So Mitsubishi across the street from my office has a Public Charging station listed on plugshare. So I pulled in today to check it out. There were about 8 Mit electric vehicles, and sure enough, there was a charging station open. I didn't need a charge, just wanted to see where it was. Wow was I getting the evil eye from the Mitsubishi employees walking into the office. I would actually be nervous leaving my car there to charge.
I would imagine it was because charging stations at dealerships are probably not truly "public" and are intended for use by the dealership and their customers, not just anyone off the street.
My experience with "public" charging so far are chargers at dealers and in pay parking lots in NYC. The attendants at the parking lots usually make up an excuse why it cannot be used. There are Nissan and Mitsubishi dealers right near my house...but what good is that, I could just charge at my house.
Actually I went there at lunch to check it out again. Got strange looks, but I think its because they have not seen the PiP yet. Great location 4-110 outlets, 1 type 2 charger, and they actually have a type 3 charger as well. They are all setup under these solar arches, so it free to the public (as it costs them nothing) I plugged into the level 2 for 30 mins and took a nap in the car.
Yes, they are thinking "who is ths interloper bringing his Plug in Prius over here..." You probably saw a fleet of their iMEVs (130 mile range BEV), did you see a Chademo DC fast charger as well? That can charge the iMEV or Leaf to %80 in 30 minutes.
Yep they had about 10 or so iMEVs. About the size of a leaf I would say. And yes, that Chademo sounded like a jet engine charging one of the iMEVs. 80% is 30 mins, but that last 20% takes a LONG time.
The imiev has an EPA range of 63 miles. It's batteries are capable of being charged to 80% in 15 minutes or less.
I stand corrected, I thought it had a larger pack than the Leaf, 16KW is smaller. Mitsubishi i-MiEV - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
All 3 of the Imevs I have seen have had the not so optional level 3 DC charging option for something like $800. Would pull more current than the peak load at my all electric house (no ac just heat).
Tesla is smarter -- They are setting up a network of Tesla only charging stations. The Tesla charging port is proprietary, so only a Tesla can charge into a Tesla charging station, but Tesla provides an adapter, so a Tesla can plug into other charging stations. (J1772).
That and the Model S is comming with a 10KW on board charger (that's a 240V 50A circuit), on the higher end models (240 and 320 mile versions), you can get get an optional 2nd 10KW charger, for a combined 20KW of charging capability, of course the largest model comes with an 85KW pack, so it would still take nearly 4 hours @ 20KW to fill... You also need 100A @ 240 to run it, that's 1/2 of a 200A service.
There are a bunch of threads at MNL like My Nissan Leaf Forum • View topic - (Un)Official Mitsubishi (Cypress, CA) L3 Scheduling Thread and My Nissan Leaf Forum • View topic - Quick Charging comes to Southern California about the Mitsubishi charging station in Cypress. Of particular interest for Leafers is the CHAdeMO station.
Maybe they gave you strange looks because they thought you were going to plug the Level 3 charger into your level 2 charge port on the Toyota Prius? Actually it says in the Toyota Prius Plug in Owner's Manual not to plug it in to a DC charger, which is what a level 3 charger is. Besides that the level 3 charger has a different plug which does not fit.
