Why is the 240V charging station hardwired ? The answer is..

[mitch672]

It seems that none of the 25 listed vendors offer a product andva price where one can buy an uninstalled EVSE for the USA home.

But, maybe I missed something.

gary, you probably need to contact a wholesale electrical distributors (such as Graybar, etc), that's who will have them, it's never going to be a "retail" item you can pick up at Home Depot or Lowes

Again, I suspect that the market will be flooded with EVSEs within 1 year, mostly made in China, they are excellent at copying anything, and they will... they will be on eBay within 1 year for less than $300, come check this post in a year and let me know if I was correct

[EVDRIVER]

It's a safety issue.

Ever tried to unplug your dryer from the outlet? It's not easy like a 110v plug.

Now lets assume that you get a 220v plugset like you can get for the Tesla...but it now has a J1772 on the car end. Then assume your wife/daughter plugged into a weatherized outside 220v outlet...and it's raining. Imagine those smaller fingers trying to get a fast grip on the plug because they're getting wet...and they accidentally touch one of the blades in the process. 220v + rain = Zap = never touch it again (once they get off the ground).

With ~25 manufacturers getting in the game to make Level 2 chargers (http://www.pluginrecharge.com/p/evse-vendors.html), the prices will melt once quantity starts ramping...so the high price today is mostly an early adopter "fee".

Given that probably everyone on this board is an early adopter, you know all about this (Damn, the 60" Sony LCD monitor I bought last month is on sale for 30% off! Bastards!)

I've done this over and over. GFI.

[EVDRIVER]

It seems that none of the 25 listed vendors offer a product andva price where one can buy an uninstalled EVSE for the USA home.

But, maybe I missed something.

gary, you probably need to contact a wholesale electrical distributors (such as Graybar, etc), that's who will have them, it's never going to be a "retail" item you can pick up at Home Depot or Lowes

Again, I suspect that the market will be flooded with EVSEs within 1 year, mostly made in China, they are excellent at copying anything, and they will... they will be on eBay with 1 year for less than $300, come check this post in a year and let me know if I was correct

I give China a few months once they decide to build one, just wont be UL certified.

[mitch672]

China also has their own electric car, the BYD e6, so the EVSEs may even be UL certified, if they decide to sell them in the U.S.

http://www.byd.com/showroom.php?car=e6&index=2

http://www.byd.com/company.php?index=1

[evnow]

As long as most of the buyers are getting them through manufacturers - we won't get cheap ebay evse.

I give it 3 years.

[AndyH]

I know we've gone around this topic in a number of threads, but here's a view of the 'plug thing' from the 'mothership'.

From the Plug-In 2010 conference: http://green.autoblog.com/2010/07/28/pl ... c-night-p/

About 34 minutes in, an attendee asked the panel (Chelsea Sexton, Bill Nye, and Jessie Deeter) why we needed to work on a hard-wired yet standardized recharge connection when we've got 100 years of history in this country with 110 and 220V outlets.

Bill Nye: With regard to 220V, here's our problem as I understand it. We in the electric vehicle community (if I can say we and us and you and we)...we cannot kill a single person. Now, I have a few people that I would be more than happy to ah, if they got electrocuted...I mean...it wouldn't be that...I would not be troubled too much. Frankly, I've always wondered, do your bones really light up? You know, like in a cartoon? And so from time to time, in an RV park, recreational vehicle park, someone (and I don't want to generalize) someone might have been enjoying an adult beverage - or two - kills themselves with a 220 plug. That might be Darwinian and all good, right, that are people that make these choices and kill themselves and that's how it goes. But we in the electric vehicle community we cannot have the connector cause the death of anybody. So that's why all this trouble. The connectors are really hard to electrocute yourself with. And I've given it to this one person...I got him drunk but he couldn't do it. That last part's a joke!...is that right Chelsea?

Chelsea: Yes, a lot of this has started from a place of fear, way back when, and at least we're at least at the point of having some standardization and there's even this littlest bit of talk that maybe every charger doesn't have to be hard-wired - and maybe there's some opportunity for some cracks in the fence. But it's absolutely true that we're so interested in doing this in a safe, credible, robust way whether that's infrastructure or conversions or whatever because the technology will be held responsible not only for early efforts to commercialize it but any catastrophic things that happen. And, let's face it, at some point a car's going to catch on fire. At some point someone's going to wreck one and die. This will happen! But the longer we can keep it from happening, the better off we're all going to be. So for now, we've got a simple solution in terms of technology that everyone can agree on, so let's implement it and get some cars on the road! And then we'll worry about, based on some real user data, what we can sort-of relax a little bit about and what we need more attention on.

