mrpcar

Just bought my wife a S550e plugin hybrid, can I ask questions about this car here?

Thank you

Socalsteve

Ask away! The price is right, but you get what you pay for...

mrpcar

Only reason why I bought it is so she can drive the car pool lane because it qualifies for the California car pool lane green sticker. Other than that finding that it averages out at 30 mpg is pretty cool too.

Here are the questions

(1). The plugin bay door says it can take 110v or 220v for charging, I have 220v wall plug in the garage I can use, so I want to use that because it charges very slow with 110v. Can I just use an converter with the current plug wire to plug into the 220v outlet? The charging cable control box does not say if it will work for both 110v or 220v, so I want to make sure it will work, or maybe there is another model of the plug wire I can order from the dealer? This is a link to the converter that I am referring to https://weldingsupply.com/cgi-bin/ei...NDEF:X:K1816-1

(2). Can't seen to find any original Mercedes S class sunshade (fold able) kind anywhere.

TIA!

Socalsteve

I'm not an electrician ( nor do I play one on tv ).

But, the sunshade can be found on eBay...type in: Mercedes Benz sunshade oem.

emilner

You can charge at 220 using a J1772 standard plug and charging station. Amazon has many options from 16 amps to 40 amps and up. The higher the amps the higher the charge UP TO what your car will accept. The car is the limiting factor. No matter how powerful the charging station is, the car will only draw as much as its capability. I believe your car maxes out at 3.3kw which roughly translates to 16amps at 220 (very rough calc).

You can purchase a J1772 compatible charger off of amazon for a few hundred bucks. I went with a 40 amp charger to future proof (to a degree) future electric vehicle upgrades. Keep in mind what plug you have in the wall and what it can support power wise. If you don't want to rewire and your plug in the wall is for a dryer you can probably only support 30amps.

I went with a 40amp juicebox wifi enabled box (one of the better quality companies on amazon). Just make sure you get one with a long cord...

mrpcar

I currently have a 30 AMP 220V plug in my garage used for my TIG welder, that's what I plan to use. My main question is regarding the charging cable with the control box. I am curious if I can just use the plug adapter and plug this into the 220V outlet and use it to charge it. Currently it's being plugged into a 110v outlet.

Thank you

MBNUT1

Is the 30 MPG what you have actually measured and how much of that is the result of electric only operation?

mrpcar

Last 6326 miles of that 2573 was engine off operation. Unlike the Prius the S550e allows you to choose to charge the battery to 100% level using engine operation, so when we are driving on the highway we use that opportunity to charge up the battery, so during city driving we use all electric mode.

This has a standard transmission like the gasoline model unlike Prius's CVT so there is plenty of torque on take off and can actually cruise over 100mph on electric only.

So far we are pretty blown away at how good the gas mileage is.

mrpcar

mbchris

30Amps is a lot of current. I would want to verify if that is not too much for the car. Some on amazon are actually 40A, so it may be OK. But others are 16A.

emilner

The output does not matter, it's the input that counts. The car will only draw what it needs. It's similar to charging your phone- the wall outlet could nuke it in a second but the dongle/phone regulate how much power to draw...

emilner

Sorry, I'm not familiar with the stock charging box MB gives. It should say if it is convertible to 220 but most are not.

mbchris

That assumes that the car does regulate current. It may not be able to handle so much current even if it does - because the excess current maybe dissipated in the form of heat as part of the regulation. Things don't explode due to excessive voltage - it's the current that does it.

emilner

J1772 infrastructure doesn't work that way. The format is standard- the vehicle regulates the current needs of the car, not the charger. Otherwise there couldn't be universal charging stations.

MBNUT1

So I didn't ask my question clearly enough. What I was really trying to get at is how much was the plug-in contributing to the 30 mpg? If the charging is being done by the engine then as you point out that is impressive mileage indeed.

mrpcar

Let me see if I can answer your question.

On full charge it's only good for around 20 miles of all electric range. When you step on the gas pedal too hard the engine will kick in, so casual cruise you can run on all electric.

In our case we only charge it up over night which takes about 5-6 hours for a full charge from 110v. It will usually run out of battery after about one hour in town / highway driving. Then we either leave the battery drained or charge it back up on the highway depending if we are headed straight home or we have multiple city stops.

FWIW, my Prius gets anywhere from 45-50 and I drive it hard, WOT right off the light every time.

MBNUT1

Ultimately can you guess how many miles of the total were driven on the energy you got from the household current? It's hard to tell from your description what proportion of the electric only miles were from the home plug in.

Tried to figure out what the mileage would be if it were a non-plugin hybrid.

The prius's are one of the most green cars going.

emilner

I think that is a difficult estimation to make. Every time you brake, coast or the engine turns on you are recharging the battery. It's hard to estimate how much is regen vs household current.

MBNUT1

The approach I was thinking of was about how many hours was it plugged in divided by the number of hours to fully charge times 20 miles. Subtract that amount from the total miles and then rescale the mileage. Then you have the approximate mileage associated with hybrid operation.

What I am trying to find out is did the 30 mpg just include a small or significant number of plug-in miles.

i think that the EPA estimates the combined mileage at 26.

emilner

You could calc it I guess, but it's a workaround for the true intention of the car. It's been optimized to run as a plug in hybrid.

MBNUT1

Agreed

mrpcar

I would say that probably 90% of the engine off miles driven were from energy received from the plugin.

What's the average MPG for a standards non-hybrid S550?

MBNUT1

Combined S550 is 21 per the EPA. My E3504matic is rated at 19 and has averaged an indicated 25 over 92000 miles.

Do you know if your dash's mileage calculation includes the electric miles? It would be an interesting experiment to not plugin for a tankful and use the at the pump method to see what the hybrid mileage actually is compared to a V8. Seems to me that its possible that the mileage calculation doesn't include the electric miles if that was the case that would be great mileage for an S Class.