adding charging capacity

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tenthousandclowns said:
Has anyone looked into adding a salvage or aftermarket 6.6kw charger?
10000clowns, welcome to the forum. Having a higher-power L2 onboard charger makes eminent sense for the i-MiEV and our relatively low-capacity packs, whereas a BoltEV and its huge pack can easily get by using L1 for its daily charging. Sadly, no one on this forum has tackled this, primarily because of the difficulty in hacking the digital communications amongst all the related onboard systems. At least one of our forum members successfully used a commercial charger to directly feed the HV pack using some of the CHAdeMO circuitry and wiring - there are a number of threads on this forum discussing this. For example,

http://myimiev.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1750&p=12471#p12471
 
thanks for the link... it looks doable but only when in 'ready' mode.... the chevy volt chargers are about $300 on ebay and evtv sells a CAN controller and wiring harness for $795.. so the price is a bit steep... but if we could figure out a homeade CAN controller for $50......
I have a 1980 electravan (evalbum.com/4180) to which i have added about 11kw of charging just by stacking lots of chargers. No computers to argue with though :)...

I just got my miev.. a 2012 SE with 30k miles.
 
on further reflection... charging added to work during 'ready' mode will not work alongside with the factory charger... so this would make no sense unless two or three or four were added.
 
Assuming you only recently bought your iMiEV, might I suggest you drive it for a while before you decide you need to make a major modification - Are you charging using L2 all the time . . . . because plugging it into any 120 volt outlet isn't using all of the car's capability

You may find, as many of us have, that it works pretty darned well just the way it is. If you need to go 125 miles in one trip so that the car's built in L2 240 volt 3.3Kw charging capacity is really slowing you down, maybe you bought the wrong car??

Don
 
JoeS said:
...whereas a BoltEV and its huge pack can easily get by using L1 for its daily charging.
It can, but level 2 charging is so much more efficient.

As for boosting I-MiEV charging power, I remember it being posted somewhere that the car shuts down if more than 4-5 kW go into the pack while plugged into level 2, which pretty much makes it impossible to parallel an additional charger larger than 1 kW. An easy way around this is to buy a 7 kW CHAdeMO charger, although it is a pricey solution:

https://www.evseadapters.com/collections/ev-chargers-and-evses/products/portable-chademo-quick-charger
 
i have been on an electric car road-trip before... not super long but like 300 miles each way. the difference between 3kw and 6 or seven kw is pretty significant there. for usual use, yah 3.3kw is fine for me, but I like to do silly things sometimes.

yah I saw that portable chademo.. costs about as much as the car! If it was $1500 or so i'd be tempted

the other thread that there is a link to above tells about charging in 'ready' mode, which can be done at more than 5 kw
 
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