Oh right. I feel less of a chump for buying a Leaf now with its "betamax" Chademo rapid charging. At least I'm not alone in being unable to use the 22 kw charging to its full extent.
22 kw charging
This is likely a dumb question. Is there a way that my 2018 40kw Leaf can make full use of the public chargers capable of charging at 22kw?
Happy Christmas seeing as I'm posting this on Christmas Day!
Happy Christmas seeing as I'm posting this on Christmas Day!
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From what I've read about that why would anyone pay for that? Surely it'd be better to sell and buy another car.You can get the upgrade from muxsan and it's not cheap...
A few months back in Whitby they fitted the first public charger of more than 7kw and it's a 22kw one. North Yorkshire council have announced they are putting in "rapid chargers" in some of their car parks including Whitby and it turns out they will be 22kw chargers.No.
22kW is incredibly rare. Basically the Zoe, optional extra on early Tesla Model S, optional extra on Porsche Taycan.
It sounds daft when from what you say hardly anyone will be able to make full use of them only being able to charge at 7kw.
In my ten months of ownership of a 2018 Leaf I've not been far in it so it's been fine for me.The 22kW charging uses three phase. So, if you wanted to upgrade a car from 7kW charging, you'd need to add 2 more charge modules or replace the original single phase unit with a 3-phase one.
It's a shame the 22kW charging wasn't more widely adopted by car makers, as 415v 3-phase supplies are of course very common on commercial sites.
I'm in the Chademo club too. I don't see anything wrong with it, and can honestly say CCS has no advantage for me with my car. I don't travel long distances where I need to fast-charge away from home, and assume most other people with 30kWh (or under) batteries are in the same situation.
Nissan's 40 and 62kWh packs are a bit oddball to me, as the range encourages travelling further away from the safety of home charging, knowing that public Chademo units are being phased out.
I suppose the moral of this EV story is like always: do your research to get the car that suits your needs.
If places like Lidl continue to have machines which only allow one rapid charge at a time I guess they won't care so much if less and less often the Chademo plug is being used?
I didn't imagine driving the car long distances much if at all so clearly I wasn't thinking enough about rapid charging. I didn't know that the Leaf's way of rapid charging was on the way out when I bought the car. It is niggling that there might come a time when I want to do a round trip of 200 miles in a day and it isn't possible in this car.What's your leaf worth now and how much would you lose from your purchase if you sold it now?
Just out of interest, and may be of benefit to other potential purchasers, when did you understand the nuances of rapid charging standards and that the leaf couldn't charge on all networks? Presumably the sales person didn't make particular mention as they'd be losing a sale if they raised the subject of Chademo vs CCS! Would you have bought the car if you had been made aware of it?
Also don't forget the Zoe40 and even some of the Zoe50 cars don't have CCS either. At least one new owner of a Zoe50 has been shocked to discover they couldn't use CCS after buying the car!
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