Charging PIP using Chevy Volt 110V charge cord

The ability to switch between 12a and 8a is very useful if you are charging on the road. Many places may have a 120v plug, but if there are other things on the circuit (including e.g. lights in a garage), the full 12A may call it to pop the circuit or cause the car to reject the power.

 

Ok - ok ... I guess it was a combo of the way it was worded, and my propensity to skim . Accordng to pEEf, the Portable L1 EVSE that comes with the Leaf is actually the most robust model he's seen to date. BTW, one the portable EVSE is mod'ed to run on either 120v - 208v - 240v it still charges the PiP just fine ... only a lot quicker.

Yep ... that happened to us after driving from south O.C. up to the Glendale foothills ... a 70 mile trip. And TRIP it did ... their poorly wired garage, was the same circuit that their kitchen microwave was on. Fortunately, I found a 240v dryer plug, and had my selection of adapter plugs in the trunk
:thumb:

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Code:

		120V Charge Cords By Make And Model Year (columns)

	  2012 PiP	2011 LEAF	2012 LEAF	2011 Volt	2012 Volt
12 PiP    x		X		*		!		!
11 LEAF	  X		x		x		X		X
12 LEAF	  *		x		x		*		*
11 Volt	  X		!		X		x		X
12 Volt	  X		X		*		x		x

X -- charge successful
x -- charge assumed successful
! -- charge failed
* -- not tested due to time

Notes:

The 2011 Volt that was tested is possibly out-of-date on the latest software updates. It is possible that the incompatibility with the 2011 LEAF charge cord has been fixed in software.

The 2011 and 2012 Volt charge cords reflect the first two variants of the cord supplied by GM. These cords are being upgraded to a new cord with a better plug and wiring but are just becoming available. The new cord will be retested with the PiP when it becomes available [EDIT: new 3rd generation Volt cord now tested but has the same compatibility behavior as the earlier cords].

Volt cords can optionally charge at 8A rather than 12A. Both modes were tested and had the same interoperability behavior.

 

If you truly want unlimited flexability, build your own EVSE, you will be able to adjust the current in miniscule degrees, see the duty cycle/formula on the "Pilot Duty Cycle" section of this link:
EVSE_TESTING - open-evse - How to test an EVSE. - Open Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment (EVSE) - Google Project Hosting

Here is the math for the pilot signal, there is a chart below it.

"The Pilot Duty Cycle is dependant on the Max current setting of the EVSE. Duty cycle should match the chart below.
Up to 51A Amps = Duty cycle x 0.6 Duty cycle = Amps / 0.6
51 - 80A Amps = (Duty Cycle - 64) 2.5"

you can also build yor own "OpenEVSE", I built one capable of L1 120V, all the way to L2 240V 30A max. see pictures here:

[ame="http://s461.photobucket.com/albums/qq333/mitch672/OpenEVSE/"]OpenEVSE pictures by mitch672 - Photobucket[/ame]

 

Some asterisks should be deleted from chart...

 

So 2012 PiP charging cord is the most compatible.

 

Well, many were not tested by Geff N yet. I see no reason why the 2012 Leaf cord will not get the same number of hits.

What really is troublesome is the fact that the Volt charging cord (at least versions 1 & 2) is made of very marginal 16AWG wires! For a $40k car one can expect this cost cut should be eliminated (I refuse to believe it's an engineering miss).

 

Yea, my audio amp power cable is 8 AWG connected to the 12v battery. 16 AWG is much thinner than that.

 

I agree that it is better to be more conservative and go with 14 gauge wires (as in the latest Volt charge cord). As a practical matter, however, I believe the heat problems they had were not due to the 16 gauge wire but rather to the way the wires were connected to the standard 120V wall plug.

My cord ran warm at the plug (which conducted heat down the 12-inch cord leading to the EVSE box) but I thought it would be okay. Apparently not, since after a year of working okay the injection-molded plastic plug began to show signs of swelling and melting.

I replaced the plug with a $6 heavy duty plug i bought from the hardware store. The new plug on the same 12-inch 16AWG cord now runs cool even after charging for many hours at 120V at 12A.

The cord between the EVSE box and the car is thicker than the cord leading to the 120V plug. I don't know if that means the wires there are already 14AWG or that the cord just contains more filler material between the wires.

 

Most of the asterisks are because we did not bother to prove that the charge cords that came with the car itself could charge that same car. We also assumed that the charge cords for each brand could charge both the 2011 and 2012 models of that same make (both LEAF cords charge both LEAF model years...).

Beyond that, we did not have time to test the charging of the 2012 LEAF with the cords from the other car makers. We were doing this over the lunch break. Perhaps when I get my new updated Volt charge cord I can rearrange to do some additional tests with the 2012 LEAF to fill out the table.

I updated the chart to clarify which tests were just assumed to pass versus which ones were not conducted between car makers due to time limitations.

 

Sorry, I was not clear, i meant: where no test is needed it can be - sign instead of * sign.

 

Did I miss it, or did you ever test the latest Chevy Volt cable to see if it worked on the PIP ?

 

I can confirm a 2012 Leaf charger works on a 2012 PIP.