Electric Vehicles in Thailand

[Pib]

Just to give an idea of how long it takes BYD to schedule the free wall charger installation a neighbor on my soi got his Atto on 18 Oct.  He said the installer called a few days later to talk/schedule the installation. Today/30 Oct they are doing the install.  That's equates to 12 days.

 

Now for me I got my Atto on 25 Oct....no one has called to schedule the install yet.  The wife just got off the phone with our sales person asking why we haven't even been contacted yet.  The sales person called Rever who apparently is the daddy rabbit for arranging charger installs...the sales person said Rever is looking into the issue, checking why we haven't even been called yet.  The sales person said she would follow-up again.    Sure 28-29 Oct was a weekend....so maybe that has something to do with not being contacted yet.   

 

[Pib]

My neighbor also said the Atto and Seal get the free wall charger but not the Dolphin.

[Melpomene]

19 minutes ago, Pib said:

My neighbor also said the Atto and Seal get the free wall charger but not the Dolphin.

When we looked at the Dolphin for my wife, they told us if you took finance they'd throw in the wall charger as well, but not for a cash buy...

[Andrew Dwyer]

1 hour ago, Pib said:

My neighbor also said the Atto and Seal get the free wall charger but not the Dolphin.

25k if you wanted to buy the charger with the car( same one as Atto 3 I think ).

[Pib]

31 minutes ago, Andrew Dwyer said:

25k if you wanted to buy the charger with the car( same one as Atto 3 I think ).

 

Expect Bt25K is the price of charger "and installation."  The ZHIDA charger itself (identical to the one BYD gave me) goes for around Bt12K on Lazada.

 

They finished the install at my neighbor's house in about 3 hours.  His install required a 19M cable run.....15M is free with Bt200 for each extra meter (wire/PVC conduit/etc).   The install includes a circuit breaker/RCCB mounted just above the charger and in his main circuit box they replaced (for free) an unused 20A breaker with a 40A breaker to feed the the charger/RCCB. 

 

A few weeks ago I went ahead an bought a 40A breaker (a few hundred baht on Lazada) for my main bax in advance planning for an EV charger and installed it in replacement of a unused 20A breaker.  But now that I know they will provide a free 40A breaker in your main circuit box if required I will just reinstall the 20A breaker so I can get the free 40A breaker.  😜   

 

I sure hope I can get the wall charger installed within 2 weeks as I don't want to overwork my granny charger nor go to a DC fast charger.....granny will just need to labor for a few month weeks.

 

 

[Andrew Dwyer]

7 minutes ago, Pib said:

 

Expect Bt25K is the price of charger "and installation."  The ZHIDA charger itself (identical to the one BYD gave me) goes for around Bt12K on Lazada.

 

They finished the install at my neighbor's house in about 3 hours.  His install required a 19M cable run.....15M is free with Bt200 for each extra meter (wire/PVC conduit/etc).   The install includes a circuit breaker/RCCB mounted just above the charger and in his main circuit box they replaced (for free) an unused 20A breaker with a 40A breaker to feed the the charger/RCCB. 

 

A few weeks ago I went ahead an bought a 40A breaker (a few hundred baht on Lazada) for my main bax in advance planning for an EV charger and installed it in replacement of a unused 20A breaker.  But now that I know they will provide a free 40A breaker in your main circuit box if required I will just reinstall the 20A breaker so I can get the free 40A breaker.  😜   

 

I sure hope I can get the wall charger installed within 2 weeks as I don't want to overwork my granny charger nor go to a DC fast charger.....granny will just need to labor for a few month weeks.

 

 

Sorry, yes, I forgot the free installation bit for Dolphin.

 

How is the install in your opinion ?, they fit a ground rod ? or is that only if a 2nd circuit ( TOU Meter ) is fit ?

 

So he only paid 800 baht ?

 

( apologies for all the questions but I have been following the FB groups and it’s so confusing trying to understand the translations )

[macahoom]

13 minutes ago, Pib said:

as I don't want to overwork my granny charger

 

I don't think you need to worry about that. 

