E-MotorWerks JuiceBox - an open source 15kW EVSE

[valerun]

Hi Guys,

Val here from Electric Motor Werks (http://www.emotorwerks.com/)

Just wanted to start a separate thread dedicated to questions & tech support for our JuiceBox product - a 15kW open source EVSE. As seen on KickStarter (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/emw/emw-juicebox-an-open-source-level-2-ev-charging-st) and Engadget (http://www.engadget.com/2013/06/24/emw-kick-starts-juicebox-a-99-level-2-diy-charging-station/).

A quick refresher on the product: the DIY kits start at $149 and contain everything you need, including a 80A relay, a fully populated PCB, an industrial IP66 waterproof enclosure, chromed IP66 waterproof cable entry glands, nuts, bolts, and washers - even a decal! ;-). Just add your cables (or get them as option from our shop). Premium versions include WiFi, color LCD, wireless remote, etc - all working out of the box.

~500 if these have been shipped and already help people charge their EVs faster than ever. ~30-40 of those are charging RAV4EVs at 10kW. I love that car myself and definitely appreciate faster charging than I could get from all the regular charging stations one can buy on Amazon.

Given this is a completely open source product, we would love to hear your suggestions / comments for the next version - check out specific details at http://emotorwerks.com/products/online-store/product/show/44-emw-juicebox-an-open-source-level-2-15kw-ev-charging-station and let us know what you think!

Thanks,
Valery & Team JuiceBox.

PS. This is one of the latest of out products. Other products features in a number of publications (EAA, ChargedEV, Engadget, etc) include 12kW DC chargers, 25kW High-Voltage DC chargers, 20kW fully isolated EV chargers, and [soon] a CHAdeMO-compatible 20kW DC charger.

 

[Michael Bornstein]

Valerun:

I have called your office several times and sent two e-mails, so far with no results. Please answer the following questions:

With the premium version, is there some way to adjust the current limit externally without removing the case? I note that in the basic version, the current limit is set by a trimpot that is only accessible by removing the cover. Have you modified this in the premium version?

In your instructions for the current transformer, you do not mention stripping the two large wires that pass through the toroid before putting on the end connectors. Is this an oversight (i.e. the wires should be stripped), or does the connector penetrate the insulation to make contact with the wire (doubful as one of the wires will be carrying up to 60 amps)?

Please improve your customer service. Your product looks very good, but I am fearful that your presale service is a harbinger of what your postsale service might be.

You can reply in the forum or send me a personal message.

 

[arnolddeleon]

My understanding is the current setting is changeable on the premium version via the remote control.

arnold

 

[Michael Bornstein]

Arnold:

Thanks for the info. I am just upset that all attempts to contact EMW have been unsuccessful. As a result, I am fearful of what customer service will be like after the sale if I have problems.

Mike

 

[Brandy]

Mike,

Some patience contacting EMW maybe required. I suspect they maybe on an Olympic vacation.

=D~~Brandy

 

[Michael Bornstein]

Brandy & Arnold:

Thanks for the reply. OK, I will cool my jets. I sometimes get a little impatient.

I am looking for (?Nirvana) and inexpensive but high quality EVSE that will do 10 kW for portable use.

So far, my candidates are the Clipper Creek HCS-40P 7.2 kW $644, the Clipper Creek LCS-25P 4.8 kW $549 plus extra for a plug converter, or one of the DIY products, the Juicebox and the Open EVSE.

The Clipper Creek products supply the quality but at a price.

The Juicebox has excellent manuals online, but I am frustrated by being unable to talk to anyone there. (OK, I will wait until next week) There is also the question about the quality of the relays in their product. Can I replace the relays with PB or some other American manufacturer? How much will that raise the price?

OpenEVSE only supplies complete DIY kits and doesn't seem to have partially assembled kits. I can't find a manual on their site so I have no idea of how complicated the assembly is. I've been told that the relays can be replaced with ones designed to handle greater currents (theirs is limited to ?24 or ?30A), but again no details. Also, there are the weasel words on their site saying that the kits are for experimental use only.

EVSE Upgrade may be a choice, but I've read that the Nissan/Panasonic EVSE wont work with a RAV4, and I dont have access ot one of those anywy. Upgrading the Toyota EVSE only gives 2.9 kW.

Anyone have any experience with these products? Can I get a Open EVSE manual? What are the real world prices for a completed Premium Juicebox or Open EVSE with an enclosure?

 

[Brandy]

Mike;

For EVSE's I have the Toyota EVSE 120V/12A modded to 120/240V 12A, the Leviton 40A wall mount unit and the EMW Basic setup for 240V/50A circuit. I went to EMW when they had an open weekend and used their demo to charge. No apparent problems. The EMW Advanced units I believe are just in production now. Looking into the open box there are all quality components.

My new EMW Basic unit I have not used yet. I need to make a trip to test it. All my circuits at home are fully loaded.

