CHAdeMO Questions

[PV1]

KiEV, did you ever figure out the problem with quick charging? I did some research and I agree that the polarity seems correct. It also doesn't seem that there is a short (you'd have known as soon as the contractors closed). I wonder what the issue could be.

 

[kiev]

Never did Tim, i'm still interested to figure it out but sidetracked by other projects right now.

Go Pens--it's 3rd period of stanley cup game 6 and they are up by a goal...fingers crossed.

 

[Lic]

Interesting article about chademo on our cars
http://publications.lib.chalmers.se/records/fulltext/159633.pdf

 

[Phximiev]

Anyone see the negative i-Miev comment posted on the Nissan Facebook channel by Aaron Castro? Or know her?

https://www.facebook.com/NissanElectric/?ref=ts&fref=

I've never heard of the Chademo charger in the 'Miev causing this kind of problem.

Wonder if she needs to be reached out to?

 

[kiev]

Here's the comment under a photo of some Leafs plugged in to a Nissan dcqc,
q/
Aaron Casto: So jealous!! Made the mistake of buying a miev and the chademo makes the car shut down and have to be towed every time! Brand new car! Mitsubishi management says there is nothing they can do to fix it. Buy a leaf!! I wish I would have."
/q

i've only tried chademo several times, at a local Eaton unit in town, and my car causes that Eaton to throw the main breaker for the 3-phase supply...? don't you know the leaf owners were hating me for the downtime until the service tech could be bothered to go reset the breaker...

The miev factory service manual has little to nothing to say about dcqc, or repairing it. Of course that is true about the pack too.

 

[JoeS]

I moved the last two posts into this more on-topic thread.

I personally haven't had any issues using nrgEVgo or ChargePoint or Blink or Nissan CHAdeMO chargers.
I understand Eaton is getting out of the business. ref: http://myimiev.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=2806

The RBS Light Alarm thread issue described there is still unresolved. Red herring?

 

[PV1]

I still haven't figured out KiEV's issue. Does the breaker trip during the safety tests, or after the tests when the car engages the contactors to start charging?

For both KiEV's and the poster on Nissan's facebook page, there has to be something mis-wired or a short somewhere. Replacing one of three components should solve either problem, and those would be the battery pack, EV-ECU, or the QC port and harness itself. If the data wires on the harness are bad/shorted, that could cause the car not to restart. Shorted power cables would cause the quick charger to fault/trip the breakers, so would reverse polarity within the pack (though that would do it after the safety checks).

The only QC issues I've had to date were CAN errors, some alarming pops, and one unit had a shorted power module, and these were all on a pair of Signet units (which through a series of changes and firmware updates, have mostly been resolved). Nothing was the fault of the car, though.

 

[wmcbrine]

The only issues I've had with CHAdeMO were that weird smell the first time, and struggling with the old-style connectors. (Happily, EVgo is replacing all of theirs with the easy push-in connectors.) I don't use it that much, although I did twice in one day during Drive Electric Week.

 

[Phximiev]

Here's the comment under a photo of some Leafs plugged in to a Nissan dcqc,
q/
Aaron Casto: So jealous!! Made the mistake of buying a miev and the chademo makes the car shut down and have to be towed every time! Brand new car! Mitsubishi management says there is nothing they can do to fix it. Buy a leaf!! I wish I would have."
/q

i've only tried chademo several times, at a local Eaton unit in town, and my car causes that Eaton to throw the main breaker for the 3-phase supply...? don't you know the leaf owners were hating me for the downtime until the service tech could be bothered to go reset the breaker...

The miev factory service manual has little to nothing to say about dcqc, or repairing it. Of course that is true about the pack too.

I made contact with Aaron via Messenger about the i-Miev problem. Here is the problem per Aaron:

"I have an exact definition of what problem is from Mitsubishi R&D it was a change on the 2016 models called a contact test. All new chargers also have this test and they don't work with the miev now. Regional manager says there is nothing he can do but if I can find old chademo chargers without this they will work. Only new chargers around here and most places so this is useless to me. He says there is no issue with the car I just can't use it with any modern chargers. Very irritating".

This doesn't make any sense to me and is the first time that I have heard of such a problem. Has anyone else had this problem?

