2022 Plus won't charge at 100kW DC station

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.

hmbay

Member
Joined
Jan 29, 2021
Messages
14
Location
Half Moon Bay
OK, so we finally got our Nissan Energy Perks credit so I drove the 22 Plus to the Laurelwood San Mateo EVGo station which has the newer 200kW chargers. What happened was weird and I spent a while with EVGo support debugging to no avail.

The session started and the rate ramped up to about 45kW over about 30 seconds and then a charging session ended message came up (no error message) and that was that. I tried it with two different chargers and then tried it with EVGo support to make sure it wasn't a billing issue. She said that she was getting an error on her side that read "vehicle current deviation error" which does not sound good - sounds like as charging starts to go over 50kW, something in the Leaf goes awry. [I've used this station a lot with my other Leaf and it has been very reliable]

Anyway, I then tried charging at an old 50kW EVGo station near our home and that worked fine (although only at 35kW).

Next I'm going to try an Electrify America 50kW station to see if that works above 50kW as has been suggested. If it does, then there is something funky with EVGo. If it doesn't then it's on to Nissan Service.

Otherwise the car is fine. Level 2 charging is fine. And I've had it report 244 miles range on a full charge (not that I drive that carefully).

I will post updates as I go on this journey. Has anyone else had issues with 100kW charging stations?

Cheers, Joe
 
http://daveinolywa.blogspot.com/2020/07/june-2020-drive-report-how-roadtripping.html has charged at higher than 50 kW on "50 kW" Electrify America stations in WA. EA uses 4 different vendors for their DC FCs (BTC Power, Efacec (have never seen any on EA from them), ABB, Signet). EVgo also uses a bunch of different vendors.

https://insideevs.com/news/495913/nissan-leaf-dc-fast-charging-curve/ also used EA "50 kW" CHAdeMO chargers and got to near 70 kW.
 
I've got a 2016 and I've never had any issues. All the stations I've been at are rated 125-150kw. The only thing I've noticed is that Greenlots chargers tend to have a much lower charging rate peak on my Leaf than the Charge point station i use semi regularly.
 
I have charged at a few EAs which gave me 75+kW before they software limited them.

On my way back through Iowa in Nov, I came in with a reasonably hot battery and it gave me 60kW. I think that was at a Greenlots MidAmerica charger. I don't know if I had let it cool a bit whether I would have seen 70. There was another Leaf Plus at the neighboring charger at the time, so not sure if that had any impact.
 
I'm guessing the OP is referring to https://www.plugshare.com/location/289825 which look like newer BTC Power units. They look similar to these EA (definitely) BTC Power units (https://www.plugshare.com/location/193054).

https://www.plugshare.com/location/309517 have Delta (a Taiwanese company, which EA doesn't use at all AFAIK) and Signet.
 
In any case, my local EA station has a broken chademo unit so I'm going to look for some other DC units that can go over 50 (Chargepoint has some 62.5kW stations).

I suspect that I've got a defective charging unit in my Plus since it shouldn't end a session after 30 seconds just when the power would have gone over 50kW. Going to give Nissan Service a call on Friday. Maybe they don't test them at the factory with a 100kW capable station. Annoying since you just know this is going to be one of those parts with a long lead time (had a recent service experience with another make where a part took 2.5 months to arrive).
 
I suspect that I've got a defective charging unit in my Plus since it shouldn't end a session after 30 seconds just when the power would have gone over 50kW. Going to give Nissan Service a call on Friday.

I agree. It's either that, IMO, or maybe a wonky charge controller is messing up what it tells the station. I don't know the exact extent to which the DCFC station takes over the process.
 
What was the temperature on the day when you first tried and it failed--Could cold be a factor?

Charging at 40kW is like 400V at 100 Amps; 80kW is 200 Amps and 100kW is like 250 Amps.

Even 40kW wasn't possible when you tried the second location.

It seems incredible for a battery pack with the thermal system of the laef to charge at 100 Amps or more.

How many regen bubbles correspond to 100 A--does your car ever hit that level of regen on the steep drive over the hill?
 
San Mateo, California is the location of the 100kW DC station so no temp issues (battery or ambient). It was pretty clear that the power was going to ramp up over 50kW when the session ended.

At a 50kW EA station, we got 44kW normal operation (although EA stations are just ridiculously awkward to use). So they are now limited to 50.

We're going to try a different EVGo 100kW DC station but that won't be for a while since there aren't that many of them around here.

I'm going to call Nissan EV service just to see whether this is one of their known problems which hasn't been escalated to a service bulletin like the charge timer not working correctly with home location.
 
Try the stations at Belmont - https://www.plugshare.com/location/309517

Be sure to try the 100kW Delta's as well as the signets. Both should give you 200A, - ~75kW.
 
OK, it is starting to look like the problem is with the new 200kW stations that EVGo has set up like the Laurelwood station. We tried a different station (Serramonte Branch Library) which had Delta 100kW units and we got a peak 76kW from those units with the Leaf Plus.

I also found a complaint on Plugshare for the same Laurelwood station...

Nissan LEAF 2021
Tried to fastcharge, session initiated but ended session automatically after 1min

It now looks like a software / protocol issue with the new 200kW chargers and their Chademo connectors (I'm going to assume that the CCS is working since I haven't seen any complaints about it).

So now it's to EVGo support... wish me luck.
 
Good luck. You may also end up helping someone else which is always a good thing.

You got as about good as you can possibly get on that other charger, I had a peak of 77 which may be a record at an EA once I do not think the car can do any more even in ideal conditions. If someone hit like 79 or 80 I would love to hear of it.
 
salyavin said:
Good luck. You may also end up helping someone else which is always a good thing.

You got as about good as you can possibly get on that other charger, I had a peak of 77 which may be a record at an EA once I do not think the car can do any more even in ideal conditions. If someone hit like 79 or 80 I would love to hear of it.

Even at the Nissan HQ where they had 100 kW free ChaDeMo charging, I've never seen it hit above 75 kW no matter if the battery was cool, warm or hot. I suspect it's just the limitation on the max the battery can accept in physical terms, probably not so much the QC station itself.
 
DougWantsALeaf said:
There is a video somewhere. Where they showed in a lab the Plus hitting 104kW. I don't know how many amps/volts you need to hit that peak rate.

Really!?! I did not know that was possible! This is the first I heard of 79 let alone 104! That is a huge jump above anything I ever heard about. Wow!
 
hmbay said:
In any case, my local EA station has a broken chademo unit so I'm going to look for some other DC units that can go over 50 (Chargepoint has some 62.5kW stations).

I suspect that I've got a defective charging unit in my Plus since it shouldn't end a session after 30 seconds just when the power would have gone over 50kW. Going to give Nissan Service a call on Friday. Maybe they don't test them at the factory with a 100kW capable station. Annoying since you just know this is going to be one of those parts with a long lead time (had a recent service experience with another make where a part took 2.5 months to arrive).

Let us know how those 62.5 KW stations work out. I have hit a handful and none charged faster than 125 amps which is essentially 50 kw speed. I think its car restricted. I hit a Blink last Summer rated at 62.5 kw and it hit 135 amps for about 15 seconds before immediately dropping down to 125 amps with neither heat or SOC a factor...
 
DougWantsALeaf said:
There is a video somewhere. Where they showed in a lab the Plus hitting 104kW. I don't know how many amps/volts you need to hit that peak rate.

I saw someone at 81 kw or so but they were also pulling over 210 amps. Pretty rare. I believe it was a 22? so maybe just another unannounced tweak by Nissan?
 
Back
Top