buickanddeere said:
The 20 minute quick EV charge is for the kind of person with the perpetually dead cell phone :roll: because they can't plan ahead far enough to charge it.
Who wants to bake the life out of the batteries with 20 minute charges :shock: ?
Disagree. I don't run my cell phones to anywhere near dead and I've used my CHAdeMO port about 10x now. Heck, at work, much of the time my phone's plugged in and doesn't get below 75% on a workday.
I've used it because the charging was free, sorta on the way (and I could sit in my car catching up on emails, reading, be on the phone, etc.) and to reduce the amount I need to charge at home on weekends. Also, I can only L1 charge at home, so it can take quite awhile to replenish range.
(I get free L2 charging at work, but I only go to work on weekdays.) Today, I used a free CHAdeMO DC FC at Walgreens, which I've used a few times before. Sometimes, I use one at a Nissan dealer.
As for the latter, at least w/the Leaf with its battery chemistry and NO battery cooling system, there was found to be little difference in degradation vs. using just L2 vs. CHAdeMO DC FC. See http://green.autoblog.com/2014/03/17/dc-fast-charging-not-as-damaging-to-ev-batteries-as-expected/. http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=14271 has more info/discussion but MNL is currently down.
DC FC can be great for taking an EV on trips where you cannot stop THAT long to charge on the way or your destination (e.g. 60+ miles one way, all highway in sub-90 mile EPA range EVs). Ask some Leafers w/good CHAdeMO DC FC infrastructure like in OR and WA about their usage patterns and reasons. Ask Model S owners who use Tesla Superchargers to do long road trips.
In one session (either mine or someone else's) on CHAdeMO, after 31 minutes, 14.8 kWh was dispensed and the DC FC had ramped down to 9.5 kW output. SoC was ~86%. If you're doing this to enable you to travel further and have no means of charging at the destination or for a long time on the way, 31 mins is a lot better than ~4.75 hours.
Andy Palmer (Nissan exec) who lives in Japan has mentioned that his only car is a Nissan Leaf. I think it helps that there are over 1967 CHAdeMO DC FCs in Japan per http://www.chademo.com/. From http://chargedevs.com/features/a-new-leaf-localized-manufacturing-and-a-focus-on-infrastructure/,
“I know I can drive across the whole of Japan and know that I’ll always be within 20 km of a fast charger,” he said.
Tesla's Supercharger infrastructure enabled http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/cross-country-rally-numbers.