And how can we help?

 

[JoeS]

Phximiev, thank you for following up. The description as written is confusing, so let's see if we can parse it:

Does it say that the 2016 i-MiEV performs a 'contact test' on the charger?

Does it say that the new charger performs a 'contact test' on the car?

Does it say that the new charger will or will not work with a pre-2016 i-MiEV?

Does it say that the new charger will or will not work with a 2016 i-MiEV?

I think it says that an old charger will still work with a 2016 i-MiEV(?)

As a sample of one, my old (2012) i-MiEV works just fine with a brand-new (2016) ChargePoint CHAdeMO charger.

Anyone with a 2016 i-MiEV have any CHAdeMO issues?

 

[kiev]

This is a good example of the problems with feature bloat and frequent useless software 'updates' that out-date previous hardware or are with previous versions e.g. microsloft and apple

It sounds to me that they have added another safety test in the EVSE, in addition to checking for ground faults and isolation, to check the resistance of the main contactors on the vehicle. If Mitsubishi didn't update their software to recognize this contactor test protocol, then it won't respond as expected by the Chademo station, and the station won't send the charge.

e.g. Apple won't let some apps run thru my wireless home router because it has upgraded their ios to only accept a newer wi-fi version that uses WPA2 security. WPA has been working fine, never a security threat. This might be useful for a big company but not for home use--there is no threat at home of someone stealing wi-fi when you use a passkey and MAC address filtering.

 

[jray3]

Interesting issue, hope it ain't so. I'm a heavy CHAdeMO user, and have never had a charging fault ascribed to the car. Just today an EVGO DCFC went offline after a successful handshake due to "over current fault", costing me an extra 30 minute delay (as I had already gone inside for breakfast). Turns out this had been happening for at least 24 hrs (to LEAFS) without EVGO taking the station offline to await repair.
The other EVGO DCFC on that site worked fine.

 

[JoeS]

I recently noticed that EVRUS http://www.evrus.net is a relatively new player around here with CHAdeMO charging stations by hotels on major routes, so I applied for a charging card with them.

Guess what: my card application was rejected and they refunded my PayPal $25!

Reason: "Because the i-MiEV was discontinued, its software has not been upgraded to be compatible with our EV Express charging stations."

I called them asking for a more detailed explanation, and they promised to have someone from their tech department call me. Evidently they had an i-MiEV user who was unable to use their stations and asked for his money back. They couldn't tell me what vintage that i-MiEV was. Perhaps this is a problem with 2016 i-MiEVs... or perhaps with all BUT the 2016? "Contact test" problem described here?: http://myimiev.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=2481&start=20#p30761

Anyone with a 2016 i-MiEV having trouble using CHAdeMO?

Will post when I hear back,

 

[wmcbrine]

Goofy. I haven't had a problem with my 2012, with at least four different models of CHAdeMO chargers .

Edit: Ooh, I found this statement on the EVrus web site:

"The EV Express 25 kW is equipped with a CHADeMo connector, which is common for Nissan Leaf, Kia EV Soul, Mitsubishi i-MiEV, Toyota RAV4 EV and also compatible with Tesla Model S (with a CHADeMo adapter)"

 

[MattT]

Has anybody had a CHAdeMO charge affect their overall range?

I used a public level 3 'rapid' CHAdeMO charger yesterday for the first time with my 2010 I-MiEV. The network provider reckons it'll take an I-MiEV from empty to 80% charge in 15 minutes (see How long will it take to charge my car?).

When I plugged it in it said 25% charge so I figured I'd be there 10 minutes tops. However, it took 25 minutes to get me to 57% charge. I'm hoping this delay might be because I told it to do a 100% charge rather than an 80% charge (and will confirm this at another charger on the weekend).

I charged it to full overnight at home and when I turned it on this morning it was reporting 93km range, up from 80km. I thought this might be a glitch and the predicterometer would quickly drop, but it held steady, showing 80km after an 18km trip.

 

[jray3]

That is a very unusual fast charging session. On a 50 kW station my slowest ever time was 23 minutes from very low state of charge to 80% and that was in hot weather with the air conditioner compressor running nearly nonstop. There are some lower power CHAdeMO units around here, for instance today it took me 22 minutes to get from approx 30% to 75% on a 25KW station.
Did you hear your air conditioner cycle up and down during the fast charge?

