How to charge PHEV quickly?

[alex101]

Hi,

How could I charge my PHEV quickly at home?
I understand that the charger that comes with the car can work in two modes depending on the current.
Is there a way I can install a power socket that will provide faster charging to the PHEV ?
How?

Alex

 

[Regulo]

The onboard charger limits the current drawn by the car to 16 Amps maximum. The charger that comes with the car can supply 10 Amps maximum. After market wall chargers can supply anything the electricity supply can give, but usually 16 or 32 Amps. But the car can only accept 16 Amps in any case, so that's your limit. This all applies to earlier models, but I don't think anything has changed for recent cars, unless I've missed it! So I don't see any way to charge the car in a domestic environment any quicker than about 3½ hours (at 16 Amps).

 

[mellobob]

Hi,

How could I charge my PHEV quickly at home?
I understand that the charger that comes with the car can work in two modes depending on the current.
Is there a way I can install a power socket that will provide faster charging to the PHEV ?
How?

Alex

Are you in a 110v or 220v area? If you are in North America it is (relatively) easy to install (or have installed) a 220volt outlet and purchase a 220volt charger. That will cut a charge from empty to around 3 hours.

 

[RoyM]

Hi,

How could I charge my PHEV quickly at home?
I understand that the charger that comes with the car can work in two modes depending on the current.
Is there a way I can install a power socket that will provide faster charging to the PHEV ?
How?

Alex

Are you in a 110v or 220v area? If you are in North America it is (relatively) easy to install (or have installed) a 220volt outlet and purchase a 220volt charger. That will cut a charge from empty to around 3 hours.

Not true, in the Nordics we have 230V supply, charging still takes around 7 hours limited by onboard charger.
The cable is only a controller.

For fast charging - CHAdeMO is required (20/50kW DC), and getting that at home sounds really expensive

 

[STS134]

Hi,

How could I charge my PHEV quickly at home?
I understand that the charger that comes with the car can work in two modes depending on the current.
Is there a way I can install a power socket that will provide faster charging to the PHEV ?
How?

Alex

Install full 3 phase power and a DC fast charger at home. CHAdeMO will charge from empty to 12 bars in about 18-20 minutes (the car cuts off charging at 12/16 bars in DCFC mode). But it WILL kill your battery if you make a habit of doing it. I've only done it twice on my PHEV in about 6000 miles, both times in Santa Cruz because they have a free CHAdeMO charger.

 

[Tipper]

Hi,

How could I charge my PHEV quickly at home?
I understand that the charger that comes with the car can work in two modes depending on the current.
Is there a way I can install a power socket that will provide faster charging to the PHEV ?
How?

Alex

Are you in a 110v or 220v area? If you are in North America it is (relatively) easy to install (or have installed) a 220volt outlet and purchase a 220volt charger. That will cut a charge from empty to around 3 hours.

Not true, in the Nordics we have 230V supply, charging still takes around 7 hours limited by onboard charger.
The cable is only a controller.

For fast charging - CHAdeMO is required (20/50kW DC), and getting that at home sounds really expensive

In the UK a 230V 16A supply will allow the car to charge at 16A which takes about 3.5 hours.

Not done using the Mitsubishi plug-in box though...it needs an EV charge point with either 230V 16A or 230V 32A supply connection.

As already said the car's limit is 16A except when using high voltage DC charge stations.

 

[alex101]

the charging cable that comes with the car has 2 modes - 8A and 12A.
My power socket has 20A braker, however when I connect this cable to this power socket (110V) it only works in the 8A mode.
Is there anything I can do to make it work in 12A mode (faster) ?
I think this will speedup the charging a bit.

Also I noticed that after 8 hours charging sometimes it shows 27km distance on full battery but sometimes it shows 37km distance.
Can't figure out why...

 

[user 2238]

Most likely the ambient temperature.

 

[Regulo]

The distance shown on the "Guessometer" is an estimate only. It is based on how the car was last driven, someone said the last 5 minutes, possibly. Also the mileage will be affected by temperature and whether the heater was in use.

The two modes on the supplied charger are a mystery to me, in the UK we only got a box that gives 10 Amps at our nominal 240 volts supply.

 

[jaapv]

Hi,

How could I charge my PHEV quickly at home?
I understand that the charger that comes with the car can work in two modes depending on the current.
Is there a way I can install a power socket that will provide faster charging to the PHEV ?
How?

Alex

Install full 3 phase power and a DC fast charger at home. CHAdeMO will charge from empty to 12 bars in about 18-20 minutes (the car cuts off charging at 12/16 bars in DCFC mode). But it WILL kill your battery if you make a habit of doing it. I've only done it twice on my PHEV in about 6000 miles, both times in Santa Cruz because they have a free CHAdeMO charger.

Hasve you looked at the price of such a charger? At least 10.000 $. Not counting the adaptation of your electric supply system.

 

[jaapv]

Not true, in the Nordics we have 230V supply, charging still takes around 7 hours limited by onboard charger.
The cable is only a controller.

Surprising. Normally it takes about 3 1/2 hours on a 10A charger. Are you sure the cable box doesn't switch down to 6A because the outlet lacks sufficient power?

 

[STS134]

Hi,

How could I charge my PHEV quickly at home?
I understand that the charger that comes with the car can work in two modes depending on the current.
Is there a way I can install a power socket that will provide faster charging to the PHEV ?
How?

