Dead SPX charger

[cottylowry]

Recently all the lights went out on our Voltec SPX charger -- the one that sells for about $490-500. The portable charger wouldn't charge the car either. The dealer had to replace what they called "the charger" in the car, but our electrican found that both hard wired fuses in the SPX were shot too. WE must have been hit by a power surge or something that fried the SPX and the Volt.

It's absurd that the SPX does not have replaceable fuses and that it does not seem to protect the vehicle.

So, has anyone got any recommendations on surge protection for the SPX and the Volt? Anyone else had a similar problem?

CL

[Sterling Silver]

I'm glad I came across your post. I probably will purchase an RV style surge protector (expensive) from Camping World to use on my new SPX Express. I paid somewhere around $900 for it and the cost of the electrician to install (and give me a long extension cord) will represent a total of $1,200...

[Skotty]

I've certainly had this concern, and I don't understand why no one ever addresses it. Do any electric cars or chargers on the market today have any kind of surge protection? Who knows. No one ever even discusses it. I sure wish I knew.

For now, I just try not to charge when a storm will be coming through, and I intend to look into one of those whole house surge protectors in the future, or at least try to set one up for the circuit I charge on.

[cottylowry]

I"m going to talk to SPX about surge protection. They told me that the more expensive 900$ charger only has a 2% failure rate. They didn't volunteer the failure rate of the $490 we bought from them. In their defence, they immediately sent me a new one which arrived today. I'll have our electrician swap it out. The electrician is going to try to bill SPX for their time on the swap.

[Cord]

From the pictures people have posted of the insides of many charges there are fuses on the 2 power lines and there may be additional protection on the control side as well.

Having the charger fail to work is one thing but causing damage is another.

USE the Correct breaker size.


It would not be too hard to mod the file we use to remote start which now looks at local temperature and monitor local storm warnings and delay charging or use the app to delay charging ?

[westom]

It's absurd that the SPX does not have replaceable fuses and that it does not seem to protect the vehicle.

Fuses do not protect hardware. A fuse takes almost forever to trip. It function is to disconnect hardware AFTER damage has occurred. So that damage does not cause a fire.

Anything that would stop or block a destructive surge is bogus. Any such functions already exist in the volts and all other household appliances. Effective protection is easy. But not possible if thinking in terms of blocking or stopping surge.

RV surge protectors are for different anomalies. For example, if AC voltage goes too low (a common problem in campgrounds), then an RV's air conditioner is at great risk. So the RV protector disconnects AC power. Those functions take milliseconds of longer to occur/trip. A surge is done in microseconds.

[gieso]

My Voltec SPX charger died the same way. Thankfully, the EVSE is the only thing that failed. My Volt charges fine on the 120V EVSE cord as well as a Voltec L2 EVSE at the dealer.

My electrician (that installed it for SPX) confirmed that the lower of the two fuses in the unit was blown. Given that the fuse is soldered in, SPX has to send another unit out to replace the one that failed. I agree that it would be better if the fuse was field replacable. I made this suggestion to the SPX support folks and they indicated that GM has design responsibility for the unit and not SPX/Bosch.

By the way, my house does have a whole house surge supressor and when the unit failed, there was no electrical activity (thunderstorms, etc.) in the area, so I am at a loss to know what happened to the unit. The breaker was properly sized at 20A and installed by the SPX electrician. The breaker was not tripped when the unit failed.

[westom]

... so I am at a loss to know what happened to the unit.

Most all failures are manufacturing defects. A classic example is infant mortality. Another was computers and electronics with counterfeit capacitor electrolyete that causes failures maybe years later. A third is a design failure that appears only after many products were sold. In every case, a manufacturing defect.

Why did one fuse blow and nothing else in the house fail? Most common reason for premature failure is manufacturing defects.

[Steverino]

Most all failures are manufacturing defects.

I think this is particularly true with the Bosch SPX unit. Junk, unless you are one of the few jackpot winners. When they slapped that 1 year warranty on the unit, they knew exactly what they where doing. They work fine for about 12 months, then they die.
My replacement for the shoddy Bosch SPX unit will not be from Bosch SPX.