Anyone got bored of plugging in everyday?

I got the online manual. Can you gimmy a page # ?? The j plug & cord are rated for thousands & thousands of cycles of use ... which is the same as anything electric. Is that what you're referencing?
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Just re-read the charging section of my owner's manual. Saw no mention of fixed limit to number of charges for the cable itself. I'd thus estimate that the HV battery will be the bottleneck, in terms of limits to number of times charging (as I'd suspect). Where in your manual did you read this?

 

It's right on the manual which comes with the charging cable. The light flashes to tell you the cable is coming to the end of it's service life.

This topic has already been discussed another thread: Disposable charging cable? | PriusChat

 

And that thread has no definitive explanation for an inartful translation. We have no idea what the limit is for self-destruction, IF THERE IN FACT IS ONE.

I believe Toyota would have a very big class action suit and bad press if this "limit" were to effectively cut short the life of a perfectly serviceable unit as a method to encourage replacement. If the "limit" is 10,000, as someone calculated, it would take over 13 years to reach it. Ridiculous to worry about this.

 

Based on what we know so far, there is indeed a limit, which is cause for concern in itself. The fact that we do not know what the limit is, is another cause for concern.

 

Hmm... so these blue charging cables for our PiPs all use the SAE J1772 standard. According to SAE J1772 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia , this is the signaling circuit for the charging:

The left side represents the cable, from wall power to the blue-handled connector. The right side represents the car's half of the circuit path. I suspect the likeliest "culprit" for the issue is that relay:


I've been studying up on auto power electronics from car audio enthusiast sites. When performing tasks like installing secondary 12v batteries (for providing added power to feed their audio systems), a common improvement is to isolate the different batteries to reserve one for being able to start the car again after running the audio system while the vehicle is off. 2 common ways of battery isolation are using diode-based ones vs. relay-based ones.

There're pros & cons to each and, for relays, it's that the relay will eventually wear out (because it's an electronic component that's actually switching back and forth, as opposed to the diode, which is solid state).

As such, I suspect that it'd be this relay that's anticipated to wear out and need replacing before any of the other components, and it's most likely inside the controller box portion of the cable. Toyota's legal department likely wants to avert lawsuits from DIY-wannabes crispy-frying themselves on a 12A current path to try to save themselves a few bucks. Toyota also likely doesn't wanna deal with the added complexity costs of attempting to repair/replace small components inside larger, reliably self-contained components like "the entire cable" either.

As some have opined in the other thread on the subject though, the long-term replacement costs of the cables may drop significantly by the time such cabling needs to be repaired. But there're apparently already smaller-to-mid-sized places specializing in this stuff that would likely be capable of doing it as well (including DIY-ers who're actually safe and competent).

 

Note that relays in the car will eventually go bad as well after enough age of use. They're just commoditize to be more easily replaced the enterprising DIY-er than what's in these cable controllers. (One could also argue that these are "early-era" implementations of EV tech standards and aren't designed for inexpensive replacement of such parts. There probably isn't sufficient demand for such features yet..)

 

The more I look at the design of that circuit, that relay is really just part of a safety subsystem designed to break the connection if that detector sees anything amiss. You can see a similar, more sophisticated protection in the vehicle's side.

Anyone with sufficiently competent electrician skill adventurous enough to disassemble the controller box an' document for us what they find? (I am obviously not condoning doing this if you are in any way less than fully capable.. ) I don't recall off the top o' my head if that controller box enclosure was sealed with simple screw fasteners or if it appeared to have some more mystical and seamless method of enclosure..

 

I wouldn't count on being able to jimmy the microprocessor that flashes the warning for a time before it disables the charging cable.

 

Mm.. it may be digitally tracking the number of times it charges (whether it's the times the relay flips or whatever else). Still, apart from things like the relay, solid state electronics don't really "wear out" physically, at least not to my knowledge in things like cables.. galvanic corrosion perhaps between different metals in used internally? but that seems unlikely.

 

When was the last time a relay went out in one of your cars? In over 12 cars over 40+ years of driving, even a Chrysler-made POS, I've never had a relay fail. (While solenoids are similar, they aren't relays, and solenoids do fail on cars from lesser manufacturers. Like my '74 Opel 1900, which required a hammer to "encourage" the solenoid to engage. )

 

I don't think I really understood what relays even were until just recently, so never bothered to test them to see if they had nor would've I known how.