 

There's plenty of discussion on EV forums about long term use of granny chargers and there seems to be no problem doing so. Some people have no choice. For example: if they rent their residence and their landlord won't allow the installation of a 7.4kWh wallbox.

[JBChiangRai]

I am less than happy with most wall boxes.

 

Most only allow the car to charge at the full power of 7.2 kW, it’s advantageous to be able to slow that down. If either you have a weak supply, or there is a general Brown out, or you don’t need the car charging quickly, for example overnight.

 

and the hottest days of the hot season. There may not be enough power to charge at the full 7.2 kW

[Pib]

57 minutes ago, Andrew Dwyer said:

Sorry, yes, I forgot the free installation bit for Dolphin.

 

How is the install in your opinion ?, they fit a ground rod ? or is that only if a 2nd circuit ( TOU Meter ) is fit ?

 

So he only paid 800 baht ?

 

( apologies for all the questions but I have been following the FB groups and it’s so confusing trying to understand the translations )

No 2nd meter and no separate ground rod.  Correct, he paid Bt800 for the 4 extra meters above the free 15 meters. 

 

My neighbor's house, as well as mine and most houses in my moobaan, have single phase 30 (100)A service....a.k.a., 100 amp service.  The 30A stands for average/typical current draw for a house...where the 100A stands for the maximum the service provides/max rating of the meter.  Seems here in Thailand a lot of people call that 30A service but it's really 100A service.  The bigger houses in my moobaan have 3 phase service.

 

From the charger to the main circuit box they ran three wires: Line, Neutral, and Ground and all three hooked to the appropriate connector in the main circuit box.  The main circuit box is already grounded---that is, the l....o......n.....g copper stake into the ground when the house was built to create the Ground (a.k.a. Protective Earth (PE))

 

Some Youtubes show a separate Ground for the charger...a copper stake being driven into the ground close to the charger probably because the house itself did not have a ground.  Kinda like the houses in my mother-in-law's village out in the province.....the land of two wires (line and neutral) running from the meter to the house, two wires running throughout the house, and no ground.  So, in those cases where the house was built without a ground I expect the charger installer creates a ground for the charger.

 

[motdaeng]

1 hour ago, JBChiangRai said:

I am less than happy with most wall boxes.

 

Most only allow the car to charge at the full power of 7.2 kW, it’s advantageous to be able to slow that down. If either you have a weak supply, or there is a general Brown out, or you don’t need the car charging quickly, for example overnight.

 

and the hottest days of the hot season. There may not be enough power to charge at the full 7.2 kW

 

slow charging can result in more charging losses, which can be up to 20%!

however, if you charge your car with surplus energy from solar panels, then

the charging speed (charging losses) may not matter in terms of cost efficiency ...

[Pib]

1 hour ago, JBChiangRai said:

I am less than happy with most wall boxes.

 

Most only allow the car to charge at the full power of 7.2 kW, it’s advantageous to be able to slow that down. If either you have a weak supply, or there is a general Brown out, or you don’t need the car charging quickly, for example overnight.

 

and the hottest days of the hot season. There may not be enough power to charge at the full 7.2 kW

 

 

Yea...it does seem most 7KW chargers do default to pumping out 25 to 32A versus offering a lower amperage.   I expect this is simply due to it makes it cheaper to manufacturer and most places will infrequently experience brownouts. Yes, yes, I know it all depends on where a person lives and the use of the word "most" can have a wide variation.   

 

I have now lived in my Bangkok home for 15 years and during the first 5 to 10 years brownouts were very infrequent...but you sure hated it when it happened.  But over the last 5 years I don't remember any brownouts....and only one blackout caused by a building fire kilometers away and the electric company had to cut power for one hour to a big area like my entire moobaan and other surrounding moobaans.  Now for the last 5 years or so brownouts have been non-existent for me here in western Bangkok.   

