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. 

 

[ChrisABQ]

Actually I meant away from cities rather than on the already covered interstates between cities by “off the highways”.
Don’t need so many players enabling the same routes. The fined folks (yep VW) should have had the mandate to not just offer another network for the same routes (I40, I70, I10 here) but rather ‘turn on’ the unserved routes and smaller cities (read: Durango not Denver) in between. This was a major missed opportunity with VW’s violation.
To illustrate: Overlay the supercharger map, EA map, EVGO, etc and have a look at the middle of America (cold + range effecting Rocky Mountains).
In case anyone calls out a lack of EV customers in “flyover states”...That’s kinda along my point.

 

[Rocky_H]

Rocky, your points are correct, though when Tesla offered a 20kW onboard charger they had but a fraction of today's customers.

Well, I consider the 17 and the 20kW versions almost equivalent, and they still had that available right up until about 7 months ago. It's a product they already have--not something new that would need R&D development resources.

I'm assuming a car can't be retrofitted affordably.

The retrofit can be done very easily. I guess the question is about affordably. For a period of time a few years ago, they had shifted those all out of the initial production line. You could add the high amp charger in your build configuration, and it would be an aftermarket swap at a service center, so that they could take that additional variable out of the factory production. I don't think they were losing money selling that upgrade for a couple of thousand dollars, so "affordably" still seems reasonable.

And smart business uses a process called "pricing yourself out of the market". My wife had an economics professor who was in demand for consulting. He didn't really like the traveling and wasn't that interested in it, but you don't just say no. He set his rate at $100 per hour. (back in the 90's to get the picture of relative value of money). It did cut off most of his business, so that he didn't have to do it much, but when someone really did want it enough and hired him for a contract, he felt pretty damn good with getting paid $100 per hour!

That's certainly what Tesla could do with this instead of just telling people who want the faster charging to $%&^ off. They have those high amp chargers for repair replacement anyway. Raise the price to where it is worth it to their profitability. People want to pay $2,500? $3,000? $3,500? Some people will want it badly enough.

Offering a DC solution would allow any of their cars access to it.

And again this is back to very expensive hardware for something that is going to irritate most people by being such slow charging or just isn't much faster than any other destination charging for hours.

 

[Kailua Rider]

Will repeat usage of the chademo adapter to quick charge the Tesla model 3 increase the degradation of the batteries?

I have access with the DRIVEtheARC app to free Chademo charging sessions with the adapter in the Bay Area with routes to Lake Tahoe.

 

[Saghost]

Not so you'd notice. Well, unless you do it virtally every charge. Then you might end up like this guy:

If you fast charge, Tesla will permanently throttle charging

 

[Meats]

Not so you'd notice. Well, unless you do it virtally every charge. Then you might end up like this guy:

If you fast charge, Tesla will permanently throttle charging

Purely speculative on my part, but wouldn't that be a possible reason why the Tesla CHAdeMO adapter is capped at 50kw?

 

[Saghost]

Purely speculative on my part, but wouldn't that be a possible reason why the Tesla CHAdeMO adapter is capped at 50kw?

Power from a CHAdeMO that's working correctly shouldn't be any different from Power from a Supercharger that's working correctly.

My assumption is it's capped at 50 kW (actually, at 125A) because Tesla looked at what was on the market and likely to be for a while and sized the wiring and connectors within to match. Making it able to handle more would make it more expensive...

Even today, I don't know of a faster than ~125A (62.5 kW, since they rate at 500V even though no one uses it) CHAdeMO installation in the US. There's theoretically a standard extension I think, but I haven't seen it used anywhere.

 

[cwerdna]

Also, I remain skeptical about Nissan dealers who often are only available during business hours and rumors that some dealers only allow charging by their customers or other Nissans.

On both of these, they are both true. There are countless posts at MNL about YMMV when it comes to charging for free at Nissan dealers. Google for site:mynissanleaf.com charging at dealers.

When I had a Leaf w/CHAdeMO, I only DC FCed at one dealer. It was free and they never gave me a hard time/trouble even though I didn't buy nor lease from them. I think it's no longer free but it doesn't matter since I no longer have a car w/CHAdeMO and haven't since July 2015.

