The Panamera S e Hybrid and the Cayenne S e Hybrid come with a charging box and a stand for that box. Details are a bit scarce online about the Universal Charger, so I'm going to go over it.

The actual charger is built into the car. The Porsche Universal Charger is actually an EVSE cable, some additional electronics and a heavy-duty cord for connecting the car's charger to either 110v or 220v. The business end is a SAE J1772 plug.



Any cable that ends in a J1772 plug will work. Since any commercial EV charger will have a J1772 plug, you don't need the PUC cable to use a public charger. You only need it to plug your car into a 110 or 220 outlet.

The car comes with the PUC cable and a stand for the cable. The cable is basically a rounded rectangular black box with two attachment points, one for the 110/220 side, one for the car.



Here I have the cable inside the stand. I can easily lift it out and take it with me if I think I'll need it on the road.

As you can see in the photo, the stand is designed to be mounted over an outlet, so it has a big rectangular cutout in the back. The two black indents on the bottom are points where you can hang the J1772 plug when it's not in use. Between them is a slot intended for the J1772 cord. It runs out that slot and then wraps around the back of the stand.



That slot is not intended for the 110/220 volt cord. I am, however, running the 110 cord out that slot. This has the drawback that the two cords cross - the J1772 cord wrapped around the back of the stand, and the 110 volt cord running to an outlet.



The stand comes with a spacer on the back, which you can use to run the cord out the back, through a channel in the top or the bottom.



The problem with the spacer is that it's very narrow, just wide enough for the cord itself, not the 110v plug. To use it, I'd have to run the cord through the spacer before attaching it to the wall, and in order to remove the cord from the stand, I'd have to unscrew it from the wall.

Combined with the fact that the supplied screws are 1" too short to use with the spacer, it's apparent that no one at Porsche actually expects you to use it. They expect you to mount the stand over an outlet, and that's the only way they tested it.

The PUC comes with two cables, a regular 110 and a NEMA 6-50 220 volt cable. The NEMA 6-50 looks like a really big version of the 110v NEMA 5-15 connector you know.



Note that the NEMA 6-50 connector is not the same as a dryer plug. A modern dryer plug is a NEMA 14-30 connector.



The second number in these connectors refers to current. Standard outlet handles 15 amps, 14-30 handles 30 amps, and 6-50 handles 50 amps. I'm pretty sure the PUC won't draw more than 20 amps even at 220. At 50 amps and 220v you could easily fill the battery in 50 minutes, much faster than Porsche advertises. The onboard charger is probably 3.6 kW.

Since I haven't installed a 220 outlet yet, I only know charge times at 110, which are pretty long.

 

Oh, and something else worth noting: the car latches on to the plug. You have to use the remote to unlock the doors, even if the doors are already unlocked, or it's impossible to remove the plug from the car.

It's clearly a security measure, for times when the car is charging unattended in a public place.

 

Gus, thanks for creating a thread on the charging equipment for the PSeH.

We lasted about one week before it became priority #1 to install a 220V service for the charger. We were experiencing about 14 hours to full charge on 110V.

Here's our install: I ran a 6/3 wire to the garage. It was a 125 foot run from our main service panels. Cost for materials was about $300. Including the wire, 50Amp breaker, 6-50 recept and various other bits. I served as the helper to my electrician. He charged me a very reasonable $300 to get this job completed.

I chose to run an oversized circuit in order to hedge against future improvements in chargers and also the possibility of multiple electrical vehicles and/or multiple onboard chargers a la Tesla.

I chose a central location to affix the charging equipment. This spot will reach two inside garage spots and two driveway spots with the 25' cord.

I fabricated a simple cabinet in order for the Charger and cords to clear the garage door tracks.



The Porsche equipment is mounted to the cabinet, but the cabinet is held to the wall with cleats. I did this so that I can easily access the plug, rather than going through the small port in the back of the Porsche cabinet.






Here's the back of the cabinet showing the rest of the cleat arrangement




Interesting that it appears we have different J1772 plugs. Our production dates aren't that far apart, either.

 

The locking of the J1772 plug is an interesting feature. It will prevent casual theft of private charging equipment in public parking areas. But I must admit to cursing it when I head out late in the evening (sans key) to unplug the car for the wife's ease of departure the next morning.

I also suspect that this locking arrangement will cause some consternation at public charging stations, as it appears to be common practice by others to unplug a fully charged vehicle that is occupying a dedicated spot, so that the next person may use the juice.

Not only will they not be able to remove the plug, but the PCC should send a notice of tampering to the mobile device of the PSeH owner. Not sure how well that is going to work out...

Three other notes:

With the 220V service now charging the PSeH, we're seeing low two hours range to fully charge the battery.

Optional from factory is either an 8 foot cord or a 25 foot cord. No price difference for either.

