QC Charging Study - Nissan vs EA vs EVgo vs Chargepoint

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Excellent, keep the data points coming. You are inspiring me to try the new EVGo stations (they replaced 1 old chademo/ccs station with 4 new chargers (2 of which can charge chademo and ccs at the same time).
 
Found out something interesting today. Some time back, I contacted the company that maintains the QC stations at Nissan HQ to ask about max power, etc. I found out today, that while the stations say "100 kW" on the screen, they are actually limited to 80 kW during charging. Seems the 100 kW was a marketing typo :lol: and the 80 kW that I get while using them really is the absolute max they can push out. I guess my quest for a true 100 kW ChaDeMo will continue, though I got a message that some new ChargePoint ChaDeMo in the norther part of Nashville are suppose to be true 100 kW ChaDeMo (not for free obviously), guess I will make some future plans to swing by them one day on a low level of charge to test that out. :D
 
knightmb said:
while the stations say "100 kW" on the screen, they are actually limited to 80 kW during charging. Seems the 100 kW was a marketing typo :lol: and the 80 kW that I get while using them really is the absolute max they can push out.
My understanding is that CHAdeMO connectors are limited to 200A, and actually only the Sumitomo plugs (blue in color) have this rating. 200A at 400V is 80kW. These chargers could possibly send 100kW if a vehicle's battery is at 500V, but that's unlikely in practice.

I got a message that some new ChargePoint CHAdeMO in the northern part of Nashville are suppose to be true 100 kW CHAdeMO...
As above, I suspect it will be the same, unless you add 100V of cells to your Leaf's battery. But maybe they have 250A plugs, and your Leaf's charge port can somehow manage 250A safely as well. Visually, the pins look about as beefy as the pins on other vehicles' CCS ports, but I guess there's more to it than appearances.

Edit: the original CHAdeMO spec was 125A max. How things change.
 
coulomb said:
knightmb said:
while the stations say "100 kW" on the screen, they are actually limited to 80 kW during charging. Seems the 100 kW was a marketing typo :lol: and the 80 kW that I get while using them really is the absolute max they can push out.
My understanding is that CHAdeMO connectors are limited to 200A, and actually only the Sumitomo plugs (blue in color) have this rating. 200A at 400V is 80kW. These chargers could possibly send 100kW if a vehicle's battery is at 500V, but that's unlikely in practice.

I got a message that some new ChargePoint CHAdeMO in the northern part of Nashville are suppose to be true 100 kW CHAdeMO...
As above, I suspect it will be the same, unless you add 100V of cells to your Leaf's battery. But maybe they have 250A plugs, and your Leaf's charge port can somehow manage 250A safely as well. Visually, the pins look about as beefy as the pins on other vehicles' CCS ports, but I guess there's more to it than appearances.

Edit: the original CHAdeMO spec was 125A max. How things change.
The original ChaDeMo works at 500V with 125A max (500 x 125 = 62.5 kW max), the ones at Nissan HQ do run at 400V, but they don't have the 250A connectors, only the 200A, so both the ChaDeMo and CCS are capped at 80 kW according to the company that maintains them. The Chargepoint ChaDeMo, if the company that own's the QC is telling me the correct specs, are suppose to have the 250A connectors. It seems someone did charge there driving a Hummer EV recently and claims they got the full 100 kW during their QC session, so I'm curious to see if the ChaDeMo will perform as well or be capped at 50 kW instead. :D
 
I got some interesting data today. I don't have my 2020 right now because it's in the shop being fixed, but I am using a friends 2015 SV Leaf in the mean time to get around for work. I took it to Nissan HQ to quick charge it (because, for giggles) and to my surprise, was able to surpass the 50 kW limit for the Leaf. It only last a few minutes, but I know there has been a lot of debate about charging a Gen 1 Leaf with a ChaDeMo that surpasses the 50 kW limit and now I have proof it is possible if the QC station can put out that much power.

