My wive has a car now

We are going to move soon. Since our new home is not as close to the supermarket, train station and school, my wive also needs a car. She wanted a very small and cheap one, but with at least four seats. For the whole family it was quite clear that it can’t be one that emits toxic gasses. As chance would have it, my brother knew that a ten year old iMiEV which he usually performed service and repairs, was for sale. The charging connections are quite different from the ones on the Tesla.

The Mitsubishi has a Type 1 connector for AC and Chademo for DC. In order to be able to charge it with our existing Tesla Wallcharger, I ordered an adapter cable. Unfortunately it turned out that it would work with most other charging stations, just not with the one we have. I successfuly tested the adapter cable on the public charging station of the nearby Aldi store. So for charging at home during the remaining month at our current place, we will have to improvise. At the new place I plan to install a separate plug.

For DC, the car has a Chademo connector. I still have the Chademo adapter that I used for the Tesla a couple of years ago. But since CCS was established as the standard in Europe, most new DC chargers don’t even have Chademo any more. Luckily there are still a number of triple chargers around. I wanted to test DC charging, before she is in urgent need some day. But to my knowledge for most fast chargers around here, you can only pay with one of those horribly insecure RFID cards, NFC credit cards or apps that are not available for any of my phones. I really don’t mind paying for electricity, but only with a sane payment method. I am really looking forward to charging stations where you can pay with Bitcoin (Lightning), regular debit cards or good old cash, like you can at every gas station. So we had to find a station where you can charge for free. After some reflection, we drove to the Lidl store in Flüelen. The CSS plug was occupied, and so it didn’t have enough power to also service the Chademo plug. We still plugged in, and the station would usually switch automatically, when the other plug was disconnected. But when we came back from shopping, it didn’t charge. I think this was due to some wrong manipulation either by the driver leaving, or by the new one charging his hybrid with AC. So I manually started the session, and we waited a bit longer. Anyway, DC fast charging worked, which was the important successful outcome. Fun-fact: Since the battery of this car is so small, it fast charges slower than the Tesla does on AC.

So now I hope my wive will have many pleasant trips with her first car.


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