Where should the Charging Port be ?

[Drnel]

It's perfect.

I wish there were two or four charging ports on the car to charge faster.

 

[jwatte]

I wish there were two or four charging ports on the car to charge faster.

At 240 V, you get 7.7 kW charging, meaning it draws about 33 amps. Are you suggesting you get a second circuit with another 33 amps for 15 kW total charging? It might be easier to wish for an 80 amp 240 volt charging option...

Did you get the DC charge option? If so, you can also get a L3 charger, for plenty of fast charge.
It does require a three-phase service connection, and a pretty expensive high-capacity DC charger installation, though.
And it wears out the batteries much faster, too...

 

[Drnel]

I almost bought a L3 but I heard it only charges to 80% and long term use is bad for battery life. I stll may get one.

I have 16KVa solar system. Sunpower with 2 8KVa sma inverters.

 

[ENIAC]

Great points, especially with regards to parallel parking. If the charging port were located on the drivers side, you would have to step out into traffic to plug in. Is the Focus EV design cast in stone at this point, or can Ford fix this flaw prior to launch? Perhaps the NTSB should step up and set the standard for the location of the charging port.

Having the port in the front:
saves space by keeping parking spot widths narrower;
avoids damage by people walking between cars hitting the plug;
avoids damage from a car pulling in next to you hitting the plug;
allows charging when parallel parked.

How often do you charge vs. having a front end collision?

(I will be driving very carefully today! :lol

 

[TomT]

Really? From whom and for how much? Pray tell why you would need one at home?

I almost bought a L3 but I heard it only charges to 80% and long term use is bad for battery life. I stll may get one.

 

[Herm]

Inductive charging seems cool and all, but it is lossier than copper wiring, and you might also start worrying about actual magnetism issues (de-magging credit cards? etc).

Not nessesarily, there is a proposed system that has about the same losses.. it bypasses the car's built in charger with a more efficient unit.. compensating for the losses. Credit cards are bad for you anyways.

 

[Herm]

Really? From whom and for how much? Pray tell why you would need one at home?

Need it?.. because you want it?.. The guy from Manzanita is proposing a Chademo adapter for his 10kw DC charger, it would use the L3 port but it would charge at a 12kw rate, so about 2 hours to full charge. Cost probably around $4.5k, guessing.

http://www.manzanitamicro.com/component/content/article/42-info/61-pfc50detail

here is a 3 phase 54kw charger:

http://www.manzanitamicro.com/products?page=shop.product_details&flypage=flypage.tpl&product_id=59&category_id=14

 

[planet4ever]

I almost bought a L3 but I heard it only charges to 80% and long term use is bad for battery life. I stll may get one.

You can get your car initially equipped with a Quick Charge port (often called, though not correctly, L3) but you can't add one later. However, that is just the connector on the car. The biggest part of Quick Charge is the external charger to connect to that port, and you are not going to have one of those in your garage. They cost $15,000 and up and are (at least usually) driven by 3-phase power, which you are extremely unlikely to have in your home. At the moment there may be two of them in working condition in the United States, though a lot more are "supposed" to be coming.

As for what you heard, it appears that if you start below 50% it does cut off at 80%, but you can restart it to charge the last 20%. It's not clear whether this behavior is controlled by the car or the external charger, since the Owner's Manual says nothing about it. Nissan says using Quick Charge more than once a day could be bad for battery life.

Ray

 

[tps]

I vote for front-mounted charge ports, which the LEAF currently has. My guess is that many EV charge points will be pull-in parking slots, and the front-mounted port keeps the cable out of the way of foot traffic. (This assumes that you do what I have done, and leave all of the cable but what you need neatly rolled up and hanging from the charger's cable hanger.)

 

[Deleted member 770]

If there were a way to connect a genset trailer to the charge port to charge while driving long distances, then I'd argue that the most appropriate place would be in the center rear of the vehicle (similar to many '70's vintage American ICE cars). But as many have pointed out that this isn't an option, I suppose the current location is the next best thing.

 

[Yodrak]

Front center or rear center. Like Spies, I remember when it was common to put the gas filler behind the rear license plate.

Since most people pull frontwards into their garage or public parking spaces, I guess that narrows it down to front center. For public charging, side mount is awkward having the cable between cars.

 

[Yodrak]

GM did that, but without the need to pull a trailer.

If there were a way to connect a genset trailer to the charge port to charge while driving long distances,

 

[gbarry42]

GM did that, but without the need to pull a trailer.

Indeed, they did, but you can't unhook that one for the other 95% of your trips.

 

[Spies]

GM did that, but without the need to pull a trailer.

Indeed, they did, but you can't unhook that one for the other 95% of your trips.

Not easily anyway

 

[Lanzer]

Saw the Renault ad today and I love how they integrated the charging port with their logo. Feels like something from transformer.

If designing from ground up, the front definitely makes the most sense. Maybe one day we'll be charging through the wheels and all we have to do is to park at the right spot. Or maybe the car can just drop down two leads, slot car racer style.

[youtube]http://youtu.be/13l6UsQAe5M[/youtube]

 

[jwatte]

Volvo has an inductive charger that runs a coil in the floor, and a receiver in the bottom chassis of the car. Wireless charging! I like the idea theoretically, but I think that innate problems (cost and weight of wiring, inefficiency, degaussing things nearby) means it's not actually practical.

 

[evnow]

I think one of the reasons Nissan went for front charging is that they have 2 charging ports - something other EVs don't (won't) have. I'm curious to see what Model S will have.