Buy Local They Said - EV Charging Station

I try. If its not much more, if they have it, and its not more hassle than it should be.

Lets start by saying the people at the local KIA dealership should really know their products better. My wife just signed a 3 years lease on a new Kia Niro full EV. (Don't lecture me. She chose that.) If anything her time is more valuable than mine, so driving out of her way to use an EV charging station and having to sit around waiting is just plain stupid. It made no sense to me, and the eyes of the smartest people at the local Kia dealer just glazed over like they couldn't imagine not using the free (500 KW included free) charging stations at their dealership, their sister Hyundai dealership, or one of the local public charging stations.

When I started asking questions I already knew decent name brand chargers were available from old names like Schumacher. The dealer folks kept going on about how slow it would be to use a cord, and we should have a Kia "Level II" charger professionally installed. I hadn't really looked at price, and their price wasn't outrageous as dealerships go. They just couldn't answer my questions about what is level I, level II, and why a hardwired level II was better than a corded level II. They suffered from clue deficiency. They didn't even seem to have a definition of what level II was other than its a bigger number than level I.

I gave up and went home where I took a quick look on the Schumacher website where with the most casual of study I quickly figured it out.

Many of the plug in cord type charges are both Level I and Level II with the only difference being input voltage. You can plug it into a 20 amp

240V outlet and charge at 16 amps. With an adapter you can plug into 120V outlet and charge at 16 amps. 240V is Level II. 120V input is Level I. If there is anybody in this group who doesn't already know what that means: Total power is watts. Watts is amps times volts. Then I looked a the wall mounted chargers and discovered that they were somewhat configurable. For example the SEV1600HW (HW stands for hard wired) can be configured with a plug upto a 50 amp range type on a 50 amp breaker. It can also be hard wired directly to larger breakers and set for higher charging current.

I opted for a new 50 amp breaker on the sub panel in the garage and a 50 amp range plug. The recommended switch settings are to charge at 40 amps in this configuration. Its not as fast as it could be, but we already did a test with a Schumacher cord charger last weekend with it plugged into the 120V ceiling receptacle next to the garage door opener. It was enough after one week of normal daily use back up to 100% charge. I am sure 40 amps at 240 input will be plenty enough faster than 16 amps at 120V that she won't complain.

The big bonus, is that now I have an outlet in the garage where I can plug in a welder. That's the main reason I went with a 50 amp breaker/outlet instead of hard wiring into a 70amp breaker instead. I no longer have to drag things through the field to the back of the shop or string extension cords (I have some heavy 240V extension cords) all the way through the shop to work out in the driveway.

I don't think the Schumacher is much different (other than price) from the Kia charger and I would have paid the Kia premium, but they just couldn't answer any of my questions. If I pay dealer premium price I expect the dealer to know their products.

... Oh I'm not done yet. I decided to just buy all the electrical stuff locally at the big box store, so it would be here when I was ready to hang the bigger wall mounted charger and set it up. Whichever one showed everything in stock. Home Depot showed everything in stock on-line, but alas they didn't actually have the 4 pin 50 amp plugs their website said they did. Then I grabbed the wrong breaker... and it all just annoyed me. I checked Lowes and they didn't show any 50 amp (range plugs) on their website as in stock locally. I ordered one on Amazon, and it should arrive today. I wound up getting the correct breaker over at Lowes, and on my way to the check out I happened to see on a bottom shelf a box over flowing with 50 amp 4pin plug cords in just the right length for the job.

In the end I would have been better off just buying everything from Amazon. I'd have had the job done two days ago. Next time somebody lectures me about buying locally I won't punch them in the mouth, but I'll probably think about it. Oh, yeah, I had plenty of 8awg wire on hand already. More than I will probably ever use.