=D~~ Brandy

 

[TonyWilliams]

40 amp EVSE choices

There are several choices for 40 amp (9.6kW @ 240 volts),and any of them are automatically "portable" with a pigtail and a NEMA 14-50 attached:

1) Leviton that Toyota wants you to know about, since they have a marketing agreement

2) Clipper Creek, the industry workhorse for a decade and first to be UL listed (CS-50 will pump out 40 amps continuous)

3) JESLAtm already comes with a NEMA 14-50 plug
http://www.QuickChargePower.com
All products at Quick Charge Power now carry a one year limited warranty.

4) Build your own OpenEVSE to any size you want for the technically inclined

 

[Michael Bornstein]

Tony:

I appreciate your comments. I already have a Leviton 40 at home. The EVSE I am looking for is one to take on the VERY RARE trips that I will make with the RAV4. The jESLA is nice, and if I didn't already own a Leviton, I might consider buying it, but for this application it is too expensive. Your Chademo, which will probably be more expensive, has the added attraction of a QC so I would consider it at a higher price level than a regular EVSE. So we are down to the Juicebox, the OpenEVSE, and one of the cheaper, but less capable Clipper Creeks.

Before I make a decision, I will talk to both EMW and OpenEVSE and try to decide between them

Mike

 

[valerun]

Mike,

Some patience contacting EMW maybe required. I suspect they maybe on an Olympic vacation.

=D~~Brandy

LOL Brandy - yes, we have quite a number of Russians on the staff at EMotorWerks.

We do try to respond to all emails promptly, though. Please make sure to direct tech support requests to JB-support at emotorwerks.com. That way, it goes to at least 3 people and you will get a response quicker.

Thanks,
Valery.

 

[valerun]

Brandy & Arnold:

The Juicebox has excellent manuals online, but I am frustrated by being unable to talk to anyone there. (OK, I will wait until next week) There is also the question about the quality of the relays in their product. Can I replace the relays with PB or some other American manufacturer? How much will that raise the price?

What are the real world prices for a completed Premium Juicebox or Open EVSE with an enclosure?

Thanks Mike for your kind words on the manual. Many builders like you have helped us make it better (got to love the Open Source!). As you know, it is now posted as a Google Doc, with ANYONE able to add their comments to the doc: https://docs.google.com/a/emotorwerks.com/document/d/127joe-QgHYRQVD4Zl2-oZO3A9gRjJZC4ReH_2jIM_x0/edit#

We have not had any report of issues with the relays yet. ~500 of those are out there now. We had 2 reports of power supplies issues - one of them ending up being a 'user error'. We had a few reports of false GFI trips on early units - now fixed via hardware and firmware changes.

Not sure I understand the last question on 'real world prices of Premium JuiceBox with an enclosure'. This is one of our standard products with pricing listed on our site so I would imagine that's what I would consider a 'real world price'. We do run a few week lead time on Premium units now but 300 enclosures are getting shipped to us end of Feb so we are all eagerly awaiting that moment.

We are now working on getting full WiFi monitoring and control of your JuiceBox working on WiFi-equipped Premium units. You can see some initial view of the monitoring part at http://emotorwerks.com/cgi-bin/JuiceBox/JB_data.pl?ID=28117872904738883433501998325314421251172647325&timeunit=30. This is actually one of the WiFi-upgraded Base Editions installed at my house. You can see 2 distinct cars charging on it - my RAV4EV and my wife's Leaf (you can discern them by power draw - bottom chart). According to my JuiceBox, I have saved ~$300 by driving electric since installing this JuiceBox (~6 weeks). In the next few weeks, we will release Android App that you can use to both monitor AND control your JuiceBox...

Show me another EVSE product that can do this at $500 price point all-in...

Valery

 

[TonyWilliams]

Show me another EVSE product that can do this at $500 price point all-in...

Valery

http://clippercreek.com/store/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/ClipperCreek-HCS40-Sell-Sheet.pdf

http://www.clippercreek.com/store/product-category/new-products/

 

[valerun]

Show me another EVSE product that can do this at $500 price point all-in...

Valery

http://clippercreek.com/store/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/ClipperCreek-HCS40-Sell-Sheet.pdf

http://www.clippercreek.com/store/product-category/new-products/

Really, Tony? ;-)

Where is WiFi? Where is the color LCD display with 10+ lines of relevant info? Where is energy metering? Where is an Android app for control?

V.

 

[valerun]

Show me another EVSE product that can do this at $500 price point all-in...

Valery

http://clippercreek.com/store/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/ClipperCreek-HCS40-Sell-Sheet.pdf

http://www.clippercreek.com/store/product-category/new-products/

It's also 30A, not even 40A (and definitely not 60...).

It's also $590, not $500...

I must be missing something really obvious??? ;-)

The fact is, there is no comparison. The only thing most other commercial EVSEs have going for them is UL approval. We will soon fix that. We are extremely aggressive with pricing of our products and will continue to be that way.

My main motivation is to stimulate adoption of EVs and I believe that affordable fast charging is a big part of that.

Everything else is secondary, including making a huge margin on products that have a handful of parts and that could be put together by an EE freshman.

If I drive pricing of other EVSEs down by being aggressive, I consider this an awesome outcome as everyone benefits. If someone releases a $500 unit with all my capabilities tomorrow, I will make a $400 version the day after.

