EV general discussion

kmax86 said:
For anyone starting to get into EVs is the standard homeplug enough for nightly charging? We currently have two diesel cars and looking into replacing the oldest. Looking around it would cost me around £1k to get a wall charger installed.

Should one get a wall charger first before buying into EVs?
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I got an EV a few weeks ago and using the 3 pin plug charger for now until i can get a proper charger installed and... turns out i can manage totally fine using it so i'm really questioning if its worth spending the money on a proper charger.

It depends how many miles you do, i do 60 miles a day and that'll easily charge up on the 3 pin plug in maybe 4-5 hours which fits in nicely with the cheap overnight rates (which i've yet to get the missus to sign up to..)

Yes it is slow to charge up and if you're going from like 20% it will take all day but i don't go very far very often so i wouldn't foresee if ever being an issue for me.

SO yeah depends how many miles you'll be doing, work out how many KWh you'll need to put into the car every night and see if that's going to be comfortable with a 2kw charger.
 
yeah, low mileage makes charging from a wall socket fine, assuming either you have the car in a garage or have some way of getting the cable out of the house to the car. the 7KW home charger can get maybe 45-50KW of charge into a car in off-peak, so even this isn't enough for most cars if you require close to the full range of the car everyday.
 
... and ONT box ?

if you buy a granny lead make sure it's more than 1 year warranty -neighbour on his second with 330e, granny control box throttling/stopping intermittently,
electricians investigated supply socket/wiring before granny was suspected (all similar to getting a charger with 5 years warranty)


BTW puma lease deal meme is not £139 once you amortize the deposit, nearer £200.
 
sovietspybob said:
I got an EV a few weeks ago and using the 3 pin plug charger for now until i can get a proper charger installed and... turns out i can manage totally fine using it so i'm really questioning if its worth spending the money on a proper charger.

It depends how many miles you do, i do 60 miles a day and that'll easily charge up on the 3 pin plug in maybe 4-5 hours which fits in nicely with the cheap overnight rates (which i've yet to get the missus to sign up to..)

Yes it is slow to charge up and if you're going from like 20% it will take all day but i don't go very far very often so i wouldn't foresee if ever being an issue for me.

SO yeah depends how many miles you'll be doing, work out how many KWh you'll need to put into the car every night and see if that's going to be comfortable with a 2kw charger.
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I'm curious, is it the car or the 'granny' charger that determines the speed of a charge on a 3 pin plug? I see 3 pins taking 20 hours to fully charge on some cars, then you've said it takes 4-5 hours.
 
Andybtsn said:
I'm curious, is it the car or the 'granny' charger that determines the speed of a charge on a 3 pin plug? I see 3 pins taking 20 hours to fully charge on some cars, then you've said it takes 4-5 hours.
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Both potentially - depends on the car and the charger

However the post you're responding to, they are saying that the 60 miles/day they need takes 4-5 hours, not the full charge
 
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Andybtsn said:
I'm curious, is it the car or the 'granny' charger that determines the speed of a charge on a 3 pin plug? I see 3 pins taking 20 hours to fully charge on some cars, then you've said it takes 4-5 hours.
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He's said it takes 4-5 hours to charge up 60 miles worth of range, not fully charge the car although that's perhaps still a little optimistic - at 3 miles per kWh that's still 20kWh which would take more like 8 or 9 hours at 2.3kW. (If you can get 4 miles per kWh though, then you're looking for 15kWh of charge, so more like 6.5 hours)

Edit - looking back at his posts, he seems to be achieving 5 to 6 miles per kWh in his Ioniq, so 4 to 5 hours makes more sense, he might only need 10kWh of charge to achieve that.
 
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Andybtsn said:
I'm curious, is it the car or the 'granny' charger that determines the speed of a charge on a 3 pin plug? I see 3 pins taking 20 hours to fully charge on some cars, then you've said it takes 4-5 hours.
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The car will determine the current pull, up to the maximum 13 amps where the fuse should blow in the plug.

As a rough guide, I’ve found that 10 amps is the highest you want to go, but for extended periods I drop it to 8 amps and the plug generally doesn’t get warm at that level.

My Polestar can control it in 1 amp increments down to 6 amps, and the EQC has set levels of maximum, 8 and 6.

As this is a generic setting for all AC charging, I have to remember to put it back to maximum afterwards before I plug it back into the wall charger…
 
I thought charge current was communicated between car and EVSE via a PWM signal on the control pilot connection?

If not then my basic understanding of how EVs charge has just gone out of the window :p
 
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Penfold101 said:
The car will determine the current pull, up to the maximum 13 amps where the fuse should blow in the plug.
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Generally I think most UK reputable supplied 3 pin charger cables cap out at 10A rather than 13A, not sure i'd trust the chargers that'll permit 13A
 
Kenai said:
Generally I think most UK reputable supplied 3 pin charger cables cap out at 10A rather than 13A, not sure i'd trust the chargers that'll permit 13A
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I'd turned mine down in the car's app to only draw a maximum of 10amps hoping that would lesson the heat issue, but it didn't.
Now my new setup with a commando socket and charging lead draws 16amps without any issues.
 
Jimbeam3678 said:
How do cars not have a warning a cable is still connected. Madness
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Electric handbrake....which unfortunately it does let you disengage in an MG ZS. Our drive is on a slope and she took the handbrake off and rolled back!

It does throw up a warning in the dash but nothing audible. The dash isn't always easy to see in bright sunlight.
 
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