I have L2 charged at Gilroy Nissan a few times even though I've never done business with them. I didn't see any CHAdeMO charger there at all (on Plugshare nor the premises) but it wouldn't have mattered as I couldn't use it anyway.

Side note: This guy in Canada (Official Tesla Model 3 thread - Page 344 - My Nissan Leaf Forum) had been really wanting a CCS or CHAdeMO adapter since he says "Chademo/CCS locations already outnumber Tesla Supercharger locations by 10 to 1 and its still growing. It comes down to where we drive. "

 

[MrMassTransit]

That's certainly what Tesla could do with this instead of just telling people who want the faster charging to $%&^ off. They have those high amp chargers for repair replacement anyway. Raise the price to where it is worth it to their profitability. People want to pay $2,500? $3,000? $3,500? Some people will want it badly enough.

The difference here is that economies of scale come into play. To the extent that a high price results in only a few customers, the cost to produce the unit will be also be very high, and the transaction still isn’t worth Tesla’s while. Now if this was an off the shelf part produced by a vendor for a large number of car types, then I’d agree, just charge what it takes to make a decent profit, but I don’t believe that’s the case here. There’s also an upper bound on what Tesla can charge for such a unit, as nearly everyone will reach a threshold where the cost is reaches such a high percentage of the car’s original value that they would not be interested in the option.

 

[miimura]

Power from a CHAdeMO that's working correctly shouldn't be any different from Power from a Supercharger that's working correctly.

My assumption is it's capped at 50 kW (actually, at 125A) because Tesla looked at what was on the market and likely to be for a while and sized the wiring and connectors within to match. Making it able to handle more would make it more expensive...

Even today, I don't know of a faster than ~125A (62.5 kW, since they rate at 500V even though no one uses it) CHAdeMO installation in the US. There's theoretically a standard extension I think, but I haven't seen it used anywhere.

As far as I know, all of the High Power CCS chargers installed in the USA that also have CHAdeMO are fitted with cables capable of 200A. Electrify America has so far programmed their chargers to limit the output to 125A. They have promised to eventually allow higher power delivery. However, Recargo has installed a site in the Monterey Bay Area with 6 200kW stalls with CCS + CHAdeMO on each stall and their CHAdeMO is not limited to 125A. When I tried it during their "soft opening" almost a year ago, it delivered 150A. I think they have since turned it up to 200A, but I'm not sure. The cables with the blue CHAdeMO handle in the picture below are made by Sumitomo and are rated for 200A. I'm pretty sure the CHAdeMO standard only allows more than 200A if the cable is cooled and cooled CHAdeMO cables are not commercially available yet.

PlugShare - Find Electric Vehicle Charging Locations Near You

Recargo (the owners of the Plugshare web site) have won grants from the California Energy Commission to install fast charger sites up and down the US-101 corridor both north and south of the SF Bay Area. We don't know yet what equipment they will install. Unfortunately, the minimum requirement is 50kW. The site pictured above was partially funded by the Monterey Bay Air Pollution Control District, which allowed a 1:1 pairing of pedestals to 200kW charger cabinets even though the BTC hardware can support more than one pedestal per cabinet.

 

[bwilson4web]

Preliminary data, ~100 miles at night, charge limit set to 150 mi:

• ~$5 - SuperCharger session
• $10 - CHAdeMO using Electrify America
• $15 - CHAdeMO using EVgo

I've got to take a nap before doing a more detailed analysis but thought I'd share what I've got.