Now for the surprising part, this isn't happening because the Leaf is "requesting" it send +60 kW of power, it seems the ChaDeMo is "forcing" this into the battery. Notice the 3rd screen-shot. I know I encountered this long ago in Atlanta Power when I still had my 2013 SV and while doing a QC, noticed that they were pushing +62 kW into my Leaf. I knew at the time that 50 kW was the "sacred" limit, so I didn't understand how LeafSpy was showing that much extra power (the display on their QC station was also showing that much power going in). I didn't take screen-shots years ago because I thought perhaps my understanding of ChaDeMo was wrong, but now I think I understand what is going on. The QC station is exceeding the "request" from the Leaf, for some reason? I thought about starting another topic just for this, but figured it could all technically be part of the discussion about different QC Stations. :mrgreen:

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I charged at a peak of 74.2KW on a new Duke Energy Shell Recharge station listed at 150kW. I didn't record any Leafspy data but I go by this station often so I'll do it next time.
 
I recently made a 1700 mile trip in my 2022 LEAF, and I fast charged several times. I have no hard data, but I can share my experience. I fast charged at EA, EVgo, and Chargepoint. EA was at Sheetz along the PA Turnpike, Walmart elsewhere. EVgo was in large strip malls. Chargepoint was at auto dealers. Both going and coming, I charged at EA/Sheetz at Bedford PA and Carlisle PA. Each site had multiple CCS and a single Chademo. The pack tended to heat up most during these EA charges, never into the red, but elevated, and it tended to remain there on the freeway. I stopped at Washington PA at Budd Baer/Chargepoint both ways. This site had a single charger with CCS and Chademo. This somehow seemed to charge quickly without heating the pack too much. I stopped overnight at St. Clairsville both ways and used the Clipper Creek L2 at the hotel. I fast charged at Columbus on the west side of town going and on the east side of town coming back at EVgo. The EVgo sites multiple of CCS, Chademo, and Tesla plugs. I was able to charge just fine. On the way out, I wanted to charge at EA in a Walmart parking lot northeast of Dayton, but the single Chademo charger was down, so I went to a car dealership next to the airport which had a single Chargepoint station with CCS and Chademo. This worked fine. I charged at an EA at a Walmart in Beech Grove (Indianapolis area) both going and coming, which worked fine. For the time I was in Lafayette IN, I used the L2 charger at the hotel. On the way back, I spent a few days visiting my sister in Cincinnati, and I used an old Nissan-branded cable from my 2012 LEAF modified for 240V many years ago by EVSEupgrade plugged into her dryer outlet. She, my brother-in-law, and his cousin got to ride in and drive the LEAF quite a bit while I was there; everyone thought it was very easy to drive.

The most important points: Never did I have range anxiety; it never got below 20%. The charging stops were typically 15-25 minutes, and because of where the chargers were located, there was usually something to do other than just sit there. Breaking the drive up with these charging breaks was actually quite pleasant. It did require some planning, mostly since there are still a lot of gaps in the charging networks between cities. But, having made that trip, I would be comfortable driving the LEAF most places east of the Mississippi...
 
To avoid hijacking other topics with these pictures, I figured this would be a good place to post topic wise and just link to this one. This wasn't a planned QC station to get data on, just a spur of the moment that caught me off guard. I thought this was a ChargePoint QC station, but it was actually a Nissan QC station at Nissan HQ. This isn't a public charger, it is buried inside the complex in the back. I couldn't find a picture of the QC station specs, but I do remember this is a 500V ChaDeMo QC station, this one is able to delivery the near max that a Leaf Plus can handle for charging. This might have been an experimental ChaDeMo 3.0 QC station 🤨 , not sure? Its exterior design is very different from the public QC stations that Nissan has out in front of it's HQ offices. Also, seems I got a good picture of my feet and Leaf, lol. :LOL:

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Incredible. Thank you for the screen shot. So this station is in Tennesee?
Yeah, at the Nissan HQ. If you look at it from space with google maps, it's easier to visualize. They have a front "public" parking lot where (2) Dual ChaDeMo/CCS QC stations are located, then (2) More of the same in the Contractors Lot beside that. Then they have a massive L2 charging lot under a massive solar panel installation. 😲 Those areas require an employee ID to get to, including the one I was "testing". ;)
Employees have several areas to charge that are not normally available to the public along with a lot of prototype vehicles from time to time roaming around. :censored:
 
So are the volts higher than what the screen shares? 200amps and 378 volts is only 75-76KW, isn't it.

