USED EV SALES WAY UP, SURPASS NEW
11-27-2023 | 11:15 PM
#46
Track Day
Joined: Nov 2023
Posts: 18
Likes: 4
From: Costa Mesa, CA
Great detail!
Commercial quality receptacles have a steel band from the top mounting hole, down the back of the receptacle, and to the bottom hole. Plastic quality is better. Wire clamping is better. And internally there are more "wipes" contacting the plug blades. So they are definitely more robust both in terms of continually plugging/unplugging, and in electrical reliability.
Most 120V EVSEs tell the car to limit current draw to 12 amps - which is 80% of 15 amps. This derating to 80% is a NEC requirement for continuous loads. If you want to pull a continuous 16 amps from a 5-20, you'll need a different EVSE. (The Tesla Mobile Connector is one such example. It has an optional NEMA 5-20 adapter available for this purpose. I think @daveo4porsche has tested this with his Taycan and a TeslaTap adapter.)
Most 120V EVSEs tell the car to limit current draw to 12 amps - which is 80% of 15 amps. This derating to 80% is a NEC requirement for continuous loads. If you want to pull a continuous 16 amps from a 5-20, you'll need a different EVSE. (The Tesla Mobile Connector is one such example. It has an optional NEMA 5-20 adapter available for this purpose. I think @daveo4porsche has tested this with his Taycan and a TeslaTap adapter.)
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daveo4porsche (11-27-2023)
11-27-2023 | 11:46 PM
#47
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From: Santa Cruz, CA
Thanks for the additional information and to check out @daveo4porsche to see what his experience is. It is always better to upgrade your plugs & switches to commercial quality. I do so many repair calls in large developments & apartments which only use the cheapest components. When I renovated our last home I replaced all the wiring with 12/2, replaced all the cheap plugs & switches as well as replaced all the low grade copper tubing in the entire home which would alway spring leaks in bends and 90 degree turns after 30-40 years since they were built. I always believe you should buy once, buy right. This is why I always over engineer every rebuild, every renovation & every tool & appliance purchase. I hate to throw away anything so I buy industrial grade components & products so they outlast me. I firmly believe my Porsche Taycan, Boxster & 911 will be running and looking good long after I'm in the ground. That's good enough for me...
see post #45 for details.
Last edited by daveo4porsche; 11-28-2023 at 12:08 AM.
11-28-2023 | 12:06 AM
#48
Track Day
Joined: Nov 2023
Posts: 18
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From: Costa Mesa, CA
11-29-2023 | 10:44 AM
#50
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From: Santa Cruz, CA
You are definitely correct about typical cheap plugs used by contractors. I'm an electrician & electrical engineer so I can add a few more pieces of information. Only 15A residential plugs have the quick connects. Leviton makes both commercial and residential grade NEMA 5-20 receptacles which only have screw terminals and both are rated for continuous use on a 20A circuit using 12/2 Romex, Bx or single conductors with a ground in EMT.
Commercial grade plugs are a bit stronger to take more physical abuse but are no different in terms of electrical performance.
If Porsche wanted to insure their customers only used the right receptacle they should simply spec NEMA 5-20P receptacles since you can only use a NEMA 5-20P plug in these outlets.
If a customer is using a NEMA 5-15 receptacle on 14/2 wiring with the quick connects or the screws they will have a problem even with a dedicated circuit because these plugs are designed for 15A not 20A.
I asked Porsche specifically if I could use their 120v charger on a dedicated 20A circuit with a NEMA 5-20 receptacle for continuous 120V (trickle charging my Taycan since it's so slow). The Porsche 3rd party electrical service installer they connected me with said "no", the service bulletin issued by Porsche in late 2021 does not mean you can use a commercial grade receptacle, wiring & breaker to charge daily or for more than 12 hours. I asked why but he said he didn't know. This statement by Porsche clearly means they are protecting their product, not the customer's potential lack of quality electrical components in their garage.
I will be going to Porsche in Germany in early 2024 for some technical discussions on other advanced technology development topics. Hopefully I will get to the bottom of this once and for all so I know why this policy was put in place several years after the first vehicles were delivered without this new policy.
I am hoping you are correct and they are just being very conservative and the local service & sales people are just being given simple instructions to educate customers to follow.
My local dealership did not remember ever seeing this service bulletin and said they simply don't recall any Taycan buyer not having a dedicated 220v circuit installed in their garages to charge only at 220V.
This is understandable but unfortunately my home is in an association with a detached garage across a driveway controlled by the association. The association will not allow homeowners to run a dedicated 220v line to their garage so I'm stuck with a dedicated 120V line and the hope I can change the association's mind or decide to buy another home sooner with 220V in the garage for my Taycan and park only my ICE vehicles in my current garage which is closer to the airports I fly in/out of every week or two.
I love my Taycan but as an engineer I still have a few questions to get answered...
Commercial grade plugs are a bit stronger to take more physical abuse but are no different in terms of electrical performance.
If Porsche wanted to insure their customers only used the right receptacle they should simply spec NEMA 5-20P receptacles since you can only use a NEMA 5-20P plug in these outlets.
