Quote:
Originally Posted by Zereldo
Thanks for your input LogicalApex. Do you have any recommendations? I live in Canada and so my options may be limited in regard to what I can have shipped here vs availability of products on US based Amazon/ebay website.
Not sure about a dedicated charging station as the 530e is my only PHEV/EV and it is parked outside.
Any major difference b/w 20 AMP 120 V (240 V)with a dedicated Level 2 cord VS 30 AMP 240 V charging? Not sure what is the maximum capacity of 530e charging.
Let me know,
Thanks!
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I use a ChargePoint charger that I purchased and vastly over-specced for the 530e. But my reasoning there was I street park and getting a sidewalk opened up to install it I wanted to only be doing this once no matter if I went to a BEV in the future. The ChargePoint also has WiFi connectively so I can monitor charring, power use, and etc all from my phone. Depending on your needs you can go with a cheaper "smart" EVSE or you can go with something more "dumb" (I don't mean that in a negative way) that just allows the car to charge. The less fancy the cheaper the EVSE will be.
My car is street parked so installing my EVSE was a chore! That being said how much you'll get out of a dedicated charging spot will be governed heavily by how you use your 530e and what your goals are with it. I live in Philly which has really short blocks of around 300ft since it is an older city. My goal was EV in the city and Hybrid/ICE on my long road trips up to Canada. That means charging between trips is important to maximizing my EV use in the city. It has worked our perfectly for that as I have about 5K EV miles on my car of the 10K total miles in the year I've owned it.
When I got the car I used the 120V adapter run with an extension cord outside across the sidewalk as I wasn't sure I wanted to go through the pain of tearing up the sidewalk. It took about 12 hours to charge the car from flat (240V takes under 3 hours) and it wasn't able to handle the demands of preconditioning effectively either (meaning you'd chew up 10-15% of the charge if you decided to precondition while plugged in at 120V!).
If you drive the car from home to work only then you might be able to be OK with 120V as the slow charge won't impact your usage much. If you have a garage you can put the car in then preconditioning is less of an issue too. For me, preconditioning is a really nice feature. Nice to get into the car and it is cool or warm without having kicked on the ICE to get it done.
The 530e charges at a max of 16A @ 240V with a 12kWh battery in MY2020+ and 9.2kWh in MY2019-. I can't comment on usable capacity in Canada. In the US my MY2020 has about 9.2 of usable capacity, but I believe we get access to less capacity due to battery warranty length (in some states it is as long as 10Y/150K miles).