As to the lease / EV. Well I'm not ready for EV for a whole host of reasons. The big one being that often when an EV battery bricks the car it costs more to replace than the car is worth, and EV batteries don't seem to last as long as a gas engine at this point. My wife has had an illogical desire to buy an EV for a while now. I argued. I pointed out the less than ideal logistics. I detailed the longevity issues. I even pointed out that a paid off gasser would cost less to operate (no payments) than a new EV. She wasn't having any of that. She didn't disagree with me. She just wanted an electric car. Generally I am against vehicle leases as well. About the only one its better for is your accountant if its a business vehicle. Otherwise you are just paying rent and gaining no equity. In this case though I think its the right thing to do. In three years battery technology will have improved, and three years is well within the average life of an EV battery at this time. She won't be stuck with a large paper weight when it bricks the car. It will be somebody else's problem.

FYI: The Kia Level II wall charger was $750 plus installation. The Schumacher on Amazon was $550 with free shipping. I spent less than $100 on breaker, box, connectors, outlet, and misc, and I had wire and smurf on hand.

Reply to
Bob La Londe
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Southern NH has a high concentration of defense contractors. When a clerk finds that I understand electronics the usual reaction is "Oh, you must be an engineer", spoken as a put-down of someone expected to be difficult to deal with.

I'd like to know how many miles per KWH it actually gets and what she complains about. I test-drive new cars and trucks to narrow the focus of what to buy if/when my 23-year-old CRV fails and so far have concluded I like my old one as much or better, although it's often jacked up for repairs, right now to patch some rust for instance. That first model was designed by and for engineers, some from Land Rover, subsequent ones by stylists who had no use for the practical features I liked.

Reply to
Jim Wilkins
[snip]

Real world experience, Gord C-Max "Energi" model.

Typically 4 miles per kw-hr when driving 60 mph. Cut that down by a third if using air onditioning...

Larger veh's would, of course, be less.

Reply to
danny burstein

AAAARRRHHHHGGGHGHGH. That's a FORD C-Max.

Reply to
danny burstein

FORD C-Max.

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My boss at Segway.

Reply to
Jim Wilkins

Looks like he's the point person in trying to bring all the various (currently outsourced) pieces of software under the Ford umbrella so they'll all talk nice to each other and Ford can upgrade without HUGE problems.

I heard a report a week or two ago that all this segmentation and outside contracting for the different modules was a big reason Ford was pulling out its hairs..

And I can tell you as an owner that this SUCKS and we had to install a 12V battery cut off switch so we could force full computer resets...

Every few months the various systems in the car (radio, headlights, climate control, oh, and the speedometer and what "gear" were we were in) would go kablooie [a]. There was no simple way to reboot everything, so we had to unscrew the grounding cable from the chassis - which was a very LONG screw in the back. Oh, and it sparked and sparked and sparked as I applied the socket wrench to it.

Forcing my teeth to clench as I worried as to what that might be doint to the electronics.

So we paid the shop an hour or two to wire a simple cut-off switch. (I could have done it if my eyes and hands were ten years younger).

And yes, we still have to force the resets..

[a] these work off the 12V system, as opposed to the electric motor which is high voltage.
Reply to
danny burstein

Looks like he's the point person in trying to bring all the various (currently outsourced) pieces of software under the Ford umbrella so they'll all talk nice to each other and Ford can upgrade without HUGE problems.

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I'd rather be unemployed than take that job, or Production Manager. I just got off a chat with my low cost ISP whose programmers are incompetent, after much squeezing the agent finally admitted the login problem I see was their fault.

When I was a circuit board designer I learned all the standard manufacturing specs and tolerances and put the necessary ones in the bids to board makers, many times they'd cut their price by ignoring the ones that were difficult for them. Eventually the salespeople learned they couldn't BS me and I learned who could meet the harder specs for controlled impedance digital microwave radio circuits and sent bids only to them. The hard proof was that they would add a test pattern for their impedance measuring equipment to the panel of circuit boards.

It's the same with software, many programmers are better graphic artists than engineers, in fact a programmer who understands complex (or even simple) electronics is rare, I've been put in that spot and had to take programming courses to do it. At Segway where Doug Fields was head of engineering the mathematical basis of controlling the brushless motor is similar to and as difficult as the NASA space communications coding I learned at Mitre. My one interaction with him made me question his expertise in electronic math.