The current cost for the all of the charging equipment from Suncoast is as follows:

Cabinet $380
Bare Charger Unit $1,495
J1772 Plug and 8' Cord $320
J1772 PLug and 25' Cord $425
Storage Bag $195
110V Cord $107
NEMA 6-50 Cord $475
NEMA 14-50 Cord $180

All of this (with the exception of two J1772 cords) is included with purchase of vehicle. Cost to replace is upwards of $3,250!

 

That's a cool setup, and it's heartening that it only cost $600 (parts + labor) despite a 125 foot run to the garage. I would have expected $2000 or more given the distance.

My charger didn't come with a 14-30 cable, just the 3-15 and 6-50. Our J1772 plugs are remarkably different in color.


The Porsche EVSE is predictably overpriced. Prices run as low as for AV Turbocord with 20' of cord.


There are a lot of chargers, some with wall stands in the $600-$800 range. The $600 looks a lot like the Porsche station, though it's a dedicated wall setup rather than a cabinet + portable cable.

 

6/3 wire was $1.85 per foot. The rest of the stuff was nickles and dimes. My electrician is about as fair as one will ever find for an actual licensed electrician. In advance of his arrival, I had punched a couple strategic holes where we needed to run conduit. But aside from that, he was here for about three hours.


Turbocord is the one we're going to get once I have a chance to check the 110V recept that's near my wife's work parking spot.

I have a bad feeling it's on a common circuit with another one nearby that someone else is using to charge a Ford plug in.

 

Thanks guys.. this is very useful info as I wait for my Cayenne SEH. I noticed that there will be an optional 7.2kw charger available as of 11/2014. My build date is Nov, but dont know if that means I will get it or have the option to as my order change window closes at the end of Sept. Not really sure I need 7.2kw as two hours with the 220v 3.6 system seems plenty fast.

Wish the Porsche charger stand/cabinet wasnt that large...looks HUGE in the pics for a mostly empty cabinet even with the portable charger inside.

 

Since you mentioned the 7.2 kW charger, I did a search on found the official mention of it on Porsche's site, and it does indeed confirm that the standard charger is 3.6 kW. Which is a common standard for EV's that don't have higher-current options.

With a Porsche e-Hybrid, I think the advantage of a 7.2 kW charger isn't home use, it's charging on the road. The idea being that if you're on a road trip, and stop somewhere for lunch, and there's a level 2 public charger available, you'll get more EV range back in the 30-40 minutes you stop. 10 miles in ~40 minutes isn't a lot more than 5, but it's something.

Personally, I wouldn't delay ordering the car for what seems a minor improvement. It's a hybrid, and you're not limited to electric range. It'd be a bigger deal if you were buying the pure-electric version of the BMW i3, for example, without the gas range extender.

A little tangent here: apparently the i3 only comes standard with a 110v level-1 cable, unlike the Porche e-Hybrid models. The official page lists full charge time as 20 hours with that, and a 7.2 kW station as "extra" with "financing available." That's crazy for a pure-electric vehicle.

 

Good point. Definitely makes sense when stopping at charging stations for shorter durations (several of my customer sites have charging stations, would be nice to get a full charge for the hour or so I am there).

I will ping my sales person later in the month to see if more info is available about adding it to my Nov build. I wouldn't delay my order for it, but if an option (Porsche's site states an "optional 7.2kw charger), becomes available for a reasonable amount I would go with it.

 

The OEM for my J1772 is Yazaki

http://charge.yazaki-group.com/engli...al_outlet.html

The latch/thumb release mechanism is all metal. I think this is a common unit found on public stations.


Regarding the size of the Porsche cabinet... honestly now that it's mounted, I actually wish it was just a bit larger. Yes, most of the cabinet is empty space, but it serves as the cord holder for the car plug, and most of the time it's fully extended, and looping that cord around the cabinet over and over kinda sucks.

 

Sounds absolutely ideal for you, then. I can't imagine a circumstance where the 7.2 kW charger would matter more than being on the road with frequent one-hour stops with charging stations available. It's the near-perfect usage case.

 

We had heavy storms roll through here yesterday afternoon. Lost power (as usual) for about eight hours. When the wife got home she plugged the PSeH in for a recharge, but the generator wasn't too happy about it. The load shedders went into action managing the HVAC loads. I manually switched the charger over to 50% and all was well again. If we had the PCC set up, I could have scheduled the charge for overnight when there was less load on the 20kw generator.

 

Probably no point in recharging the car from a generator. It's probably no more efficient that just running the car in e-Charge mode.

 

Overnight, the genny is running with very little load. If it's going to run, no reason not to store it in the car battery.

Generator consumes only 2.1gallons per hour of LP at 50% load, and 3.9 gph at full steam. The math is likely a fun exercise, but it would greatly depend on weather conditions and corresponding residential HVAC requirements.

 

This bosch unit is a great deal and highly rated - I just ordered this for my Fisker. $576