100 kW Charging

[nlspace]

Here's the charging screen from my 2019 SL plus.

Does anything else show up if you scroll down to the bottom of the list and try to keep scrolling?

 

[ramisalah]

Have you considered the possibility that your Leaf is broken or malfunctioning? 4 or 5 of us have mentioned or shown you 70kW charging, so there's enough evidence that it can and is being done. These 4 or 5 people don't have special Leafs likely any different than yours.

That is one of the questions I am asking. Is my Leaf broken or malfunctioning? I reported the case to Nissan and they had no means of testing the car to answer that question.

 

[ramisalah]

That's very vague. Who mentioned 100kW rate? If it's Nissan, please back it up (as you say). If it's not from Nissan then it's not an official statement and that source is whom you need to go after.

The attached brochure from Nissan refers to 100 kW charging. I hope that there will no longer be any parsing such as "well, when they said this, they did not mean this". Any number in this table should be achievable. Parsing words is meant to misrepresent.

 

[RogerRDalTx]

Does anything else show up if you scroll down to the bottom of the list and try to keep scrolling?

No, that's the full screen. The menu did not change after my vcs was updated to address a recall related to the backup camera, but I did notice a few screens that did.

 

[knightmb]

That is one of the questions I am asking. Is my Leaf broken or malfunctioning? I reported the case to Nissan and they had no means of testing the car to answer that question.

Probably not, I would focus more on the QC stations being used. Unless your Leaf has the 40 kWH battery pack, which are strictly limited to 50 kW on a QC station that can do more (I can verify with my own 2018 Leaf).

 

[ramisalah]

Probably not, I would focus more on the QC stations being used. Unless your Leaf has the 40 kWH battery pack, which are strictly limited to 50 kW on a QC station that can do more (I can verify with my own 2018 Leaf).

My Leaf is a plus that has a 62 kWh battery. When you say "QC Stations". Is that a brand? If it is, I don't believe we have them in the Northeastern US.

 

[BillAinCT]

The attached brochure from Nissan refers to 100 kW charging.

Indeed it does. Have you brought it up with them or anyone official? Unfortunately, they only need to demonstrate it once and it could have been in-house with a prototype. I think someone said it is a marketing brochure but also it does say "Specifications". So I do agree that this document is misleading and it could say 80kW as that is more likely real-world for shipping Leafs. No one on MNL can do anything and the best you might do is to get Nissan to amend this, if you contact the right Nissan person who handles marketing materials (and who cares as much about this as you do and I say this because that's corporate you're up against and not for any other reason).

If that document said e.g. 80kW would this be resolved for you?

An aside, I worked at a place that set up a system perfectly to achieve a marketing metric for a spec sheet. We all pretty much knew the customer didn't have the expertise or accompanying equipment to achieve the number. But it was put in the data sheet anyway. Was it wrong? I saw it achieved. Misleading since a customer probably couldn't (but it was possible to) achieve? Probably they would see it that way.

 

[BillAinCT]

I don't believe we have them in the Northeastern US.

I am in the North East and my specific "72kW" location was at Nanuet NY where there are 6 EVgo CCS1 and CHAdeMO nozzles. I plan my stops there because there's a lot of redundancy. I saw 70kW+ every time I charged once they upgraded these to 100kW. I also used 4 of the 6 stations.

 

[ramisalah]

I am in the North East and my specific "72kW" location was at Nanuet NY where there are 6 EVgo CCS1 and CHAdeMO nozzles. I plan my stops there because there's a lot of redundancy. I saw 70kW+ every time I charged once they upgraded these to 100kW. I also used 4 of the 6 stations.

OK, so they're EVgo chargers. Thank you.
Closer to me, we have "100 kW" EVgo chargers in North Haven, CT; Rye, NY and New Rochelle, NY. I never got anywhere near 70 kW+ on any of those.

 

[nlspace]

Check your window sticker to see if it calls out an optional High-Output Chademo Port (the 100kW version). Maybe it is an option that 62kwh + cars can add or get, but if not then they come with the standard 50kW port?

The Chademo contactors in the PDM may have to be upgraded for the High-Output version.

