In short: No, they can not by design. The long, painfully-detailed version: What I was told back at EVS12 (electricdrive.org / EDTA's EV Symposium #12) is that GM wanted their charger standard to be proprietary and unique. A automaker had to sign-on/agree-to-GM's-terms/be-in-bed with GM to use their inductive charger coupler.
The only thing in common with the then old Avcon conductive and GM's inductive (LPI, then later SPI) is they used similar power sources. I was told that GM's inductive charger rectified the 208 to 240VAC into + & - DC voltages (~300 to 350VDC) which fed into a high frequency (chopper/) inverter (analogous to the front end of today's PC power supplies), with the inductive handle as the primary winding, and the vehicle's on-board inductive slot as the secondary winding of their high-frequency transformer load. Control of the power was performed with circuitry that adjusted the pulse/wave-width. There was circuitry on the vehicle side to change it back to DC power for recharging the on-board pack. Also there was high frequency signal handshaking going on through the inductive handle/coupler using GM's proprietary protocols between the inductive EVSE and the vehicle that kept any hacker from using their EVSE (GM detested hobbyists and conversion EVs, they did not want them charging off their EVSE). GM's official reason for going inductive was that there was no metal to metal contact to cause a shock. Unofficially GM sales reps at the EVS12 booth said that GM did not want to get sued: 'GM can't have some (uneducated/) third-world bare-foot grandma standing in the rain plugging in the EV, getting shocked, then suing GM'. First was the large MagneCharger LPI (on the left) http://www.evchargernews.com/photos/92632_1.jpg then the MagneCharger gen2 (on the right) http://www.evchargernews.com/photos/91702_1a.jpg then that charger but with a spi coupler, and then the Japanese came up with a lower cost spi charger called the tal 2000 (tal for short - on the right) http://www.evchargernews.com/photos/94080_1.jpg The LPI cost GM over $6k to produce. The tal was ~4k. Whereas the Avcon conductive evii ics-200 EVSE was ~$2k+, but later the Avcon powerpak brought the cost down to $800. Yet GM's devious efforts to divide and conquer paid off. Even though GM successfully killed their EV1 product line (and all the other automakers stopped as well) and there were no Production EVs to be had, both of the old EVSE was still being installed (CA DMV fees at work). Each new installation had to have one of each standard, doubling the cost, and reducing the number of conductive EVSE in the public that anyone could use (including conversions). GM's original Large Paddle Inductive (LPI - now total use-less = practically no-one can use them) and later the Small Paddle Inductive (SPI - only original gen1 Toyota RAV4-EVs can use them, but most of those drivers now carry their tal spi on-board with them with and a j1772 adapter), have been or are going to be pulled/yanked, and today's EVSE standard installed. All the effort of the old EVSE being installed way back then was not wasted. Because the old and the new EVSE use the same type/amount of electric power, an upgrade was fairly easy. Only the EVSE unit needed to be replaced and it connected to the same electrical wiring. {brucedp.150m.com} - On Sat, Jan 19, 2013, at 07:02 AM, Lawrence Rhodes wrote: > I've seen a few Magnachargers for sale. Cheap. Can they be used with a > J1772 > plug easily? Lawrence Rhodes.... - -- http://www.fastmail.fm - One of many happy users: http://www.fastmail.fm/help/overview_quotes.html _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org For EV drag racing discussion, please use NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
