Tetsous raised a question to me at a recent meet-up. He charges at 13Amp 240volt and is seeing dramatically more energy being used to charge the car than being consumed by the car on the road (according to the info the car provides). He asked me if I was seeing the same as I charge at 70Amp 240volt. The suspicion is that due to the high temperature (around 30celcius +/-5celcius), the air conditioning used during charging to cool the battery pack is consuming perhaps as much power as the car itself (doubling the cost of a charge).
I got three data sets. The outside temperature was not the same on the three days, but was dropping over the week (perhaps 28celcius at 70A down to 24celcius at 13A) - so that should favor the 32A and 13A charges.
All charges were in standard mode.
First day: I drove about 44km on my commute. Car says I used 7.4kWh (rounded to .1 kWh). Recharge was 50minutes at 70Amp, using 8kWh (rounded to 1 kWh). P.S. This puts my commute at about HK$4 each way (about 1/4 the Prius I replaced, and 1/10 the Land Rover the Prius replaced).
Second day: 10.0kWh usage (commute plus a couple of school runs) took almost 2 hours and 12kWh charge at 32Amp.
Third day: 9.2kWh usage. Charging at 13amp (using HPC dialed-down by the car) needed 4hours 25minutes and 15kWh energy.
I'm not sure if the net energy usage figures include regen (I assume regen has already been taken away from the figure). For example, for day 3 the car showed 9.2kWh usage and 1.9kWh regenerated. On average, the regen numbers are about 20% of the 'net energy used' numbers (or about 17% if net energy used already includes regen).
IF (big if) the aircon used about 1kWh, the numbers would work out. The 70A charge took 50 minutes (and the diff is about 600Wh), the 32A charge took 2 hours (and the diff is about 2kWh), and the 13A charge took 4 1/2 hours (and the diff is about 5.8kWh).
The power to run the aircon doesn't seem to affect charge time.
Does this make sense? At 13Amp, we seem to be paying about 50% extra for the charge.
I got three data sets. The outside temperature was not the same on the three days, but was dropping over the week (perhaps 28celcius at 70A down to 24celcius at 13A) - so that should favor the 32A and 13A charges.
All charges were in standard mode.
First day: I drove about 44km on my commute. Car says I used 7.4kWh (rounded to .1 kWh). Recharge was 50minutes at 70Amp, using 8kWh (rounded to 1 kWh). P.S. This puts my commute at about HK$4 each way (about 1/4 the Prius I replaced, and 1/10 the Land Rover the Prius replaced).
Second day: 10.0kWh usage (commute plus a couple of school runs) took almost 2 hours and 12kWh charge at 32Amp.
Third day: 9.2kWh usage. Charging at 13amp (using HPC dialed-down by the car) needed 4hours 25minutes and 15kWh energy.
I'm not sure if the net energy usage figures include regen (I assume regen has already been taken away from the figure). For example, for day 3 the car showed 9.2kWh usage and 1.9kWh regenerated. On average, the regen numbers are about 20% of the 'net energy used' numbers (or about 17% if net energy used already includes regen).
IF (big if) the aircon used about 1kWh, the numbers would work out. The 70A charge took 50 minutes (and the diff is about 600Wh), the 32A charge took 2 hours (and the diff is about 2kWh), and the 13A charge took 4 1/2 hours (and the diff is about 5.8kWh).
The power to run the aircon doesn't seem to affect charge time.
Does this make sense? At 13Amp, we seem to be paying about 50% extra for the charge.