If a customer is using a NEMA 5-15 receptacle on 14/2 wiring with the quick connects or the screws they will have a problem even with a dedicated circuit because these plugs are designed for 15A not 20A.
I asked Porsche specifically if I could use their 120v charger on a dedicated 20A circuit with a NEMA 5-20 receptacle for continuous 120V (trickle charging my Taycan since it's so slow). The Porsche 3rd party electrical service installer they connected me with said "no", the service bulletin issued by Porsche in late 2021 does not mean you can use a commercial grade receptacle, wiring & breaker to charge daily or for more than 12 hours. I asked why but he said he didn't know. This statement by Porsche clearly means they are protecting their product, not the customer's potential lack of quality electrical components in their garage.
I will be going to Porsche in Germany in early 2024 for some technical discussions on other advanced technology development topics. Hopefully I will get to the bottom of this once and for all so I know why this policy was put in place several years after the first vehicles were delivered without this new policy.
I am hoping you are correct and they are just being very conservative and the local service & sales people are just being given simple instructions to educate customers to follow.
My local dealership did not remember ever seeing this service bulletin and said they simply don't recall any Taycan buyer not having a dedicated 220v circuit installed in their garages to charge only at 220V.
This is understandable but unfortunately my home is in an association with a detached garage across a driveway controlled by the association. The association will not allow homeowners to run a dedicated 220v line to their garage so I'm stuck with a dedicated 120V line and the hope I can change the association's mind or decide to buy another home sooner with 220V in the garage for my Taycan and park only my ICE vehicles in my current garage which is closer to the airports I fly in/out of every week or two.
I love my Taycan but as an engineer I still have a few questions to get answered...
- I believe Porsche's "distain" for 120V charging comes from the low kW rate of less than 2 kW - I would be unsurprised if 1.44 kW (120V @ 12 amps) is insufficient in some cases to offset actual consumption/overhead during charging sessions - thereby stressing the 12V system - so to avoid the embarrassing "my 12V is dead while plugged in" problem Porsche now considers 120V for "emergency use only" vs. dailly charging
- also there maybe some very long term reason that running at such low kW's for long period of time over the life of the vehicle is moving into the realm of reduced reliablity for some onboard components that were never meant to accumulate that many hours of operation - it can take 72+ hours to fully charge a Taycan from 5% to 100% - I'm not sure Porsche intended the vehicle to be "awake" and charging for 3 days as a "normal/practical" use case.
- dealers/service people know _NOTHING_ about EV charging and asking them about it is like asking a mountain goat about deep sea diving…their answers are random and not rooted in facts or even a good set of fundamentals - attempting to engage Porsche on any EV charging topic is a fool's errand.
- Porsche's EVSE North American supply cables do not have a NEMA 5-20 or 6-20 power supply cable in the parts catalog - you'll need a non-Porsche EVSE for those types of plugs - and that's ok - Porsche's charging game in North America is weak - and other alternative North American EVSE's are universally superior choices vs. the really honestly super crappy/expensive Porsche PMC+/PMCC…
- there is no "trickle" charging with an EVSE - the car only uses power when the onboard charger it and it's controlling software "turns on" the EVSE - once the battery is at the target SOC % - power is no longer flowing - so leaving any EV "plugged in" does not mean power is flowing - charging an EV is an on/off thing - not a continuously pushing power thing.
- EV charging is not like power tools, cellphones, laptops, RC toys - the power is not continously flowing - the car has an internal onboard charger and the power flow is definitively turned on/off to charge the battery - once the battery reaches target SOC% - the power flow is switched "off" and the vehicle is effectively disconnected from the external power source
- depending on how the manufacturers software behaves the power may never flow again or it may click on/off as the vehicie's battery drops below target SOC% over time - in the case of my Tesla's this would happen every 1 or 2 days while leaving it "long term plugged in" - in the case of my Taycan there is very little "draw" on the battery so it stays at target SOC% for weeks - so there is no need to "top off" the battery due to very very very low vampire draw when the vehicle is stationary
- there is no continuous power draw with an EV that I've observed for 10+ years - it's an on/off thing.
- all North American EVSE's are functionally 3-wire affairs
- in the case of 120V it's 1 hot, 1 neutral, 1 ground
- in the case of 240V it's 1 hot, 1 hot, 1 ground
- if you're using a NEMA 14-50 or 14-30 outlet the neutral is "unused/ignored" - it's purely for compatibility that these plugs are provide
- in the case of the Porsche NEMA 14-xx power supply cables the "neutral" blade isn't even wired up - it's just a dummy blade with no electrical connection to the unit (wire is missing in the PMC+/PMCC end of the power supply cable)
- _ALL_ 120V circuits in north America have 3 wires (1 hot, 1 neutral, 1 ground) - you could convert a existing NEMA 5-15 120V 3-wire outlet to a 240V 3-wire outlet (NEMA 6-15 or 6-20) by swapping the breaker in the panel and the outlet with no change to the wire in the circuit - this will double your charge rate and use the existing wire
- there are NEMA 6-20 EVSE's on the market that will work just fine with Taycan - with access to the breaker panel and actual outlet this should be less than one hours work to "upgrade" an existing 120V 3-wire circuit to a 240V 3-wire circuit (repurposing the existing circuit's wire).