Even more amazing was that rate at 44% SoC on the dash. Usually the car starts to ramp down after 30ish % on the dash.
 
The 378V was the Leaf battery voltage at that time I believe, the QC station uses 500V, so 500V x 200A is right at 100 kW, but it may have been greater than 98.5 or less than 99.5 as I'm sure there was some rounding. The other QC stations that Nissan has out front run at 400V when I looked at the station specs plate on the side, the pictures are posted in the earlier parts of this topic. I wish I had taken a picture of this QC stations spec plate, but I don't remember if it had one. I do remember laughing when I looked at the "time" estimates on the dash. The +2018 and later year Leaf have a weird thing where the lowest time estimate stops at "5 minutes" and never goes lower no matter what. But you can see that by the time I got the pictures, it had already been charging for 5 minutes. The time estimate of 7 minutes to 75% was impressive though but it was also estimating 1.5 Hours for a full charge so who knows if those were accurate. :LOL:

I think the SOC was somewhere in the low 30s when I started, but if I had known this QC station could do this, I would have paid better attention to the details, gotten a full LeafSpy capture, etc. This was October of last year (2023), so the weather was probably cooler by then. You can see from some of my earlier LeafSpy charts on other QC stations that the power seems to start a ramp down between 45% and 50% (on my Leaf anyway) which depends on the battery temperature at that time. A lot of my earlier test were done in warmer weather, so that probably effects how soon the ramp down occurs. Mine started to go down once it got to 45%, so I got those pictures about as fast I could when I noticed. 😲
 
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I recently made a 1700 mile trip in my 2022 LEAF, and I fast charged several times. I have no hard data, but I can share my experience. I fast charged at EA, EVgo, and Chargepoint. EA was at Sheetz along the PA Turnpike, Walmart elsewhere. EVgo was in large strip malls. Chargepoint was at auto dealers. Both going and coming, I charged at EA/Sheetz at Bedford PA and Carlisle PA. Each site had multiple CCS and a single Chademo. The pack tended to heat up most during these EA charges, never into the red, but elevated, and it tended to remain there on the freeway. I stopped at Washington PA at Budd Baer/Chargepoint both ways. This site had a single charger with CCS and Chademo. This somehow seemed to charge quickly without heating the pack too much. I stopped overnight at St. Clairsville both ways and used the Clipper Creek L2 at the hotel. I fast charged at Columbus on the west side of town going and on the east side of town coming back at EVgo. The EVgo sites multiple of CCS, Chademo, and Tesla plugs. I was able to charge just fine. On the way out, I wanted to charge at EA in a Walmart parking lot northeast of Dayton, but the single Chademo charger was down, so I went to a car dealership next to the airport which had a single Chargepoint station with CCS and Chademo. This worked fine. I charged at an EA at a Walmart in Beech Grove (Indianapolis area) both going and coming, which worked fine. For the time I was in Lafayette IN, I used the L2 charger at the hotel. On the way back, I spent a few days visiting my sister in Cincinnati, and I used an old Nissan-branded cable from my 2012 LEAF modified for 240V many years ago by EVSEupgrade plugged into her dryer outlet. She, my brother-in-law, and his cousin got to ride in and drive the LEAF quite a bit while I was there; everyone thought it was very easy to drive.

The most important points: Never did I have range anxiety; it never got below 20%. The charging stops were typically 15-25 minutes, and because of where the chargers were located, there was usually something to do other than just sit there. Breaking the drive up with these charging breaks was actually quite pleasant. It did require some planning, mostly since there are still a lot of gaps in the charging networks between cities. But, having made that trip, I would be comfortable driving the LEAF most places east of the Mississippi...
I would like to go from Cleveland to Cincinnati but i have a 2015 12 bars and 86.5% SOH. My research tells me it's probably not a good idea.
 
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