Prime charging cable warranty?

i suspect they are not, but it's always worth asking.

 

Are you sure it's the charging cable not the household socket or car socket?

When you draw high current, 12A off a cheap 15A household socket, The pinch tabs held in place by plastic tends to loosen up over the years. The one cable that partially works, run your hand over the entire length of the cable, check for hot spots - including the outlet your plugged into. They do make tension checkers for your household outlets, but it may be cheaper to just replace it - if your handy.

Good Luck..

PS I've noticed in another one of your post that you've tried charging two cars on one circuit. Even if you backed both cars down to 8A you'll still need a 20A circuit with nothing else on it to keep from popping the circuit breaker.

 

I can't seem to find it, but I think there's a preprogrammed limit to the number of times you can use the charger. I think they built that into the charger to prevent problems with the contacts in the plug from wearing out. If that's the case, Toyota may not repair your charger under warranty.

The charge rate in the Prime is limited by the car's onboard charge module - 12 Amps normal, or 8 Amps. That's the car's "charge acceptance rate". I've verified this as my charger can be set up to charge at various rates, setting it to more than 12 Amps does not increase the charge rate more than the car will accept. Going to level 2 does make it so the car charges in 1/2 the time, so it "effectively" charges at 16 or 24 Amps, but not really. It's just charging at 12 Amps from both the line voltage circuits at the same time. (I'm sure there's a better way to say this.)

Using the level 1 charger on my 2019 Prime, it takes 8 hours to charge at 8 Amps, and 6 hours to charge at 12 Amps. For my level 2 charger, it takes 4 hours to charge at 8 Amps, and 3 hours to charge at 12 Amps.

I got a charger that can be set to various charge rate limits. I set it to 16 Amps, but it could be set to up to 32 Amps. It's got a meter on it, and I verified that when I set the car to a 12 Amp charge rate, the charger read 12 Amps. When I set the car to 8 Amps, the charger said 8 Amps too. I didn't try setting the charger to 10 Amps and seeing what the car said.

The fully charged range includes an estimate of how you use the power. I wouldn't put too much stock in a couple extra miles of range, because that's just the car's estimate based on how you've been using your car fro the last few trips. My wife is a teacher at a rural school 50 miles outside of town, and most of that trip is highway miles. The car has been getting closer to 20 miles of EV range. Now that it's summer, and we're just running around town, the car is saying it has a lot more EV range after a charge. Yesterday it was 29.3 miles. Changing the use of your heater/AC settings also changes the estimated EV range too.

I think the quick charge leading to faster battery degradation on your Leaf's EVs is because of the effects of excess heat on the battery cells. To charge at the rate that causes some concern would be more like what you would get if you charged the car by connecting directly to the car's DC battery voltage. I don't know what the Leaf is capable of, and this gets into the technical details of fast DC chargers.

I'm not sure excess heat buildup in the battery is much of an issue with the Prime's 12 Amp charge acceptance rate. The direct-to-battery DC connections aren't provided on the Prime's J1772 port.

 

Yes, a slower charge is always better on an air-cooled battery pack. I know an early adopter of a Tesla that has already replaced his pack, for $15K. He has free lifetime charging at any Tesla charging station, but I suspect those quick charges didn't do that old pack any favors. Since he had free lifetime charging, he saw no reason to install a L2 charger in his garage - even though he could afford it.

Regarding replacing that plug, I've heard that there may be a thermal resistor in that plug. Please report back if that is the case. There should be some extra signal wires, once you cut that plug head off. If there is a resistor, you should see 3 thick power wires and 2 thin signal wires. I don't believe Toyota will cover the charger with that busted ground pin, but it doesn't hurt to ask.

Good Luck....