Which would you choose for $700, L3 port or 6.6 kw charger?

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Which would you choose for $700, L3 port or 6.6 kw charger?

  • L3 charge port option

    Votes: 17 29.3%
  • 6.6 KW or higher charger option

    Votes: 13 22.4%
  • I want both options (but may or may not like the cost, etc)

    Votes: 20 34.5%
  • I don't need an L3 charge port or a more powerful charger

    Votes: 8 13.8%
  • What does KW mean?

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    58

EVDRIVER

Well-known member
Joined
Apr 24, 2010
Messages
6,753
Since the L3 charge port is a $700 option it would be interesting to see what people would choose if they had an option for a faster onboard charger at the same price. This assumes the price is the same for both options. The key point attempts to see if one would have a preference of one option over the other, if you would choose a more powerful onboard charger over L3 over 6.6 KW and say up to say 7.2 kw (ISH) please select the 6.6kw option.
 
I would be willing to pay $1,400 for both, however I think it is more important to add an "rate of charge" override to the Leaf so that I could charge at 1.2 KW, 3.3 KW, 6.6 KW or anything in between (up to the EVSE rating).
 
DarkStar said:
I would be willing to pay $1,400 for both, however I think it is more important to add an "rate of charge" override to the Leaf so that I could charge at 1.2 KW, 3.3 KW, 6.6 KW or anything in between (up to the EVSE rating).


This could be user selectable since chargers like the one on the Leaf can be set via software to any charge rate (KW) easily.
 
This may be relevant in the near(?) future: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=plug-in-hybrid-recharge
 
I haven't voted yet, and I am going to have to think about this. Either L3 or fast L2 would only be of use to me on the rare occasions when I need to charge away from home. L3 would certainly be more convenient, but for the foreseeable future it will also be much less available. Not getting L3 was an easy choice when I ordered, since it would have cost me $1640, rather than $700. (I didn't see much value in any of the extra SL features, so would have had to upgrade from SV just to get L3.) If I could have gotten L3 for $700 I might have done that. On the other hand, it appears that L3 charging may be a bit rough on the battery. On the other other hand, I'll probably lease anyway, so I would have three years to decide how the battery is doing.

I think I'm glad that I wasn't really faced with either of your $700 choices. Tough calls, indeed.
 
MikeD said:
This may be relevant in the near(?) future: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=plug-in-hybrid-recharge


This article is misleading and confusing, they are not developing anything new that does not already exist, it's only another high powered charger that still requires 240V. More marketing. If you want faster charging in a Leaf you need to use L3 or a larger on board charger, the later is more valuable to me.
 
DarkStar said:
I would be willing to pay $1,400 for both, however I think it is more important to add an "rate of charge" override to the Leaf so that I could charge at 1.2 KW, 3.3 KW, 6.6 KW or anything in between (up to the EVSE rating).

Any value below the 6.6kW rating is automatically selected based on the maximum rating on the EVSE. If you wanted to go below the EVSE rating yourself, then either the charge screens have to have a setting or some other way.

dutycycle.jpg
 
When the range on the Leaf gets to be 200 or 300 miles, I think both of these options are going to be extremely important.

You may well need 6.6kW just to charge a larger battery pack over night.

If you could drive most of the day with only needing to Quick Charge once - this would help change or augment the market for the Leaf.

With today's pack, you may be able to live with things as is - even with just trickle charging. As the batteries improve, you may start to think about going places you won't consider right now and these other options will be crucial.
 
Driving LA to Seattle, perhaps 20 hours, but with 30-minute QCs roughly every hour, about 30 hours of "drive-and-rest". With the QC option, I hope to be able to make that trip. L2 charging would make the trip possibly, but ... VERY time consuming.
 
garygid said:
Driving LA to Seattle, perhaps 20 hours, but with 30-minute QCs roughly every hour, about 30 hours of "drive-and-rest". With the QC option, I hope to be able to make that trip. L2 charging would make the trip possibly, but ... VERY time consuming.


And likely cause your BMS to slow the current from the charger due to thermal cut back and strain your pack considerably from the heat of the freeway loads and the charging heat.
 
palmermd said:
DarkStar said:
I would be willing to pay $1,400 for both, however I think it is more important to add an "rate of charge" override to the Leaf so that I could charge at 1.2 KW, 3.3 KW, 6.6 KW or anything in between (up to the EVSE rating).

Any value below the 6.6kW rating is automatically selected based on the maximum rating on the EVSE. If you wanted to go below the EVSE rating yourself, then either the charge screens have to have a setting or some other way.
Correct, that is exactly what I'm referring to. However, since we only control the EVSE at home, this control needs to be in the vehicle itself.
 
DarkStar said:
palmermd said:
DarkStar said:
I would be willing to pay $1,400 for both, however I think it is more important to add an "rate of charge" override to the Leaf so that I could charge at 1.2 KW, 3.3 KW, 6.6 KW or anything in between (up to the EVSE rating).