 

Now one thing that is not infrequent....probably happens once a month is when the electric company is balancing/switching loads and the power will go off for only a second...just long enough to where you have to go around and reset the microwave oven clock, that 1 second off-on might trigger your TV to turn on, etc.  

 

You can buy EV chargers where you can program a lower amperage output and the Feyree charger below....the 7.6KW charger has 6 different amp settings....all the way down to an 8A granny charger level.  

 

 

 

 

 

[Andrew Dwyer]

7 minutes ago, Pib said:

No 2nd meter and no separate ground rod.  Correct, he paid Bt800 for the 4 extra meters above the free 15 meters. 

 

My neighbor's house, as well as mine and most houses in my moobaan, have single phase 30 (100)A service....a.k.a., 100 amp service.  The 30A stands for average/typical current draw for a house...where the 100A stands for the maximum the service provides/max rating of the meter.  Seems here in Thailand a lot of people call that 30A service but it's really 100A service.  The bigger houses in my moobaan have 3 phase service.

 

From the charger to the main circuit box they ran three wires: Line, Neutral, and Ground and all three hooked to the appropriate connector in the main circuit box.  The main circuit box is already grounded---that is, the l....o......n.....g copper stake into the ground when the house was built to create the Ground (a.k.a. Protective Earth (PE))

 

Some Youtubes show a separate Ground for the charger...a copper stake being driven into the ground close to the charger probably because the house itself did not have a ground.  Kinda like the houses in my mother-in-law's village out in the province.....the land of two wires (line and neutral) running from the meter to the house, two wires running throughout the house, and no ground.  So, in those cases where the house was built without a ground I expect the charger installer creates a ground for the charger.

 

Thanks for that @Pib, I’m on a 15/45 meter so I need a separate meter for the EV as at nighttime we have 2 air cons running and with the EV would be too much load. That’s the way I understand it anyway.

 

So luckily i am in PEA territory ( MEA in Bangkok don’t allow a TOU ) and can get a Time Of Use meter added for cheaper o/night and weekend rate ( 2.5 baht ). 
As it’s a separate meter and circuit a ground rod needs fitting, not sure what that means with the Charger install, presumably there will be an additional charge, the showroom guy was totally in the dark about this but I’m not the first to do this so I suppose the installer will be clued up.

 

My power pole is right outside the gate so should be well within the 15m .

 

From what i can gather it will go something like this:

 

1) Receive delivery of car

2) 2 weeks (?) after the installer, after an initial audit, will install charger, DB and ground , leaving cable sufficient to the TOU meter.

3) PEA will inspect the installation ( already been given go ahead for a TOU ) and return, at their leisure, to install the TOU meter.

4) Presumably PEA will connect TOU meter to the 2nd ( charger ) circuit and will be good to go.

 

All sounds fairly straightforward but have read on FB that nobody is in a rush to complete anything and PEA already told me that it will be 2 to 4 weeks after inspection to fitting meter so I expect a drawn out affair.

[JBChiangRai]

9 minutes ago, motdaeng said:

 

slow charging can result in more charging losses, which can be up to 20%!

however, if you charge your car with surplus energy from solar panels, then

the charging speed (charging losses) may not matter in terms of cost efficiency ...

I can’t find anything saying slow charging is less efficient, only the opposite, like this …

 

“While slow charging does use less power during the charging process, it may prolong the overall charging time. As a result, if you take into account the energy used during the extended charging period, slow charging may not provide significant energy savings.”

 

It’s actually the car that responds to the request of the wall box to set charging speeds.  All EV’s onboard chargers can charge at multiple speeds, the wall box just sends a different pulse to the car and the car complies by setting its charger to the speed requested.  Once charging starts the wall box is entirely passive.

 

It’s probably a good idea to charge the lowest speed possible when the car has just been driven, and the battery pack is hot, or the ambient temperature is high.

 

[Pib]

23 minutes ago, JBChiangRai said:

It’s actually the car that responds to the request of the wall box to set charging speeds.  All EV’s onboard chargers can charge at multiple speeds, the wall box just sends a different pulse to the car and the car complies by setting its charger to the speed requested.  Once charging starts the wall box is entirely passive.

