Recent content by Stan

Thanks for the suggestion on who to call at Toyota. That worked. We got the car back, repaired and working fine within two weeks of calling. The problems with the car must have been tough to debug. According to the paperwork Toyota replaced the drive unit, the propulsion battery, the DC-DC...

Our Rav4EV has been sitting at Toyota of Palo Alto for 6 months with no progress getting it fixed. It would not charge but we were able to drive it to the dealership. They promptly replaced the charger but it stopped charging again a few days later so we drove it to the dealership again. That...

Consider discharging the battery to half before the car is baked. The battery is more tolerant of temperature when it isn't fully charged.

It sounds like it is unusual, but when we bought our RAV4 EV, it had a distinctive hum at 60mph when it was cold. Over the first 10,000 miles that hum gradually went away. Now we don't notice a hum at any speed, cold or not.

Valery, I'm looking for a portable 240v EVSE with high current capability. The JuiceBox looks perfect except I'm puzzled about whether the relay is capable of 40A, steady state. Referring to the specifications of the JQX-62F relay on your site...

There is no unusual communications between the CS60 and the RAV4, just the duty cycle signaled on the control/pilot wire according to the J1772 standard. When the high/low control signal on the CS60 is pulled to ground (by a timer relay) the CS60 sends 10% duty cycle on the control/pilot wire...

Below is a link to the timer/relay that I bought from Amazon and use with my CS/60. The timer costs < $15 is powered from 240vac, and has a "dry" relay contact output which means it contains a relay with both sides accessible by connections (and neither side tied to AC). The fact that the...

Is the relay being overloaded? Carefully read the graph at the lower left of the specification sheet posted at: http://soll.en.alibaba.com/product/1385916472-220323770/Power_Relay_High_Power_Relay_JQX_62F_2Z.html or...

Does anybody know where the pin is that presumably reduces the phantom loads on the 12v battery? It would be nice to know because it might be useful to insert the pin if it is necessary to park the car out of reach of a 12v trickle charger like at an airport for a long trip. Currently if the...

Another approach is to give up on the timer in the car altogether and connect a timer controlled relay to the EVSE that just enables charging between midnight and 7am every day. Put the relay in series with the "Pilot" wire in the J1772 cable. When the "Pilot" wire is disconnected by the...

Here is a recent interview with JB Staubel, the CTO of Tesla, that is very worth reading. http://www.sae.org/mags/AEI/tools/11923 Stan

Here is the timer/relay that I bought. It costs < $10 is powered from 240vac, and has a "dry" relay contact output which means it contains a relay with both sides accessible by connections (and neither side tied to AC). Just wire the timer to your EVSE, set it to enable the EVSE from...

When my wife and I bought our car we didn't notice any whine in the demo vehicle, but in our car there is a noticeable whine when you first get on the freeway if the car is cold. The whine goes away after driving on the freeway for 10 miles and it becomes as quiet as the demo RAV4 EV. We will...

I've read previously that, "The best thing you can do to prolong battery life, other than to do extended charges sparingly, is to stay "plugged in" as much as possible when the car is parked and it is convenient to do so." Question... I noticed that in the Panasonic literature for the...

Sometimes when you charge the car and leave it plugged in, the car does a subsequent, brief, charge, several hours after the primary charge is concluded. Maybe the car is balancing the battery after the main charge, and then once balanced does another "top-up" charge. If that is the case...