CHAdeMO Charging the Model 3

Last night I received the 2019.24.4 software update for our Model 3. So this morning I tested Tesla’s CHAdeMO adapter to determine the rate of charge, and see how many miles I’d get and how long it would take to charge from a given SOC. Summary: 45 minutes gave me 139 miles of rated range and cost $8.69. Tesla’s CHAdeMO adapter is easy to use and provides more charging options for the Model 3.

A DC charger at a charging station in Sacramento.

This site where I charged has one DC charger with dual plugs to charge EVs with either CHAdeMO or CCS charging ports. It can charge one car at a time, delivers a maximum of 125 amps, and provides maximum power approaching 50 kW depending on factors such as state of charge, battery pack temperature, etc. I arrived at the station with 126 miles of rated range – 39% SOC – in our long range RWD Model 3.

I arrived at the station with 126 miles of range / 39% SOC.

If you haven’t used CHAdeMO chargers before the plugs are substantial, and by that I mean big. But using the adapter, while not dead simple like a Supercharger, was straightforward and easy: I removed the CHAdeMO plug from its holster on the charger, connected it to Tesla’s CHAdeMO adapter, and plugged the adapter into the Model 3’s charging port.

This station is operated by Greenlots. To start a charging session you either call their 1-800 number, use the Greenlots phone app, or a Greenlots RFID card. I have a Greenlots account and their RFID key fob so I held the key fob next to the labeled sensor on the charger and it verified my account. The charger provides you with easy to follows instructions. I pressed the button to select the CHAdeMO plug, and then pressed the button again to start the charging session.

I connected Tesla’s CHAdeMO adapter to the charger plug, plugged the adapter into my Model 3 charge port, and used an RFID card to start the charging session.

The charger delivered 22.8 kWh in the first 30 minutes, providing about 90 miles of rated range.

This DC charger sent 23 kWh to the Model 3 in 30 minutes, adding 90 miles of rated range to the pack.

The session started with the charger delivering 42 kW when the battery pack was at 39%. The power slowly increased, hitting 49 kW when the battery pack reached 80% SOC. I didn’t charge long enough to see where the taper would begin, but I’m guessing that would be in the range of 80-85% SOC.

It took a total of 45 minutes to go from 39% to 81% SOC. This included the time it took me to plug in and initiate the session. In 45 minutes the charger delivered 33.7 kWh (according to Greenlots), adding 139 miles of rated range to the pack.

The charging session started with the charger delivering 42 kW at 39% SOC, and the power slowly increased hitting 49 kW when the battery reached 80% SOC.

At this location Greenlots charges 25¢ per kWh, plus taxes and a 35¢ session fee. Total cost for this charge was $8.69, so just under 26¢ per kWh, which is comparable to the cost of using a Supercharger. The cost of using CHAdeMO chargers varies depending on the network that operates the station.

CHAdeMO charging stations are not Superchargers, yet. Some of the new stations coming online provide more than 125 amps, but I believe Tesla’s current CHAdeMO adapter will accept no more than 125 amps (please correct me if I’m wrong). CHAdeMO chargers don’t span the entire country, and generally don’t have as many charging stalls per site compared to most Supercharger locations. But some regions of the country have a good number of CHAdeMO charging locations that support EV drivers. So while 139 miles in 45 minutes is slower than a Supercharger, it’s better than L2 charging. Most importantly this gives us more charging options for road trips and regional travel.

I’ve used this station before to charge our 2012 Toyota Rav4 EV, thanks to Tony Williams’ CHAdeMO charging port, JdeMO. Adding the CHAdeMO charging port to our Rav4 EV expanded the horizons of that car, and I expect the CHAdeMO adapter to come in handy for our Model 3. I don’t expect to use it for local charging, but plan to use the adapter on longer trips we have planned.

Quick charging my 2012 Rav4 EV at this station several years ago.

If you are new to EVs and want to know how to find CHAdeMO charging stations, Plugshare is a very good resource. Go to that website (or download the phone app), click on the filter tab, and select CHAdeMO (or any other type of charger) to find charging locations near you.

Screen shot from the Plugshare.com website showing the location of CHAdeMO charging stations in the Atlanta area.

Final note: In the United States the two non-Tesla DC charging standards are CHAdeMO and CCS. The CHAdeMO charging standard was designed and promoted by Japanese power companies and auto manufacturers including Nissan and Mitsubishi. The Nissan Leaf, which came on the market in 2010, is the best selling EV with the CHAdeMO port. Other auto manufacturers use the CCS DC charging standard. Cars with the CCS port include the Chevy Bolt EV, BMW i3, VW e-Golf, and other European made EVs coming on the market. Ultimately cars with a CCS port will outnumber those with CHAdeMO. At some point Tesla may sell a CCS adapter for use in the United States, but there’s no indication of that yet.