Bob Wilson

 

[bwilson4web]

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Driving ~100 mi at night with the charge limited to 150 mi (62%), charging costs:

• ~$5 - Tesla SuperCharger
• ~$10 - CHAdeMO at Electrify America
• ~$15 - CHAdeMO at EVgo

CHAdeMO at Electrify America

With 150 mi (62%) on the battery, I drove to the Nashville TN, Electrify America station:

The first step is to hold the adapter up and connect the CHAdeMO plug. Last summer the card reader at Manchester was dodgy. Before leaving, I downloaded the Electrify America APP and it connected and started the charging session. So here is the receipt:

​

Thank you for charging with Electrify America.​

​

Assistance: 1-833-632-2778​

​

08/04/2019 11:07:54PM​

Willowbrook Commons​

61 East Thompson Lane​

Nashville, Tennessee 37211​

Charger #100208-01​

Connector #2​

​

​

Total paid: $9.96​

​

Session ID: 37236​

Transaction ID:​

​

Charging: $9.12​

($1.00/Session + $0.21/Minute)​

Discount: $0.00​

Idling: $0.00 ($0.40/min)​

Sales tax (9.250%): $0.84​

​

End state of charge: 61%​

Energy delivered: 29.4 kWh​

Max charging rate: 48.75 kW​

Charging time: 00:38:39​

Grace period: 00:45 min​

Paid idle time: 00:00​

It appears the Electrify America station has a higher peak charge rate than the EVgo, EVpump, 40 kW.


CHAdeMO at EVgo

This trip was via Beechgrove, TN to get the miles:

The starting and ending altitudes were about the same. Also, we had to deal with construction and entering an urban area street speeds.

After wiring the adapter to the CHAdeMO, I used their App to start the session:

Session Id 5392571​

Account Number ******​

Member Wilson, Robert​

Start Date 08/05/2019 01:04:38​

Stop Date 08/05/2019 01:50:08​

Start Card 41294372​

Stop Card 41294372​

Total Cost $15.75​

Total Energy 27.010​

Total Duration 00:45:30​

Charger JOSH, CHAdeMO​

The "pay as you go" plan has a time limit of 45 minutes. Just as the charging was ending, the timer expired but I had enough charge to reach the SuperCharger at Athens AL.


SuperCharger at Athens

The trip home was shorter but the ending elevation was higher than the Nashville start:

Here is the SuperCharger receipt:

CONCLUSIONS

• SuperCharger is the fastest and most affordable. Use it to save time and money.
• CHAdeMO Electrify America is twice the SuperCharer cost and longer, 28 min vs 18. Use it if no SuperCharger around or you need a biology break found near the Electrify America station.
• CHAdeMO EVgo is three times the SuperCharger cost and can stop prematurely due to the 45 min limit. Still, it can give a 150 mi battery charge versus any L2 charger.

Bob Wilson

 

[heysteveh]

The only people who don't know are the people who haven't been told.

It's no more difficult to understand than grabbing the right hose at a gas station.

After reading several other posts on this thread of people having problems with Chademo chargers, and seeing pictures of straps being tied around trunk hinges and holding up charging adaptors, I would have to disagree that this is "no more difficult to understand than grabbing the right hose at a gas station". I have recently bought a Model 3 and the last thing I am interested in is being out on the road trying to figure out adaptors and straps, and then discovering that two different types of technology are not "communicating" and I can't charge my car. For me, I will never venture to try other chargers then Superchargers until all the kinks are ironed out and they are "dead simple" to use, especially if I am on a vacation out of town. If I want to buy gas at a gas station, I know I can drive in, unhook any hose and fill up my tank the same way, and pay with my current credit card. I don't need an adaptor, let alone figuring out which one to use at which station. I don't need a strap jimmy-rigged to my open trunk hinge to hold the hose, and I also don't need to set up a new account. I just use the credit card I have in my pocket. One of the main reasons I bought a Tesla was because of the Supercharger network which, for me, makes refueling almost as easy as using a gas station. I don't mean to sound overly negative, but without the Supercharger network I never would have bought a Tesla, knowing that In order to travel I would have to resort to all of these other charging stations.

 

[Eno Deb]

The first step is to hold the adapter up and connect the CHAdeMO plug. Last summer the card reader at Manchester was dodgy. Before leaving, I downloaded the Electrify America APP and it connected and started the charging session. So here is the receipt:
[...]

($1.00/Session + $0.21/Minute)​

Nice, that confirms that Teslas using the adapter will be placed into the lowest EA price tier.

SuperCharger is the fastest and most affordable. Use it to save time and money.