The early PDMs used Omron G9EA-1 contactors in the Chademo HV power circuit, with a 100A for 10 minute carry current; the High-Output version would likely need a different part number with a higher rating.

 

[cwerdna]

https://mynissanleaf.com/threads/chademo.33745/page-5#post-644851 has a pointer to a site that presumably had 4 CHAdeMO plugs before but is now down to 1. 3 stations are now CCS1 + J3400.

 

[Jeffrey Stumpf]

I think the Leaf and its aircooled battery is a fine car - for certain use profiles. It excels at anything that can get done with L1 and L2 charging. Even a single L3 charge of perhaps 50KW -occasionally- isn't the end of the world. So with a Plus - that's a potential 200 mile radius of homebase. Or ~400 miles with one fast charge today and another fast charge on the return trip. That's pretty good for most people.

For the ambitious EV roadtrippers - buy something else.

Great reply. I have owe a Leaf since 2018 and with my Plus models I have done on average 76 QC. Per year, making multiple road trips of 436 miles each way

 

[Jeffrey Stumpf]

The purpose of this post is to review the Nissan Leaf's ability to reach the mentioned 100 kW rate or even the 0-80% in 45 minutes. In my experience, even with a 100 kW charger, my charging times are not any better than charging with a 50 kW charger. I posted the question regarding the lack of a 100 kW listing on the Charge Time Screen in settings. If other owners of the Plus have 100 kW listed and mine does not, that may indicate that my car has an issue. Can you check your settings?

On many occasions I have seen about 76 kW maximum when doing quick charges. Never above. I’m not sure but I believe the electrical is capable of 100 kW and the marketing folks did not know 76 kW was the peak, even at 100 kW stations.

 

[ramisalah]

Check your window sticker to see if it calls out an optional High-Output Chademo Port (the 100kW version). Maybe it is an option that 62kwh + cars can add or get, but if not then they come with the standard 50kW port?

The Chademo contactors in the PDM may have to be upgraded for the High-Output version.

The early PDMs used Omron G9EA-1 contactors in the Chademo HV power circuit, with a 100A for 10 minute carry current; the High-Output version would likely need a different part number with a higher rating.

View attachment 4123

@knightmb can you help us clarify this? My understanding was that every Leaf with a 62 kWh battery came with a 100 kW charging capability. Isn't that the case? Is it possible that my Leaf did not get the right contactors in the PDM?

 

[BillAinCT]

Check your window sticker to see if it calls out an optional High-Output Chademo Port (the 100kW version). Maybe it is an option that 62kwh + cars can add or get, but if not then they come with the standard 50kW port?

But these 50kW ports wouldn't handle 60-74kW over time, correct? I suppose that they could but isn't that getting into an area of running something over spec?

 

[knightmb]

@knightmb can you help us clarify this? My understanding was that every Leaf with a 62 kWh battery came with a 100 kW charging capability. Isn't that the case? Is it possible that my Leaf did not get the right contactors in the PDM?

ChaDeMo ports, even from the very first Gen 1 Leaf, should be rated 400 amps max spec wise. Of course, the earliest Leaf models would not use that much since the battery could not handle it. Even the 62 kWH battery Leaf has its safe limits, so I'm not sure if the limitation is the port in the Leaf or the plug on the QC station spec wise. The Gen 1 Leaf as far as back the 24 kWH battery could even handle +62 kW during a QC session if the battery conditions were right; temperature and age wise. I have a capture of that back in my QC testing topic of a 2015 Leaf doing this.

Given that, I don't believe the issue is a physical hardware limitation such as the wrong sized contactors during a charging session in the OBC. I don't remember which exact video it was, but Dala had a good break down of this and I do remember him pointing out the relays used for a QC session on a Gen 1 Leaf and they seemed more than beefy enough to handle +250 amps of power with ease during a QC session.

I think the issue still steers back to the QC station being used to test with along with battery conditions, etc. Unfortunately, I can't drop down a QC station from Nissan HQ to give you a comparison as the issue might be the Leaf itself, but unless you have some other QC stations to test against, it is very difficult to say with certainly, what the issue is.