Well, got my CHAdeMO adapter yesterday (I was # 205 on the waitlist), and just had a chance to try it out. Thought I would share my initial impressions. Key takeaways -
1) SOOO much better than charging with a standard Level-2 charger.
2) some weird, but acceptable differences between charging with Level-3/CHAdeMO stations vs Level-2
3) There are (in the Bay Area, CA) quite a number of Level-3 chargers out there, but some don't work
4) the pricing to charge is pretty exorbitant, but probably worth it.
Unboxing the adapter was pretty uneventful. It comes with an instruction card, the adapter itself, and that's it. The adapter is pretty big. If you don't have rear seats it will fit nicely under the floor in the rear trunk. I do have rear seats, and the adapter still fits in there with the seats folded down, but it would be in the way if I were using the seats. The adapter is too big to fit in the cubby on the side where I put the mobile charging adapter. The frunk is another option, but with the P85D the frunk is also limited so the adapter takes an annoying amount of space. Still, the Model S has a lot of space so it is a relatively small issue.
Last night after work, I tried going to two Level-3 chargers, and was unsuccessful. The first was a Nissan sponsored charger at a mall. When I got there the charger was in some error state and wouldn't do anything. It had nothing to do with the adapter. I tried again at a grocery store a few miles away, but that adapter was an eVgo adapter and despite signing up online, I needed a fob which hasn't come in the mail yet.
This morning, I went to work where we have a Blink Level-3 charger and tried away. I had a few problems getting it going. First, if you want to use the charge port open button on the adapter, it needs to be plugged the adapter needs to be plugged into the charging station to get power. However, then the charging station doesn't recognize it when you plug the adapter into the car. As such, you have to re-plug the charging station into the adapter after it is plugged into the car. This pretty much makes the charge port open button on the adapter useless, but since the new Model S charge ports can be opened by pressing them, it is not a big deal.
Once plugged in, I then realized you have to spend some time (with the Blink Level 3 charger at least), telling the charging station what you want to do. This is different than Level 2 stations where you just plug in and go. The Level 3 charging station talks to the car and knows the car's level of charge. It asks you then what level you want to charge the car at. This is redundant because the car has it's own charge limit. It appears that the car stops at whichever limit comes first (the car's or what you set at the charger), so it makes sense to me to just tell the charger to always charge station to 100% and continue to control the limit from the car.
Once I figured all that out, I started to charge, only to have the whole thing error out. I have no idea what caused this and it happened 3 more times. I set the charging limit on the station to 80% and tried again and this time it worked. However, it worked on subsequent attempts regardless of what limit I set and I haven't seen the error return. In any event, once it got going, the charging station I was using started making quite a bit of noise (cooling fan), and off we went.
This was a standard Level 3 charger. My charing output started at 42kw and slowly inched up to 47kw. For a P85D, this works out to a peak of 148 rated miles/hr. Pretty awesome. Since charging at work on a level-2 charger gives me roughly 17 mi/hr, this is about 8.5x faster (note: something is weird with rated mile calcs because the charging output of a level-2 charger is 6kw and 47/6 = 7.8x more power, yet 148/17 = 8.7x more rated mileage. Haven't quite figured that out. Anyway, the car is still charging, but it looks like it is going to go from 27% to 90% in just about one hour.
A few other notes:
There are no start/stop charge controls on the mobile device when using the level-3 charger. This is both with Tesla's app as well as Blink's. So, if the car stops charging for whatever reason, you have to go back out to the car to start it up again. You can stop the car from charging, but you have to use the charge limit to do so.
There is also no estimated time to complete on the mobile app.
Where I live, there are a lot of level 3 chargers so this whole thing is very complimentary to the supercharging network. I generally don't use superchargers due to their location and the fact that I don't do a lot of road trips on the car, but with this charging adapter, I can definitely see driving my car in more distance scenarios. The only issue, is that a level 3 charger is not cheap. Most of the charging rates I saw were between $0.50 and $0.65 per kwh. If the average charging session is 45Kwh, that is between $20/$30 a charging session which is not cheap. Still, the convenience it enables is probably worth it. Given the availability of charging stations where I live, this will definitely increase the driving range for me of the car.
