DC Quickcharging for Leafs at dealers

My Nissan Leaf Forum

Help Support My Nissan Leaf Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
BEVeedom said:
2000 chargers and 70,000 cars are a drop in the bucket in terms of all petrol service stations and vehicles worldwide. Let's correct the mistake now, early, and switch to SAE Combo or "Frankenplug". I believe the Society of Automotive Engineers will triumph and that it just makes sense to have one plug to cover Level II and Level III charging. No changes are required on the Level II J1772 system that is in place and there is 0 Level III infrastructure at this moment, even in Washington, DC. Until the CHAdeMO vs. SAE Combo issue is resolved, I can see no business case for Level III investment.

Give in Elon and Nissan (Carlos Chosn?) and you can star in "Who Saved the Electric Car". I'm a Marylander and can't even drive my Leaf to Ocean City in the summertime. Well, unless I want to spend 4 hours at a lonely professional park in Stevensville, for crying out loud. I guess I could bring a hibachi and have a very long picnic? Making a 3 hour drive take 7 hours is not progress. Regardless of the outcome, America needs a Level III infrastructure for the BEV to survive.

The other hope is the new 6.6KW on-board Level II charger on the 2013 Leaf and others. This will, at least, cut Level II charging time in half.

Now don't get me wrong, I love my BEV and it is perfect for our normal driving. I'm never going back to liquid fuel and we are only in the infancy of the transformation from ICE to the electrification of auto transport.

Gasoline stations have multiple pumps for multiple fuels (regular, premium, diesel) and it's not unreasonable to think that DCQC stations couldn't offer multiple plugs at a single site (possibly even from a single piece of hardware). You wouldn't need multiple underground tanks, they all share the same source! Nothing to get worked up over folks..
 
The problem is that GM and others who are pressing for a competing standard are not acting in good faith. They just want a fly that they can put into the ointment.

If Nissan is serious about their EV program they will work to install as many of their DC QC stations as they can but they need to be smart in the choice of locations and terms.

Nissan can offer incentives for dealers to install these QC stations in return for rights to control access and pricing. The goal here is to promote EV adoption not to make buckets of money recharging EVs.

Nissan needs to ensure that EVs have corridors along highways that will allow EV drivers to travel to and from popular points of interest. They also need to ensure that they can keep the cost of charging attractive to EV drivers and potential EV purchasers.
BEVeedom said:
2000 chargers and 70,000 cars are a drop in the bucket in terms of all petrol service stations and vehicles worldwide. Let's correct the mistake now, early, and switch to SAE Combo or "Frankenplug". I believe the Society of Automotive Engineers will triumph and that it just makes sense to have one plug to cover Level II and Level III charging. No changes are required on the Level II J1772 system that is in place and there is 0 Level III infrastructure at this moment, even in Washington, DC. Until the CHAdeMO vs. SAE Combo issue is resolved, I can see no business case for Level III investment.

Give in Elon and Nissan (Carlos Chosn?) and you can star in "Who Saved the Electric Car". I'm a Marylander and can't even drive my Leaf to Ocean City in the summertime. Well, unless I want to spend 4 hours at a lonely professional park in Stevensville, for crying out loud. I guess I could bring a hibachi and have a very long picnic? Making a 3 hour drive take 7 hours is not progress. Regardless of the outcome, America needs a Level III infrastructure for the BEV to survive.

The other hope is the new 6.6KW on-board Level II charger on the 2013 Leaf and others. This will, at least, cut Level II charging time in half.

Now don't get me wrong, I love my BEV and it is perfect for our normal driving. I'm never going back to liquid fuel and we are only in the infancy of the transformation from ICE to the electrification of auto transport.
 
So it's April now, and AFAIK Nissan still hasn't published a list of all dealers with QCs, even though SF Bay Leafs were told back in mid-January that they would have lots of them within 60 days. People have been reporting them individually as they're spotted in Socal, but I haven't heard of any except Santa Rosa in the SF Bay Area. So when is Nissan going to tell us, or this just more of the same "they'll be everywhere" BS?
 
Don't forget NorthBay Nissan in Petaluma has a DC QC that is 24/7, plus Schneider Level 2s. Again, it's 24/7. Also heard that Elk Grove Nissan (near Sacramento) will be having their grand opening DC QC around April 2013 for Earth Day.
 
Phoenix said:
Don't forget NorthBay Nissan in Petaluma has a DC QC that is 24/7, plus Schneider Level 2s. Again, it's 24/7. Also heard that Elk Grove Nissan (near Sacramento) will be having their grand opening DC QC around April 2013 for Earth Day.
Again, why doesn't someone at Nissan give us a consolidated list?
 
GregH said:
...it's not unreasonable to think that DCQC stations couldn't offer multiple plugs at a single site (possibly even from a single piece of hardware). You wouldn't need multiple underground tanks, they all share the same source!
The problem is exactly that they share the same source. That source can only provide a certain amount of electricity. On top of that, each plug requires its own quick charger, which are neither cheap nor reliable at this point. I think Tesla is smart to provide the high-speed chargers in the car.
 
