Leaf newbie with L1 cable question

[KD1SQ]

I started playing with my 2016 Leaf just today. Thus far I am very impressed by it. I have a question - it came with a L1 charging cable in its chichi little Nissan carrying bag. I've plugged it in, the Leaf is charging, little blue light a-flicker and sloooowly incrementing. This suggests all is well at this point.

One thing I did note is that the cable is an absolutely straight cable - no little rectangular box with LEDs anywhere along its length. Just the household plug at one end, the J connector at the other.

So, the question is - what do I have here? Is it some hacked up charging cable or some undesirable mutant item?

If this is an item that needs to be sprinkled with Holy Water and dumped quickly, can anyone suggest a good quality replacement?

TIA

 

[cornbinder89]

Not sure what you have but not original. If it were I, I'd look for something better. You may find it sets a code, when the OBC tries to shut down at the end of the charge.

 

[cwerdna]

Can you put up a pic? I suspect it might not implement various safety features that EVSEs should have (e.g. long portion of cable should NOT be energized when the car's not charging/pulling power). I remember seeing some of those in early Leaf days and that was pointed out.

 

[jjeff]

Yes I'm not sure what you have, every EVSE I've seen has some sort of box between the wall plug and the J1772 connector, no matter how small. Case in point the OEM BMW EVSE has a very small box, not much bigger than a wall wort, basically built into the plug but it still has that. The BMW EVSE(of which I have one) is very nice and compact but still more than just a regular plug and the J1772 end.

 

[cwerdna]

Yes I'm not sure what you have, every EVSE I've seen has some sort of box between the wall plug and the J1772 connector, no matter how small. Case in point the OEM BMW EVSE has a very small box, not much bigger than a wall wort, basically built into the plug but it still has that. The BMW EVSE(of which I have one) is very nice and compact but still more than just a regular plug and the J1772 end.

I took me awhile, but I finally found what I was referring to that is unsafe and non-compliant: https://mynissanleaf.com/threads/why-isnt-the-evse-built-into-the-car.21726/#post-457663.

Some of the pages that point to it are dead but here are some copies:
https://web.archive.org/web/20150506062913/http://www.charge-amps.com/spark
https://web.archive.org/web/20121009232401/http://charge-amps.com/um-evse
https://web.archive.org/web/2012101...com/Content/Images/UM-EVSE/Usermanual_3.2.pdf

 

[nlspace]

Some of the very early spec J1772 and IEC 62196 charging cables appeared to be just a "plain" cable with no leds or box, but the resistor circuits for the Control and Proximity functions were built into the handle. Wikipedia has a good overview and history of these standards.