- depending on the wire-gauge in the existing circuit you may even be able to upgrade the breaker from 20 amps to 30 amps - leading to a NEMA 6-30 circuit - for 5.76 kW of raw charging power - but a NEMA 6-20 circuit will provide 3.84 kW of raw power - this should yield approx. 2.8x kW charge rate according to the in-car Porsche charging display.
- you should only consider this for a dedicated circuit
- consult a local licensed/bonded electrician
- but 3-wire 240V dedicated circuits are 100% functional and supported by 99.9% of North American EVSE's (existence of NEMA 6-15, 6-20, 6-30, 6-50 power supply cables prove this - they are fully functional with only 3 wires (2 hots + 1 ground)).
- I look forward to any factual/technical information you can extract from Porsche - my expectation is it's not one thing or the other - rather a combination of factors that has lead Porsche to reduce their enthusiasm for 120V charging - both crappy residential install and probably an internal charging infrastructure in-vehicle's that isn't very efficient with low kW charge rates (i.e. you're losing most of the raw power to overhead rather than charging the battery). In my experience few if any engineering decisions like this a due to a single factor, but rather a growing awareness of a combination of factors where the conclusion is to just avoid it for no single reason, but the overall picture is "yeah, this really isn't a great idea".
Last edited by daveo4porsche; 11-29-2023 at 11:26 AM.
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11-29-2023 | 11:54 AM
#51
Track Day
Joined: Nov 2023
Posts: 18
Likes: 4
From: Costa Mesa, CA
Fantastic observations!
Your observations are exactly on point and then some.
Your analysis is the most comprehensive & realist explanation for Porsche's new position taken in late 2021 on 120V charging.
This is why I will follow Porsche's recommendations because they know their EV design best. The last thing I want to do is to push the envelope and compromise their design and the long term reliability of my Taycan.
I will hopefully learn more as I collaborate with Porsche advanced development engineering staff over the next few years to get a better feel where they see opportunities for technology improvements after their learning experiences of their first foray into EVs. Avery EV company will face these challenges and I'm confident Porsche will continue to improve their designs for performance and reliability. Their reputation depends on this to maintain their high standard of excellence second to none.
Thank you again for taking the time to contribute so much to this discussion!
Your analysis is the most comprehensive & realist explanation for Porsche's new position taken in late 2021 on 120V charging.
This is why I will follow Porsche's recommendations because they know their EV design best. The last thing I want to do is to push the envelope and compromise their design and the long term reliability of my Taycan.
I will hopefully learn more as I collaborate with Porsche advanced development engineering staff over the next few years to get a better feel where they see opportunities for technology improvements after their learning experiences of their first foray into EVs. Avery EV company will face these challenges and I'm confident Porsche will continue to improve their designs for performance and reliability. Their reputation depends on this to maintain their high standard of excellence second to none.
Thank you again for taking the time to contribute so much to this discussion!
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daveo4porsche (11-29-2023)
12-01-2023 | 01:40 PM
#52
Burning Brakes
Joined: Mar 2004
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There has been much doom and gloom lately about the EV market, however statistics today showing that Electrification rates; (includes BEVs and Hybrids) are up to 16% in 2023. This a marked increase over 2021 and 2022.
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12-01-2023 | 03:25 PM
#54
RL Community Team
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Please do not use fact, actual facts, to get in a way of a good internet discussion.
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12-02-2023 | 11:37 AM
#55
Drifting
Joined: Oct 2020
Posts: 2,607
Likes: 1,879
From: Alberta/BC
Part of the reason why EV sales are doing ok still though is the biggest player on our continent for EVs by far slashed prices significantly while other manufacturers are still trying to charge full price on bloated msrps.
12-03-2023 | 09:05 PM
#57
1st Gear
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12-03-2023 | 09:14 PM
#58
Three Wheelin'
Joined: Dec 2018
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I will say that I have noticed our company doing a lot more Evs in the last few months. I own Precision Pro Detailing.
12-17-2023 | 11:52 AM
#59
Banned
Joined: Jul 2020
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Chinese EV’s are coming. Tesla may have pioneered the acceptance of EV’s, but there’s a tidal wave of Chinese EV’s headed to most of the world….except, maybe not to the US….but to the rest of the world, which is leading the US in terms of EV adoption. If you visit Europe, you will see a lot of cars, and specifically EV brands, you don’t see here.
Americans still love their trucks and big SUV’s….sedans and small vehicles, well, not so much.
Americans still love their trucks and big SUV’s….sedans and small vehicles, well, not so much.
Last edited by CodyBigdog; 12-17-2023 at 11:57 AM.
12-17-2023 | 02:04 PM
#60
Three Wheelin'
Joined: Dec 2018
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