Charging at other brand dealerships

[dfdureiko]

Firstly, planning on buying a '14 i3 REX by mid october. In fact there are TWO in Brooksville FL, a rather rural location. I looked for rentals in Tampa, wanted to live with the car for a week.....nothing. Now to my question
Planning a road trip to S. Florida and found a couple of Nissan dealers enroute. as a rule are dealers open to charging other brands. Personal opinion? in theory, they should be open to all brands...as only Tesla has a nationwide travel network....if all dealers cooperated, it would help sell more of their brand EV. In other words a Leaf owner would have many more possibilities on a road trip if they could charge at Chevy and BMW dealerships., and so would the Chevy and BMW owners....a selling point for EV's in general?
Dan

 

[jadnashuanh]

The people at my BMW dealership told me that there's often a Nissan Leaf charging there. It's a dealership's prerogative to decide who they let charge. It could get a little messy if your BMW was taking up a slot and the brand the dealership sold drove up and wanted to charge. But, there are often a fair amount of public charging points around. Get a copy of one of the EV charging companies' app and look over the maps around the areas you drive (or look at them in your browser). You might be surprised at where they are. FWIW, there are lots more EVSEs out there than CCS DC charging points. WHere I live, a CCS unit is pretty rare.

 

[theothertom]

The nearest charging stations to my house are at a Mazda dealer and a Nissan dealer across the road. I've stopped by both several times and they are rarely, if ever, in use. I asked if I could charge a BMW there and the I've always gotten a yes answer. However, I didn't talk to the GM so.....
Anyway, dealer charging stations (even BMW in my area) are L2 chargers. It's gonna take you 6-7 hours to fully charge your i3 at a L2 charger, so you'll be spending a long time at the Nissan dealer.

 

[bwilson4web]

I'd recommend using "PlugShare.com" since it is kept current by EV owners.

Bob Wilson

 

[jadnashuanh]

Something new owners do not realize is that not all L2 or even CCS units are equal. FWIW, the i3, at least as sold in the USA, is limited to about 7.4Kw input. Since power = volts * amps, both the supply voltage and the amount of amps a L2 unit has will affect how much power gets delivered (not counting the car's uses for cooling, and the efficiency of the ACV-DCV conversion). Current wise, the i3 (again, in USA form) can accept a maximum of 32A, so if you want to maximize the power delivered, 7400/32=231V would be required. Note, many commercial power systems use 208vac, and not all units can handle the amount of amps the i3 can take. If, for example, you had a commercial unit capable of 30A @ 208vac, that would only supply 30*208=6240W, i.e., it would not max out the capacity of the i3. My EVSE is rated at 30A, but my input voltage, especially in the winter, tends to be 245vac or so, so it can maximize my charging rate. Your results may differ. In a brownout during the summer, or maybe really cold snap in the winter, the voltage may drop, and you will notice a difference if you're monitoring things. In my case, once home, it's usually an overnight before I need the car again, so extra speed isn't an issue above what I have.

The same is true with CCS units...the maximum the power i3 (USA delivery) can accept is 50Kw, but not all CCS units are capable of that maximum (or more - in either case, having more won't hurt anything, they 'talk', and the car won't use more than the device says it can provide or wants). There are 24Kw units out there...still faster than L2 at max, but less than half of what a 50Kw unit can provide, at least to about 80-90% charge...after that, the car slows down the charging rate, and to get that last bit, there is much less of a difference. Many of the apps will indicate the capacity of the EVSE unit, and if you have a choice, choose one with a higher amperage, but it may not maximize the i3's charging rate if it has lower voltage inputs.