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The last couple of post in this thread deserved a lot of attention, IMHO because it answered a heavily debated question about the convenience charger that comes with the Karma, but for some reason went unnoticed, so I am starting a new thread to make sure it gets the attention it deserves.
Early on, we had spent some time discussing whether Fisker makes different versions of the convenience charger that comes with the car or if they just make one version of the device that can adapt itself to the local voltage, like practically every other electronic device sold today. See this thread, for example.
Ultimately, the discussion faded out because short of taking a US Spec. charger and plugging it into a 220V plug it was not really possible to make a conclusive determination one way or another, and understandably, no one was prepared to conduct this experiment.
Well our fellow forum member @EVO-Z finally conducted that experiment, out of sheer necessity. What happened was that he bought a car in the US and had it shipped to China where the local voltage is 220V. By the time the car arrived, cleared customs, and he took delivery, the HV battery was dead and he could not even start the ICE to charge the battery and he could not easily locate a J1772 compatible EVSE locally. After exploring various suggestions by the members of this forum, he obtained a plug adaptor for the US plug (not a transformer or voltage regulator, just a plug adaptor) and plugged the US Spec. charger into the local grid, and lo and behold, the adaptor worked just fine with 220V.
Now I am not recommending that anyone do this and I accept no responsibility for any damage caused by doing this, but if the information is correct and EVO-Z is in fact using a US Spec. charger, it should be possible to use an adaptor (such as the one suggested by @Siliconkiwi here) to plug the convenience charger into a dryer (or similar) plug to charge the car a lot faster without having to spend a lot of money getting a standalone Level II charger installed.
Of course, this is too late for me because I have already installed a Blink charger in my garage, but others may consider investigating this further, and it implementing such a solution, as long as it turns out to be safe and legal to do so.
Early on, we had spent some time discussing whether Fisker makes different versions of the convenience charger that comes with the car or if they just make one version of the device that can adapt itself to the local voltage, like practically every other electronic device sold today. See this thread, for example.
Ultimately, the discussion faded out because short of taking a US Spec. charger and plugging it into a 220V plug it was not really possible to make a conclusive determination one way or another, and understandably, no one was prepared to conduct this experiment.
Well our fellow forum member @EVO-Z finally conducted that experiment, out of sheer necessity. What happened was that he bought a car in the US and had it shipped to China where the local voltage is 220V. By the time the car arrived, cleared customs, and he took delivery, the HV battery was dead and he could not even start the ICE to charge the battery and he could not easily locate a J1772 compatible EVSE locally. After exploring various suggestions by the members of this forum, he obtained a plug adaptor for the US plug (not a transformer or voltage regulator, just a plug adaptor) and plugged the US Spec. charger into the local grid, and lo and behold, the adaptor worked just fine with 220V.
Now I am not recommending that anyone do this and I accept no responsibility for any damage caused by doing this, but if the information is correct and EVO-Z is in fact using a US Spec. charger, it should be possible to use an adaptor (such as the one suggested by @Siliconkiwi here) to plug the convenience charger into a dryer (or similar) plug to charge the car a lot faster without having to spend a lot of money getting a standalone Level II charger installed.
Of course, this is too late for me because I have already installed a Blink charger in my garage, but others may consider investigating this further, and it implementing such a solution, as long as it turns out to be safe and legal to do so.