Can I use a 30 AMP RV outlet to charge my ID4? If yes do I need adapter, and what? Please respond in simple and straightforward language and not with too much technical language ( it’s way beyond my head and I’m new in the EV world)
It's likely, though you may want to post in the Volkswagen sub-forum and not the MINI Cooper sub-forum. If you take a picture of the outlet, it will help people suggest which adapter you need.
I believe most RV outlets are 120V not 240V, so I would think not. But it’s been a hot minute since I’ve looked at one. Sent from my iPhone using Inside EVs
It's complicated but there are limitations. I don't recommend it and you would have to get an aftermarket EVSE. Lectron EV does offer one but I have no idea on how it performs and it would be $200 for a plug for 30A socket (not 50A).
Following up on the reply from @teslarati97 above, it does seem rather complicated. FWIW, the original poster's question was posed on a dedicated VW ID forum some months back, which you can see here. In addition to posting to the forum, that poster also posed the question directly to VW, and here's the answer they got back... I also reached out to VW to ask them about charging on a TT-30 past normal L1 speeds when I first posted this question. They recently got back to me and said they had to do some consulting with their engineers about the question in the meantime, and their official advice is not to try it. In the meantime, on a camping trip, we unmounted our plug-in Juicebox 40 from the wall and brought it along (a little unwieldy), camped at a site with a 14-50 RV outlet in an region with no DCFC coverage, and it was about as seamless as could be. That was five months ago and the poster hasn't followed-up since then. One caveat: Note that they asked about charging "past normal L1 speeds." It's possible that VW's advice would have differed if the poster was okay with charging at L1 rates (i.e. the same charging rate you'd get from a standard wall outlet). If you're feeling brave and want to go ahead and try it, this site offers info that might be helpful. Note that this info is written by a Tesla owner and he's using a portable EVSE and adapter that communicate with his car to automatically set the correct charging rate. It's likely that, even if you're using equipment that's compatible with your VW ID and a TT-30 receptacle, you'd have to manually reduce the charging rate in your VW ID to avoid overloading the circuit. In Mini-speak, I think we'd have to set the charging rate to "Reduced" before plugging in to a TT-30 receptacle. Out of curiosity, have any Mini SE owners charged at an RV site?
I poked around some UK ID.3 forums and someone said their ID.3 7kW charge gets reduced to ~2.4kW so it wouldn't trip 120V 30A breaker (TT-30 receptacle) being under the 80% threshold. TT-30 looks like a problem for reduced Level 2 on the Cooper SE as it is about 3.2kW. You could still get an adapter for your Level 1 charger for granny charging speeds! A 14-50 service would probably be much safer and should have no problems. Other issues with RV campgrounds with extra long wires there is a voltage drop, so it could also pose a problem as the current would have to increase to offset the drop!
