Is DCFC always worse than AC charging?
Is DCFC always worse than AC charging?
So, my PHEV limits DCFC charging to 19kW, and recommends using AC charging most of the time as mostly-DC charging will wear the battery faster.
A dealership down the road from my Mitsubishi dealer advertises a public 19kW Level 2 AC charger; would using that cause the same wear and tear as a 19kW DCFC? It seems like that is probably the case, but OTOH the actual AC charging circuitry is integral to my truck/battery so it might be able to mitigate that somehow?
Or is the info in gmaps definitely wrong and a 19kW L2 charger is just silly?
Edit: it's a 2020 Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV, with a 12.1kWh battery.
Like you already hinted at batteries are DC systems and can only be charged using DC. Many EVs have at least a small AC to DC converter on board. When you plug it into an AC source the charging speed is limited by the size of that converter.
DC charging stations bring their own converters which are oftentimes much more powerful and therefore heavier than what your car carries along.
Whether you use an external 19kW converter or your cars internal converter doesn't make a difference. In both cases the cars charging circuitry will monitor for dangerous situations such as overheating and throttle the charger down if need be.
The important question is how large your cars converter actually is. Sure the L2 charger provides 19kW AC but can your car's converter actually use all of that?
If it can only do 10-15-ish kW then it'll charge slower and therefore won't tax the battery as much as a DC charger with 19kW would.
I don't know what car this is and how PHEVs play into this but existing BEVs have been charging with much higher speeds for more than 100,000 miles and generally don't end up with broken batteries.
Depends a lot on the make and model of course, as I'm sure there are some horrible examples out there. But the public fast chargers wouldn't be under such demand if it was that damaging to the cars.
Right, that makes sense. I don't know what the AC charger's capacity is, it might be worth visiting the Caddy dealership just to try it out.
I think it's a flaw specific to the 2020 Outlander PHEV or so; the way the manual and other documentation repeat it makes it seem unusual, as well as important. Maybe just because the battery is so small, at 12kWh?
If it takes a J-1772 plug it's probably 7.7Kw.