TurboCord

Aerovironment is a company with a long history of innovation. I first encountered the company in the 90s in undergraduate Aerospace Engineering when the Southern California company took part in USC’s engineering and internship program. At the time, founder Paul McCready and Co were working on human powered flight and then solar powered flight, which required radical battery and charging systems.

Since then, the company moved on to building drones for governments (boo!) and working on innovation in the electric car space (yay!).  AeroVironment was a big part of the Sunraycer and Impact/EV1 project with GM in the late 80s and 90s and now powers the charging solutions with a number of automobiles through its EV Solutions subsidiary.

Their main consumer product is the TurboCord Dual, a tiny combination Level 1/2 charger that can be plugged into a normal 110V outlet or with the included adapter, 240V NEMA 6-20 outlet and charge a vehicle at three times the speed.  How well does it do? I’ve been using one as my main on board charger with vehicles ranging from the Plug in Prius to the Tesla Model S since the beginning of the year…
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