So for me it is official; the Autel EVO II's car battery charger is 100% useless for the times when I need it. I have written about the fundamental problem with this charger before in my DJI to Autel user experience thread, but today this charger really cost me a lot of extra time and risk.
The problem with this car charger is that it has undercurrent detection circuitry which was designed to prevent users from depleting their vehicle's battery while charging their EVO flight batteries; a valid concern considering the capacity of the flight batteries and the fact some cars let you leave the 12V socket energized even when the car is off. The epic flaw that Autel's engineers completely overlooked is that there are plenty of high capacity battery packs out there with 12V sockets which can easily charge multiple flight batteries yet due to the very sensitive undercurrent protection the charger will block charging from those power sources. I would think it is far more common to recharge a flight battery from a battery pack than from a car.
Today I had a major project, 4 flight batteries and my GoalZero 400 battery pack. I recently replaced the battery in the Goal Zero 400 battery pack and had already successfully recharged EVO II flight batteries with the battery pack in the past so I did not bring the wall outlet charger thinking everything would work as intended. Half way through the project I discovered that once only 20% of the battery capacity in the GoalZero was used, the car charger stopped charging the flight batteries. What this meant was the GoalZero still had enough remaining capacity to recharge 7 more flight batteries (from 35% remaining) yet I couldn't recharge even 1 flight battery before the car charger stopped working.
The GoalZero does have a DC inverter so with the wall charger which does not have this problem I could have recharged additional flight batteries if I had brought it, but that is a very inefficient way to recharge flight batteries. The current starts out DC, then has to be converted to AC, then back to DC which means you lose between 20%-35% of your recharge performance when using a battery pack.
For this particular situation I ended up having to keep the car running and use the car's outlet just to get enough battery life to complete the project. All of this could have been avoided if the car charger had a simple switch on it that allowed users to disable the undercurrent protection. It could even be a breaker style switch which has to be pressed every time the input power is applied. So @Blade Strike if you happen to read this, it would be great if you could provide this feedback to Autel.
From here on out, I'm never relying on the car charger again and will instead bring the wall charger even though it is far less efficient than the car charger for mobile charging. The only time I could see the car charger being slightly useful would be if you are taking a long road trip and stopping along the way to get a few drone pictures.
The problem with this car charger is that it has undercurrent detection circuitry which was designed to prevent users from depleting their vehicle's battery while charging their EVO flight batteries; a valid concern considering the capacity of the flight batteries and the fact some cars let you leave the 12V socket energized even when the car is off. The epic flaw that Autel's engineers completely overlooked is that there are plenty of high capacity battery packs out there with 12V sockets which can easily charge multiple flight batteries yet due to the very sensitive undercurrent protection the charger will block charging from those power sources. I would think it is far more common to recharge a flight battery from a battery pack than from a car.
Today I had a major project, 4 flight batteries and my GoalZero 400 battery pack. I recently replaced the battery in the Goal Zero 400 battery pack and had already successfully recharged EVO II flight batteries with the battery pack in the past so I did not bring the wall outlet charger thinking everything would work as intended. Half way through the project I discovered that once only 20% of the battery capacity in the GoalZero was used, the car charger stopped charging the flight batteries. What this meant was the GoalZero still had enough remaining capacity to recharge 7 more flight batteries (from 35% remaining) yet I couldn't recharge even 1 flight battery before the car charger stopped working.
The GoalZero does have a DC inverter so with the wall charger which does not have this problem I could have recharged additional flight batteries if I had brought it, but that is a very inefficient way to recharge flight batteries. The current starts out DC, then has to be converted to AC, then back to DC which means you lose between 20%-35% of your recharge performance when using a battery pack.
For this particular situation I ended up having to keep the car running and use the car's outlet just to get enough battery life to complete the project. All of this could have been avoided if the car charger had a simple switch on it that allowed users to disable the undercurrent protection. It could even be a breaker style switch which has to be pressed every time the input power is applied. So @Blade Strike if you happen to read this, it would be great if you could provide this feedback to Autel.
From here on out, I'm never relying on the car charger again and will instead bring the wall charger even though it is far less efficient than the car charger for mobile charging. The only time I could see the car charger being slightly useful would be if you are taking a long road trip and stopping along the way to get a few drone pictures.
