Slow Charging: Fixed!

The stock 'charger brick' that comes with the car isn't really a charger at all. The trick liquid-cooled 3.3 KWatt charger is actually built into the car. The cord/connector thingy is called an EVSE and it's kind of a pregnant extension cord with just a little 'smarts' in the brick. Not very much smarts it turns out since Mitsubishi listened to their lawyers instead of to anyone who would have to actually USE the darn thing. Like most products designed by lawyers it only just barely works at all, taking some 21-22 hours to generate a full charge. Unfortunately the seats are not comfortable enough for a nap that long. The very same equipment in Europe  (minus some of the dumbing-down) charges the car in something under 10 hours. What gives?
I guess the American consumer is just that much dumber, or, more likely to sue if plugging it into a house whose electrical system hasn't been updated since 1920 causes it to burn down.
You can buy a faster (higher current) version of the same equipment for around $1000, but it turns out you don't have to. Some clever folks noticed that the 'dummed down' version we get is almost identical on the inside to the 'faster' Eurpoean version. They upgrade a couple components, update some firmware and 'Ta Da' your EVSE can now drive your 3.3KW charger to nearly it's limits.
Go to http://evseupgrade.com/ and you'll find that ours is not the only car with this problem.

Shown here is what I got back from the EVSE Upgrade folks about a week after I sent mine off to them.
The brick in the middle is the brains of the outfit (where the upgrades happened) the big white thing is the J1772 connector that you plug into your car (unchanged).
The 'other end' where the 120V plug would normally be has been changed to a L6-20 240V locking plug. Then they provide an adapter to go from that to the 'normal' 120V grounded plug. (shown toward the right)
I went a little wild and got the Dryer Plug adapter and the RV Plug adapter and another adapter (from L6-20 to L6-30) that 'adapts' to those adapters. That put my total$$ closer to $400 than the usual low $300 area you'd normally see including shipping. Still not a bad deal!

 

How does it work? Exactly as promised:
The 'stock' cord charges at 8 Amps (around 1000W) and takes 20-22 hours.
The upgraded cord charges at 13A  (around 1500W) and takes 14-16 hours (overnight)
The upgraded cord when plugged into a 240V outlet charges at 13A @ 240V (about 3100W) and takes about 7-8 hours for a full charge. However, since the last hour is given over to battery balancing and you rarely have the battery down below 'two bars' the real world answer is closer to 5 hours.
It's still not a great answer if you had to sit there and wait for it, but way better than a whole day.

Most Public Charging invrastructure can run the internal charger at full whack (yes, that's the technical term) and you're generally looking at something closer to four hours there. That's exactly what I did to 'get by' the week when my EVSE was off getting upgraded. Here I am:

I signed up for Ecototality/BLink https://www.blinknetwork.com/network.html
charger access. If you're a member (free of charge to sign up) they only hit you $1/hr for using any of the ~450 blink chargers in the state. This is the one at the OSU parking garage.
I also signed up for the AeroVironment network (also free) as they have the best coverage on the coast and on I5.
AeroVironment Network




[EDIT 2014: Looks like Ecototality went into bankruptcy. but came back out with BLink owned by someone else. That could have been a bummer since about 80% of the public charging infrastructure in the state are BLink network units. Hmmm.  AV (AeroVironment) is now charging $7.50 per charge on their charging stations. At least BLink is only about $5 worst case.]

General Driving & Private Joy. An Army of Mmmmm

Ya plug it in. Ya unplug in the morning. Ya drives. What could be simpler.
It's an Urban/subUrban Transportation Appliance. Mash the pedal and it GOES. Cornering is very well controlled. Brakes very well too. Everything 'just works' no muss no fuss no bother.
I plug it in every second or third day, unless I know there's a longer trip in store.
It goes from our base in Corvallis to Albany or Lebanon or Monroe without issues, or wanting more charge. Keeps up on the highway just fine. Fastest I've gone so far is around 75 and it handled that without issue. It just kinda goes Mmmmm . . along.

Here are the instruments as seen through the steering wheel, with a few distractions removed.

On the left is the Charge Gauge showing Six 'Bars' of charge (out of 16) and Gear status which is 'P' for Park. On the right is the Range Remaining (RR) display. More on that later.

In the middle is the digital speedometer and surrounding that is a big Ammeter gauge. Although it doesn's say 'Amps' on it, that's basically what it is. It's at Zero now (no surprise) and the Red needle moves to the left for re-gen (charging) during braking or coasting-in-gear and to the right to show how much current is being drawn from the batteries during normal running or acceleration. If there were numbered marking on the face the ammeter would show approximately 50, 100 and finally 150 Amps as the needle sweeps to the right.

Looking at the above RR=32 and Six bars of charge, you would reasonably guess that 16 bars (full charge) would translate into around 75 miles of range... and you'd be about right. The RR display functions by asking "How much charge did it take to go the last 15 miles traveled?" and then "If we assume we'll use up all the remaining charge at that same rate, here's how far we could go."

In the real world a full charge will get you somewhere between 50 miles (cold day, heater on and hiway driving) to maybe 90 miles in perfect (flat) conditions with no wind and a top speed of around 40mph. 'Normal' driving gets you somewhere inbetween. Probably closer to 60 miles than 80. Plus it's not a real great idea to run the battery flat on a regular basis. Leaving two bars on there is a good investment in battery life.