Living on the 120v charger.

[cmiller82]

I did my best to find out the following info before I bought the car and had a hard time. So now that I know, I'd like to share it and hopefully it will help others.

Not everyone can get a 240v charger, or at least right away. I have a friend that is an electrician, but booking him to do free work has taken a while

I've been living off the charger that comes with the car for a week now and have just over 500km on the car. Most days I'm driving 30 to 40km which leaves the battery at around 75%. The 120v charger takes around 6-7 hours to get that back to 100%. On Thursday I drove 87km and used the air conditioning and the battery was at 59%. The charge time was 12 and half hours. I got home late, and the car was at 97% 12 hours later when I had to leave the next day.

So I've learned that if I'm going to be home late, the next day I may not have 100% battery. At 59% I still had 100km range showing, but if I had a couple of busy days in a row I would need to find a Level 2 or 3 charger to top off. Luckily there is a Level 3 charger about 8km from my house, so in a pinch I could run out in the evening, get boosted up to 80% and then the charging overnight would bring me back to 100%.

Is anyone else relying on the 120v charger? What are your experiences?

 

[ralyon]

I have had my car for over 4 months now and only have the 120v charger. In that time I have had to use a L3 charger only 3 times, twice because I had to drive across town and a third because we had heavy flooding and I wasn't able to get the car to the house (had to wade the last several blocks). My work is 17 miles from my house, but I generally only use a little over 20% on that drive. Then there is soccer practice for my son and other errands and there have been a few days I have gotten below 10%. After a really low drain, it will take 2 or 3 nights of charging and driving during the day to get it back up to 100%, but so far so good. At this time, I can't see myself getting the L2 charger any time soon.

 

[tractioninc]

I've had my car 15 months and I charge almost exclusively on 120v. It's not ideal though -- it takes *ages* to charge a low battery at that voltage.

My commute back and forth to work typically takes 30-40% of my charge, depending on how patient I am, so I can comfortably start off with less than 50%. There are both L2 and L3 chargers within a mile of my office, but they're not inexpensive; in an emergency I have driven to work starting with just over 20% and charged at the L3 on my lunch break.

 

[wrickcook]

We used the 110v charger the first few months.
I have a 5 mile commute, but my wife drives 45mi, round trip.

Using the 110 charger, she could drive Monday and Tuesday, I would take it on my short commute on Wednesday, then she would have enough for Thur and Fri.

Now we have an L2 and never think twice about the charge.

 

[slobodanc]

I used it for almost 2 months.
I have daily 100 km commute plus other trips (kids and wife) so slow charging was tough.
I found a library and Ikea store with free level 2 chargers. I had no trouble finding open spots and would top up as needed.

I found that it requires some planing but for the most part it worked well enough. I still managed to log 3,000 km in one month.

Now that I have level 2 at home I am still experimenting with using the slow charger as well. The problem is on hot days when I come from work battery and motor are warm/hot. Since power converters sit on top they also are rather warm. So pluging in faster charger tends to activate the fan and power converter is warm which is not good for long life.

My current experiment is to let the car cool down after work for 1-2 hrs, then plugin slow 120V cable during the night. Over night car cools down completely. So first thing when I wake up I switch to faster charger to top up. By the time I finish preparations and am ready to go the car is almost full (this morning I left with 85%)

This is only needed during summer since heat is the main enemy for both battery and electric components. I have a colleague at work who had to replace power converter on his brand new car.

In summary, when I have time or car is hot/warm I believe the 120V cable will prolong battery and electric components lifespan. So it is still useful. Of course, when you have only the cable then your daily range is reduced so extra planning is needed.

 

[notfred]

I charge it on the level 2 and just set the charge timer to start at 2am. That's well after I'll have parked it and it cooled down on even the latest night, and it will be done by 6am even if it was pretty much flat.