Note that this isn't necessarily true in states where Tesla charges per kWh. With the per-minute pricing it's much less expensive because the price is similar but the supercharger pumps much more energy per minute into the battery than Chademo as long as the SoC isn't too high.

 

[mike123abc]

Well tried my first session this evening. It went well -- I downloaded the electrify America app and set it up on the way to the charger. I arrived with 11% charge and 15 minutes later I had 25% charge for just over 4 dollars. It was charging according to the car at 43 kWH. EA reported 48 on their end.

It is more expensive than supercharging, but the Walmart is right by my house, vs a half an hour drive to the nearest supercharger (plus return equaling about an hour plus charging time).

No, I will not be using it often. The main advantage of this charger is that it is almost 4x faster than my home charger (48 amp model 3 on a 100 amp circuit doing about 11500 watts). Essentially if I arrive home in a low state of charge I can charge here and pay a hefty premium but charge up 4x faster. Every now and then I arrive home and have to charge up a bit (an hour or 2) before I can go to my next destination. This has not really been a problem since I have not needed a fast turn around time. But, now I have the option of going to an EA station and filling up 4x faster if needed.

Of course travelling outside my area of normal driving it could be valuable.

CCS faster charging is what I would really like....

 

[srs5694]

FWIW, I got a CHAdeMO adapter last week, too. I tried it out at a local mall with an EVgo station. One of the two CHAdeMO units (an NRG CHAdeMO-only device) didn't work at all, but it had an error light on when I pulled up to it, so I suspect the unit was broken. The other unit (one of the common ABB CHAdeMO/CCS devices) initially reported a bad connection, but when I disconnected and re-connected both of the adapter's connections, it started working. I was at a fairly high SoC (63%), and I got 44kW through most of the charge session. The total cost was about twice what I pay for electricity at home, so clearly I won't be charging here frequently, at least not via CHAdeMO. (The site also has a J1772 plug, which is free, but I seldom spend enough time in this mall to make it worth the bother of plugging in for Level 2 speeds.)

I'm planning a 450-mile (one-way) road trip at the end of the month, and just for the heck of it, I may try one leg on CHAdeMO, just to see if it will significantly lengthen the travel time. My calculations suggest it will add little, if any, time, given that I've got an LR RWD with a nominal 300+ miles of highway range.

 

[Wennfred]

Tesla Moblie Service came out today and met me at a EVGo station close to both of us, he came out with a new CHAdeMO Adapter, mine is brand new also. With the car locked, the EVSE communicated and then shut down once it attempted to charge, 2 seconds into it. I contacted EVGo and we troubleshot the station and rebooted the station, then we moved over to the other side and it failed also. The service mobile guy stated that there are lots of problems with the Model 3 and CHAdeMO. Hopefully another patch will fix this issue. Also make sure that the Tesla connector side locks into the model 3, if it doesn’t it will give an error. He also attempted to use the CHAdeMO Adapter on the Model S, it also failed. His model S didn’t have the fast charge firmware.
EVGo is sending an engineer to check the station, I told them to contact me if needed.

 

[Rocky_H]

His model S didn’t have the fast charge firmware.

The Model S and X were not waiting for an update to their firmware to be able to use the CHAdeMO adapter. They have had built in DC fast charging for several years.

 

[Wennfred]

The Model S and X were not waiting for an update to their firmware to be able to use the CHAdeMO adapter. They have had built in DC fast charging for several years.

Just stating what the Tesla Moblie Service guy told me.

Fred

 

[Rocky_H]

Just stating what the Tesla Moblie Service guy told me.

Fred

Oh--ugh. I expect that kind of lack of knowledge from sales people sometimes, but I thought a service tech would understand that better.

 

[bwilson4web]

Tesla Moblie Service came out today and met me at a EVGo station close to both of us, he came out with a new CHAdeMO Adapter, mine is brand new also. With the car locked, the EVSE communicated and then shut down once it attempted to charge, 2 seconds into it.

Did you have a strap or other strain relief to minimize torque on the Tesla plug?

Bob Wilson