 

Maybe, but it wouldn't make sense for it to be easily defeatable. More likely, it's like a printer ink cartridge which after a period of use, disables the printer until you buy the manufacturer's cartridge.

 

I've used many types of relays in many projects over the years. There seems to be two main types; those which are spec'ed to last for a certain number of duty cycles, and those which seem to virtually last forever. I have tried to use the latter type.

 

Is there an expectation that the cable should last hundreds of years? All the components and materials in anything have finite lifetimes. How do you want the cable to announce it is unsafe....shock you? The reality is the cable must conform to safety standards just like the car....and cars usually announce their end of life by lighting up warning and follow that with refusing to move quickly thereafter. A lot of effort (mostly successful) goes into designing the failures to happen in a safe fashion. As a (too old) aircraft electrical engineer, one of the fundamental requirements of any vehicle and support equipment is to design it for a certain life....and ensure the safety circuits work for that entire life. Then the other fundamental requirement is to ensure the failure modes do not hurt or kill folks. This is an engineering basic, not a money making technique. The charging cable is not a passive device, but an very well engineered device to provide a very long, but not infinite service life. The wording of what to do when the safety circuits are active is the problem, not their existence. What is nice is this design gives you warning to avoid being stranded. That is a good thing, not a shortcoming.

 

There is definitely a finite number of insertion cycles the connector contacts are designed to maintain their designed conductivity. I don't know what the number is, but every aviation connector I have used does have this specified.

 

Have we become conditioned to accept planned obsolescence? Is there anything wrong with using a 75-year old airplane for delivering cargo? Do we want our tires stamped with an expiry date? Do we really need someone to save us from using an electric cord too many times?

I want the freedom to buy and use products which have not been engineered to have a short service life, in order to provide a guaranteed revenue stream for the manufacturer.

Toyota raised the bar for reliability, and other manufacturers were forced to follow suit. that strategy certainly hasn't hurt Toyota over the years. I hope the "disposable" charging cable isn't the start of a reversal of that trend.

 

Knowing the expected usable lifetime of something is far more useful than not knowing it and simply assuming it's "forever", which is actually what people used to do...

What's changed is having knowledge in place of ignorance + hope. (I do agree that HP pioneered the print-cartridge economic model, but I think that presuming that Toyota must be doing the same here is leaping to conclusions. (I, likewise, do not want to be replacing these cables at ~$850 oem prices with any high frequency..))

 

I prefer to decide when something is worn out myself, and I prefer to buy those products which do not have a short service life.

 

No, there's no such expectation. And when something goes wrong when it fails, the GFI will cut off the power.

Here, we are talking about a design that apparently causes the device to become inoperative based on some kind of software-based count (charge cycles, insertions, or ???). Regardless of the device being perfectly safe and usable. Clearly, safety mechanisms are in place to keep it from shocking during its operation, and if the safety mechanism fails, no one is disagreeing that it's replacement time.

Here, we are talking about pre-destined failure without the manufacturer providing any information as to when the "count" will indeed cause "end of life" messages and shutdown. That's a problem, and I respectfully disagree with comparing aviation over-engineering with consumer electronics.

EDIT: Someone above was mentioning how HP limits cartridge life. But they tell you the volume of ink in the cartridge and an approximate page count, and for laser toner an approximate page count. Those are finite consumables. The EVSE ain't.

Toyota should provide the specific number of times the EVSE will operate before this software bomb explodes. Period.

 

What 75 year old aircraft has not been inspected and had all numerous components and parts replaces that were inspected and showing wear? The 75 year life was accomplished with extensive inspections, replacements, and upgrades as required the various aviation authorities worldwide. I'm like you in that I would rather buy something one time and have it last forever, but that is not the case, so I do the best I can (like a Prius). The charging cable is not an extension cord, but a long life support equipment. If it wears out before the car I would agree with insufficient engineering or design. But all that has been shown is a set of indications of replacement is needed, not that this is happening routinely at high frequency.

I don't want to buy stuff engineered for short service life either. Has that actually been shown to be the case? Or has it somehow that an assumption that since it can wear out, it must happen quickly. What would you say if it finally wore out after 200 years? That it is a good design or designed to fail?

All I see is indicators for replacing the cable, not that it is disposable. I think it is worth seeing how long it lasts before considering it was designed to expire before the car. Like everything in the auto industry, cost and service life are opposing tradeoffs. A $2000 cable with a 100 year service life vs. a $300 cable with a 10 year service life is usually what has to be decided. Which would you buy?