In a TV interview, a representative from Bomba Malaysia advised EV owners not to charge their electric vehicles during rain. In addition to that, he also said that EV owners should make sure to plug out the charging connector once they are done charging to avoid any mishaps.
While the advice sounds quite good, do they really apply in real life? Well, let’s test them out for real.
Here’s what I encounter when I charge an EV in the rain
Truth be told, EVs come with plenty of safety implementations to the extent that you should not face any problem charging your EV in the rain. This also applies to EV chargers since most of the reputable EV charger manufacturers out there have designed their products to be useable in most weather conditions.
To demonstrate this, me and my colleague from SoyaCincau BM’s team, Hanif brought a BYD Dolphin (the winner of SoyaCincau Awards’s EV of The Year for 2023) to the Gentari-JomCharge EV Charging Hub at XPark Sunway Serene. Yes, it was indeed the same place where the interview with the Bomba representative took place just a few hours earlier.
At the time, it wasn’t raining though. To simulate the wet conditions caused by rain, we spray the charging connector and the Dolphin’s charging port before we connect them and activate the charging session.
So, what happened next? Well…nothing, as the charging session ran rather smoothly.
Interestingly enough, we experienced heavy rain a few hours later which provided us the opportunity to test charging an EV in the rain for real. So, me and Hanif drove the BYD Dolphin to the DC Handal’s EV charging station at the UOA Business Park near Glenmarie Shah Alam.
Unlike the Gentari-JomCharge’s hub at Sunway Serene, DC Handal’s chargers at Glenmarie have no roof above them. Nevertheless, our charging session went on smoothly without any problem as well.
Can you drive your EV with the charging cable still attached?
Another interesting piece of advice that Bomba Malaysia’s representative mentioned during the interview is to plug out the charging connector or risk driving away with the charging cable still stuck in your EV’s charging port.
It is sound advice but it is quite unlikely that you would experience it through. With the Dolphin, it is quite impossible as the EV would not even let you engage in any drive mode while the charging cable is still connected to the car.
Regardless of whether the charging session is still going on or has already been terminated, it is still the same: the drive mode selector on the Dolphin simply refuses to work. A warning would also appear on the EV’s digital instrument display.
Safety and wellbeing are still a priority
By doing these real-life tests, it does not mean that we are trying to undermine the man and woman of Bomba Malaysia who have been doing a tremendous job and working tirelessly around the clock to ensure our safety and wellbeing.
Instead, we want to highlight the fact that there are plenty of safety features that have been implemented into EVs and EV charging infrastructure to make them fairly safe for consumers. Of course, nothing is 100% safe and there is still some risk of accidents but as long as you use an EV charger the way it is supposed to be, you should be alright.
