Mitsubishi Imiev Electric Vehicle Forum

I've wondered about that, and I hope it will prove feasible. Level 3 is moving some hellacious current and the control interface for CCS looks nothing like CHAdeMO, so the adapter, should one be available, would have to be both hefty and smart. To me that sounds like $$$, but probably nothing like retro-fitting a L2-only EV to support L3 charging.

If these issues can be addressed and give us a safe, practical device for a couple hundred bucks, that would be a major win. Just as good would be a complete retrofit to replace the CHAdeMO port in the car with SAE CCS - that would be worth more than the adapter to me (much less hassle to use), but hopefully still doable in the same price range (something under $500). That's probably something I wouldn't undertake unless/until I needed it and there was some significant CCS charging infrastructure around me, though obviously, the lower the price, the more readily I'd do it.

I believe after seeing in the SAE-CCS 3 stage charger plug that this will become the standard. The L3 DC fast charge is simpler that the Japanees standard. As far as adaptors for DC fast charging, well that may work, but is a pain. I think Tesla should adapt the standard. Seem wired that they do not. I guess they are in their own little world like Apple is. LOL. That is OK as long as I can charge from my 120 or 240 V outlets.

I thought I made a mistake by not getting the "fast charge " feature in our MiEV, but after I realized there are NO fast charge stations in the greater Denver area I said to myself "gee had I bought that extra feature I would not have even been able to use it for maybe another year or two if that" because it will take at least 2 years or more to install fast charge stations and besides I think once the SAE-CCS 3 charge units catch on the current Asian fast charge will slowly disappear. As hoers have said , we will see who it all works out. I am good for now with the 120V charger that comes with the car and for now plugging in at other 240V stations when I need that "ester Boost" for a charge.

In fact speaking about charging, I also thought I would have to run out and buy a Level 2, 240V charging station ($700-$100 plus installation $200-500), but we are coming to find out we drive an average of 45 miles when we use the EV and that it charges up fine over night. We still may get a L3 charger, but are in no hurry as we have to run a 240V line into our garage that only has 120V AC.

We will look at trade in maybe in 3-5 years or just change out the battery pack in 5 years. The fast charge to me would come in if we attempted to drive to Idaho to see our son. But it will be at least 5-10 years before there are that many fast charge stations to be able to travel those type of distances. I also feel that if you where constantly fast charging your battery bank that you would use up its life. There is no such thing as a free lunch, but there is a such thing as charging with free electrons (i.e.. Charging from a solar electric array).

I agree. It worked for Walgreens. I never shop there until I plugged into their L2 charging station (actually they did not install it, they just gave a charging company the space to put their chargers. I went o dinner and when I came back I bought $50 of stuff I needed and maybe I used $.50 worth of electricity form the charger. A win win for both of us, in fact Walgreens made out like a bandit, but they got what they wanted and I got what I wanted. WIN WIN! That is the way the world needs to work more. Now if all Walgreens had solar array s on them...

I do not see the need for charging for L2 charging stations, fats charging stations maybe, but L1 and L2 never. L1 are just to slow unless you are staying over night somewhere then hotels would be the logical places for them.

The Tesla is a completely different car - What 'works' for fast charging a 50Kw battery in a 300 hp car would have little application for our miniscule 16 Kw packs. Thank heavens whatever becomes 'standard' for them won't apply to us

I still believe that if you bought this car intending to use it for longer trips by fast charging the battery pack, you're barking up the wrong tree. I'm sure there may be a few folks who drive an i as their only car, but if I could only have one car and wanted an EV, it would definitely be a Chevy Volt - They were designed for that type of usage

Level 1 charging does about 90% of what we need also. If you happen to have two 120 volt outlets in your garage which are fed by different breakers, you can still do Level 2 charging without running a dedicated wire. Investigate the 'Quick 220' box. http://www.quick220.com/220_catalog.htm

No doubt

Hey Guys,
Look at this EV 500 , a race ? or test over 500 miles in one day with a big fast charger. would be interesting to get data from them on battery temp and how capacity changed over the day due to fast charging.

If this was possible without damage, my trip of 385 Km each way would be easy. Would change my $ 270 NZ fuel bill to only $ 45 even if using a diesel generator.

The sums I have done here, based on the total cost of the car, with free power, comparing to a car that does 10 km to the litre, pretty much makes the car will only pay for itself, assuming no residual value after five years due to perhaps being outdated...indicate about 200 km per day needed to travel to be the same as if we brought a similar but petrol car and went the distance in fuel cost of the cost of the car.

Allowing a residual of $ 25, 000 out of the $ 51, 000 for the car, NZ $, the per day travel needed works out at 117 or so Km per day.