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Reply to
Jim Wilkins

Looks like he's the point person in trying to bring all the various (currently outsourced) pieces of software under the Ford umbrella so they'll all talk nice to each other and Ford can upgrade without HUGE problems.

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I'm not articulate, persuasive and diplomatic enough to keep them from becoming defensive, sullen and uncooperative when I find their errors and display them on an oscilloscope. One reason for buying machine tools was to make models to demonstrate solutions I couldn't convincingly explain. Doug did apologize via his secretary when I solved his request literally and he hadn't expected the consequence.

On one project I was given responsibility for the backplane which interconnected the boards designed by the individual engineers, so it's signal specifications acted to coordinate them. The project engineer did the negotiation while I managed the documentation and saw how tricky it was to make them work together. On another project two board designers had stubbornly conflicting ideas on ribbon cable connectors and I had to make custom cables with each signal/ground pair separated and twisted 180 on one end and hand staked into the connector notches. Amazingly it worked, at least on the ground. I and most of the other techs left before it was flight tested.

Reply to
Jim Wilkins

On another project two board designers had stubbornly conflicting ideas on ribbon cable connectors and I had to make custom cables with each signal/ground pair separated and twisted 180 on one end and hand staked into the connector notches.

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A problem with engineering playgrounds and "country clubs" is that they all want to be in charge which means they all end up working by themselves. Either the project manager or their techs need multi-disciplinary skills to help coordinate them.

Reply to
Jim Wilkins

Top posting on purpose here. Any of you who are interested already read the rest anyway. Skip down and review first if you need to.

When we were picking up the KIA Niro EV we noted it did not have any kind of charging cord or charger included. The sales people kept acting like it did or it didn't depending on whatever point they were trying to make badly at the moment. It was physically not present. At one point the junior sales person told us he was sorry that he had told us it came with a charger, but there wasn't one. He was willing to split the cost of one with us and pay it out of his pocket. The senior sales person later said he would get us a charger (Level I) on the dealership's dime, but when I asked when we could expect to get that he back pedaled and said he had to check see if it was supposed to come with one first.

As documented below I bought a cord type level I / level II (16 amp) Schumacker charger and a wall mounted hardwired Level II charger. The cord type arrived the next day and we used it already. I finished mounting and wiring the wall mounted charger the end of last week after some trials and tribulations.

The local Kia dealer called yesterday to let us know they were in fact giving us a plug in cord charger. The first thing I noticed is it appears to be Level I (120V) only. There is no plug for any type of

220V. You may recall the Schumacher portable cord charger can be plugged into either a 20amp 120V outlet or a 20amp 220V outlet. It charges at 16 amps with either voltage giving it a faster charging capability if you are one of those people who have a 220V 20 amp outlet in your garage. I do. I used to use my Delta radial arm saw in the garage. Its behind boxes on a shelf now, but its there.

So far for my wife's daily driving (work/shopping/meetings) the vehicle looks like it can run 3(+) weeks on a charge using the air conditioning every day. This means the pressure to clear space in the garage so she can pull in (mostly her garbage) is not as high. I do have a couple saws I'll either move to the other side of the garage or out to the shop, but there is, well, a lot of her garbage.

I > I try.  If its not much more, if they have it, and its not more hassle

Reply to
Bob La Londe

Top posting on purpose here. Any of you who are interested already read the rest anyway. Skip down and review first if you need to.

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The Ford dealer had several vehicles on the lot that couldn't be bought and driven away because they were waiting for missing parts, which were on back order because all that could be obtained were going into new production.

It was like the Army's severe parts shortage in Europe when everything was going to Vietnam. We solved that via J. C. Whitney and driving our own cars, which was nice because it meant we didn't have to park and stay overnight on post somewhere when travelling.

Reply to
Jim Wilkins

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