I'm happy using the 120v cord to charge at home, but is it possible to charge the car using a public charging place if it provides only 240v service? Is the plug configuration universal? Does anything have to be changed or adjusted in the car if it's getting charged with 240v?
Yes you can use 240 volt level 2 charging locations with the J1772 connection. The car will talk to the station and tell it how many amps it can use all you have to do is plug it in.
OK, I'm good. Thanks, mindmachine. Now all I have to do is figure out where charging stations are located.
I only use Blink and Chargepoint. Electric Vehicle Charging By ChargePoint and Blink , you can sign up online and see there charging locations for your area of interest online too.
Another good option is PlugShare. Beware of stations that charge a fee to plug in. These may be a necessity for Leafs and Teslas, but for a Plugin Prius a visit to a gas station can be much cheaper per mile.
I'm curious. What kind of travel does one do where stopping to charge the car for an hour or so is more important or cost effective than using less than 1 quart of gas? Of course if you commute and charge at/near work it makes sense.
If you're at a mall with the family or a restaurant, both can easily exceed 1hr stays. So if they offer free charging, why not take advantage? One hr L2 charge on my car gets me 10-12 EV miles.
Yep, I used to charge while eating lunch. Could get about ~7 miles during a lunch. There is one mall here that has charging too. Unfortunately, they now charge so I don't use it and have not seen a car charging there since.
The novelty of plugging in a car kept me going to the Fremont Target. It still makes me giddy every time I do it. They doubled the amount of chargers there to some 20 spots but unfortunately, we're still past saturation as I counted some 5 BEVs parked in regular stalls. I no longer go there.
That's crazy there are 20 spots and they are still always used! The ones I go to around here usually have 4 spots each (all free) and no one is ever at them. Ever.
You virtually never see them. Every now and then I see a Volt. Never another PiP yet. I've seen a few iMiEV's, but those are owned by the university. And I've only seen a handful of Leaf's (Leaves?). And unfortunately never a Tesla, although I know of a few in town.
Never having used a public charging point before, I can picture myself trying it out a time or two if it were readily available and I had some business to conduct that would leave the car idle for a while. On the other hand, I'd be pretty unwilling to pay much for the charge, since a full charge at home costs about $0.30, and that's only an equivalent value since our solar array generates more than we use. A full charge will take me about as far as a quarter of a gallon, so at $4 per gallon or so, I'd think about public charging at a good deal less than a dollar, but I'd be looking for a free source. We'll see how this pans out in actual practice.
Those are pretty much the numbers I came up with. Full charge = about 12 miles = about 1/4 gallon = about $1 of gasoline. Note that charging fees are generally by time, and it takes about 90 minutes to charge at a 240V charger (which most of the public ones are), so the break-even point with these numbers is about $0.66/hr. Note that this calculation is charging vs. gasoline. A full charge is about 3kwh from the wall, which is what you have to use if you want compare charging at a public station vs. charging from home.
It's more worth it to use the ones that charge by kWh instead of by hour for a plug-in with the slower 3.3 kW charger. If you assume the PiP takes max 3 kWh, and it takes 1.5 hours to charge, then we fill about 2 kWh per hour. At $1 per hour, that's 50 cents per kWh (easier to compare). However, if you have a Leaf or other car with 6.6 kW charger, then that cuts it down to 25 cents per kWh (since you charge twice as fast), which is still more pricey than most people pay at home but still is a relatively reasonable amount.