I am really keen on the car, I can't yet seem to find a way to make it pay for itself in fuel saving compared to a similar sized petrol car.

I could get a mail run and do higher miles ! maybe. As an eco taxi, and with a charging place for waiting for fares it would work ! Most fares here would only be 20 km tops.

Maybe a Hotel Shuttle from the Airport ?. Find an eco Hotel that has solar panels ?.

I am contacting the realpower people to see how much the charger is !




Edit: I forgot the link for the race....http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDEb09xgW2w

or search real power 500 imiev

SAE Finalizes New Electric Car Fast Charging “Combo Connector”
http://www.greencarreports.com/news/107 ... -connector

That didn't take long - Finally they've done something which actually makes sense

"The new standard also allows for backward compatibility with existing level 2 charging stations.

In fact, the top half of the new combo connector is identical to existing level 2 charging sockets, allowing car fitted with it to charge at level 2, 240-volts when a rapid charging socket is not available."

A single charge port (instead of two different doors as we have now) and an all new plug which is still compatible with cars which cannot use quick charging at all - One plug hanging on charging cables all over town which does it all, and on new cars with Quick Charge capablilities as well as older cars which only have J-1772 L2 capablilities. The entire concept makes so much sense it's just plain scary

Our extra door, along with it's $700 CHAdeMO port is already a white elephant - Sure glad Mitsu didn't stick us all with the outdated CHAdeMO port . . . . which was the original topic of this thread

Don

This "new" SAE standard is not news, and they've taken plenty long - this was announced a year ago with much fanfare in Germany, some may recall; indeed, this was pointed out in my original post opening this thread. And to think, just one short year later, we're already getting to the "we've agreed to a standard" part - my head's sure spinning.

Again as previously noted, I do think the J-1772-CCS design is a good one; now all that's missing are any chargers or cars that use it. And when they first arrive, I'm not sure I'd jump to buy a new Chevy SparkEV (the first vehicle planned to use J-1772-CCS). Theory is great, but engineering is about delivering solutions to a messy, complicated, and sometimes unpredictable world, and I'm pretty sure I don't want to be the case study that teaches the engineers some unexpected lessons about their hot new 100kW charger.

Meanwhile, insulting CHAdeMO as a "white elephant" doesn't change the fact that it's the only non-proprietary fast DC charging system that's been delivered, nor that the capacity for emergency quick charging has real value. I have little trouble imagining scenarios where recovering range at a 12 mi/hr rate might not quite cut it - do you? I'm pretty sure I won't die for the lack of quick-charging, but it could definitely make the difference between a mildly annoying afternoon and a ruined weekend. I remain mystified as to why this pretty sensible precaution would be the subject of skepticism bordering on hostility.

What's 'missing' for almost all of we early adopters is the ability to quick charge anywhere, using any sort of plug - Unless you live in certain parts of Washington or California the odds on you running across a quick charge plug are pretty slim, which is what struck me when you first penned this thread - Make everyone pay another $700 for a CHAdeMO socket when in all likelyhood, their car will never see anything to plug it into? . . . . and then a year or two later they find out they'll never ever get to use it because the standard has changed? That would make everyone feel . . . . fleeced. I haven't read every thread here, but I can't recall reading about anyone here ever using a Quick Charge station

I understand the value of the ability to quick charge the car (for some users) and if I was a car salesman trying to sell a car which came so equipped, I'd be pushing the benefits of that $700 accessory really hard because how else are you going to make someone think paying that money is a good idea? But, most of us bought the car because it fit our needs recharging it only in our garages, not because of promises that one day we could use it differently if and when public charging became available - That may take many years and that fact is what makes it easier to sell Chevy Volts and PNP's over true EV's. If we're ever going to sell many pure EV's we've either got to have the charging infrastructure already deployed *or* we've got to make people see the car can stand on it's own, which it can do for many users, depending on how far they need to go. We're tickled with what it can do and if one day there happens to be a public L2 cord somewhere, all the better, but even if it's never plugged in anywhere but our garage, it was still a great buy . . . . assuming I get the 100K from the original battery

I also understand your idea that if it was standard on every car, the customer wouldn't even know he/she has just shelled out a bunch of money for something they'll never use because the doillar figure would no longer even show up on the car's sticker. Maybe if it was original equipment on every Mitsu/Nissan it would help make CHAdeMO the standard?

