fooljoe said:
Great observation miimura. Just goes to show how ridiculous it is that the car doesn't close and open the relays to sample the voltage when you plug in, as other EVs (at least the Leaf) do.
Yes, excellent observation . . . my VOLT "always" does this apparent sampling of my Leviton 32A L2 EVSE right after being plugged in for a subsequent scheduled charge, which work flawlessly each and every time. My RAV4 EV does
not do this, so how can it determine how long the charge will take?
Another thing, even though my scheduled charges "complete" way earlier than scheduled, the balancing charge that follows a few hours later, which takes ~30 minutes, ALWAYS completed about 10 minutes past the scheduled completion time. I have seen this behavior consistently.
Thus, my "workaround" is to always do a weekly scheduled charge sometime after midnight for completion by 10am Sunday morning. I set up for this by plugging in the car late Saturday afternoon around 5pm to my Leviton 32A L2 EVSE, then make sure the LEDs start blinking alternately. At this point I just leave the car unattended, parked and locked up for the rest of the evening.
Sure enough, the charging system "wakes up" and starts charging in the middle of the night, well after midnight, and completes the scheduled charge sometime very early Sunday morning. Then, it apparently goes to sleep again for a few hours, only to wake up again around 9:40am. This is when it apparently resumes charging at a much lower rate for approximate 30 minutes for cell balancing purposes, which completes NLT 10:10am. At this point I can unplug, error free, with a fully charged and balanced battery. From that point on the car is ready to go for my next drive.
Btw, I do this scheduling routine WEEKLY, as specified above, and only on Sundays, because if the car screws up and charges waaay too early (before midnight) or takes waaay longer to complete, I am still doing the charge during PG&E's off peak rate, so that's my failsafe for avoiding a penalty by inadvertently charging at a higher rate period on some other day of the week.
In my Volt, which I have to recharge at least twice per week, and often once mid week, I can do a scheduled charge using the same Leviton 32A L2 EVSE any day of the week, after plugging in at any time, and always have the charge fully completed about 15 minutes before my next scheduled departure. It works GREAT!
