Roadster Conversion to J1772 Charging

[tomsax]

Cathy and I, with help from Dave Denhart and many others in the Tesla and broader EV communities, have converted our 2008 Roadster and Tesla High Power Wall Connector to use the new industry standard J1772 inlet and plug. This will allow us to charge without an adapter at the tens of thousands of Level 2 charging stations that will be installed in the US by the end of 2011.




What we have is functional and completely reversible, but not ideal; we view this as a version 0.9 conversion. As there are very few J1772 charging stations currently installed, and the numbers probably won't take off until late spring or early summer, we have time to develop a better solution before it actually becomes compelling for Tesla owners to convert in significant numbers.



I'm sure Tesla Motors could do a much better job of creating an integrated solution and I would prefer that to having the owner community develop a conversion solution.



Our next steps are:

1) Hope that Tesla Motors provides an official conversion solution before it matters to most owners, thus saving us the remaining steps.

2) Design a circuit to monitor the proximity pin and disconnect the pilot signal when the J1772 plug is unlocked.

3) Test with other J1772 plugs and possibly work on a better solution for cable clearance over the body panel.

4) The 2010 and later Roadsters have the inlet cable assembly connecting to the PEM in a different location. There may also be other differences. We haven't looked into it yet and don't know if it will be more or less difficult to convert than the 2008 Roadsters.

5) Before recommending an unofficial conversion to other owners, we'll need to find out how this will impact our warranty. Tesla Motors has been cooperative with our efforts: they sold our group an inlet cable assembly so that we could do the conversion reversibly. We hope they will continue to be supportive rather than forcing us to wait until our warranties expire before being able to effortlessly access standard J1772 public charging stations.

For more details on our project and what still needs to be done before we can recommend that other owners do the same, see my blog.

[TEG]

Nice!
Can you still charge at full HPWC/HPC current levels through your converted 'solution'?

Seems likely based on this part of your blog:

...we finally obtained an ITT Canon 75A UL-approved inlet and plug pair from Clipper Creek. The plug cord is intended as a replacement cable for Clipper Creek's model CS-100, and carries the same power and signal wires as the TS-70 aka Tesla's High Power Wall Connector (HPWC, formerly the HPC)...

[tomsax]

Nice!
Can you still charge at full HPC current levels through your converted 'solution'?

Yes, that's why we waited for the 75A ITT Canon hardware.

[dsm363]

That's amazing Tom. Thanks for doing all of that work. Did you remove the Tesla plug somehow and install the J1772 plug (it's fixed in place)? That would be great if Tesla provided an officially supported solution but I'm glad people like you are looking into a solution as well. Thanks again.

[vfx]

Really cool Tom. I don't know how you could keep it secret!

In 1.0 can you tilt the socket back a bit so the cable does not rest on the car?

[ChargeIt!]

Really cool Tom. I don't know how you could keep it secret!

In 1.0 can you tilt the plug back a bit so the cable does not rest on the car?

FANTASTIC !
Or how about rotating the inlet about 30 degree CCW (but not too far where the cable would interfere with the trunk open/close).

[TEG]

I don't know if it makes sense to merge, but here is the "precursor" thread talking about J1772 charging using adapters:
http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/showt...Tesla-Roadster

[tomsax]

In 1.0 can you tilt the socket back a bit so the cable does not rest on the car?

We had to tilt it back to get the ITT Canon plug to almost clear. There's more detail, and an image of the bracket on my blog.

Or how about rotating the inlet about 30 degree CCW (but not too far where the cable would interfere with the trunk open/close).

Actually, with the way the body flares out toward the back, I think it would be more effective to rotate it 20 or 30 degrees clockwise. Unfortunately, the mounting points (bosses) on the back of the cup interfere with being able to do that. Most significantly, the boss that supports the bottom center screw is where the bottom corner of the base wants to be when you rotate it.

[tomsax]

I don't know if it makes sense to merge, but here is the "precursor" thread talking about J1772 charging using adapters:
http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/showt...Tesla-Roadster

I get a little tired of trying to find the interesting bits in a thread that goes on forever, and I thought the conversion was a sufficiently big update to warrant a new thread. But I'm open to merging if that's the preferred way to handle this sort of thing.

[dpeilow]

I think we'll leave the threads as they are this time. I agree, it's big enough to warrant its own topic.