Any value below the 6.6kW rating is automatically selected based on the maximum rating on the EVSE. If you wanted to go below the EVSE rating yourself, then either the charge screens have to have a setting or some other way.
Correct, that is exactly what I'm referring to. However, since we only control the EVSE at home, this control needs to be in the vehicle itself.


Easy to integrate on a touch screen, it's all software driven, like the charge timer.
 
Right, I wanted this feature, even from the Aptera daze.

Then, if we trip a "touchy" 20-amp breaker, but still need to charge from that circuit, we could tell the car to only draw 12 amps instead of 15, and probably avoid tripping the breaker a 2nd time. Yes, a rare circumstance, I know.

Apparently the EV standards people thought that we would be too stupid to do this, and we ended up with the EVSE.
 
garygid said:
Right, I wanted this feature, even from the Aptera daze.

Then, if we trip a "touchy" 20-amp breaker, but still need to charge from that circuit, we could tell the car to only draw 12 amps instead of 15, and probably avoid tripping the breaker a 2nd time. Yes, a rare circumstance, I know.

Apparently the EV standards people thought that we would be too stupid to do this, and we ended up with the EVSE.


The 99' Think had this button right on the dash for this very reason. The Leaf is too dummied up in places.
 
EVDRIVER said:
garygid said:
Right, I wanted this feature, even from the Aptera daze.

Then, if we trip a "touchy" 20-amp breaker, but still need to charge from that circuit, we could tell the car to only draw 12 amps instead of 15, and probably avoid tripping the breaker a 2nd time. Yes, a rare circumstance, I know.

Apparently the EV standards people thought that we would be too stupid to do this, and we ended up with the EVSE.


The 99' Think had this button right on the dash for this very reason. The Leaf is too dummied up in places.

As this stuff evolves, I'd hope to see a smart breaker which is able to use G2V communications to let the car know how much load it is able to draw from the circuit. As the load on the circuit changes, the vehicle may be able to change charging rate. We do this stuff with switched IP, we can certainly do the analogous with electrons when there is enough reason to do so.
 
LakeLeaf said:
EVDRIVER said:
garygid said:
Right, I wanted this feature, even from the Aptera daze.

Then, if we trip a "touchy" 20-amp breaker, but still need to charge from that circuit, we could tell the car to only draw 12 amps instead of 15, and probably avoid tripping the breaker a 2nd time. Yes, a rare circumstance, I know.

Apparently the EV standards people thought that we would be too stupid to do this, and we ended up with the EVSE.


The 99' Think had this button right on the dash for this very reason. The Leaf is too dummied up in places.

As this stuff evolves, I'd hope to see a smart breaker which is able to use G2V communications to let the car know how much load it is able to draw from the circuit. As the load on the circuit changes, the vehicle may be able to change charging rate. We do this stuff with switched IP, we can certainly do the analogous with electrons when there is enough reason to do so.

Yes and there are actually was to "ping" a breaker without tripping it.
 
Hardware solution, many Billions of dollars:
Change 100's of millions of breakers to "smart" breakers for all the circuits that an EV might plug onto, and still not solve the problem of a weak breaker.

Software solution, essentially free:
Allow the operator to have some choice in matching the car to the e-fuel source.

Notice how each ICE user has to choose between 3 or 4 "oc-tane" hoses every time they gas up?

You pull up to an e-pump and it has a big number (12, 24, 32, ...) on it, and you just set your EV to the highest "e-tane" (amps) number that your EV can handle.

I know, perhaps too difficult to grasp for the standards guys, but should be easy enough for us "simple" people.
 
L3. While I would like 6.6 kW, the 3.3 kW is enough for overnight charging and 6.6 kW is not enough for charging on the road. L3 could greatly extend my weekend range, for trips with one L3 charge along the way and L1 overnight at destination.

However buying the L3 is a gamble. If there end up being only a handful of L3 charging stations I can use, and every Starbucks, grocery store, and shopping mall ends up with free or cheap L2, then I clearly would be better off with 6.6 kW L2.
 
walterbays said:
If there end up being only a handful of L3 charging stations I can use, and every Starbucks, grocery store, and shopping mall ends up with free or cheap L2, then I clearly would be better off with 6.6 kW L2.

Count on it. They're rolling out 1,200 L2 stations and only 60 DC. The infrastructure required for DC is massive (440v, big juice) vs the 220 that's already there.
Not to mention the cost of the stations.

If I could charge twice as fast off L2, that's worth more than the occasional DC quick charge. I'm not doing any road trips, here, just opportunistic charging.
 
garygid said:
Then, if we trip a "touchy" 20-amp breaker, but still need to charge from that circuit, we could tell the car to only draw 12 amps instead of 15, and probably avoid tripping the breaker a 2nd time. Yes, a rare circumstance, I know.
You're in luck - the trickle charge supplied EVSE will only draw 12A as it has a standard 15A plug thanks to NEC rules.

I think they are only recommending you plug it into a 20A circuit to help prevent nuisance/accidental tripping.

But if they supplied a 20A plug, you would not be able to charge at all on a 15A circuit as a 20A plug will not physically fit into a 15A socket - but a 15A plug fits fine into a 20A socket.
 
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