City and Cruise type chargers?

[gday]

Can anyone explain the difference between City and Cruise type chargers? They show up in the Soul EV 2020 manual in several places and seem to affect even when the warnings of low battery show up, but there is no explanation (or I have missed it). Thoughts?

 

[gday]

Solved!

David LeBlanc on Facebook solved it for me - City is the general model name for the smaller capacity battery (39.2kWh) and Cruise is the name for the 64kWh version. Nothing to do with chargers really where I first really noticed it.

Odd that they would not have put the explanation early in the manual because there are references to the terms throughout yet the explanation does not appear till near the end - on page 510 of 532 pages!

 

[verneamanda]

Thank you. Just bought mine yesterday and reading the online manual, I had that exact question.

 

[techrider]

The manual estimates a charge time of 9 hours and 35 minutes for the “Cruise-type” (i.e.64kWh) battery, using a level 2 AC charger. What’s frustrating is that the manual doesn’t state the performance specs of the level 2 charger assumed to be used (e.g. 20A, 30A, 50A?) in the charge time estimate.

I tried to find a calculator, such as this one (https://pluginbc.ca/resource/charging-times/) but the inputs needed aren’t all stated in the manual. The manual is light on details.

Anyway, the manual would be clearer if it used the terms ‘City-size (39.2 kWh)’ and ‘Cruise-size (64 kWh)’ instead of just ‘City-type’ and ‘Cruise-type’.

 

[ksoul2084]

Not sure about the two charger types at all, but a typical Type 1, 120v charger will deliver max 1.8kWh per hour to the car.

 

[notfred]

Standard Level 2 EVSE is usually 240V @ 30A so 7.2kW

1st gen Soul EVs will only draw 90% of what the EVSE is capable of (for safety) so would charge at 6.5kW. Also note that in a commercial setting in North America then the EVSE may be powered from a 3 phase supply and be only 208V @ 30A so 6.2kW and a first gen Soul EV would then charge at 5.6kW.

 

[gday]

Charging rates are always estimates but there are several factors at play and the manufacturers seem to try and "average things" sometimes I feel because they cannot know exactly what you are using and their capabilities.

Level 1 is about 12A, level 2 can be 30A or 40A it seems. The onboard charger has a max of 7.2A for AC charging (on my 2020 Limited) 40A is limited by that onboard charger device in the case of my Soul EV so it wouldn't be faster. I have seen Level 2 chargers that are rated as 3kW and 7kW so that confuses things.

I show 1.4A on trickle charging and 6.9 - 7A on level 2.

If you go for DC charging things change a lot and it bypasses the limit of the onboard charger.

Trickle adds about 5km per hour for me and level 2 (7kW) is about 40 km per hour while DC was about 350km per hr. I have only tried the DC once and that was at IKEA so my number may not be typical.

I admit I tend to get my Amps confused with kWh and kW so I am happy to be corrected!

 

[IanL]

The manual estimates a charge time of 9 hours and 35 minutes for the “Cruise-type” (i.e.64kWh) battery, using a level 2 AC charger. What’s frustrating is that the manual doesn’t state the performance specs of the level 2 charger assumed to be used (e.g. 20A, 30A, 50A?) in the charge time estimate.
...

The data I have found at https://ev-database.uk/car/1154/Kia-Soul-EV-64-kWh#charge-table is that the level 2 charger is single phase 240V ac 32A and the car draws a maximum of 31A, as limited by the OBC to 7.2kW.