Overall, I feel pretty good about the $450 investment.
1) SOOO much better than charging with a standard Level-2 charger.
2) some weird, but acceptable differences between charging with Level-3/CHAdeMO stations vs Level-2
3) There are (in the Bay Area, CA) quite a number of Level-3 chargers out there, but some don't work
4) the pricing to charge is pretty exorbitant, but probably worth it.
Unboxing the adapter was pretty uneventful. It comes with an instruction card, the adapter itself, and that's it. The adapter is pretty big. If you don't have rear seats it will fit nicely under the floor in the rear trunk. I do have rear seats, and the adapter still fits in there with the seats folded down, but it would be in the way if I were using the seats. The adapter is too big to fit in the cubby on the side where I put the mobile charging adapter. The frunk is another option, but with the P85D the frunk is also limited so the adapter takes an annoying amount of space. Still, the Model S has a lot of space so it is a relatively small issue.
Last night after work, I tried going to two Level-3 chargers, and was unsuccessful. The first was a Nissan sponsored charger at a mall. When I got there the charger was in some error state and wouldn't do anything. It had nothing to do with the adapter. I tried again at a grocery store a few miles away, but that adapter was an eVgo adapter and despite signing up online, I needed a fob which hasn't come in the mail yet.
This morning, I went to work where we have a Blink Level-3 charger and tried away. I had a few problems getting it going. First, if you want to use the charge port open button on the adapter, it needs to be plugged the adapter needs to be plugged into the charging station to get power. However, then the charging station doesn't recognize it when you plug the adapter into the car. As such, you have to re-plug the charging station into the adapter after it is plugged into the car. This pretty much makes the charge port open button on the adapter useless, but since the new Model S charge ports can be opened by pressing them, it is not a big deal.
Once plugged in, I then realized you have to spend some time (with the Blink Level 3 charger at least), telling the charging station what you want to do. This is different than Level 2 stations where you just plug in and go. The Level 3 charging station talks to the car and knows the car's level of charge. It asks you then what level you want to charge the car at. This is redundant because the car has it's own charge limit. It appears that the car stops at whichever limit comes first (the car's or what you set at the charger), so it makes sense to me to just tell the charger to always charge station to 100% and continue to control the limit from the car.
Once I figured all that out, I started to charge, only to have the whole thing error out. I have no idea what caused this and it happened 3 more times. I set the charging limit on the station to 80% and tried again and this time it worked. However, it worked on subsequent attempts regardless of what limit I set and I haven't seen the error return. In any event, once it got going, the charging station I was using started making quite a bit of noise (cooling fan), and off we went.
This was a standard Level 3 charger. My charing output started at 42kw and slowly inched up to 47kw. For a P85D, this works out to a peak of 148 rated miles/hr. Pretty awesome. Since charging at work on a level-2 charger gives me roughly 17 mi/hr, this is about 8.5x faster (note: something is weird with rated mile calcs because the charging output of a level-2 charger is 6kw and 47/6 = 7.8x more power, yet 148/17 = 8.7x more rated mileage. Haven't quite figured that out. Anyway, the car is still charging, but it looks like it is going to go from 27% to 90% in just about one hour.
A few other notes:
There are no start/stop charge controls on the mobile device when using the level-3 charger. This is both with Tesla's app as well as Blink's. So, if the car stops charging for whatever reason, you have to go back out to the car to start it up again. You can stop the car from charging, but you have to use the charge limit to do so.
There is also no estimated time to complete on the mobile app.
Where I live, there are a lot of level 3 chargers so this whole thing is very complimentary to the supercharging network. I generally don't use superchargers due to their location and the fact that I don't do a lot of road trips on the car, but with this charging adapter, I can definitely see driving my car in more distance scenarios. The only issue, is that a level 3 charger is not cheap. Most of the charging rates I saw were between $0.50 and $0.65 per kwh. If the average charging session is 45Kwh, that is between $20/$30 a charging session which is not cheap. Still, the convenience it enables is probably worth it. Given the availability of charging stations where I live, this will definitely increase the driving range for me of the car.
Overall, I feel pretty good about the $450 investment.
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