I tried my first DCFC a couple of evenings ago, on a dual-head Chargepoint
50 kW [a "Veefil", made by Tritium out of Australia]. A woman was just
finishing on her Leaf as I pulled up, on its CHAdeMO side, which gave me
time to hook up my scope to the pilot line so I could watch the fast-charge
communication. Even though the station is free, I just took it from 30%
to about 60% for proof of concept and self-education, not to mention
a bunch of geek-porn pictures. It all seemed to work. Rapid-charging
is a much more complex protocol, and it's not surprising that failures
and incompatibilities happen in some scenarios.
It happily settled in at 44 - 45 kW for most of the time, with the car and
station in good agreement on rate.
It was a little unclear how to stop the charge in the middle, other than
the "stop" button on the EVSE. The usual fob-unlock was *not*
releasing the handle latch in this case. Is that expected behavior??
Exploring alternate workarounds, such as if a station has wedged and
won't release, I pulled the "mushroom" and clicked the latch up and
listened. The relays dropped as I expected, but then the charger sat
there saying "error 50" for quite a while even after I pulled the head
out of the car.
I don't know if the car told the EVSE to actually reduced current on
the unlatch, or if I wound up arc-flashing the DC relays. The car
should have told the EVSE to stop at the moment of latch raise,
well before opening up the path itself ... this might need further
testing.
_H*
