How necessary are the protective caps on charger socket?

[SanSerif]

To charge, you have to (i) push to open the flap, (ii) remove plastic protective caps from socket, and (iii) plug in. Finishing charging is the reverse - except that (ii) can be a bit fiddly.

I'm wondering just how necessary stage (ii) actually is. Could I remove the caps and turn the operation into a much quicker and "one handed" job?

Presumably, the caps protect against crud entering the socket during driving. However, the flap seems reasonable protection in its own right. Then again, who am I to second guess teams of Bavarian engineers? Maybe the caps provide essential protection. Anyone know what the arrangement is on other EVs?

 

[cab]

To charge, you have to (i) push to open the flap, (ii) remove plastic protective caps from socket, and (iii) plug in. Finishing charging is the reverse - except that (ii) can be a bit fiddly.

I'm wondering just how necessary stage (ii) actually is. Could I remove the caps and turn the operation into a much quicker and "one handed" job?

Presumably, the caps protect against crud entering the socket during driving. However, the flap seems reasonable protection in its own right. Then again, who am I to second guess teams of Bavarian engineers? Maybe the caps provide essential protection. Anyone know what the arrangement is on other EVs?

I have wondered about that too (it looked annoying to deal with). I will say, however, that I recently got a "Service charging system" error on my Volt and had to take it in. It was plugged in overnight and we had a big rain storm. I noticed a few other folks with the same issue on the Volt forum and more than one indicated it was after a rain storm...makes me wonder if there was an issue with water getting in there. Admittedly, a cap would not have matter DURING the charging since it was plugged in. Sounds like BMW engineers were just being overly cautious here. Predicting the "remove the cap" mod in three...two...one...

 

[Bunter]

To charge, you have to (i) push to open the flap, (ii) remove plastic protective caps from socket, and (iii) plug in. Finishing charging is the reverse - except that (ii) can be a bit fiddly.

I'm wondering just how necessary stage (ii) actually is. Could I remove the caps and turn the operation into a much quicker and "one handed" job?

Presumably, the caps protect against crud entering the socket during driving. However, the flap seems reasonable protection in its own right. Then again, who am I to second guess teams of Bavarian engineers? Maybe the caps provide essential protection. Anyone know what the arrangement is on other EVs?

Can't help with any direct experience but I test rode an electric motorcycle in 2012 and they had put the charging socket right behind the front wheel (which collects a lot of road rubbish) and it had no protective cap on it. I wouldn't have done that if I'd built an EV bike. They moved it on the 2013 bike.

http://www.classicdriver.com/en/article/bikes/ridden-zero-motorcycles-s-and-ds

First photo shows it plugged in.

Bill