Convenience Cord 240V mod?

I am contemplating modding the 120V convenience cord and potentially making it capable of L1 or L2 like many Leaf owners have done with theirs. Having a spare 12A L2 EVSE could come in handy. Who knows it may be capable of doing this out of the box. I don't want to risk frying it by simply plugging it into a 240V outlet and seeing if the magic smoke leaks out. So does anyone have any information on how to get them apart? It kind of looks like the case is glued together. Also if anyone has a dead one or one they'd sell me super cheap to experiment on I could go that route too.

I'm sure you know that the Chevrolet Volt EVSE is 240V compatible right out of the box.

http://gm-volt.com/forum/showthread.php?218442-2016-Volt-120v-EVSE-is-L1-L2-Conversion-Capable

Not sure how that helps us but that is what I was hoping for with our EVSE. I just need to figure out how to open it up to look at the internal power supply for the electronics to determine if it is of the 100-250V input variety and if not replace it with one. I just don't want to potentially fry any of the electronics by giving a 120V power supply 240V and letting the smoke out.

I just keep a Clipper Creek LCS-20P in the trunk with an adapter or two in the event that I'm near a 240V plug (mostly campgrounds).

Of course the C-Max benefits more from the LCS-20P than the Focus did.

FYI- being the nerd I am, I decided to address this question.

The Ford Convenience Charge Cord DOES work at 240VAC.

I put together a rather sketchy adapter (NEMA 10-30 old-style dryer plug to 5-20R 3-prong receptacle), ran an extension cord outside (10ga), then the Ford convenience charger and plugged in.


My only metrics are the fuzzy numbers from MyFordMobile, which had it charging from 69% to 100% in about 286 minutes (just under 5 hours). Given that most of the MyFordMobile metrics appear to be assuming a ~29-30kwh battery (discovered this by downloading the data from that one Chrome extension), this means a net battery charge rate of around 1.9kW. Not sure if that's a full 240V @ 12A with overhead (or if the charge rate would have continued climbing had I waited more than 5 minutes), but it's definitely faster than a 120V charge.

Someday I want to get an OBD-II scan tool (or see if my cheap Panlong adapter will work with FORscan, haven't had luck yet) to get more accurate metrics.

Regardless, I can confirm that the Ford Convenience charger EVSE has a green light when you plug it in a 240V circuit, and the other light blinks green during charging. The car definitely appears to "charge" per the fading/blinking light pattern.

Granted, 5 minutes is a start but not total confidence, I would have to let it charge for 5-10 hours before feeling absolutely confident about using this setup.

Is the 2017 evse the same as the 2013 model? This would be great If I could just make an adapter to charge at L2. It would save me a couple hundred bucks.

A charge rate of ~2kW isn't much more than you get at 120V and thus running the convenience cord at 240V isn't buying you anything.

The FFE has a 6.6kW charger in it (which comes out to close to 30A @ 240V).

jmueller065 said:

A charge rate of ~2kW isn't much more than you get at 120V and thus running the convenience cord at 240V isn't buying you anything.

The FFE has a 6.6kW charger in it (which comes out to close to 30A @ 240V).

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Yeah it's not much. But if it's all you have it's still better than 120V charging. At those low charging rates small improvements yield relatively large changes in charging time...
For diy charging setups I think a portable EVSE running at 24A is the most versatile since you can hook it up to a dryer outlet and achieve maximal use of its circuit.

So then this mod would be more about versatility than speed? A 16a evse would be faster than this mod? A 24a, much faster? Does the mod to the volt evse yield better results?

spirilis said:

Yeah it's not much. But if it's all you have it's still better than 120V charging.

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Bit it isn't better than 120V..that is my point: 5 hours to charge the car is what you get at 120V (er the old 23kWh battery).

jmueller065 said:

spirilis said:

Yeah it's not much. But if it's all you have it's still better than 120V charging.

Click to expand...

Bit it isn't better than 120V..that is my point: 5 hours to charge the car is what you get at 120V (er the old 23kWh battery).

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I have a 2017...

69% to 100% of 30kwh is (0.31*30 = 9.3kwh)
9.3kwh over 286 minutes ends up being 1.95kw charge rate... that's definitely better than 120V!

I think someone has their numbers screwed up. If the convenience cord could run at 240v it would be 2x as fast as 120V You'd be charging at 2.88kW instead of 1.44kW You could charge over night on it instead of taking 18+hours. I made some progress on this I opened up my convenience cord to see if I could make any sense out of the circuit board. It's way more complex than I expected and I can't tell from looking at it but it appears there are some MOVs on the input that I assume would go boom at higher voltage. I thought about modding it, basically replacing the guts with the open EVSE so I could set it to run at 16A @240 (3.84kW) but the wires in the cord are only 16GA! :shock: Yikes! 16GA is too small for 16A. Hell, 16GA is borderline for the 12A the EVSE is designed for (16GA is rated for max 13A).

spirilis what year and location is your ford EVSE from? I do know some of the non-US ones have been reported as dual voltage. My 2014 US EVSE doesn't appear to be dual voltage. I even had an EE friend who has experience with power supply design take a quick look and he said he wasn't 100% sure but he didn't think it was dual voltage. If I ever decide I'm willing to rebuild it with an open EVSE then before I buy anything I'll plug my convenience cord into 240 and see if the magic smoke comes out.