Let me know if any questions ;-)

Valery.

 

[TonyWilliams]

Show me another EVSE product that can do this at $500 price point all-in...

Valery

http://clippercreek.com/store/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/ClipperCreek-HCS40-Sell-Sheet.pdf

http://www.clippercreek.com/store/product-category/new-products/

Really, Tony? ;-)

Where is WiFi? Where is the color LCD display with 10+ lines of relevant info? Where is energy metering? Where is an Android app for control?

V.

Well, they have a $499 unit, and they have a 30 amp unit, but clearly the ones that I linked don't have both, nor the other features you mentioned. It was supposed to be a comparison, not a challenge!!!

 

[mnml]

The customer service is horrible. I placed my order on Jan 31, 2014 for a JB Premium which has a 4 week lead time. I emailed them several times last week asking if they had an ETA on the delivery. I am leaving town and wanted to make arrangements for the delivery so the package doesn't sit on my doorstep for weeks. No a single reply! Horrible! Not very good for a startup trying to build a customer base.

If I had to do it all over again, I would opt for another solution.

 

[valerun]

The customer service is horrible. I placed my order on Jan 31, 2014 for a JB Premium which has a 4 week lead time. I emailed them several times last week asking if they had an ETA on the delivery. I am leaving town and wanted to make arrangements for the delivery so the package doesn't sit on my doorstep for weeks. No a single reply! Horrible! Not very good for a startup trying to build a customer base.

If I had to do it all over again, I would opt for another solution.

Tran - I believe this is you, right? Do you want us to put a copy of our email exchange here?

 

[mnml]

The customer service is horrible. I placed my order on Jan 31, 2014 for a JB Premium which has a 4 week lead time. I emailed them several times last week asking if they had an ETA on the delivery. I am leaving town and wanted to make arrangements for the delivery so the package doesn't sit on my doorstep for weeks. No a single reply! Horrible! Not very good for a startup trying to build a customer base.

If I had to do it all over again, I would opt for another solution.

Tran - I believe this is you, right? Do you want us to put a copy of our email exchange here?

Yes, by all means, be my guest. It's a shame that it took me canceling my order via Paypal and my posting on this forum to get a response. As neither of my emails sent on 2/14 and 2/24 got any attention from your company.

 

[valerun]

Hi Tran -

As I mentioned in our email thread, I apologize that we missed your first email on Fri Feb 14.

So the first email we saw from you was the one you sent on 2/24, which was followed in rapid succession by request to cancel an order, filing a claim with paypal, and posting the above message on a public forum - all within less than 48 hours.

Again, apologies for missing your first email but I hope you can see how this could look a bit extreme from our point of view.

Anyway, I know that our response time can be improved and we are working on it. With all the focus now being on getting the Premium units out as quickly as possible, some emails are getting missed / delayed.

As you can see, however, we do monitor most of our forums and our company is extremely visible at many many public EV events, online groups & forums, etc. We are not hiding from our customers and try to get back to everyone as quickly as we can. Sometimes things like this do happen (if for no other reason but through a simple law of large numbers), and we are striving to eliminate such cases.

Thank you for your patience and support of our Open Source products. We are very passionate about making EVs more affordable and attractive to everybody and we hope that our charging solutions will help.

Sincerely,
Valery.

 

[Tadol]

Valery - please take this in the spirit intended - I hope you get a full-featured, UL listed, high quality product available, and that you can keep the prices low, and that you are very, very successful, BUT -

Customer service, technical support, and clear and timely communication are pretty important with a product like this. You (and all of us EV drivers) may be much better served if you were to raise your prices some, hire a couple more bodies, and make sure no emails get missed, things are very well documented, questions and concerns clearly and adequately responded to as quickly as possible. If there is a concern about an item, its usability, technical issues or questions, and as a customer you feel that you might not get a response within a reasonable time frame, you just can't afford to purchase that item - regardless of price. We aren't here because we wanted to purchase the cheapest vehicle we could - and if you read thru the forum, you'd notice many of the frustrations come from a failure to get complete information in a timely fashion, so that should be considered an important aspect of any sales or marketing you plan to do.

A couple months ago, I tried to figure out what you had available, how well it worked, compatibility, pricing, and delivery, and I experienced alot of frustration trying to get that info. I would have liked to get one of your units, but I had to be 100% sure about just what I'd get, when, and how it would work - and honestly, even after emailing your company, I was left as confused about it all as I was before. I ended up purchasing one of Tony's units, and it has been fantastic. The price wasn't my primary concern - quality, functionality, reliability, and support were ALL much more important - and Tony provided all, quickly and clearly.

As I said at the outset - I really hope you get it all together. Its crazy how expensive and functionally stupid most EVSE units are, and I like that you are trying so hard to raise the bar for these units, and trying to keep prices down. But I won't purchase something just because it's cheap, especially when it's so critical to maintaining and using my 35K/50K investment -

And when (if?) I need another EVSE, I will definitely be checking out where your product is at - best wishes to you and your team!