What's my level 2 charging rate?

BMW i3 Forum

Help Support BMW i3 Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

jaimero

Member
Joined
Nov 30, 2015
Messages
6
Where on the car can I check what my charging rate is? I"ve changed from "reduced charging" to Max charging. Where is a gauge for me to check charging rate, how does one verify charging rate??

thanx in advance

Jaime
 
Unfortunately, the i3 cannot display the charging rate directly. It does display the estimated time of charging completion, but because the charging rate tapers off as the battery pack's state of charge (SoC) approaches 100%, and because this completion time estimate is typically pessimistic, one could deduce only the average charging rate. Some public EVSE's display the charging rate.

The most accurate way to calculate the current charging rate would be to divide the change in SoC by the time and assume that with charging losses, the amount of electricity needed to fill an empty battery pack is ~20 kWh.
 
Thank you. So, overall, and generally speaking how much time is gained (reduced) to full charge assuming similar circumstances between a "reduced" charging rate and "maximum" charging rate? Is it faster by 1 hour? 2 hours? 0.5hrs??

Just a guesstimate will be helpful if anybody knows

thanks in advance

Jaime
 
According to the Owner's Manual, Maximum L2 charging is 32 amps while Reduced is 20 amps. The maximum current seems to be 30 amps in actual practice. Assuming that an EVSE can deliver 30 amps (not all can), charging at Maximum would take approximately 20/30, or 67% of the time compared with Reduced when using the same EVSE. So if full charging can be completed in 6 hours at the Reduced charging rate, it should be completed in 4 hours at the Maximum charging rate. This is an approximation because of the tapering of the charging power as the battery pack nears full.
 
Back
Top