Charging rates

[yebaws]

I've just made my first really long journey in my Enyaq 80.

Just under 500 miles with 3 charging stops.

The public charges I was using varied from 150Kw to 350Kw, CCS (or is it CSS) type plug. But I never got more than about 60Kw rate of charge. Added a fair bit to the journey.

Any ideas why that would be?

[Powerstar]

Many reasons but the car usually limits the charge irrespective of the capability of the charger.

It has been covered many times on the forum for example: viewtopic.php?t=411

[ricky10]

3 charging stop seems quite excessive for 500 miler.

If you charged 3 times, I hazardous guess you charged to 100% each time? And started around 50-60% SoC?

Lower SoC will get higher charge rate, warmer battery temp will result in higher charge rate.

The most I saw in my car was just above 80kw from a SoC 40%

[yebaws]

3 charging stop seems quite excessive for 500 miler.

If you charged 3 times, I hazardous guess you charged to 100% each time? And started around 50-60% SoC?

Lower SoC will get higher charge rate, warmer battery temp will result in higher charge rate.

The most I saw in my car was just above 80kw from a SoC 40%

Motorway driving at speed I've found brings down the mileage a lot.

Initial charge was to 100% at home, subsequent ones fromaround 20% to 80%.

Possibly could have done it with two charges but the Skoda Nav app played up - for example taking me to a Tesla only charge point - and I had issues with chargers out of order so had to add nmore mileage to find replacements

From a 150Kw charger, I was looking for 150Kw or close. Not 50 or 60Kw. Is that unrealistic?

[Panagon]

everyone should be aware of the different costs of charging - many installations are charging 75-85 pence per kwh but some places like Tesla will charge between 50p and 60p per kwh.

Its worth checking.

[orrery]

From a 150Kw charger, I was looking for 150Kw or close. Not 50 or 60Kw. Is that unrealistic?

Yes, completely unrealistic.

Look at the charge curve for your car to see (scroll down to see the Fastned graph):
https://ev-database.org/uk/car/1280/Sko ... arge-table

The max you can get is 143kW, and the battery has to be under 20% for that. As the initial state of charge rises, this figure falls, and falls steeply after 60%. Note that this graph is for optimum temperature, which would probably have to be above 25C in the battery. If the car has been sat in sub-zero temperatures overnight then the battery will be cold. Driving it doesn't substantially warm the battery and as far as I know, the Enyaq has no battery pre heating facility.

You can usually get a good rate of charge if you start at under 20%, where the charge current is high enough to heat the battery to minimise temperature restrictions.

[ricky10]

From a 150Kw charger, I was looking for 150Kw or close. Not 50 or 60Kw. Is that unrealistic?

It will depend on battery temp/soc/charger facilities etc.

A lot of chargers may say 150kw but they ain’t able to deliver that speed.

Similarly MEB cars don’t have preconditioning of battery to get optimum DC charging which is a gripe for some people.

[Powerstar]

150kW chargers may also only deliver that to a car with 800 volt architecture, for the 400 volt Enyaq the max could be 75kW.
The spec of the charger will need to be checked to see its potential

[Aragorn]

Earlier cars were limited to 50kw in software unless you paid for an upgrade. Mine will sit at exactly 50kw on a fast rapid charger for most of the charge period.

Oddly enough, even with 50kw charging, i have found that the car is usually ready before we are, by the time you've gone thru the loos, grabbed a snack or coffee and stretched your legs etc the cars at 80% (albeit on a 60, not an 80). If we stop for lunch i've had to acutally go and move it from the charger. At one busy lunch stop, the car was full and had to be moved before lunch was even on the table. Perhaps travelling with kids changes the dynamic a bit though. However even on my own i've never been one for cannonballing a 8 hour drive. I like to stop every 2 hours or so regardless.

If you have the full speed charging option, then either the battery is too cold (in which case you'll probably see the rate increase as charging goes on, as the pack heats up) or the charger itself is limited for some reason. Some sites use load sharing between multiple heads for instance. Given you started full, and drove all the way down to 20%, i'd have thought the battery would naturally have warmed up a decent amount unless you were driving very slowly.

As mentioned the headline figure can be missleading. Power is current * voltage. Chargers are current limited, as well as power limited. For instance. 200A at 360v gets you 72kw. 200A at 750v gets you 150kw. So a "150kw" charger might be limited to 200A, and thus can only supply 150kw into a car with high engouh pack voltage. The Enyaq is nominally around 360v, and so would only manage 72kw. On the other hand if the same "150kw" charger is capable of 400A, then it can do 144kw into a 360v pack, but if you connected at 750v pack the power limit would kick in and it would only deliver ~200A.

[rgbgr]

I have to say that I've never achieved above 50kW in 18 months of Enyaq ownership. I've probably tried 20 different chargers that support higher rates.

I do believe that higher charging rates are achievable, but the conditions required to do so are pretty rare.