AeroVironment has an interesting new charging product

It's called the Home Charge Appliance.

Basically it requires no installation because it trickle charges a battery from 110v and makes energy available at 220v or level 2 anytime you want while trickle charging at lower rates.

Here is a link to a spec sheet.
Home Charge Appliance PDF

Yes, we discussed this way back in July. See this summary by garygid. The PDF you are pointing to here is clearly updated from what we were looking at then, but it still doesn't answer the key questions Gary raised:

• How heavy is this thing, anyway?
• How much is it going to cost?
• When will it be available?

If it really can do a full charge in 8 hours (unlike what Gary was expecting) then it would seem that it would have to have a battery about as big as the one in the LEAF. If so, it sounds like we might be talking about a 400 to 600 pound monster with an $8K to $12K price tag.

I can't imagine many sales for something like that, nor for a smaller unit that can supply only a fraction of what the LEAF needs, so my answer to the third question is, "probably a concept that will never come to market." Of course I could be wrong.

Ray

Nice concept. I'm waiting for them to come up with a 10-20 mile "electric can" that you can put in your trunk that you can plug in "just in case". Especially 5-8 years down the line when we are getting some aging of the battery.

It does not say the internal battery capacity. I can't imagine a situation where that thing was actually beneficial.

smkettner said:

It does not say the internal battery capacity. I can't imagine a situation where that thing was actually beneficial.

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Yes, you are correct- error Based on the size this thing seems pretty much useless.

I can see a use for this in a "Time of Use" charging scenario.

If the power company offers penny rates during midnight to 4 am, you can't get your car fully charged during those hours.

Let this box suck up juice every night from midnight to 4, keeping itself topped off.

On the days when you need a booster charge, at say 3pm to run and get the kids from soccer and an extra errand, you can use this box instead of the premium priced electricity at those hours.

I'd also say here in Florida where an unplanned power outage can render the car "troubled" having a spare charge laying around to get you to work the next day while the crews restore power would also be useful.

Wouldn't the battery to battery efficiency be pretty low?

Sounds like something that would be more useful for people with solar PV systems but are not home most of the day; charge stationary batteries with excess solar power, dump it into the car at night. The difference between peak and off-peak hours would have to be quite large to be worth it for that application.

As for efficiency, probably ~50% of the energy you take from the wall ultimately makes it into your car. 80% wall to battery, 80% back to AC, 80% in the in-car charger to the traction battery. Probably pessimistic but that's a good guestimate IMHO.
=Smidge=

I could almost see having a storage battery if the situation was needed. But I would be inclined to buy a stack of L-16 2v batteries to drive an off the shelf 24 or 48 volt inverter rather than this AV product.
A generator would do fine in an extended power outage.

Smidge204 said:

Sounds like something that would be more useful for people with solar PV systems but are not home most of the day; charge stationary batteries with excess solar power, dump it into the car at night.

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I don't think so. Unless you have something that weighs a quarter ton (literally) you can't fill up the car with it. The best you could do would be, as driveleaf suggests, give the car a few miles boost if you need it in the middle of the day. And your PV system can handle that without the battery-to-battery loss. It depends on your utility rate structures, but if you can sell juice to the utility at a high rate during the day, and buy it back cheaply at night, as we can in northern California, that is a much better way to go. Think of it as the electric power equivalent of storing your data "in the cloud".

All I need is another full set of batteries to purchase, degrade and replace.....

That's the whole idea in my thoughts. When the Leaf battery ages to 80% capacity, replace it and use the old one as the storage for your house / leaf power. It could even be a DC fast charge. Not full bore like a 408V commercial unit but 20 ~ 30 amps so both packs live longer.

bowthom said:

That's the whole idea in my thoughts. When the Leaf battery ages to 80% capacity, replace it and use the old one as the storage for your house / leaf power. It could even be a DC fast charge. Not full bore like a 408V commercial unit but 20 ~ 30 amps so both packs live longer.

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Interesting idea - if down the line you get your batteries replaced, something like this would motivate Nissan to give you a good refund on the batteries you are returning, or risk not getting them back. When the time comes to replace the batteries - I think dealers are now required by law to give you the replaced parts if you request them (a way for the consumer to be sure the dealer isn't just replacing perfectly good parts). Wonder is Nissan has thought this far down the road....

This would be great for electric dirt bikes such as the Zero MX. Assuming to guys can lift it, then it can go in the back of the truck with the bike. I have been looking in to an electric dirt bike but run into issues when I need to recharge in the desert. Running a generator to charge seems counter intuitive. This would be great.

I could see this being setup at your work location if they only have 120 volt so you could get a full 240 volt charge at work in an 8 hour day.