Gents (and Ladies): Recently noticed that the supplied charging cable for my '25PHEV is less than flexible in cold (-20F/-29C) weather. As I tend to believe that flexing a cable when the jacket is not flexible will result in damage to the cable's jacket, I'm thinking I should source a different/better/more flexible cable - at least for winter usage. So the question is: What am I looking for - key words, tricky phrases - to ensure that any replacement will remain flexible in cold weather? Thanks!
Start wishing for warm weather and sunshine, it's about as realistic as finding an insulator that stays flexible the colder it gets. Park in a heated garage. Works wonders.
I feel my generator cord is pretty flexible in the cold, but I couldn't readily read the impression on the jacket when I went out to the garage just now. It has a rubber look to it, rather than shiny plastic. However, I did a search on cold weather generator cable, and came up with at least one hit that bragged about its cold weather properties.
this is the first time i have read of this concern, and we have some serious cold weather members. the supplied cable is fine.
Continuing my theme of giving answers useless to those in North America, here's what I picked up: https://www.defa.com/product/econnect-type-2-ev-charging-cable-46kw/ They tout being "made for Nordic conditions". But the reason I got it was that the one that came with the car was mega-unwieldy regardless of temperature - it was a 22kW lead - triple-core 32A. The Prius doesn't need that at all, so I wanted a much lighter and easier to handle one - that's single-core 20A (4.6kW). Little tech detail - the EVSE indicates available current to the car via some PWM signals. The cable indicates its current rating to the EVSE via resistance on the signalling pins, and the EVSE then limits its indication to the car accordingly. 20A and 32A are two of the options for resistance signalling, with nothing in-between, so that's the available cable ratings.
