 4.1 volts, or 360 volts total for 88 cells, both fast and slow. I don’t really know what chemistry it even is, but probably similar to what is on the 1st gen Leaf. Possibly manufactured by GS Yuasa though. Anyway, right away when I looked at this charge graph I got from a CHAdeMO charge I did (https://www.dropbox.com/s/ulqjr6simao43yg/pict_2014-11-05_10-22-06.png?dl=0) I thought “Wow, that voltage sure goes up fast to max of 360 V. I wonder if they’re playing it too safe by using a too low voltage.” As you can see it’s dropped from 120A to 77A in just 7 minutes.
Then again, it would be interesting to see a test, for example with your CAM72FI cells, what would happen if you started with 216A, but then limited the cells to 3.55 volts by backing down on the current to keep that voltage. How much you would need to drop it? Would it be a significant drop and how much longer would the charge take. In other words, how long you would have to keep the cake in the oven with this different recipe. Not a very useful test, but interesting. Perhaps also useful if one would be trying to maximize their cell count while staying under 400V, which I would recommend at this point for maximum global CHAdeMO compatibility.
In any case the battery testing you did on this latest show was indeed very interesting and reveals some new things one needs to think about when charging with larger currents. It also proves how much better these CAM cells are compared to what OEM cars have. Funnily enough. I can now charge my car in 30 minutes from empty to 80%, but with CAMs it could charge from empty to at least 95% in less than 20 minutes. Thus giving 15% more usable range on the road.
I’ll need to save more complete graphs from the next CHAdeMO charge to see if the current fluctuates up and down as the batteries warm up. The i-MiEV battery cooling won’t let them get very hot though. It seems to kick in rather aggressively.
With regards from your young liberal democrat lgbt equality viewership. We don’t have to agree on anything else to understand that magnetic drive is the only reasonable thing to do and inevitable in the long run. It is in the interest of most individuals, independent of political views.
I have had much the same experience with Nissan Leaf. I called asking about the Level 3 / Class 3 charger, Nissan reffers me to AeroVironment that makes and installs class 1 and 2 chargers and claims to make class 3. The problem is that when I ask for the price of the class 3 /Level 3 DC CHAdeMO charger they cannot quote me a price. So I call Nissan and try to explain that the likely cause of the price drop in used leafs is the availability of fast chargers. Americans are not patient enough to wait on a charge to drive the car tomorrow. … it just ain’t happening. So the sell or chose not to renew their leases or whatever. These cars are being sidelined for lack of fast charging. The cost a 38K car reselling for 9K with 12+K miles. I do not need 30 minutes but I really must charge in 60 min or me and electric cars are not going to happen.
YES, I am ready to build my own car charger from a kit.
Where do I buy it!!!!
I’d like to know where to buy a quick charge kit too. I’m surprised that someone hasn’t bundled the basic components into a kit yet. Something enthusiasts can develop with.