Alex

Install full 3 phase power and a DC fast charger at home. CHAdeMO will charge from empty to 12 bars in about 18-20 minutes (the car cuts off charging at 12/16 bars in DCFC mode). But it WILL kill your battery if you make a habit of doing it. I've only done it twice on my PHEV in about 6000 miles, both times in Santa Cruz because they have a free CHAdeMO charger.

Hasve you looked at the price of such a charger? At least 10.000 $. Not counting the adaptation of your electric supply system.

Yeah, I have. I think $30k-40k is a more reasonable estimate actually. I made it pretty clear that it's not practical, nor is it even recommended. But it IS by far the fastest way.

Now what I have in my garage is a NEMA 6-50 outlet and Charge point Home. That's a lot more practical. Many other EVSEs connect to NEMA 14-50.

 

[anko]

... nor is it even recommended.

By you, you mean :?:

 

[anko]

Not true, in the Nordics we have 230V supply, charging still takes around 7 hours limited by onboard charger.
The cable is only a controller.

Surprising. Normally it takes about 3 1/2 hours on a 10A charger. Are you sure the cable box doesn't switch down to 6A because the outlet lacks sufficient power?

16 amps charge station (only 14.5 consumed by car) should result in 3.5 hrs.
10 amps should result in 5.5 hours.
6 amps should result in even longer times.

Maybe the control box is designed to be able to detect a voltage drop when high current is consumed. I think / hope that when this happens the charger would switch off instead of step down, as it could indicate serious trouble.

 

[STS134]

... nor is it even recommended.

By you, you mean :?:

If you look in the manual, Mitsubishi does not recommend frequently using DCFC, for the obvious reason that it'll kill the battery (although strangely they will allow the battery to DISCHARGE at over 30 kW in Normal mode for a sustained period of time which is just as bad or worse than CHARGING the darn thing at 18-20 kW).

 

[cornclose]

10 amps should result in 5.5 hours.

I can confrim this is correct. My 2019 4HS will charge from 'flat' to 'full' in a little over 5.5 hours, at a little over 9.1A charge current.

Maybe the control box is designed to be able to detect a voltage drop when high current is consumed. I think / hope that when this happens the charger would switch off instead of step down, as it could indicate serious trouble.

I have monitored the current the charger consumes during the start-up phase and can confirm that a small load current is drawn for the first 30 seconds or so, around 2A (460W). It appears the system is looking at the actual voltage drop and calculating the maximum current it allows based upon this. On the two circuits I charge on at different houses, I have never seen 10A (9.1-9.2A is the most I've seen) and I suspect the charger is using a nominal 230VAC as it's reference point. i.e. it won't allow a voltage drop to below 230VAC which in effect will limit the charge current.

 

[jaapv]

Not true, in the Nordics we have 230V supply, charging still takes around 7 hours limited by onboard charger.
The cable is only a controller.

Surprising. Normally it takes about 3 1/2 hours on a 10A charger. Are you sure the cable box doesn't switch down to 6A because the outlet lacks sufficient power?

16 amps charge station (only 14.5 consumed by car) should result in 3.5 hrs.
10 amps should result in 5.5 hours.
6 amps should result in even longer times.

Maybe the control box is designed to be able to detect a voltage drop when high current is consumed. I think / hope that when this happens the charger would switch off instead of step down, as it could indicate serious trouble.

Yep, that's correct on consideration . I have a third-party one which is a nominal 10 A but when plugged into a 16A socket (nearly all of them over here) will obviously pull a bit higher current and be correspondingly faster.

 

[anko]

I have monitored the current the charger consumes during the start-up phase and can confirm that a small load current is drawn for the first 30 seconds or so, around 2A (460W). It appears the system is looking at the actual voltage drop and calculating the maximum current it allows based upon this. On the two circuits I charge on at different houses, I have never seen 10A (9.1-9.2A is the most I've seen) and I suspect the charger is using a nominal 230VAC as it's reference point. i.e. it won't allow a voltage drop to below 230VAC which in effect will limit the charge current.

I know the charging process ramps up slowly. That can be controlled by the control box but also by the OnBoardCharger. I am quit convinced the control box simply advertises 10 amps full stop. Maybe until to big of a voltage drop occurs and then it advertises 0.

 

[cornclose]

I know the charging process ramps up slowly. That can be controlled by the control box but also by the OnBoardCharger. I am quit convinced the control box simply advertises 10 amps full stop. Maybe until to big of a voltage drop occurs and then it advertises 0.

Not from what I've witnessed. It will go from zero charge (0A) to about 2A (460W) instantly, stay at 2A for about 10-15 seconds, and then go straight to ~9A and stay there until charging is almost complete, after which it gradually reduces the charge rate from ~9A to 0A over a period of about 30 minutes.

Interestingly, even after a complete charge, the control box consumes about 2.4W for as long as the mains supply is connected and switched on. Although insignificant, it's something to bear in mind if you leave the car plugged in for extended periods of time - it'll cost you some extra money for no benefit.. :lol:

 

[alex101]

Thank you everyone for answering my question.
Here is what I've found:
My charging cable has 2 modes: 6A and 12A.
I was trying to change the mode when car was plugged and it did not work.
If I plug the cable and then press the Power button, it allows to change mode from 6A to 12A.
Problem solved.

I am thinking to get a Level 2 charger which is 30A to get a quicker charge at home.
Current cost is CAD 800 and $600 to install.