Quote:
Originally Posted by jaffles
Agree home charging is a sad joke and a bit of a feel good ploy on the dealers behalf for new buyers. But its a start for a newish tech and thinking.
In Aus the general purpose wall socket charger that comes with the car is 240v/2kW, but its capped at 2 amps not to overload the home circuit even though its 10amp. You can upgrade to 7kW if you have a 15 amp circuit but the charger is still capped at 4 amps, and so still slow. Its not until you install 3 phase power, or have it already you can have a 22kW charger pumping in 22kW.
At present its an extra cost, but builders or renovators will add it as standard over time. No different to solar, battery, pool, or shed so to speak. I look forward to the day multiple cars are charging at home but all being paid for by the sun. I'm almost there having 3 phase and 13kW solar. For work we just fitted a 22kW charger under a 20kW 3 phase solar system. So virtually no power bill to run the business and now moving to cars to absorb the excess energy the solar makes as the grid offers 2c/kW feed in. Go figure though, as we bought the system from the grid no interest 5 year payment plan. So you could say our whole energy/fuel bill is around 4K a year and the grid still gets a cut. Pretty good for a business with a few cars. Won't get that from fossil fuels plus we have shielded ourselves from Energy wars.
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Well, things are certainly different in Australia.
I am in Benton County AR in a nice townhouse with an attached garage. In the living quarters there is an electric stove/oven and clothes washer and clothes dryer. The stove/oven and dryer are 220V (single phase). Oh the electrical service here is a 200amp (single phase) service.
Just last week paid $287 to have a 220/240VAC outlet installed to use with the BMW charger and adapter cable to charge my new i4.
I had been using 120VAC and as soon as I could I gave the high voltage charging a try.
Approx. 4 times faster. At some point I noticed the A/C current charging limit was set to unlimited. I tried setting it to 24 amps and 40 amps and then back up to 48 amps. At any current charging setting I cannot detect any signs of any problems. And the charging speed with the charging current limit set to 40/48amps is quite impressive.
Yesterday charged battery from 43% SOC to 80% SOC. Took 3 hours 26 minutes and the charging level was at 9kWh the entire charging session.
When I charged with the A/C charging current limit set to 24 amps the kWh was 6. But at 40 amps it went to 9kWh. So it would appear the circuit can deliver reliably over time 9kWh.
The first charging session was at an AC Charge Point (a public charging station) and it charged the battery at 6kWh. And A/C charging current limit was set to unlimited.
With more experience under my belt I'm surprised at a public charger the charging was done at 6kWh while at home I can charge at 9kWh. The public charging station had two charger connections. The 2nd one was plugging into a Tesla but according to the display for that cable the battery charge target was reached and I assume there was no current draw that would have affected my charging session.
So sorry to read of charging limitations where you are but I'm thankful I have access to for home charging rather good charging speed. And cost is low. For 395 miles of i4 use I have spent ~$14 for electricity. That's 3.5 cents per mile.
But just to be clear the motivation for getting an i4 was not to avoid the pain at the pump but rather to experience a quality BEV and in the form of a nice driving car and so far the i4 had delivered in spades.