Upgrading from 240 to 480v charger

Thread Starter

Hybridking864

Joined Feb 26, 2017
4
I'm looking to upgrade my 13 Ford Fusion energi from a 240v to a 500v charging system! I've seen that normal wire can handle up to 1,000v and up to 200amp w a 0awg wire. Is this true? If so how can I convert this car to a 500v charging system? Also, I've heard from a third party that if I wanted to put a different electric battery in this car I could; but I would have to access the computer system to have it recognize the new battery.

Can anybody answer any of these questions please?
 

Papabravo

Joined Feb 24, 2006
21,160
Rule of thumb for current carrying capacity of wire is 700 circular mils per ampere. Ah....what's a circular mil? Glad you asked.

A circular mil is a unit of area, equal to the area of a circle with a diameter of one mil (one thousandth of an inch). It corresponds to 5.067×10−4 mm². It is a unit intended for referring to the area of a wire with a circular cross section. In simple terms the area in circular mills is the diameter squared.

Any wire table will give you the cross sectional area for a particular wire gauge and material. The rest is up to you.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_wire_gauge
 
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#12

Joined Nov 30, 2010
18,224
Wikipedia says these cars use a 275 volt battery. So, are you talking about changing the charger to plug into a 500 volt AC outlet?
 

Thread Starter

Hybridking864

Joined Feb 26, 2017
4
Wikipedia says these cars use a 275 volt battery. So, are you talking about changing the charger to plug into a 500 volt AC outlet?
They're 300v but can use a 120v or 240v charger. I want to take the 300v and increase it to 500v system and change the 240v charger to a 500v charging system.
 

Thread Starter

Hybridking864

Joined Feb 26, 2017
4
If I could use a fast charger and charge this car and 15 minutes instead of two hours and 15 minutes it would be worth it. As it is these cars are worth the money because it takes too long to charge it for 20 miles
 

#12

Joined Nov 30, 2010
18,224
Now that your intent is clear, you will have to start from scratch.
You can't just change some wire sizes and get a bunch of 300 volt transistors to suddenly become 500 volt transistors.
You can't blow twice as much power charge into the batteries at 11 times the best speed anybody else can do it without designing in a cooling system. You can't make magnetic cores saturate at twice the power they were designed for by waving your magic wand at them. You will have to start from zero and beat the best design ever produced. Which math and physics degrees do you have?
 

mcgyvr

Joined Oct 15, 2009
5,394
Now that your intent is clear, you will have to start from scratch.
You can't just change some wire sizes and get a bunch of 300 volt transistors to suddenly become 500 volt transistors.
You can't blow twice as much power charge into the batteries at 11 times the best speed anybody else can do it without designing in a cooling system. You can't make magnetic cores saturate at twice the power they were designed for by waving your magic wand at them. You will have to start from zero and beat the best design ever produced. Which math and physics degrees do you have?
So basically..
 

trader007

Joined Feb 27, 2010
249
yikes. these new oem battery and charging systems are highly proprietary, and monitored/controlled by an ecm. unless you want to hack into ford's firmware and reverse engineer what they did, do not bother trying to install an aftermarket battery or charging system.
 

#12

Joined Nov 30, 2010
18,224
these new oem battery and charging systems are highly proprietary, and monitored/controlled by an ecm.
Funny you should mention that. A highly proprietary battery charger? To the people here, that's kind of like a highly proprietary hole in a cardboard box. One person told me, "That's not a hole in a cardboard box. That's a patented dispensing system!" Yeah. Right. I have one of those patented dispensing systems in my butt and I've built proprietary battery chargers out of everything from a wall wart to a stack of surplus 150 watt transformers.
unless you want to hack into ford's firmware and reverse engineer what they did,
I'm working that on another site. The difference is that I'm trying to avoid buying a $1000 instrument cluster replacement to get the dome light to go off instead of trying to violate the laws of thermodynamics. I just wanted to be clear about the difference between blasphemy against computerized cars and blowing your car up by plugging it into the transformer on the telephone pole.
 

tcmtech

Joined Nov 4, 2013
2,867
Well first off do you have a 480 VAC power system to run it off of to begin with? o_O

If you're in residential location you're already SOL being 480 volt power systems are only installed in and for high power usage commercial locations and applications.

Second if you don't have a 500 volt battery in your vehicle and only a 275 volt one as #12 says, again not a thing you can do with that either unless you plan to do a complete custom electric power system for the vehicle.

Lastly as from what I am seeing they battery packs are at best ~7 KW capacity which ona honest rated 240 VAC 200 amp service with an efficient charging system it would be theoretically possible to dump the necessary ~10 -11 KWH worth of energy required to put that ~7 KWH worth of charge in in about 18 - 20 minutes. However realistically the battery itself would likely never handle that sort of charge loading without overheating.

Also there's whole ROI (Return On Investment ) issue. What will it realistically cost you for what gains you think you will ever get and how long would the change over take to pay for itself in any realistic savings to be remotely equated to the whole concept?
 
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jay2050b

Joined Mar 28, 2017
5
If I could use a fast charger and charge this car and 15 minutes instead of two hours and 15 minutes it would be worth it. As it is these cars are worth the money because it takes too long to charge it for 20 miles
Be careful, my experience, the faster you charge it, the faster you need to replace it.....u can't add those 2 together ether unless u have a 120v outlet, 240v outlet an 2 chords to plug in at once? I could be wronge....be as for charging very fast....make sure to drain all the way and trickle charge (low amps) for a good deep charge once in a while to keep the bat. In good health
 

#12

Joined Nov 30, 2010
18,224
u can't add those 2 together ether unless u have a 120v outlet, 240v outlet an 2 chords to plug in at once? I could be wronge
I think you don't know about American power lines...but then I don't know if you're in North America...:D
 
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