This guest post from Steve Noctor originally appeared on his blog It’s Electric. 

 

[ElectricEel]

EVGo still doesn’t work at all, Electrify America seems to be the goto CHAdeMO Charger here in San Diego.

Really? I've used EV go and chargepoint and both of them have worked perfectly. The EV go glitched once out of 7 times and stuck charging at 21kw, restarted and it jumped back to 48kw.

You might be using older ones.

 

[Wennfred]

Really? I've used EV go and chargepoint and both of them have worked perfectly. The EV go glitched once out of 7 times and stuck charging at 21kw, restarted and it jumped back to 48kw.

You might be using older ones.

I think these are older outdated ones, the new Electrify America station fired right up.

Fred

 

[Peter Lucas]

Pricy but at least it works

View attachment 444344 View attachment 444343

$3.75 for 5 kwh is expensive electricity. Even for San Diego.

 

[srs5694]

FWIW, I recently got back from a road trip from Rhode Island to Niagara Falls, NY, and I decided to try out the CHAdeMO adapter at a few sites with my Model 3 LR RWD:

• EVgo at Hannaford Supermarket in Albany -- This was my first stop, about 150 miles into my trip. The charge rate was only about 33kW, but that was enough to add 15kWh in the 26 minutes it took me to eat lunch at a Subway in the mini-mall. (EVgo reported delivering 16.3kWh, though.) The cost was $8.42, so $0.56/kWh ($0.52 based on EVgo's statement), which of course is rather expensive.
  
• Mohawk Valley Welcome Center -- This site has three free Aerovironment CHAdeMO stations (but no CCS plugs). I stopped there partly just to check them out, but also to get some ice cream. I chatted briefly with a pair of maintenance people who said they'd recently brought the stations online, and who admired my Model 3. I added about 22kWh, according to TeslaFi, at a rate of about 46kW, in 29 minutes. My SoC at the end was 86%, and the charge rate was starting to taper down slightly. Given my location and SoC, I figured I could probably reach Niagara Falls without more charging, but I decided to make some more stops nonetheless....
  
• Waterloo Premium Outlets -- This is an Electrify America site, and it did not work for me; the station kept reporting an error, which I reported via the EA app. (I see on PlugShare that somebody successfully charged a Nissan Leaf on this station two days later, so either it was an incompatibility with the Tesla adapter or the station was being flaky but was fixed after I reported the problem.) I realize others have had success at EA sites, so I don't think the problem I experienced is common to all EA stations. Just to be 100% sure I could reach Niagara Falls with enough charge to do some driving while I was there, I stopped at the Victor Supercharger a few miles down the road.
• Western NY Welcome Center -- This is another free site operated by the State of NY, but it's got CCS/CHAdeMO stations. I stopped here twice. Inbound, I stopped for 14 minutes, which got me 10kWh (at about 42kW). I'd intended to charge at one of the few Level 2 stations in Niagara Falls the morning I left, but was ICEd out when I tried, so I instead stopped here again on the way out. Out of curiosity, I decided to charge to 100%. The car reported this would take 45 minutes, but that dragged on to 60 minutes (24kWh added at an average of 24kW). As with the Mohawk Valley site, these charges were free. After this stop, my only charging stop was at the Guilderland Supercharger, which of course was blazing fast compared to the CHAdeMO stations; however....
  
• Lee Service Plaza Eastbound -- I considered stopping here for a short break and to try out this EVgo CHAdeMO/CCS station, but it was in use by a Chevy Bolt, so I just kept going.

Overall, had I wanted to do the entire trip on CHAdeMO stations, I expect it would have been possible; however, between single-car stations being in use (like the Lee Service Plaza EVgo station) and non-functional stations (like the Waterloo EA station), it would have involved more anxiety about infrastructure reliability. This might have been a little better on CCS, given that all the EA stations on my route had just one CHAdeMO stall and at least two CCS stalls.

Superchargers are definitely more convenient -- just plug in and use them, compared to fumbling with the CHAdeMO adapter and, at a minimum, pressing some buttons to start a charge; or swiping a card or playing with an app to activate the charger.

