Charging question

[MGMark]

Apologies in advance, this a really silly question I know but one I’m confused about.

I’m currently making use of a public charger; 22kw. The car next to me is charging at 11.3kw yet mine is only 2.7kw. Why is this please?

 

[Anon70]

Could be a few different reasons, here are just some possibilities...

Current state of charge of your battery and where it is in the charge curve

The XPower has a max AC charge rate of 7kW if the car next to you has a max AC rate of 22kW then the charging station may have allocated the available power to allow for that

Some other quirk of the power allocation for the charging station (e.g. first car gets priority for power)

Temperature of your battery vs the other car (they pre conditioned you did not)

The Setting you have to limit AC charge rate may not be set to max

 

[siteguru]

And final thought ... is the charging cable you're using 16A or 32A?

 

[Coulomb]

It will be charging at about 3.6kW for various reasons. The difference between the reported 2.7kW and the likely 3.6kW (0.9kW or 900W) is a combination of conversion loss (roughly 7% or 0.07 x 3.6 = 0.25kW = 250W), HVAC (heater or A/C), and 12V loads plus the DC-DC conversion loss. The other car was probably reporting AC power, the MG reports power into the traction battery.

So the important question is why you were charging at around 16A (3.6kW) instead of 30A (around 6.6kW). That could be the charging cable, if you were using your own. Can you see the cross sectional area written on your cable? For example, 2.5mm² indicates a maximum of 16A. I discuss this issue in some detail here, although in that case the on-board charger is three phase (around 10.5kW), where yours is presumably single phase (around 6.6kW):

Does charge cable affect charge speed?

I was charging today, and only got up to about 3.5 kW. Now I'm pretty sure this was because I was sharing the charger with another EV, but it got me thinking; does your BYO cable matter? On Amazon they sell all these different cables for different kW ratings (7, 11, 22) and 1 phase or 3 phase...

www.mgevs.com

 

[MGMark]

Thank you for the detailed replies. I was using a tethered charger.

 

[Coulomb]

I was using a tethered charger.

In that case, the EVSE must have throttled both of you to 16A. But the other car had a 3-phase on-board charger, and in the UK, your model only gets a single phase charger.

In some other markets, your model gets a 3-phase charger, in which case you would not have had charging envy

 

[MGMark]

Thank you