The charger on the Prius Plug in …is the amp rating selectable at 120V ? Or is it just
a 12 amp?
Little confused.
120v is VOLTS. Which is a standard outlet volts. Amps is current that is drawn by the charger. Outlets are 15 amps or higher.
It may be that the charger plugs into a 120 volt outlet and draws 12 amperes. There may be a provision to pluf the charger into a 240 volt outlet. If you were to do this, you would have to have a 240 volt circuit in your garage.
I’ll bet that the owners manual goes into a LOT of detail on the care and feeding of this car’s batteries, including how the charger works (assuming it’s a factory charger).
The charge rate is controlled by the vehicle, it is not adjustable by the owner.
This vehicle has been designed to allow charging from an external
power source using a charging cable for exclusive use with standard
household AC outlets.
● The charging operation is designed to operate at 12A continuously
for the charge duration (up to 3 hours).
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@Tom777 - You had a thread in Oct '15 where you were considering a Hybrid but had several reservations about buying one. Is this thread along the same line? If so it appears that the Prius Plug in Hybrid has been discontinued.
I’ll bet though you can use either 120V or 220V household current. I have heard that building codes are now trying to insist on every garage having a dedicated 220V outlet for charging. Along with sprinkler systems. Guess they don’t care about welders but just EVs. Seems like kind of a basic question one would ask when buying an electric car though.
The standard charger cable that comes with the car is for household current, 110/120 volts.
You can go up to a 220 volt plug but that takes a different charging cable. I’ve heard of people adapting their original cable but there is a “level 2” cable available.
If you haven’t checked Priuschat then do yourself a favor. There is a section dedicated to the first generation plug-in (gen3 prius) which will likely answer some of your questions.
The second generation plug-in is around the corner and will be the Prius Prime.
I think they have renamed it the Prius Prime…unless I misunderstood this is a plug in.
I assume that you do not have a plug in Prius and are considering buying one. If that is the case then you should be using the Official Toyota web site and requesting all the info you can get. My understanding is that the Prius Prime is not on the market yet.
The first generation Prius plug-in ran from 2012-2015. That is the version of the Prius plug-in that I talk about above.
The second generation Prius plug-in is the Prime and is not available yet. I see it on the Toyota website as a 2017 model.
I’d be leery of adapting a 120V/12A cable to 240V/12A service. The 240V cable is likely a larger diameter to accommodate transferring twice the power of the 120V cable.
I don’t see where volts is a factor here: