The Problem Was the Installation, Not the Charger

One Saturday morning we received a message from Matthew. He had just picked up a Corsa-e from a dealership – a demonstration model from 2023 with only 1,300 km on the clock. The car came with the standard 230V "brick" charger included in the box. The result: a full charge from zero took nearly 29 hours, with a power draw of just 2 kW. Not exactly what you expect from an electric car.

Matthew knew things could be better. He bought a Q11 from Ampere Point. And that is where the real story begins.

First Results: Better, But Something Was Off

With the Q11, the numbers jumped immediately. From 9:00 to 12:00 – three hours of charging – the battery went from 19% to 50%. Instead of 6 km/h of range gain from the brick charger, the Q11 was delivering 34 km/h. A clear improvement.

But Matthew was observant and persistent. The Q11 app was showing single-phase charging, while the actual charging times and power draw suggested something completely different. Total power displayed: 5.378 kW – which sounded more like three phases at roughly 7.5A each, not one.

To verify this, he drove to work. At the Opole University of Technology, colleagues from the vehicle engineering department connected his Corsa-e to the university's wallbox. Their result: charging across phases L1, L2 and L3 at 10A each. Charging times identical to what he was seeing at home with the Q11. The mystery was deepening.

The Specification Puzzle: How Many kW Does the Corsa-e Actually Have?

Matthew started digging into the technical side. Opel's head office insisted the Corsa-e was single-phase. One service centre suggested a single-phase 32A cable, another recommended a three-phase 22 kW option. The ev-database.org listing showed a maximum of 7.4 kW AC.

One more detail made things even more complicated: when adjusting the amperage in the Q11 app, the charging current only responded in the 6–10A range. Above 10A, the power stayed flat – stuck at around 2.3 kW per phase.

The Corsa-e from this model year is equipped with a 7.4 kW on-board charger, but its behaviour across different supply configurations is counterintuitive. When fed three-phase 16A power, the on-board charger activates only 2 of the 3 available phases, achieving 7.2–7.4 kW combined. The Q11 app, measuring load from the charger's perspective, was reflecting phase activity in a way that looked like single-phase operation. In reality, current was flowing across two phases at approximately 7.5A each.

But this still did not explain why the car was capping itself at 10A and refusing to draw the full 7.4 kW.

What the Q11 App Was Showing – Evidence in Numbers

Screenshots from the Q11 app during charging at Matthew's home told a clear story:

Voltages and currents looked normal. Charging was working. 

However, Matthew noticed one more thing: when he tried to increase the current above 10A in the app, the car simply did not respond. The 10A ceiling looked like a hard limit set by the vehicle itself. That was the signal that something in the installation was preventing the car from trusting the supply enough to go beyond that threshold. 

Mystery Solved: Swapped Phases in the Wall Socket

Matthew decided to test the same Q11 at a friend's house. Everything worked differently – no current limit, full power.

The diagnosis turned out to be simple, and surprising: the problem was in the home electrical installation – swapped phases in the wall socket. The car detects an incorrect phase sequence and limits its current draw as a safety measure.

This is one of the classic wiring mistakes that tends to cause a lot of confusion. Swapped L1/L2/L3 phases do not break household appliances – a kettle or a fridge will run without any issues. But an EV charger is far more sensitive to the supply configuration. The car detects an incorrect phase sequence and limits its current draw as a safety measure. The result: charging works, but slower than it should.

Once the installation was fixed – the problem disappeared. Matthew sent us a short message: "Problem was the socket, swapped phases. Tested at my friend's place and it worked fine." And the Q11 is staying, of course.

What This Story Teaches Us

Charging problems very often have nothing to do with the charger itself. They come from the electrical installation, from the specific behaviour of a particular car model, from the supply configuration, or from settings inside the vehicle. Matthew spent two weeks looking for answers. He called Opel's head office, asked at service centres, ran tests at the university. It took combining the Q11 app data, the university wallbox readings and the test at his friend's house to piece the full picture together.

This is exactly the value of having real-time per-phase monitoring in the Q11: you see what is actually happening on each phase, live. You are not guessing – you have data. And data helps you find the cause faster, instead of returning equipment that was working correctly all along.

A Tip: Before You Return the Charger, Check the Socket

If your EV charger is running slower than it should, or the car is limiting the current draw – before calling for a return, do one thing: plug the charger in somewhere else. At a neighbour's, at work, at a charging station. If it works normally there, the problem is in the installation, not the device.

If you have a Q11 – open the app and check the voltage readings on each phase. Voltages below 220V, large differences between phases, or no activity on one phase are all signals worth showing to an electrician.

If in doubt – write to us. We enjoy a good mystery.

Q11 – Portable 11 kW Charger with App

The Q11 displays live measurements from each phase separately. In Matthew's case, it was exactly that data which made it possible to understand what was really happening in the installation – and avoid returning a charger that had been working correctly the entire time.

• Power: 11 kW (three-phase, CEE 16A)
• Cable: 6 m (adapter version: 7.5 m)
• WiFi app: iOS and Android, live per-phase readings
• Adapter version: also charges from a 230V household socket (3.7 kW)

Q11 – view product
Q11 with adapters – view product

Sources:

1. ev-database.org – Opel Corsa-e specification: https://ev-database.org/car/1585/Opel-Corsa-e
2. Customer correspondence – Matthew, March 2026
3. Ampere Point Q11 technical documentation