[North America] 9.6 kW vs. 11 kW charging…

[daveo4EV]

for long time Porsche EV victims the sage of Porsche's confusion regarding the actual limits of their standard OBC (on board charger) and the regional limitations they have chosen (for undisclosed reasons) to enforce are a comedy or tragedy depending on your perspective.

In the rest of the world it seems all of their OBC's come standard with a confguration allowing a max L2 240V AC charge rate of 11 kW…

In North America the Taycan has been marketed alternatively as an 11 kW or 9.6 kW vehicle - with Porsche's own standard equipment details on their website offering confusing spec's in this space…

More recently Porsche seems to have settled on 9.6 kW (240 volts @ 50/40 amps) as the default maximum rate - there as been a factory option for 19.2 kW OBC but that also has been fraught with reliability problems, service parts restrictions and unclear lineage as to if the "new ones" are actually improved or simply the same old unreliable 19.2 kW OBC unit…

the North American Cayenne EV continues this proud Porsche tradition of an embarrassingly slow L2/AC/240V maximum charge rate for a $150k+ premium EV limiting itself to charge rates even a $25k Chevy Bolt would be embarrassed by …

The Cayenne has two "maximum" charge rates…which I find interesting

1. Standard Equipment is a 9.6 kW OBC - continuing Porsche's relentless march to be substandard in this space…
2. The optional wireless charging is advertised as 11 kW maximum charge rate…

I've been wondering of this is yet again Porsche North America being "confused" about what limits they will actually enforce. But I find it comedic that I can charge my Cayenne EV faster wirelessly than I can with a wired standard OBC…

NOTE: it's reasonable speculation that there is no such thing in the parts supply chain as a 9.6 kW OBC - since all Porsche EV's ship with an OBC that can do 11 kW in other parts of the world. The 9.6 kW limit is a "choice" made by Porsche and a limit for the North American market that has never been fully explained…

So I can only charge my Cayenne at 9.6 KW but I can charge it at 11 kW wirelessly?

I've been thinking that's got to be wrong and simply confused marking materials. The wireless path is not subject to the North American "discount" charging rate of 9.6 kW? Then I realized - wireless charging is via induction - induction is Direct Current electricity (DC) - it's not Alternating Current (AC) electricity - so it's not being routed through the neutered 9.6 kW AC 240V OBC…it's probably being fed directly to the DC inverters/OBC's where we know the limits are much much higher…

I now I'm thinking we will have a comedic/tragic split in max charge rates for home charging:

• use a "wire" to charge your Cayenne - 9.6 kW max power
  • or pony up $1800 for the 19.2 kW factory option and cross your fingers it's a redesigned unit vs. the existing know fragile Taycan 19.2 kW units…
• use wireless - 11 kW max power

{sigh} Porsche + EV's -

 

[Fun TC Driving]

Background info/experience interim using Porche’s provided charger on our 2024 Macan EV Turbo:

My garage level 2 EVSE (an Enel X 40 ) started to unsafe overheaat last week after five years of great functioning (its plug in and cord both starting to overheat, e.g., last week it getting up to 135 degrees F while plugged into my 14-50 NEMA outlet that I had been successfully using the entire five years). For safety, I unplugged the Enel X unit from the 14-50 receptacle (the Enel unit now at our county’selectronic’s recycling center. Our new Tesla Univeral Wall Charger is going to be hard wire installed today when my electrician arrives.

In the interim I first time last week opened up the Porsche Prosche charging suitcase, using its 220 adapter end. It worked flawlessly. Admittedly it was only a very short time and many posts here have pointed out complete failures with theirs, but it functioned perfectly for the one week. Yesterday, a 95 degree day in which the car was outside in the sun for an hour while we were driving around, and we returned home its battery temp @103 degrees with its SOC about 15%. Plugged in the Porsche charger into that same 14-50 wall plug; watched it closely (+ 90 degree air temps pretty rare in western Oregon even in summer). I “took its temperature” at 30 minutes, at one hour, then every two hours until my car reached 80% SOC. No part of it got more than warm with one exception (below), which was easily rectified. The charging cord part was getting hot at 30 minutes (maybe 120 degrees F) was due to my mistake of leaving its 25’ cord tightly taped together, its coils touching each other as factory shipped (though I had taken the unit out of the suitcase). I quickly unrolled the tight factory coils and spread the long charging cord out in the garage (still about 95% degrees ambient) — though as the car was charging the battery temperature itself was slowing dropping and within minutes of spreading out it charging cord, its temp was reduced to just a little warmer than the garage’s 95% temp.

The rate of charge using the Porsche charger was 8.4A throughout the charging session, showing .5 miles/per minute charging. Again, it worked perfectly for the one week interim use. When unplugged, was put back into its Porsche suitcase (might remain there until end of its lease next year) as I look forward for my Tesla UWC’s install later today.