[tbleakne]

It's a safety issue.

Ever tried to unplug your dryer from the outlet? It's not easy like a 110v plug.

Now lets assume that you get a 220v plugset like you can get for the Tesla...but it now has a J1772 on the car end. <<<<<<<< >>>>>>>>>>>>>>

I was hoping someone would bring up Tesla on this thread. They have a very over-priced cord ($1500) with a ton of adaptors to fit any of the many 3-prong 220-240V outlets, including the dryer one you see in many folks' garages. Each adaptor programs the cord to tell it what its' circuit's current rating is. This sounds like it would be very useful when you occasionally wish to visit friends who live near or beyond the Leaf's 50 mile one-way limit without a recharge. Since this would be an occasional use, wear-and-tear on the connector should not be a problem.

So how come Tesla owners can do this, but not Leaf owners ? I have heard that the Tesla hit the market before the J1772 standard was established, but why are they now allowed to have and use this cord but not us?

This is my first post to this forum, so if this question has been answered before, please give me a link. Thanks.

[Wolfgang]

Totally can't come to terms with the whole idea of a "home charging station". What's the rationale behind such an expensive junk box. I plug my Vectrix twice daily into an ordinary wall socket. What on earth for would I have to install a special box in my garage for a Nissan Leaf? Would I have to install another box for a VW E-up? I sincerely hope that I'm not limited to charge a Nissan Leaf only at its own proprietary Nissan "charging stations", but will be able, in the future, to connect my on-board charger to the existing ubiquitous electric "infrastructure", constituted by the world-spanning electric grid, for opportunity charging. Hard to believe that US National Electric Code requires expensive "charging stations" without any added functionality, to control charging in homes of private citizens. It might once become brisk business for the likes of Coulomb, Schneider Electric, Blink, General Electric, Aeronvironment, to sell and install those futile boxes. I've heard rumblings that like European guidelines are being brewed up in Brussels.
However, "connectivity" for me is a standard European wall socket, be it of the single phase 230 V, or the CEE 3 × 400V/230V/16 A, or /32A variety (yes that's a 22 kW connector, not quite uncommon in work shops or farms).

No need even for any fancy new 7-pole "Mennekes" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEC_62196 plugs, which -- because unavailable and not yet officially standardized -- prevent me and all the fellow EV drivers from using those new public charging columns here in Carinthia. I will admit as much as there should be some kind of identification/roaming provisions at public points, but no need for "connectivity" to obstruct plugging-in at my home.
Rgrds Wolfgang

[EVDRIVER]

Totally can't come to terms with the whole idea of a "home charging station". What's the rationale behind such an expensive junk box. I plug my Vectrix twice daily into an ordinary wall socket. What on earth for would I have to install a special box in my garage for a Nissan Leaf? Would I have to install another box for a VW E-up? I sincerely hope that I'm not limited to charge a Nissan Leaf only at its own proprietary Nissan "charging stations", but will be able, in the future, to connect my on-board charger to the existing ubiquitous electric "infrastructure", constituted by the world-spanning electric grid, for opportunity charging. Hard to believe that US National Electric Code requires expensive "charging stations" without any added functionality, to control charging in homes of private citizens. It might once become brisk business for the likes of Coulomb, Schneider Electric, Blink, General Electric, Aeronvironment, to sell and install those futile boxes. I've heard rumblings that like European guidelines are being brewed up in Brussels.
However, "connectivity" for me is a standard European wall socket, be it of the single phase 230 V, or the CEE 3 × 400V/230V/16 A, or /32A variety (yes that's a 22 kW connector, not quite uncommon in work shops or farms).

No need even for any fancy new 7-pole "Mennekes" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEC_62196 plugs, which -- because unavailable and not yet officially standardized -- prevent me and all the fellow EV drivers from using those new public charging columns here in Carinthia. I will admit as much as there should be some kind of identification/roaming provisions at public points, but no need for "connectivity" to obstruct plugging-in at my home.
Rgrds Wolfgang

The leaf box will work on any new EV. There are some valid reasons for an EVSE but not at the present costs but that wil change soon. You may want to do a bit more research on the topic.

[johnr]

The Leviton approach gets rid of the safety concerns by use of a simple outlet cover, and there's probably some grounding and GFCI in the kit as well. Legitimate concerns regarding use of 240V, but more than one way to address them.