Do I need a Leviton Charger?

Looking at possibly adding a Rav4EV to my household.

Currently have a BLINK Charger for a Leaf and a Voltec Charger for the Volt.

I really don't want to buy a Leviton charger.

Will either one work with the Rav4? Both chargers I believe at 30AMP chargers with a 50AMP breaker at the sub panel.

This could influence my crazy notion of adding another EV car.

If you are referring to a "Level 2" EVSE Voltec charger (presumably to charge a Chevy VOLT), I believe it may only be rated to 3.3kW. The Rav4 EV can accomodate up to 10kW. Nevertheless, the Voltec can be used in theory, but some time ago, there were incompatibility issues using it to charge a Rav4. There may be a firmware update for the Voltec that eliminates the compatibility problem. You should check on that with the OEM to be certain. In any event you will not be satified with an EVSE that does not charge at a higher kW capacity like an appropriate model made by Leviton. However, there are others that may work just fine as well, although I think certain Blink chargers may have had some problems with the J1772 charge port connector overheating due to bad electrical contacts.

I use a Leviton 16A unit I purchased for my Volt. Although the Volt would only pull 3.3Kwh, the RAV4 pulls 3.6Kwh and works just fine. I know I could charge faster with a higher power unit but the expense of new wiring and new EVSE is not worth it to me.

Incidentally, I don;t have a Leviton myself - I have a Siemens Versi-charge, but I am adding Tony Williams' post to this thread.
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Life is too short to suffer with the 120 volt 12 amp plug that comes with the Rav4 EV and was really only intended for the Prius Plug-in. Charge 600% faster with JESLA(tm) !!!!

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You don't strictly need an Leviton charging station.

We have a 2011 LEAF and 2012 RAV4-EV. We have a Blink and Coulomb CT-500

The Blink should work, however you will want to look for the thread (http://www.myrav4ev.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=79&hilit=melted+blink) on overheating nozzles on some stations (notably Blinks). When I first got the RAV4-EV I tested it on the Blink. I noticed that it was getting a little too warm. Blink replaced the J1772 nozzle on mine. The new one appears to work better.

Since you have a LEAF and a Blink I will guess that you 2011 or 2012 model so most likely you have only been charging 3.3kW which means you have not exercised the Blink a the full power that it can supply (7.6 kW). The Tesla powered RAV4-EV can pull 10kW so it try to pull the full 7.6kW that the Blink will signal to it). If it has a defective nozzle it will more likely manifest itself under the higher load.

A 30/32A charging station is perfectly adequate for most users of the RAV4-EV. You should consider if you will be inconvenienced by having to share a charging station.

arnold

LabDad said:

Looking at possibly adding a Rav4EV to my household.

Currently have a BLINK Charger for a Leaf and a Voltec Charger for the Volt.

I really don't want to buy a Leviton charger.

Will either one work with the Rav4? Both chargers I believe at 30AMP chargers with a 50AMP breaker at the sub panel.

This could influence my crazy notion of adding another EV car.

Click to expand...

I think both will work with the RAV. I've used both from time to time and they charged up fine. As for the Blink unit, I had one as part of the EV project and it has always worked well. I had it detuned to 16 amps since that's all I needed for the Volt. I kept it at 16 amps when I "upgraded" to the RAV4 EV last year. It worked great, but with the added time to charge on the lower powered EVSE, I was buying electricity at times of the day where it was more expensive. Plus, on weekends when I was doing a lot of driving, I couldn't get the extra charge I always wanted quickly. So, I bought a clipper creek charger, upgraded my circuit, and sold the Blink unit on Ebay.

OP, please get your terminology correct.

Your Blink and Leviton units are EVSEs, NOT chargers. The charger is on-board the car. See diagram at http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=262630#p262630 but ignore the DC quick charge portion, since the Rav4 EV doesn't have that.

Please see http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=14728&p=332668#p332668 as to why this matters. The Rav4 EV has a 10 kW OBC, while the Volt is only ~3.3 kW.

FWIW, at my work, the Chargepoint EVSEs run at 208 volts and I've seen these vehicles pull about this many kW from them (when not ramping down their charge):
Tesla Model S (should be same/similar OBC at Rav4 EV): ~6.2 kW
My '13 Leaf SV (has 6 kW OBC): ~5.8 to 6.0 kW
'11 or '12 Leafs (w/3.3 kW OBCs): ~3.7 kW
Chevy Volts: ~3.1 kW (or was it 3.3 kW?)

There seems to be a fair amount of confusion/mislabeling of OBC wattage. Some automakers seem to use the max output to the battery (e.g. for '11 or '12 Leaf) while others seem to have gone w/the max drawn from the wall/J1772 inlet.