eGolf and charge pilot adjustments - fail (NOT)

[nsayer]

I've made a thing called the J1772 Hydra. It's a two-headed EVSE. I've described it elsewhere in this forum, but the short version of the story is that if both cars are charging, each is notified that it can have half the current available. When one car finishes, the other car is then given full power.

Interestingly enough, it appears that the eGolf will obey a pilot reduction - which is required by the spec, but it will ignore a pilot increase. This puts it in the same league as very, very early Teslas, which would not increase charging when the pilot increased the allowed ampacity. Tesla fixed this bug/misfeature a couple years ago. But the eGolf will only bump the charger back up if you use the app to stop and start charging.

Boo.

 

[JoulesThief]

I've made a thing called the J1772 Hydra. It's a two-headed EVSE. I've described it elsewhere in this forum, but the short version of the story is that if both cars are charging, each is notified that it can have half the current available. When one car finishes, the other car is then given full power.

Interestingly enough, it appears that the eGolf will obey a pilot reduction - which is required by the spec, but it will ignore a pilot increase. This puts it in the same league as very, very early Teslas, which would not increase charging when the pilot increased the allowed ampacity. Tesla fixed this bug/misfeature a couple years ago. But the eGolf will only bump the charger back up if you use the app to stop and start charging.

Boo.

This is on your leased 2016 e-Golf SE with 3.6kw charger and no DC charging, correct? You might want to add in your signature what yer and model e-Golf you are driving, since there are some significant differences between the 2015 and 2016 models.

 

[nsayer]

Sorry, it's a 2016 SEL. I've seen it charge at 29A, and then drop down to 15A when the pilot is reduced, and then not jump back up to 29A when the pilot is increased.

 

[nsayer]

Interestingly, this appears to be tied to the presence of the charge timer. I had erroneously configured the car in carnet for a departure time that included charge control, where I had intended it only to be for preconditioning. When I fixed that, the behavior disappeared - I can bring the pilot up and down at will and the car follows right along both directions.

I'm going to try with a charge timer again tonight and see if there's a behavior pattern I can confirm. If so, then this looks like it may be a bug in VW's firmware.

 

[JoulesThief]

Sorry, it's a 2016 SEL. I've seen it charge at 29A, and then drop down to 15A when the pilot is reduced, and then not jump back up to 29A when the pilot is increased.

Well I can tell you that I am charging right now, and with my JuiceBox 40 Pro, I can take it down from 31 amps at 238V to 15 amps at 241V, and then take it right back up to 31 amps at 238-239V and it goes up and down, and back up again, no problem, on the amps.

 

[nsayer]

I spent a half hour this evening trying to reproduce what I saw at work this afternoon, and I can't. Regardless of the timer settings, the current draw goes down when pilot is reduced within the 5 seconds permitted by the spec, and, while it takes a little bit longer to go up (but the spec doesn't have anything to say about that), it does pop up shortly after the pilot is raised.

So I take it back. Whatever I saw this afternoon, I can't make it happen again under controlled conditions.