rapid charger adapter

[noypi]

hi. just had my phev this month and loving it. we have charging bays at work for fast and rapid charging. to use the fast chargers, i had to buy an adapter and connect it to the supplied charging cable that came with the phev.
my question is, where can i buy an adapter so that i can use the rapid charger (32 amp). the reason i am asking is that a phev once was charging on the rapid charging bay and was using the same cable that came with the car. didn't leave a note though as i thought the chargers were all the same. only realised when i started charging my car. is there a 32 amp available in the market or was it modified? many thanks..

 

[greendwarf]

If the Rapid charger you refer to uses the standard CHADEMO connection there is usually a cable attached the machine which just plugs straight into the larger socket on the car.

I have never seen any reference in this forum to the availability of an adaptor for any other type of rapid charger. :?

 

[SolarBoy]

As far as I know ...

A Fast charger will not be faster than 16amps on the Outlander.

A Rapid charger should have it's own tethered cable.

 

[jaapv]

A fast -16A- charger will use a type 1-type 2 Mennekes cable (unless you use a tethered charging station) and not the standard charging cable with 10A box and threepin/Schuko plug that comes with the car. Those are meant for domestic outlets of 13A or more.

 

[noypi]

thank your very much for all the replies. that is why i was finding it hard to find a rapid charger adapter. if i see the phev that i saw charging there again, i'll take a photo and contact the owner as well..

 

[ChrisMiller]

Did you check where the cable was plugged in? Some public chargers have a standard domestic 3-pin socket as well as the higher power options.

 

[jaapv]

thank your very much for all the replies. that is why i was finding it hard to find a rapid charger adapter. if i see the phev that i saw charging there again, i'll take a photo and contact the owner as well..

But what would you plug into the adapter? A rapid charger will plug into the rapid-charge port of your car by its own tethered cable. The standard port will take a 16A Mennekes cable, either tethered to a fast charger or plugged into it, a standard three-point will run through your supplied 10A cable/charging box.

 

[greendwarf]

Perhaps the OP is referring to a non - CHADEMO rapid charger :idea:

 

[noypi]

thanks again for the replies. finally found yhe phev i was looking for so i took photos. apologies if I'm not describing myself clearly.








not even sure if i uploaded them correctly. i hope i did it right

what i failed to see was where this cable was plugged in into the car. assuming it was the supplied cable, it will be plugged into the fast charger port of the car and not the bigger rapid charging port.
any thoughts on this? I'm now confused. lol

 

[Steel188]

Wow!!!

Where is that?

That is a total bodge!

They are not sockets for charging cars, they are commercial electric outlets with what look like homemade adapters to allow you to use the charging lead that comes with the car.

At best you will need to be very careful, at worst they might even be down right dangerous! Someone paid to have those put in, and for a couple of hundred £'s more they would have got proper, car specific chargers that are properly designed for the job, allow you to use the correct cables WITHOUT going through two adapters and offer all the protections you, and your car, need.

 

[noypi]

Wow!!!

Where is that?

That is a total bodge!

They are not sockets for charging cars, they are commercial electric outlets with what look like homemade adapters to allow you to use the charging lead that comes with the car.

At best you will need to be very careful, at worst they might even be down right dangerous! Someone paid to have those put in, and for a couple of hundred £'s more they would have got proper, car specific chargers that are properly designed for the job, allow you to use the correct cables WITHOUT going through two adapters and offer all the protections you, and your car, need.

thanks for the warning mate. that's in stevenage. quite near you. won't bother going for this then..

 

[Steel188]

Check out www.rolecserv.com to see what kind of charging points you should have, then www.evcables.co.uk for a charging lead. Other companies are available for both, Google will be your friend.

The ones you have need throwing away, because connecting them to the lead that comes with the car restricts you to about 10amps and it takes many hours to charge your car. A 'proper' 16amp one will cut that down to about 4 hours.

We have two dual units at work, one for the Chairman's Tesla and the other one for the MD's BMW X5 hybrid and my PHEV. They are strong, weather proof and secure and I can connect my7m cable very easily.

 

[greendwarf]

I'm not sure about this - why the double connector? Can you tell us what the blue wall sign says and get a photo of the inside of the wall socket? I note that the next car along is also plugged in with a similar sign but different cable arrangement. Perhaps the white connector is a 3 pin to Shuko and then the blue ended one another Shuko to "?". I seem to remember someone posting about a hospital car park having a different type of socket for their own EVs

 

[jaapv]

Check out http://www.rolecserv.com to see what kind of charging points you should have, then http://www.evcables.co.uk for a charging lead. Other companies are available for both, Google will be your friend.

The ones you have need throwing away, because connecting them to the lead that comes with the car restricts you to about 10amps and it takes many hours to charge your car. A 'proper' 16amp one will cut that down to about 4 hours.

We have two dual units at work, one for the Chairman's Tesla and the other one for the MD's BMW X5 hybrid and my PHEV. They are strong, weather proof and secure and I can connect my7m cable very easily.

Well, charging through the 10A charge cable takes about 4-5 hours, and through a 16A charger and Mennekes cable 3-4 so there is not much difference in it. If you sleep more than 5 hours per night and work more than 5 hours per day, the provided charger in a domestic socket does just fine.

 

[noypi]

Check out http://www.rolecserv.com to see what kind of charging points you should have, then http://www.evcables.co.uk for a charging lead. Other companies are available for both, Google will be your friend.