 

Actually it the EV's onboard charger that has the most control.  Both have control but it really the EV that mostly controlling the charge.   The EV and wall charger communicate (handshake) with each other when first hooked-up and during the charging process such as the charger telling the EV how many amps it can provide and then the EV decides how much of that to draw.    The charger may communicate it can provide 32A but the EV may say "Thanks, but I only need 10A right now as I'm almost fully charged."   Ditto for a DC Fast Charger that might be able to put out 50KW (or more) but the EV will vary/control how much it draws....maybe the full 50KW to start with and then start tapping off to 40KW 35KW 30KW, 10KW etc., as it charges.   Now this doesn't mean that during the charging process the wall charger/DC fast charger might tell the EV "Sorry dude I going to have to reduce the max amount I can provide (less than what you are asking for) because I'm having an issue on my end....like a brownout.

 

[Pib]

6 hours ago, Pib said:

Just to give an idea of how long it takes BYD to schedule the free wall charger installation a neighbor on my soi got his Atto on 18 Oct.  He said the installer called a few days later to talk/schedule the installation. Today/30 Oct they are doing the install.  That's equates to 12 days.

 

Now for me I got my Atto on 25 Oct....no one has called to schedule the install yet.  The wife just got off the phone with our sales person asking why we haven't even been contacted yet.  The sales person called Rever who apparently is the daddy rabbit for arranging charger installs...the sales person said Rever is looking into the issue, checking why we haven't even been called yet.  The sales person said she would follow-up again.    Sure 28-29 Oct was a weekend....so maybe that has something to do with not being contacted yet.   

 

OK, the wife just took a call...from Rever she thinks.  The only question the caller had was what was our electric service size....our answer was 100A. The wife was then told the installer will call in 1 to 2 days.   I expect once that call occurs we'll have better idea when the installers will actually do the installation.

 

If it follows the neighbor's install process the actual installation would be about a 7-10 days after that initial call with the installer.  Time will tell.  Just glad I now know the installation process is indeed underway versus possibly being stuck in the mud maybe because my dealership hadn't forwarded all required paperwork yet to get the ball actually rolling.

 

 

[JBChiangRai]

2 minutes ago, Pib said:

Actually it the EV's onboard charger that has the most control.  Both have control but it really the EV that mostly controlling the charge.   The EV and charger communicate (handshake) with each other when first hooked-up and during the charging process such as the charger telling the EV how many amps it can provide and then the EV decides how much of that to draw.    The charger may communicate it can provide 32A but the EV may say "Thanks, but I only need 10A right now as I'm almost fully charged."   Ditto for a DC Fast Charger that might be able to put out 50KW (or more) but the EV will vary/control how much it draws....maybe the full 50KW to start with and then start tapping off to 40KW 35KW 30KW, 10KW etc., as it charges.

Close, but once the handshake is made the car determines most of the process.  If it decides to draw a lower current, it doesn’t tell the wall box, it just does it.

 

In the initial handshake, the wall box can tell the car to only draw, say 8 amps, and car will comply.  It’s not possible for the wall box to increase or decrease the charging rate once it starts (which is a shame).

The wall box contains a contactor and it can stop the charge at anytime if it sees an error or problem.  Some wall boxes have temperature sensors in the charging plug.

 

I have a degree in Electronic Engineering, I do understand the process, I studied it with a view to making my own wall box.

 

All control signals are analogue and not digital.

[motdaeng]

24 minutes ago, JBChiangRai said:

I can’t find anything saying slow charging is less efficient, only the opposite, like this …

 

 

you may are correct; there are many factors involved in the charging losses of an electric car.

with so many variables at play, the truth may indeed lies somewhere in the middle ....

 

https://www.icompario.com/en-gb/ev/charging-points/losses/

 

 

 

[Pib]

1 minute ago, JBChiangRai said:

Close, but once the handshake is made the car determines most of the process.  If it decides to draw a lower current, it doesn’t tell the wall box, it just does it.

