I'm sure there has been discussions on this somewhere but a quick search didn't return a general one.
I'm looking at the potential of buying an EV or maybe two for our household.
I'm looking at the potential of a 7kW charger. No solar on our home..
Anyone have any charger or other things that utilise hubitat when charging their EV(s)?
Say if I decided to charge two cars at home to share the charging better or prioritise one first, only charge in off peak (yes I know the cars and chargers can do this, but what about a little more "if statements" in there such as if my car is greater than a certain charge already to only use off peak, but if that isn't enough time to charge from a lower battery charge then start outside off peak etc).. Potentially energy monitoring of some sort...
I'm not likely to spend big bucks on this as the savings may take a while to pay off, but I am curious of some cost effective options to make the whole charging thing smarter. Without solar, I guess the need isn't as great but still.
I have 2 EVs and 2 chargers. One of the chargers is a Charge Point home and I use it to charge our Nissan Leaf. Unfortunately neither that charger or vehicle integrate with Hubitat at this time.
The other charger that I have is from Tesla and I am able to use it, along with the community Tesla integration to my vehicle to control the charging start/stop as well as level.
I do happen to have solar panels and this has allowed me to charge this vehicle pretty much 100% when they have a sufficient amount of excess energy.
The integration would absolutely allow off-peak charging and prioritization of one vehicle vs the other using Hubitat, but as far as I am aware, this would only work if they are Tesla vehicles. I don’t think it can connect directly to a charger at this time.
However, I also understand that Tesla chargers can be set to share fixed amperage between the two as well, and also following specific schedule through the Tesla app.
Out of curiosity, have you decided which EV’s you are planning to purchase?
Happy to help! Hopefully others can also chime in with their charger experience.
My experience with the Tesla Model 3 has been really great, and the extra value has definitely been there for me. There certainly are some technological advancements that you find with their vehicles vs traditional ICE vendors.
If you do decide to get a Tesla, be aware that current owners have access to a limited number of referral codes that they can share and will give you a discount. Currently, it is $1300 in Canada, but I’m not sure if or how this program works in Australia.
Hello Sebastien, I use a Wallbox terminal. It has an integration in Hubitat which is available. However, no information on the charge level of my vehicle is available. I would have liked this functionality because my Toyota does not allow me to connect to an API to obtain this information.
I did not. I know that the Leaf can access some information via ODB2. An app called LeafSpy uses that. But to link it to the hub would require something that has Wifi or Cell access.
You could run Android on a Raspberry PI and install LeafSpy on it. If I'm not mistaken, LeafSpy allows you to upload data all x/period to dropbox. You would just have to run a script that would read this data when the charging station is in operation.
However, I would have preferred a more generic solution that could be applied to different vehicle models via an OBD2 application not associated with a single model.
Thanks! Unfortunately, I am not familiar with anything that work on all vehicle models. One day hopefully, a new standard will exist and be mandatory…
Before I bought my EV, I thought a lot about my home EVSE (charger). Ended up installing a permanent 40 amp level 2 charger, it has no ability to connect to wifi and/or my phone. Now I don't know why I spent so much time thinking and planning for the charger. My neighbour bought an EV and he doesn't even have a level 2 charger, every night he just uses the level 1 that came with the car. Realistically, I could do the same. I know this depends on how long your commute is, but I rarely drive more than 40 km a day and usually less than that.
The car itself (ID.4) has so many options for charging and I just spent one hour on setting it up the way I wanted and then have not thought about it since. When people ask me what I like most about my EV, I say "Unlimited Range". I know it sounds weird, but I never have to worry about getting gas, I never get into my EV and say "damn it, got go get gas". I simply plug the car in when I get home if the battery shows less than 45%. For me this is about once a week, if I drive a lot then it takes about 4 days. We could easily have 3 EV's in the household and get by on one 40 amp charger.
I don't know how long your daily commute is, but I wouldn't be surprised if you rarely think about your home charger after a few months of owning a couple EV's, just plug the EV in when the battery is below 45% and your good to go.
I also love driving by super busy gas stations and chuckling to myself…
That said, I try to “fill-up” as much as I can from excess solar from my panels, so I do spend some time on this with our Leaf. Not an issue (all is automated) with the Tesla.
State of Charge is where I gained much of my inital information about EVSEs. Here's a video about Grizzl-E DUO. It may not be relevant to Australia (I don't think they sell outside NA), but I have a Grizzl-E classic and it's been working great for the 2 years it's been in service. No smarts in mine. I monitor its usage with with a second set of CT clamps on a Sense HEM (also NA specific I think).
I believe for you, the EV charge plug will be a Mennekes (Type 2) EV plug. In Canada and the US, it's j1772 for AC charging and CCS for DC fast charge, or NACS for AC and DC fast charging. Eventually all new EVs in the US and Canada will use only NACS.
A single standard will be nice! Charging stations are also starting to get better at automatically charging once plugged-in and accepting payment directly with credit cards. Great improvements!
I'm looking forward to having the additional options once Hyundai allows it. KIA is going to allow it in 2025 with an adapter, but no word on Hyundai's commenitment to their exising customers yet. New 2025 Ioniq 5 will have NACS I think.
I also heard that the 2025 Ioniq 5’s would have NACS. I would assume that once they have NACS, the older models will be able to charge on Tesla charging stations with an adapter… but who knows!
I was seriously considering an Ioniq 5 last year, but ended-up buying a Model 3. It has been nice to be able to charge on ANY charger… (I have both the J-1772 and CCS adapters…)
Yeah I would welcome the option, but we don't travel off-Island with the car very much. When we have, CCS has been only slightly inconvenient when we hit the big cities during rush hours. Otherwise we're just home charging. If we're staying overnight and we're far from home, we have used the included EVSE with a DIY220 and conversion plug I made (the Euro and Canada/US EVSE that Hyundai includes with the vehicle is the same, just uses a different plug depending on your mains voltage). This gives us around 1.9 Kw instead of 1.2Kw - Not stellar, but good enough.