The ones you have need throwing away, because connecting them to the lead that comes with the car restricts you to about 10amps and it takes many hours to charge your car. A 'proper' 16amp one will cut that down to about 4 hours.

We have two dual units at work, one for the Chairman's Tesla and the other one for the MD's BMW X5 hybrid and my PHEV. They are strong, weather proof and secure and I can connect my7m cable very easily.

cheers.

 

[noypi]

I'm not sure about this - why the double connector? Can you tell us what the blue wall sign says and get a photo of the inside of the wall socket? I note that the next car along is also plugged in with a similar sign but different cable arrangement. Perhaps the white connector is a 3 pin to Shuko and then the blue ended one another Shuko to "?". I seem to remember someone posting about a hospital car park having a different type of socket for their own EVs

hi. the blue signs are the same. the next phev is mine and plugged into the fast charger.
the first time i tried, i used this bay in the photo only to find out that it was bigger so my adapter won't fit. luckily the 2 other bays were available so i tried the adapter first before moving my car.
onced plugged in, i scrutinized all the 4 charging ports and realised that the bigger ones were 32 amp and the smaller ones were 16..

 

[jaapv]

But what did you plug into the fast charger? If it was the supplied cable and box the car will not charge more than 10A anyway.
I would not use a real 16 A charge cable on some kind of adapter to plug into an unsecured outlet. For one thing the charger relay switches would be missing and you would need to short out the communication lead from the car to the charger. Potentially harmful to the car and no insurance would pay up in case of a fire.

 

[Steel188]

As I said above, this is a 'bodge'

I really hope this is a private facility and not one open for public use, because Jaapv is correct, the lead supplied with the car is designed for plugging into a standard 13amp plug, not a 16 or 32amp commercial outlet.

When I bought my 7m lead, I got a 32amp one as a future proofing investment in case there is an upgrade during my tenure of the car and the higher power can be used.

Jaapv is also correct in that the car and charging point need to talk to each other in order for safe, efficient charging to take place. This requires the charging point to be a proper vehicle charging station.

The OP (noypi) has said this is in Stevenage (the next town from my office) and I really do hope that someone can be made to realise the error of their ways and that Google is their friend in finding, and arranging fitting of, proper charging points.

 

[Steepndeep]

Although there are some legitimate warnings in the responses to the original question I think you are overdoing it a bit. First there are 2 ways to charge the car, either with normal grid supplied AC or with special chargers through DC. For DC there are I belive four standards, ChadeMo (Japan), SuperCharger (Tesla), A new European and another American supported by GM. The main difference between AC an DC is that with AC the inbuilt charger in the car charges the batteries but with DC the charging management is done by the box you hook up the car to.

Now in theory you could just connect a standard AC circuit to the car and it would charge but the car industry has implemented 2 security meassurements making this impossible. They are implemented in the Box attached to the cable you got with the car. First there is a relay in the box and 2 low power signalling cables in the connetcor to the car. If you remember your parents warning of sticking your fingers into a wall socket and you could get hurt, that is what the relay and signalling cables are for. When the supplied cable is attached to a wall socket there is NO AC voltage in the connector to the car. When the cable is connected to the car the box detects this and ALSO signals back to the car the max Amp that the car can draw. In Mitsucase 10A. Then the relay in the box switches power on.

There are since long existing connector standards for both single phase AC and 3-phase AC called CEE standard. The blue connector you see is CEE dingle phase 16 Amp. Red connectors are 3-phase and vary in size up to I believe 64 Amp or even more. In fact most Eu Camping places uses the blue CEE connector. Having an adapter cable converting the 16A blue connector to fit your supplied charger cable with the box on it is not botching anything. It is perfectly normal. You will still get only 10Amp to the car though as the box on your cable only can signal this. There are other cables were you can adjust this so you could get 16A to the car. But you do need a cable with the said charger "box" built in.

To "simplify" the AC charging there are several companies out there having "charger" stations where the Relay and signalling circuitry is inbuilt in the "charger" (I would rather call it Power Supply for charging an EV, as it is ONLY power being supplied). And in this case you need the appropriate cable, now only supplying the AC phases and the signalling cables.

The ChadeMo and Tesla SupperCharger are REAL chargers whiich actually charges the battery independantly from the car using DC. Thats why it goes much faster.

 

[jaapv]

As I said above, this is a 'bodge'

I really hope this is a private facility and not one open for public use, because Jaapv is correct, the lead supplied with the car is designed for plugging into a standard 13amp plug, not a 16 or 32amp commercial outlet.

When I bought my 7m lead, I got a 32amp one as a future proofing investment in case there is an upgrade during my tenure of the car and the higher power can be used.

Jaapv is also correct in that the car and charging point need to talk to each other in order for safe, efficient charging to take place. This requires the charging point to be a proper vehicle charging station.

The OP (noypi) has said this is in Stevenage (the next town from my office) and I really do hope that someone can be made to realise the error of their ways and that Google is their friend in finding, and arranging fitting of, proper charging points.

Outside the UK all standard outlets are 16A.
Anyway, Li-Ion batteries need electronic controls for safe charging. If they are just connected to a power source at best they will be damaged, at worst they will catch fire. Both the car and the charging station/box provide that control together. Remove one of the components and you will have created an unsafe situation.