Yes...it boils down I=E/R with the EV controlling the R factor. 

 

[JBChiangRai]

1 minute ago, Pib said:

Yes...it boils down I=E/R with the EV controlling the R factor. 

 

In effect, yes.

 

Incidentally, I read somewhere that it’s not a good idea to charge your car immediately after driving it, you should leave it for an hour to cool down the batteries.

[JBChiangRai]

7 minutes ago, motdaeng said:

 

you may are correct; there are many factors involved in the charging losses of an electric car.

with so many variables at play, the truth may indeed lies somewhere in the middle ....

 

https://www.icompario.com/en-gb/ev/charging-points/losses/

 

 

 

Probably right, it makes sense allowing for hysteresis in the battery.

 

On the other hand, higher current charging produces more heat and the cooling system wastes energy removing it from the batteries.

[JBChiangRai]

37 minutes ago, JBChiangRai said:

I studied it with a view to making my own wall box.

 

All control signals are analogue and not digital.

The reason I wanted to make my own wall box was to vary the charging current with amount of solar power present.

 

The only way for anything external to the car to change the current is to stop the charging process, fully disconnect and repeat the hand shake process with different parameters.  I wanted a smooth transition from one speed to another and it’s not possible.

 

1 or 2 of my solar power inverters shut down if a large load is removed and the voltage shoots up too high.

 

You can get the parts to make your own wall box on AliExpress including the logic controller that send the pulses to the car’s charger.

[Bandersnatch]

Home charging will be at a speed of 7kW AC compared to fast DC charging at 150 kW so I don't think it will put too much strain on the battery

 

[JBChiangRai]

16 minutes ago, Bandersnatch said:

Home charging will be at a speed of 7kW AC compared to fast DC charging at 150 kW so I don't think it will put too much strain on the battery

 

7Kw is minuscule to what you draw when driving, even 150kw is comparable to driving spiritedly.

[Bandersnatch]

Go on admit it.

 

How many of you have got one of these and no car to plug it into  🤨

 

 

[Pib]

Just drove by my BYD dealership here in western Bangkok (where I got my Atto)....an 8 vehicle carrier was parked in front unloading.  6 vehicles were still on the carrier...all Seals.....4 white, 1 blue, 1 black.

 

[sirineou]

5 minutes ago, Pib said:

Just drove by my BYD dealership here in western Bangkok (where I got my Atto)....an 8 vehicle carrier was parked in front unloading.  6 vehicles were still on the carrier...all Seals.....4 white, 1 blue, 1 black.

 

And yet nothing about then in their website. All I see at their Thai website is the Atto3 , that sounds

not- fishy  to me 😆

[Andrew Dwyer]

47 minutes ago, Bandersnatch said:

Go on admit it.

 

How many of you have got one of these and no car to plug it into  🤨

 

 

I’ll hold my hand up.

 

[Sophon]

34 minutes ago, sirineou said:

And yet nothing about then in their website. All I see at their Thai website is the Atto3 , that sounds

not- fishy  to me 😆

 

Are you using this website: https://www.byd.com/en-th ?

 

If so, try this one instead: https://www.reverautomotive.com/en/model/seal/overview

 

 

[Pib]

1 hour ago, sirineou said:

And yet nothing about then in their website. All I see at their Thai website is the Atto3 , that sounds

not- fishy  to me 😆

 

Use the Rever Automotive Sophon gave above....Rever is the daddy rabbit for import/distribution of BYD vehicles in Thailand.   They are basically Headquarters BYD Thailand.   Every BYD vehicle a dealership receives is from Rever.  

 

[sirineou]

29 minutes ago, Sophon said:

 

Are you using this website: https://www.byd.com/en-th ?

 

If so, try this one instead: https://www.reverautomotive.com/en/model/seal/overview

 

 

Yea I was using the first one, I will try the second one

Thank you