Back in January, I posted about having two new outlets (including a conduit run) installed by Smart Charge America. The outlet upgrades were to migrate from our gigantic, old Blink chargers (installed in November 2012) to newer, portable chargers. The old chargers were still running fine, I just wanted portability. I recycled the old chargers by giving one to a reader of my blog and the other to Smart Charge America.
SCA has a museum of chargers and at the time I gave them my Blink, it was the oldest functioning EV charger they had. Since my gift, they acquired an EV1 charger from the 1990s, so my Blink is no longer king of the hill.
I bought two new, still in the shrink-wrap Webasto Go portable chargers from eBay for about $260, each. The photo at the top shows why I selected this particular brand. At Fully Charged Live in San Diego, Webasto had a Go plugged in while submerged in an aquarium! My main desire for a portable charger is to be able to charge where EV charging is not yet available by utilizing RV parks, trailer parks and campgrounds that provide electric hookups to their guests.
To make sure the charger can be used widely, it’s important that the connections work, both at the electric supply (wall outlet) and at the vehicle’s charge port. There was a video I saw on YouTube that showed a huge range of adapters available for the electric supply side of the Webasto Go. It comes with two: a NEMA 14-50R plug for a 240V, Level 2 charge and a NEMA 5-15 plug for a 120V, Level 1 charge.
Unfortunately, it appears that Webasto may have decided against offering the selection of plug adapters in the video. I can find no mention of them on the website. I did find the “Ampure Go” charger online and in one instance, it was also called “Webasto Go.” Perhaps Webasto’s charging division has been renamed Ampure or EV Solutions or they got sold… Unfortunately, the EV Solutions website also does not show a range of adapters either.
Tesla’s portable charger does have an adapter set available, but since one of our cars is J-1772, I went with Webasto.
The charger’s plug, that goes into your plug-in vehicle, is a J-1772, so it will not work for a CHAdeMO-equipped vehicle or a Tesla. Since Teslas often come with a J-1772 adapter, in theory you could use the Webasto Go charger for all EVs that have an NACS (Tesla), CCS or J-1772 port. That’s great for a family that drives multiple brands of EVs. I have used the Tesla adapter to plug my Model Y into the charger. It works great.
The Webasto Go chargers were offered (and certified for their vehicles) by:
- BMW
- Chevrolet (and GM???)
- Fiat
- Ford
- Hyundai
- Kia
- Lincoln
- Mini
- MitsubishiMopar, and
- Volvo
I am specifically interested in the TT-30 plug (used at campgrounds and parks) and the NEMA-14-30 plug (also used at some 30 amp locations). I found them at the General Motors, Chevrolet and Cadillac parts websites. I had some My Chevrolet Rewards points available, so I just had to pay sales tax on them. I ordered both adapter plugs and will take them camping soon to test them out.
I’ll let you know how it goes.
Great information, thank you!