Why is there a separate charger electronics?

The potential risks with the grid would seem to be reasonable justification. Loss of the stand alone charger won't strand the car.

There is also the safety issues with a parked electric car to consider. Most plug in layouts are FWD with the battery in the rear. The motor power electronics are mounted near the motor. Using it as the charger means leaving the power cable between the pack and it live.

 

dup

 

Good question. I use Tripp-Lite Isobar surge suppressors on almost everything in the house. If I had a Prime, I'd have to run an extension cable from an Isobar out the window to the car. Wonder how well that would work?

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.

 

I was wondering this myself and did a brief search. I found others asking the question, but I couldn't find a real answer. Everyone said the same thing: safety.


But nobody can seem to explain why RV parks, which have had high voltage outlets for decades, do not have the same safety requirements.


I don't mind the J1772 connector, but the other end should just be a standard electrical cable. The fact there's a box in the middle is redundant and bothers me. Whatever is in that box should go in the wall or in the car.


In an ideal world we'd all just switch to the UK plug:
Why Britain Has The Best Wall Sockets On Earth

 

that's the great thing about L2.

 

Some of the Nissan/Renault cars do use the motor power electronics to provide the charging function. They even use the motor as a transformer.

It is a matter of design choice and how to manage safety.

If the motor electronics are used during charging suitable additional contactors may have to be provided to disable or switch the motor windings to avoid any possibility that the motor operates and causes the car to move, especially as the car is usually unattended at that time. Those contactors have to handle the full motor current during normal operation and so tend to be expensive.

kevin

 

meah, not so great - 1st, 120v has more loss compared to 240v. 2nd, the longer an extension cord is, the more likely you'll have the necessary ohms to trip a ground fault interrupt, even though no ground fault actually exists .
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Someday, I'll have a proper place where I can park a Prius Prime, and not have to jerry rig an incredibly stupid way to charge it.

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Well, the danger of fire aside, the most a faulty 50 amp outlet can do to your RV is fry the lights and appliances of the living quarters. You can still drive the beast to a shop to get it fixed.
On the other hand, it is the entire drivetrain of the car that can be at risk in a plug in. More importantly, you want to extend the battery life as long as possible through controlled charging.

Then the safety requirements apply more to the car, and regulations in general tend to be less strict for commercial sized trucks. RVs don't follow the same emission regulations as passenger sized vehicles for example.

The EVSE circuitry is in that box on the supplied travel charger. Put it on the either end, and corresponding plug will get bigger. Possibly becoming unwieldly. You don't want the ruin the car owner experience with something like the situation with plugging multiple AC/DC plugs into a power strip.

Level 2 chargers do move the circuit to the wall box.

 

I still feel like I'm missing something. As far as I can tell, most if not all of the EVSE circuitry itself is redundant and covers safety aspects that are already covered by electrical codes and proper wiring, and the rest could be located within the plenty-spacious J1772 plug and the corresponding electronics inside the vehicle to make for a much more portable, compact, and universal connector/charger.

Sure faulty and out of spec wiring exists, but that hasn't been too much of a problem for any other electronic device that it requires a $500 2L box in the center of its cables. Just EVs.

Good point.

 

we've driven several 50 & 30 amp rental RVs & based upon that, I respectfully disagree.

No, that's not us, but there is a present issue - regardless. Anytime you have 30 - 40 - 50 amps, there is a risk. Unlike a brick house, fiberglass is a great accelerant.
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Is that plugged in?

I didn't mean to downplay the risk of fire in my post. I wanted to state how the other risks applied differently to RVs and plug ins.