RegGuheert said:
GregH said:
...it's not unreasonable to think that DCQC stations couldn't offer multiple plugs at a single site (possibly even from a single piece of hardware). You wouldn't need multiple underground tanks, they all share the same source!
The problem is exactly that they share the same source. That source can only provide a certain amount of electricity. On top of that, each plug requires its own quick charger, which are neither cheap nor reliable at this point. I think Tesla is smart to provide the high-speed chargers in the car.

Charger in the car or not it still needs the same power from the grid. Expect charging stations to be located under transmission lines or near power stations. I don't know how a charging station will store enough to charge 30 cars an hour.
 
RegGuheert said:
GregH said:
...it's not unreasonable to think that DCQC stations couldn't offer multiple plugs at a single site (possibly even from a single piece of hardware). You wouldn't need multiple underground tanks, they all share the same source!
The problem is exactly that they share the same source. That source can only provide a certain amount of electricity. On top of that, each plug requires its own quick charger, which are neither cheap nor reliable at this point. I think Tesla is smart to provide the high-speed chargers in the car.
True, but this would be the case if it were two Chademos or a Chademo and a Frankenplug.. Just last week I tried "sharing" a dual port Blink station with another Leaf and when the 2nd car plugged in it had to wait until my "80%" (ie 72%) charge had completed.. no sharing of electrons, strictly single file. There's no reason the DCQC charger guts couldn't feed two different connection protocols albeit one at a time.
 
DaveinOlyWA said:
Chalk it up to another "V-8" moment.

No reason a 2nd car could not start taking power as thefirst starts tapering down
Tesla has announced that they are going to do exactly this. It will be a 120 kW unit (edit) twelve 10 kW charge modules identical to the one or two modules in each Model S) with two hoses. Each hose will supply up to 90 kW initially, but the sum will be no more than 120 kW.

I am not sure whether any of these dual-hose units have been deployed. They have their hands full installing more single-hose units, up to 6 at one location, to keep up with demand.
 
BEVeedom said:
Give in Elon and Nissan (Carlos Chosn?) and you can star in "Who Saved the Electric Car". I'm a Marylander and can't even drive my Leaf to Ocean City in the summertime. Well, unless I want to spend 4 hours at a lonely professional park in Stevensville, for crying out loud. I guess I could bring a hibachi and have a very long picnic? Making a 3 hour drive take 7 hours is not progress. Regardless of the outcome, America needs a Level III infrastructure for the BEV to survive.

amen! A quick charger in Easton and or Cambridge would cover the "down da ocean" requirement for the whole Washington/Baltimore area.

I hear the first Chagdemo might be installed now in Bethesda?
 
tbleakne said:
I am not sure whether any of these dual-hose units have been deployed. They have their hands full installing more single-hose units, up to 6 at one location, to keep up with demand.
Most of the supercharger locations are already deployed are dual-host units just as you described. A couple are single host units and a few more are only ~30 kW capable units (Gilroy SuperChargers for example appears to have a dual-hose unit and two ~30 kW superchargers - 4 plugs total).

GregH said:
RegGuheert said:
GregH said:
...it's not unreasonable to think that DCQC stations couldn't offer multiple plugs at a single site (possibly even from a single piece of hardware). You wouldn't need multiple underground tanks, they all share the same source!
The problem is exactly that they share the same source. That source can only provide a certain amount of electricity. On top of that, each plug requires its own quick charger, which are neither cheap nor reliable at this point. I think Tesla is smart to provide the high-speed chargers in the car.
True, but this would be the case if it were two Chademos or a Chademo and a Frankenplug.. Just last week I tried "sharing" a dual port Blink station with another Leaf and when the 2nd car plugged in it had to wait until my "80%" (ie 72%) charge had completed.. no sharing of electrons, strictly single file. There's no reason the DCQC charger guts couldn't feed two different connection protocols albeit one at a time.
Well, it's probably not quite that simple - depending on the architecture of the system. The Tesla got the design right and their SuperCharger can handle this because it has a stack of 12 10 kW AC/DC converters and is able to allocate them to two different plugs. I'm bet that the Blink design uses a single 50 kW AC/DC converter, so splitting the DC output to two different cars would mean that you would need an additional DC/DC converter for each car/plug.

It's too bad that they went through the trouble of engineering it that way - but given that it'd be more complex and the already very low reliability of the units (how often are even new units Blinked from the get go???).

Personally, I would prefer 2 25kW stations over a single 50 kW station. I'd even bet that the cost of 2 Nissan or Fuji's 25 kW CHAdeMO stations are less than the cost of one single Blink CHAdeMO. Having 2 separate stations means that you're much more likely to have one that is operational given the general reliability of QC stations.
 
I used two different Blink DCFCs yesterday and both stated 60 KW power available. Blink could allow the 2nd car to start charging as soon as the charging rate started to taper on the first car but does not. Is there so technical reason for this?

