Thank you for the information! When you charge your van do you keep that charger set at 40 amps or do you lower it since our vans can only pull 6.6kw (27.5amps?)
I set it for 40A. Remember, this is not really a charger but more of a power pass through with a safety lockout. The battery charger is in the car itself. The EVSE simply informs the car charger how many amps it can pull.. with this Zencar charger you have the ability to control this by pressing a button (but make sure you double check everything first in terms of how much power you can pull).
Smartly, if the circuit is 110v the only thing you can do is 12A so there is little chance of blowing a breaker. At 208-240V there can be variations of how much amperage you can pull based on the type of plug you have. Tesla solves this problem by using smart plug adapters so the EVSE can understand that the "dryer" style l6-30 or whatever is only rated for 30A or the 14-50 is rated for 50A etc etc. With this Zencar charger you have a bit more responsibility but I trade that for flexibility.
At home I use a 14-50 so I just set it for 40A and the car pulls what it needs. If I need to plug in our Tesla with the j1772 adapter, it can pull the full 40A. I also made sure that the my 14-50 socket is fed with appropriate gauge wire and has an appropriate derated breaker (and if you have to ask, hire an electrician
). So if you want a place at home to plug in, have your electrician install a 14-50 with an appropriately rated circuit instead of hard wiring if only to provide some future flexibility.
If you travel a lot and want to play the "hunt for a charging place" game, then buy two Zencars for the price of a Juicebox, mount one on the wall at home for everyday charging and swap the level one charger that came with your car with the other Zencar with a few plug adapters. I did this and it comes in really handy when visiting parents and we can either use a dryer connection at one place or I put in another 14-50 at the other. When traveling I can also plug into 110V connections for slow charging if there are no other options available. Honestly, it's probably overkill as this is why we haul around a gas engine with our PacHy
but it's fun
. In my particular situation I have two houses, one has a Juicebox and I use the Zencar for the other because it was much cheaper.
If there is enough interest, maybe I can ask my Zencar contact, Annie, if we could do a group buy to get better pricing. But certainly, though, if you want to go this way, make sure to ask Zencar about getting adapters also as they are much cheaper than anything you can get on Amazon, etc.
