Smart charger or not?

Think about how long charging will take and how that fits in with your life. Suppose you just returned from a trip and you want to add 150 miles of charge. Your L1 charger gets you about 5 miles per hour. You may want to use your car before it has been charging for 30 hours. The L2 chargers at the supermarket would get you about 25 miles per hour. 6 hours is a long time to go shopping, or you could leave the car and walk home. That is not very nice to other EV owners and there are security issues. If you have an L2 charger at home, you plug in, go to bed and the car is full (or at 80%) in the morning. It's really the best choice.

 

Heed Tim "The Toolman" Taylor's always-appropriate watchwords:

 

I started the week off (Monday morning) at 90%, 252 miles. I’m currently at 52%, 142 miles. Tomorrow, I have to go to Hyannis, 12 miles, where there’s an EVGo DC charger, where I’ll bring it up to 90%, then drive the 12 miles home and bring the battery back up to 90% , overnight, using my Level 1 EVSE. That’s a pretty normal week for me. When your 75 and retired, you have a different perspective on things.

I got 2 proposals for installing a 240v line in the garage. One was $3200 and the other was $1700. And both of them were scheduling out to mid-July. I can wait and see how the current situation works for me.

 

Did you tell the first electrician you want to charge your expensive BEV and tell the other electrician you're taking up arc-welding? Members of other InsideEVs forums claim the price goes up if you reveal you want to charge your electric car faster.

 

omg! i never found ANY instructions on the L1 freebie charger

is there something i can do to boost mine, too?

 

Michael, it’s in the manual but that manual is such a mess it’s hard to find anything useful.

Before you start charging, hold down the button on the control box until the display jumps to the next setting. Release the button but immediately press it again for about 15 - 20 seconds , until the display blinks. This ‘saves’ the change. You could keep repeating until you get to 12 amps, but I took it up in steps, charging a couple of times after each change, to make sure I wouldn’t trip the breaker for each step up.

At 6A I was getting about a mile per charge hour, at 12A, I’m getting about 3 or 4. I plugged in last night, about 9, with a 79%, 222 mile SoC, and woke up this morning at 7, with 88% 255 miles.

(That was after charging at an EVGo fast charger earlier in the day. This was the 1st time I’ve paid for a commercial charger, I usually use the Electrify America free plan that is included with the I5. It was $14.15 to go from 40% to 80%.)

 

Nope, told them both the same thing. I’ve done business before with both outfits. Number 1 ($3200) is a lager operation with a bunch of electricians, that specializes in installing generators all over Cape Cod. They put my whole house, 16,000w system in two years ago. This quote included stuff like a load balancer to protect the gennie.

Number 2 ($1700) is a small 2 man shop. They’re both in the same small town I live in.

‘However, it looks like I’ve found a solution for my quandary. See the post below.

 

I have an additional issue with ChargePoint Home Flex (and its closest rival, the JuiceBox 40). I am having no luck finding out if one can set the overnight EVSE to STOP charging at a given level, such as 80%. The JuiceBox 40's app (shown in a JuiceBox video) appears to allow one to (a) tell the EVSE what the CURRENT charge level is for one's EV, then (b) set the EVSE to stop at a slider-set level. So, with the additional, necessary step of telling the JuiceBox the car's current charge level, it appears one can do the stop-at-a-set-charge-level. But I cannot find out if that can be done with a ChargePoint Home Flex! Both EVSEs can start at a particular overnight hour to save on electricity costs, but I also want to STOP charging the battery at less than 100% (unless set for a long-distance journey) for battery longevity. Does any ChargePoint Home Flex owner have a definitive answer to this open question?

 

I can confirm that the ChargePoint Home charger does not have that functionality. Of course you can set that in the car and via the Hyundia car app.

 

That's a shame, because if my yet-to-be-delivered Nissan Ariya cannot 'monitor' the charge level and shut it off automatically as I desire and like a Tesla can, then I'll be looking elsewhere for my EVSE; in particular, the JuiceBox 40 because it DOES have a way to do what I want. Apparently the JuiceBox app allows the owner to enter the car's current battery charge, then allows the owner to 'slide' to a percentage level desired to the shut-off point. Apparently, the JuiceBox uses an internal algorithm that uses 'current' battery charge along with the 32amp charging capacity of the JuiceBox to determine a 'pretty close" shut-off point.

 

I do not know the software of every EV (of course), but I think having DC and AC SOC cutoff settings is pretty standard.

 

My Ioniq 5 Android MyHyundai Bluelink app has a Battery...ViewChargeManagement link, which goes to a screen with three Charge Limit Presets: Battery Longevity, Longer Driving Rang, and Customize. I use the Customize button and set it for 90% on AC charge and 80% on DC charge. On Electrify America fast chargers I usually use a 150 Amp charger rather than the 350 Amp. In my experience, the average speeds over a half-hour period are almost the same. Sometimes I change the DC limit to 90% and manually stop charging at the 30 minutes time for free charging. I only charge to 100 percent with my level 2 charger if I am planning a long trip. I could not find much about this subject in the manual and came up with this protocol based on several posts on this and other forums. I do wish Hyundai would publish an article that discusses the options and makes recommendations for various situations.

For what it's worth, I have the Emporia Energy Smart Electric Vehicle EV Charger. It seems to work fine, although I use it only when I am planning a trip the next day.

 

Does your status as a customer with an order for the Ariya enable you to download the Owners Manual? If not, can your dealer get you the PDF file? You'll become the instant go-to expert on InsideEVs' Ariya forum.

 

I use the EA Homestation Charger at home and find it works well enough for me. It has scheduling, remote viewing of my current and past charges and since I already have the app on my phone in order to utilize the free 30 minute sessions it's simply convenient.