For me, the CHAdeMO adapter expands charging options, should I want to stop somewhere other than a Supercharger because of the details of nearby facilities or because a CHAdeMO station's location happens to be more convenient for my own eating or break needs. The two free stations in New York are also a nice amenity, and the fact that some Massachusetts service plazas have CHAdeMO stations can make them convenient (if they're available!) -- it often takes longer to find food at a Supercharger than at a typical highway service plaza. I also like the CHAdeMO adapter as a backup, in case there's a problem in the future with Superchargers.

Anyhow, I hope others find this account helpful.

Oh, and FWIW, Nikola Tesla is lauded in various displays at Niagara Falls, since he was instrumental in setting up the first hydropower station there. Here's a statue of him....
View media item 120265

 

[jbcarioca]

Yes, there's extensive digital communication between the L3 DCFC station and the car - in a different format for each of the various standards.

With the Supercharger, the car speaks the car's native language to the Supercharger, which is built to understand and speak the same thing - a variant of CANBus as I understand it.

The the CHAdeMO adapter, the car speaks the car's native language to the adapter, which interprets it and speaks through the plethora of pins to the CHAdeMO station, and the adapter interprets the response back to Teslaspeak for the car.

With CCS, Tesla created a version of the chargeport hardware that can speak the CCS native PLC for the EU Model 3, and created a version that can speak either for the S/X - so the adapter connects the pins, and the car natively speaks in CCS or Supercharger as needed.

FWIW, that is why the older Models X and S require a hardware change in order to access the CCS adapter. Newly delivered EU X and S have the adapter included. Sadly, the X I am driving in Italy, Slovenia and Croatia does not have the CCS adapter. Of course it works fine for all the ubiquitous Mennekes plugs.

 

[Wennfred]

For me the older EVGo don’t work but the brand new Electrify America stations work great.

Fred

 

[srs5694]

As a follow-up to my previous post, I noticed a new Electrify America site come online near where I live recently, so I went to try it out today. I didn't need much charge (I was at 69% when I arrived), but it worked fine, starting at 43kW (EA reported 45.82kW via the EA app), but dropping slowly right from the start, so the average was 39kW. Thus, I'm even more confident that the problem I had at EA's Waterloo, NY station was a site-specific problem. My total cost today was $2.87 to add 12.3kWh (as reported by TeslaFi; EA claimed 12.87kWh), for a cost of $0.233/kWh ($0.223/kWh by EA's measure), which is not outrageous for Rhode Island. EA is having enough start-up problems that I wouldn't want to have to rely on them for long-distance travel, at least not now, but I'd be perfectly willing to schedule a stop at an EA station on a road trip if it was a desirable location in some way, if I didn't need to add a huge amount of energy to reach my next stop, and if there was a Supercharger or other CHAdeMO station nearby as a backup.

 

[Wennfred]

EVGo:

Got my replacement CHAdeMO Adapter and took it to the EVGo station that had previously failed to charge, this station was also worked on as I have been in contact with the EVgo in Los Angeles. It ls working fine, topping at 30kw, will check the other side to see if that one also works, As far as Electrify America, those work great.

Update: both sides of the EVGo station are charging fine, so I believe it was a faulty CHAdeMO Adapter. This other side EVGo station was not worked on, so the Adapter for sure. Will check one more location in San Ysidro.

Fred

 

[Wennfred]

San Ysidro EVGo working fine, so definitely a faulty adapter.

 

[ElectricEel]

I found the oddest behavior with EVGo stations. Say there are usually two stations. One will give me 43kwh the other 33khw. I found this to be true at 4 different stops I've done. One will always max at 33kwh and when I switch to the other it goes to 43kwh. Anyone know wanna guess why this is happening.

 

[miimura]

I found the oddest behavior with EVGo stations. Say there are usually two stations. One will give me 43kwh the other 33khw. I found this to be true at 4 different stops I've done. One will always max at 33kwh and when I switch to the other it goes to 43kwh. Anyone know wanna guess why this is happening.

This is expected behavior if the two stations are of a different type. However, if the two stations are the same type, I can't think of a good reason for it to do that.

32-38kW is typical for a 100A station
40-44kW is typical for a 125A station

 

[ElectricEel]

This is expected behavior if the two stations are of a different type. However, if the two stations are the same type, I can't think of a good reason for it to do that.

32-38kW is typical for a 100A station
40-44kW is typical for a 125A station

Sounds like you answered it, both stations are the same, but it looks as though one is 125 and the other 100, seems extremely odd. Next time I get a chance I'll look at the box's rated info.