For me, it's still a Betamax/VHS argument and back then most consumers also had a third option - Not to buy anything until they knew which tapes would be available and that's what most of the world did. For me, unless there was a CHAdeMO plug hanging on a cord somewhere within the range of my car the day I bought it, the $700 was a deal breaker, plain and simple and even then if I had the option, I would have passed - I just think repeated use would shorten the battery life and how long my battery pack lasts could mean buying this car was a mistake . . . . or not - If I one day have to shell out even $5K to have it replaced, that will make a recalculation of my overall 'fuel mileage' a sickening thing to consider

When I bought my car in May, the dealer had 4 of them. Two had the option and two didn't. The two without sold within 2 weeks and the other two are still sitting there. Pretty sure we'll never see a CHAdeMO quick charger in south Mississippi in our lifetimes and evidently the other prospective customers down here agree. Other than the two local Nissan dealerships, we still don't have a single public L2 charging cord anywhere . . . . our lone Mitsubishi dealership got 3 Level 2 charging stations when he got the 4 cars and they are still in their shipping boxes - None have been installed

I understand CHAdeMO is/was a good idea for the few owners who have such facilities within their driving range and who don't have to pay $5 to get $1.50 worth of electricity, but for the rest of us I feel really blessed that we weren't forced to buy a socket which it seems will indeed become a white elephant. I think if Mitsu had put one on every car (and upped the price of the car by even a couple hundred) it would have been a monumental mistake and I think they knew it when they designed the car.

Since you have an ES, you obviously paid extra for yours - Have you ever used it?

Don

Last things first - no, I haven't used it, and not too sure I ever will. However, Albuquerque and Santa Fe are exactly the right distance apart for CHAdeMO to be useful, and both cities are intermittently green/techie when fashionable, so it's a real possibility (and yes, I'll grant, likely more real than in south MS) - unless, of course, the American mfrs. are successful in convincing authorities to boycott CHAdeMO and limit any L3 service plazas to J-1772-CCS. I don't think that very likely in New Mexico, but we'll see. In the end, I felt I'd regret having a use for L3 and not having it, more than I would regret buying it and never using it. To each their own.

As to cost, the "couple hundred" estimate is probably closer to the truth, and in the context of these cars' cost I don't see how that's a "monumental" anything, much less a mistake. The CHAdeMO hardware would add nothing like $700 worth of cost if installed on every car - don't forget, there's no internal charger, all the power management's in the CHAdeMO station, with primitive smarts on each side coordinating the current flow the charger slams at your battery (kind of the reverse of what goes on between the internal charger and the external L1/L2 EVSE).

I certainly don't expect that bundling CHAdeMO in all Japanese EVs would make it the U.S. standard, but it would hugely increase the odds of it being a supported standard during the lifetime of EVs now being purchased. Given the penetration of CHAdeMO in Japan, I'm not sure how soon they'll jump on the CCS bandwagon, especially since the Americans and Europeans did not agree on a standard plug (or to put it more charitably, agreed on two standard plugs).

Politics and competitive shenanigans aside, from a consumer perspective, CHAdeMO and J-1772-CCS are not like VHS and Beta (who wasted years on a mutually destructive "less than zero sum" game), because they're not opposed in the same way. CHAdeMO is what's available now, and CCS is (I think/hope) what we're going to do eventually. But I expect the Japanese to have the majority of BEVs on U.S. roads through at least 2014; if they were all CHAdeMO, that would help promote construction of L3 charging facilities, and those would in turn support CCS, building out infrastructure that would help all EVs. If most Japanese BEVs don't have CHAdeMO, this will limit the L3 build-out to the detriment of all concerned, and if that build-out's late enough, it could push CHAdeMO out of the U.S. before its time. This is why I'd encourage both Nissan and Mitsubishi to either 1) make CHAdeMO standard (or in Nissan's case at least make it available on the SV base trim as Mitsubishi has), or 2) stop offering CHAdeMO at all, since their lack of support makes it likely it won't be useful.

I've said it before, though perhaps not clearly enough - I absolutely agree that routine L3 charging is a bad idea, no matter what Mitsubishi says (and that does seem to vary depending on where you look for the answer). If that's the only way an EV can meet your overall transportation needs, then wait for better tech or buy something more suitable (e.g., Volt or C-MAX Energi). Given the sketchy economics, provisioning L3 power stations is a policy matter, one component of a general program of EV promotion if that's what a region wants to accomplish (as SoCal most definitely does). A sparse but well-planned network of L3 chargers could greatly increase the number of households that could get by with an EV as their only car, not because they'd facilitate longer commutes, but because they'd support infrequent day trips for which it would be impractical to arrange a rental. But to be very clear, for my own purposes, while I did want L3 capability as a CYA, I purchased my i-MiEV on the assumption that I would never charge it anywhere but my garage.