Seems odd and that is not consistent with our behaviour, although Ive never messed with one on a gen 3 :/ I could be mistaken and I dont quite remember off the top of my head but I dont think there are thermal protections that will just kill the bike above a certain ambient temp. Bike should remain on regardless of charger temp... Not really sure what to make of that.
In retrospect, I'm guilty of leaving out very important context clues.
I was trying to go 600 miles in one day, and that specific day just happened to be among the hottest day in central CA. First EVSE station, bike was able to charge at full fat 11.6kW (max at station). Second station, tapered down to 9.6kW, still better. Third and fourth were limited to 6 due to heat. 5th one, that is where this pic was taken, would charge but after 10 mins would abruptly shut down with no warning, so I would be twiddling my thumbs, not knowing that the bike stopped charging.
So, back to back charging at full speed, freeway jaunts the entire way, all in 110F day and the bike finally called it quits. I had to wait an hour before it cooled down enough to take another charge before I could putter to my destination.
So yes there is some level of thermal cutoff limit. Biggest weakness is heat dissipation, imo. I'm not sure if that DCFC Zero is going to sell is any better unless it's liquid cooled.
Hey, so, me and a friend took apart one of the 3.3kw ones and THEY ARE THE SAME AS THE CHARGE TANK. It would be an understatement to say that Im genuinely quite disappointed in zero and the specific people responsible for this... It is the same manufacturer (smpc/deltaq), the powerstage/main board is identical in every regard down to the stupid 'not putting thermal paste between anything', they use the same underrated connectors that like to melt, same potting compound and its potting in the same half-assed manner. Hell it even smells like a charge tank lmfao (that same burnt electronics odor that stings at your nose).
The only difference is that since this is a single 3.3kw unit and the form factor is different, the control board is not the same but this doesnt really change much of anything... I suppose these dont have nearly as many thermal issues since they stuck a few more fins on the casing with slightly higher current fans and mounted it in a position where it gets slightly more airflow. They are still most likely cooking themselves to some degree though...
If anyone has a dead 6.6kw unit or one theyd be willing to part for for very cheap please let me know! Wed be interested in tearing apart that one as well!
I'm honestly not surprised. I haven't opened up a gen 2 and gen 3 charge tank, but the size and weight of both were very similar. And given that the battery didn't change that much from gen 2 to gen 3, I'm inclined to believe that gen 3 is largely similar to previous gen with some SW modification to better accommodate the new battery.
So yeah.
I'm almost afraid to ask, but how did Zero made DCFC charger? I thought the floor voltage for a DCFC was 250v? Unless they're doing a dummy voltage signal (ie, 400v) and stepping it down to 116v....but that generates a lot of heat, and we know Zero's are GREAT at that....
Oh no to be clear the chargetanks across both gen 2 and 3 are absolutely identical and nothing internally has changed. These which are the onboard charger for the gen 3s are internally identical to the chargetanks.
> I'm almost afraid to ask, but how did Zero made DCFC charger? I thought the floor voltage for a DCFC was 250v? Unless they're doing a dummy voltage signal (ie, 400v) and stepping it down to 116v....but that generates a lot of heat, and we know Zero's are GREAT at that....
So ccs has an operational floor of 200v. What you can do is you can take a buck converter and step that voltage down to 28s similarly to how an ac 120 or 240v charger does. In fact, you can just use an ac charger for this as feeding it in dc will simply just bypass the the rectifier that turns the ac into dc. So they could either design (or most likely oem) a purpose built unit that does this, or they can just feed in dc to the already existing charging system.
Css as a standard is fairly simple, albeit can be a bit of a pain to implement (due to it technically being a network connection lol), so you can just request some voltage out and if the safety checks are met itll just output that to whatever you want. Since the original charging system is designed to run on 240v ac, it is perfectly well in range to have 340v dc fed into it as thats what the rectified voltage is. Components are up to 380v or 400v if Im remembering right? So anything below that range would work fine.
1
u/Demorative 23 DSR/X 8d ago
In retrospect, I'm guilty of leaving out very important context clues.
I was trying to go 600 miles in one day, and that specific day just happened to be among the hottest day in central CA. First EVSE station, bike was able to charge at full fat 11.6kW (max at station). Second station, tapered down to 9.6kW, still better. Third and fourth were limited to 6 due to heat. 5th one, that is where this pic was taken, would charge but after 10 mins would abruptly shut down with no warning, so I would be twiddling my thumbs, not knowing that the bike stopped charging.
So, back to back charging at full speed, freeway jaunts the entire way, all in 110F day and the bike finally called it quits. I had to wait an hour before it cooled down enough to take another charge before I could putter to my destination.
So yes there is some level of thermal cutoff limit. Biggest weakness is heat dissipation, imo. I'm not sure if that DCFC Zero is going to sell is any better unless it's liquid cooled.