 

[miimura]

Sounds like you answered it, both stations are the same, but it looks as though one is 125 and the other 100, seems extremely odd. Next time I get a chance I'll look at the box's rated info.

I was thinking of the kind of installation pictured below that was common at the older EVgo sites with a CHAdeMO charger plus a dual standard charger. This setup remains like this, even today at the Petaluma Village Outlet mall. Image from Plugshare.

However, both of those can typically output 110-125 amps. The station type pictured below is typically configured for 100A DC max output even though they can be configured for 125A.

Image from Plugshare - Lucky SSJ

 

[ElectricEel]

I was thinking of the kind of installation pictured below that was common at the older EVgo sites with a CHAdeMO charger plus a dual standard charger. This setup remains like this, even today at the Petaluma Village Outlet mall. Image from Plugshare.

However, both of those can typically output 110-125 amps. The station type pictured below is typically configured for 100A DC max output even though they can be configured for 125A.

Image from Plugshare - Lucky SSJ

Yea I'm in LA I haven't seen the first ones. I have seen the second one and I had so many issues with it, slow charge, or did dropping connection.

 

[RayK]

Well I finally pulled the trigger and ordered a CHAdeMO adapter a few minutes ago - they seemed to be back in stock. Figured that with the $500 cost and the $0.28/kWh charge cost at a local Supercharger, I'd have to do about 36 200 mile range charges to break even (i.e., 7200 miles). Two nearby 50kW ChargePoint DC Fast station recently went online and they are free (for now anyway).

I had intended to get the CHAdeMO adapter eventually since there's two ChargePoint DC Fast stations at work and employees are allowed free 75 minutes sessions. That perk is going away next week; or more accurately, the perk will remain it's just that I won't be there anymore to use it . I still have my HPWC sitting in the box in the garage. I don't know if I'm going to install it.

 

[miimura]

Well I finally pulled the trigger and ordered a CHAdeMO adapter a few minutes ago - they seemed to be back in stock. Figured that with the $500 cost and the $0.28/kWh charge cost at a local Supercharger, I'd have to do about 36 200 mile range charges to break even (i.e., 7200 miles). Two nearby 50kW ChargePoint DC Fast station recently went online and they are free (for now anyway).

I had intended to get the CHAdeMO adapter eventually since there's two ChargePoint DC Fast stations at work and employees are allowed free 75 minutes sessions. That perk is going away next week; or more accurately, the perk will remain it's just that I won't be there anymore to use it . I still have my HPWC sitting in the box in the garage. I don't know if I'm going to install it.

I wouldn't count on any fast charger remaining free in the Bay Area. I don't see any free ChargePoint DC chargers in San Jose. The only free CHAdeMO I know of are the DriveTheARC units. They have sites at Lucky on Bernal Rd. and McCarthy Ranch Walmart in Milpitas. The Sunnyvale site was taken off DTA because it was in use continuously by Leaf drivers that had used up their Nissan NCTC free charging.

 

[sduck]

I was also considering getting an adaptor when they next became available, and checked the website tonight, and there they were. So pulled the trigger. I love road trips in the model 3; having further charging options will be great.

Edit: So, how big is this thing anyway? Will it fit in the cubby under the trunk? In the frunk? Do I need a roofrack?

 

[mike123abc]

I was also considering getting an adaptor when they next became available, and checked the website tonight, and there they were. So pulled the trigger. I love road trips in the model 3; having further charging options will be great.

Edit: So, how big is this thing anyway? Will it fit in the cubby under the trunk? In the frunk? Do I need a roofrack?

it fits in the frunk across the windshield side without issue.

 

[srs5694]

So, how big is this thing anyway? Will it fit in the cubby under the trunk? In the frunk? Do I need a roofrack?

It fits in the sub-trunk cubby just fine. That's where mine lives normally, along with the stock Tesla EVSE, a Tesla tire repair/inflator kit, a long 120v extension cord, a set of jack-stand "pucks," and a roadside emergency kit. There's even a bit of room to spare with all that stuff. It'll also fit in the frunk, also with room to spare. Here's a photo:

 

[davewill]

Some of the older locations have the old Nissan CHAdeMO chargers that are limited to 44kW (left) alongside the 50kW ABB dual plug chargers like this site: PlugShare - Find Electric Vehicle Charging Locations Near You

The old Nissan chargers were famous for overheating badly when Tesla first came out with the adapter. The 24kWh LEAFs of the time would be full in under 30 min with much of that time at lower amperages. Model S with the adapter could run a continuous charging session of a hour, most of it at full power, which caused the station to overheat.