As it stands now, we are getting lines mostly from people wanting greater than 80% which takes much longer. I see no reason why the 2nd car cant start since the first car's rate will be a very small fraction of the station's capability.
 
DaveinOlyWA said:
I used two different Blink DCFCs yesterday and both stated 60 KW power available. Blink could allow the 2nd car to start charging as soon as the charging rate started to taper on the first car but does not. Is there so technical reason for this?

As it stands now, we are getting lines mostly from people wanting greater than 80% which takes much longer. I see no reason why the 2nd car cant start since the first car's rate will be a very small fraction of the station's capability.
If the Blink is not modular, so that one big charger supplies all 60 kW, then it cannot be split, because each car is in a different part of its charge cycle and hence needs a slightly different voltage.

The Tesla design uses triples of 3 x 10 kW charge modules, one module per phase. Each module can adjust its voltage to match the demand of the car to which it is connected. Each module has to be assigned to a single car.
 
DaveinOlyWA said:
I used two different Blink DCFCs yesterday and both stated 60 KW power available. Blink could allow the 2nd car to start charging as soon as the charging rate started to taper on the first car but does not. Is there so technical reason for this?

As it stands now, we are getting lines mostly from people wanting greater than 80% which takes much longer. I see no reason why the 2nd car cant start since the first car's rate will be a very small fraction of the station's capability.
Please note that this behavior on the part of Blink users is at least heavily influenced (if not solely caused) by Blink's "flat $5 fee" pricing policy.
 
tbleakne said:
DaveinOlyWA said:
I used two different Blink DCFCs yesterday and both stated 60 KW power available. Blink could allow the 2nd car to start charging as soon as the charging rate started to taper on the first car but does not. Is there so technical reason for this?

As it stands now, we are getting lines mostly from people wanting greater than 80% which takes much longer. I see no reason why the 2nd car cant start since the first car's rate will be a very small fraction of the station's capability.
If the Blink is not modular, so that one big charger supplies all 60 kW, then it cannot be split, because each car is in a different part of its charge cycle and hence needs a slightly different voltage.

The Tesla design uses triples of 3 x 10 kW charge modules, one module per phase. Each module can adjust its voltage to match the demand of the car to which it is connected. Each module has to be assigned to a single car.

**disclaimer; not an engineer**

i think voltage input is static and only current varies depending on the perceived SOC of the vehicle.

guessing Ecotality simply put in one unit which is why only one car can charge at a time. trying to save money i guess...
 
DaveinOlyWA said:
**disclaimer; not an engineer**

i think voltage input is static and only current varies depending on the perceived SOC of the vehicle.
I'm not an engineer either, Dave, but that can't be right. I've read many times here that the battery is charged in two phases, first gradually increasing the voltage so that the current is constant, then holding a constant voltage for the top off and letting the current drop. Since E=IR, this isn't really based on the "perceived SOC", but on the resistance of the battery at any point of time. My (perhaps simplistic) view is that the external charger doesn't try to control the current. It just provides the voltage that the LBC asks for, and the LBC specifies a voltage that will result in the current it would like to see.

Ray
 
planet4ever said:
DaveinOlyWA said:
**disclaimer; not an engineer**

i think voltage input is static and only current varies depending on the perceived SOC of the vehicle.
I'm not an engineer either, Dave, but that can't be right. I've read many times here that the battery is charged in two phases, first gradually increasing the voltage so that the current is constant, then holding a constant voltage for the top off and letting the current drop. Since E=IR, this isn't really based on the "perceived SOC", but on the resistance of the battery at any point of time. My (perhaps simplistic) view is that the external charger doesn't try to control the current. It just provides the voltage that the LBC asks for, and the LBC specifies a voltage that will result in the current it would like to see.

Ray

oh ok. not sure what you are saying is different from what i said. i think my explanation was just off a bit? if you apply a higher voltage to a discharged battery, the voltage will drop due to resistance of battery and slowly rise as the battery charges. as the voltage hits a certain point, it triggers a reduction in current. i dont remember seeing voltage change dramatically mostly because most chargers simply dont show it but i do see current dropping?
 
I apologize if someone already said this, but if the dealers had DCQC's, I would go to Nissan Dealers.
Except for this Leaf, I would never have been caught dead in a Nissan dealer.
Just not on my car buying radar.

Nissan Dealers would get me walking around the showroom for 15 minutes periodically, and isn't that 3/4 of the battle?

I personally sold every Leaf my dealer had by talking to other people.
I saw a pretty cool convertible crossover at the dealer when I was there last, and while I don't want it personally, I told other people about it.

I wonder what that dealer spends on advertising to get people into that showroom?
I bet more than a $10K DCQC every month.

Hell, we only have ONE DCQC any where near me, and I drive to it just for giggles.
It got me into a Denny's, so anything is possible.
 
I see a need in the future for an internal setting in the QC that limits a charge to 80% for just this reason. That last 15% takes an eternity, ties up the charger, and is hard on the battery...

DaveinOlyWA said:
As it stands now, we are getting lines mostly from people wanting greater than 80% which takes much longer.
 
Back
Top