I knew having two electric-powered vehicles in the garage would initially present some charging problems. We have a garage fridge and an air compressor that already like to trip the circuit breaker when both are running full-tilt. Charging two vehicles from that same 120V circuit was going to be tricky.

Offset Charging Schedules

Until we could add a dedicated 240V circuit, the first thing I did was set charging schedules for both vehicles. I set the Bolt to charge from Midnight to 4PM. Because I work from home, I tend to drive my car (usually to rehearsal) after work.

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It’s fairly well known in the Bolt EV community that you can plug the included 120V charger into a 240V outlet and double the charging rate. I was wondering if the PHEV Pacifica could do the same thing 🤔 I did some research and found a Pacifica forum post that says you can.

We recently got a 240V outlet installed in the garage so we could buy a Level 2 charger, so I decided to make an adapter to test it out. The adapter instructions from the Bolt site recommends 14 gauge wire or bigger. I had some 12 gauge wire leftover from another project so I used that. All I needed to buy were the plug ends. I got a convertible 14-50 / 14-30 power plug and a female 5-20 end.

Pro-tip:

If you’re starting from scratch and don’t have 14+ gauge electrical cable laying around, you could just pilfer a short 14+ gauge extension cord.

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In 2019 my wife and I went to a Discovery Dinner at the local nature center. It was a presentation about electric vehicles. The presenter, Jukka Kukkonen, was an automotive engineer by trade. He switched his focus to hybrid and electric vehicles as he knew clean energy would be the way of the future. We left the dinner with one major point in our head:

If you’re going to buy a hybrid vehicle, make sure it is a plug-in hybrid.

Jukka
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