I am mulling a small, lightweight, collapsible and cheap way to keep a "wintery mix" of snow, ice, water, and re-frozen water out of the charge port this winter. It does not need to lock. It doesn't need to be particularly watertight. It just needs to block snow that might be blown into the charge port area from the wide-open front or from the left or right side. I would even permit the back 10% to remain open to stuff rolling off the motor's hood.
My goal is to reduce--not eliminate--the total icy burden by blocking, say, 80% of any snow/ice that would tend to blow into the charge port area, and I am picturing that the the regular (body color) nose hood is lowered to its "middle-closed" position so that rain/snow will flow frontwards, down, and off.
I was thinking of simply building a prototype out of corrugated cardboard that was as simple as:
1) A rectangular central section about 6" high 12" wide with a 1" wide slit for the cord to pass through
2) Tapered/trapezoidal wings/tabs on both sides that either
- fit/wedged within the nose door's hinges, or
- wrap around outside the hinges
3) It would be held in place by the force of the nose door's closing mechanism and by friction at its edges.
4) If that won't hold, I'd consider velcro as a fastener, with a few "hook" spots on the shield and a few fuzzy loop bits of velcro on the car
If the cardboard shape basically worked, I would then make a final version out of
corrugated plastic (such as yard signs can be made of).
If it works, I'd probably make a "home" copy (I charge outside) and a "travel" copy (to keep in the car) and also post a PDF pattern here. I might even make a version that could be permanently mounted on my charger cord, but slid closer to or farther from the end, just to make handling the grip/trigger easier.
Any thoughts before I get started?