 

[sandange]

Just Curious , what was the ambient temperature at the time of charge
and what driving speed/style did you do just prior to connecting the fast charger?

 

[MattT]

It was about 12oC / 54oF - middle of the day. I generally keep the car in B mode. It had been parked for 4 hours, after which I drove about 6km / 4 miles to the charger, mostly at 60-70kmh / 40-45mph over level ground in light traffic. I'm a pretty conservative driver so tend to go easy on the accelerator and I let regen braking do most of my slowing down.

The air con whirred when I first plugged the connector in but was pretty much silent after that, same as when I plug in at home.

When I started the car up again it had suddenly lost the extra 13-odd km of range - that is, it was showing 80km when I turned it off, then dropped to 67km when I turned it on again about two hours later. This morning it was showing 97km after an overnight charge.

I get that the range estimator uses a wobbly algorithm and what really matters is actual range. I guess I'm just wondering why (a) why that algorithm is suddenly giving very different results when I haven't changed my driving style and (b) why the charge took so long. I should be able to answer the second question this weekend when I drain the car and then try a different CHAdeMO charger closer to home.

At the moment the car has more than enough range to get me to work and home again (about a 35km round trip, though this leaves me with half my bars and a predicted range of another 50km). However, once a week I may need to do a trip closer to 72km - home, first office, second office, first office office, home). That's a little too close to the predicted range for comfort, but there's a CHAdeMO charger close to the second office. If I can hit that for a 15 minute charge in the middle of the day it'll be fine, but if it's going to take half an hour for an extra 35% then that's not really going to work out, and I'll be back to using the ICE car for that day.

EDIT: this probably needs a chronology:

- car gets charged overnight, usually shows low-80km range in the morning, I do a 35km round trip, I have half my bars left and a remaining range of 40-50km

- used CHAdeMO charger for the first time after driving to work; took 25 mins to go from 25% to 57%; shrugged, drove back to the office then home

- started up the next day - 93km range instead of low 80s. Still showing 80km after an 18km trip (had to go by school on the way to work). Made my first post above.

- got back in the car that afternoon expecting it to still show 80km - nope, 67km despite not having gone anywhere. Charged up overnight as usual.

- this morning - estimated range 97km.

 

[JoeS]

MattT, thanks for your numbers.

Your RR vs. Fuel Gauge intermediate numbers are reasonable, as I consider 50km at the halfway point to be ok.

Fully fully charged RR = 100km is about par, as we're not dealing with a new car nor hypermiling. Do you have many hills that you traverse?

Can't explain why the RR changes while the car is just sitting there. I'll start paying attention to mine to see if it also does that.

My take on your CHAdeMO is that it is a wimpy one - perhaps only about 25kW?

You might consider getting CaniOn and EVBatMon apps and a good OBDII interface and see what they show as far as the state of health of your traction pack.

 

[MattT]

Thanks JoeS. I don't think I'm actually getting 50km out of that second half of the charge - the first half is gone in 35-40km and I suspect the second would be too. I'm ok with that given most of my driving is 80-100km/h with little stopping or slowing down. It should get better in warmer weather too.

Went to another CHAdeMO charger today. According to the sign on the back, it's putting out 50kW.

I plugged in with three bars remaining, 14km predicted range, and the charger reported a 23% charge. Charge results were:

2 mins - 28% - 0.5 kWh
8 mins - 37% - 1.8 kWh - 4 bars
10 mins - 40% - 2.2 kWh - 5 bars
12 mins - 42% - 2.6 kWh - 6 bars
14 mins - 44% - 2.8 kWh - 6 bars
15 mins - 45% - 2.9kWh - 7 bars - predicated range 39km

Again, not what I was expecting, and not what the network provider reckons the charger can do.

After 5.5km of 80km/h driving I was back to 5 bars, predicted range 27km. Another 3km of driving I was still at 5 bars, 24km predicted range.

I've got an ODB II thingy coming soon for evBatMon - tracking reckons it arrived in Aus 10 days ago, no idea what's happened to it. Will be interesting to see what it says.