Charging in Parking Deck off normal 120v outlet sufficient?

[mikesus]

... and no the Leaf will not know it is plugged into an extension cord. Salesman fib.

Ask him if it can tell the color of the cord too... SMH...

 

[Deleted member 14045]

Up until this weekend, I charged almost every day since late July, from roughly 6:30pm to roughly 9:30am with the level 1 EVSE on an extension cord. My round trip is about 55 to 60 miles. The car never knew, I never ran out of juice on my commute, and the house didn't burn down.

I finally just had an electrician wire us up for 240V in the garage and got a level II EVSE. I guess I was hesitant because I thought it would be more expensive than it was. It was less than $200 for the wiring.

I guess the two main issues were 1) taking the car out for things other than my daily commute, and 2) my wife occasionally plugging the vacuum cleaner into the same circuit the car was on, and popping the breaker. Other than that, it was pretty much fine for me.

 

[alanlarson]

One additional question / clarification, my salesman was adamant about not using an extension cord and said the Leaf would know if I did. Does that apply to L1 charging if I get a big enough gauge cord? If I can use an extension cord with L1, then I can plug into my house at front door and run 50ish foot drop cord to driveway and charge all night long???

Thanks!

If you plug into an extension cord, the leaf charger will not know if the outlet you are using is getting overheated from the load and possibly poor connections. At least on my 2014 unit, it has warning indications that has happened and stopped charging. This is better than having the outlet heat up and catch fire. ( There are some pretty dismal 120 volt outlets out there. )

I tried using an extension. The outlet and end of cord started getting quite warm - more than I thought was safe over a long term. I replaced the outlet with a heavy duty one, ditched the extension cord, and switched to using a 240 volt EVSE on a higher capacity 240 volt outlet (which doesn't get warm enough to notice)).

 

[Deleted member 14045]

Mine is the 2015 model, and for 3 1/2 months, it never figured out what I was doing. Maybe 2014 was a smarter year, or maybe my extension cord was of better quality.