EVSE UPGRADE

a few people have. i believe there's a thread on it. it comes highly recommended. all the best!

 

I had my factory EVSE upgraded by the same company the first several weeks I had my PIP. Not cheap, but cheaper than any other Level 2 charger available. The plus is you can use as Level 2 at 240V or use as Level 1 with any 120v outlet. Highly recommend and money well spent, especially if you can charge Level 2 at home and/or work.

 

I upgraded my old PIP EVSEro 240v for use on my Volt. It works great!

 

I used their services with full satisfaction!

 

evseupgrade.com is run by Ingineer over on mynissanleaf.com aka pEEf here. There are thousands of satisfied customers of his.

 

I did the upgrade. About a year after the upgrade I got a short in the cord. The fault lies with me because at work I have to plug the EVSE into a 120 and let the brick hang and put stress on the plug. The short was at the join between the brick and the cord that leads to the 240 plug.

Long story short. They fixed it free of charge and promptly returned it. I decided to buy an extra 120 ($300 on ebay) just for work and when out in public, so my 240 now stays at home and plugged in at all times.

 

Same here- very happy with their work!

 

You might want to use an extension cord to keep the stress off the plug, but do monitor how how the plugs and cord get. I'd go with a 14 gauge or thicker cord.

With '13 Leaf's L1 EVSE, at home, there's a lot of junk in my garage so the brick is well supported. At my work, I sometimes charge at 120 volts to keep the L2 208/240 volt J1772s free. Some stations are the CT2101 or related types at Purchase EV Charging Stations - ChargePoint. Unfortunately, the way the plug and cord are on the '13 Leaf's EVSE, I can't physically plug into the 120 volt outlet under the metal door due to lack of room and having to bend the cord. Maybe I can w/force, but it would put a VERY sharp bend in the cord. So, I must use an extension cord.

One of my 6-foot 14 gauge cords works great. I have another 14 gauge cord of the same/similar length which gets quite warm at the male plug end, so I don't use it anymore for charging.

 

One can attach a rope, coat hanger, I used 4 strands of tel wire to the hole in the brick, made a loop and hang it over the outlet box to relieve the strain on the cord and plug.

 

Is there any way to tell if this power oulet in my garage is 110v or 240v ? I have been using it to charge my PIP with facotory EVSE for about 1 year. I would certainly do the upgrade if this oulet is 240v. Thanks

 

It's almost certainly 120 volts, unless someone wired it wrong. Tesla Charging | Tesla Motors has some examples of 240 volt outlets. It isn't complete though, even for the US.

If it ran at 240 volts, your L1 EVSE would have been fried by now.

 

It's not that difficult to run a dedicated 240v line for Level 2 charging. If you're not capable yourself, pay a licensed electrician to do the work. If you're charging overnight, you might keep what you have. Multiple charges during the course of a day is different.

 

Almost all household wiring is 110-120 VAC, The only reasons for installing a separate 240 Volt line is, quicker charging or if your car is a EV. As you know, average charging time on the PIP is about 3 hrs for a full charge. Should you need quicker charging plan on spending $1000 to $2000.

 

You are right, quick charging would have more benefits. Currently I can't install a 240v line in a rental home. An existing 240v outlet would let me take advantage of it, not only it will let me charge quicker, but also save me money for installation. Anyhow, It's good to know what type this outlet is.

 

Just to be clear 208 to 240 volt AC L2 charging is NOT quick charging. It's still not real fast, esp. with a 3.3 kW or less on-board charger (in the car). At 6 kW ('13 Leaf has an optional 6 kW OBC), it's faster but still not as fast as CHadeMO, a DC fast/quick charge standard. With a 30 amp 240 volt EVSE, that's only 7.2 kW (and the Leaf's 6 kW OBC can IIRC draw 6.6 kW max).

The Rav4 EV and Model S have a 10 kW OBC, but there aren't many EVSEs that support that output.

I believe the max possible (I might be wrong) w/CHAdeMO is 62.5 kW. Pics of Nissan's CHadeMO DC QC/FC show a 44 kW max output. CHAdeMO can take a Leaf from 0 to 80 % in ~30 minutes.

With Leaf's 6 kW OBC, assuming a 240 volt EVSE and that the EVSE isn't the bottleneck, dead to full should take 4 to 5 hours.

 

I should have said "quicker" charging.

By the way, the battery swap function in the Telsa website you linked earlier is a real cool idea. However, i think the video that Telsa used to compare the time between battery swap and adding gas is a little too extreme. That Audi has a gas tank of 23 gallons! Adding gas to a fuel-efficient car, like Prius, won't take that long, since the gas tank is only 11.9 gallons in a Prius and 10.6 gallons in PIP.

 

Depending on the age of the home, existing wiring, circuit breaker panel, length of run, it might be doable. Could be a reasonably inexpensive, easy install, and later removed if necessary. Is it worth it?

 

Re: battery swapping, it's not a financially feasible idea. See what happened to Better Place anyone? | PriusChat.

 

I agree.
First, it means that the entire community of EV owners and battery suppliers own more batteries than there are cars. You have to wonder why this would make sense. Second, it means that you don't have "ownership" of the battery in your car...thus you treat it like a "rental." Third, most of the time you will be charging at home and or at work, so the percentage of the time that you would want to swap is low...it is more convenient to charge at home and/or at work -- it is not out of the way and you have plenty of time to do a "slow" charge (at least 90-95% of the time.)
The extra cost (to the car) of making the battery quick swappable doesn't seem to make sense for the few times per year that doing a swap would be advantageous. YMMV.
The swapping stations need to pay rent, pay salaries, buy electricity, do safety checks and make a profit. This just adds more cost when a "electrical fillup" or topoff is pretty cheap for most...$.10/kwh.

Mike