Things I’ve Made: DIY V2L Adapter

The car I drive, the Kia EV6, and a number of others in the Hyundai/Kia electric lineup, support a functionality called “Vehicle to Load” whereby you can plug a special adapter into the J1772 charging port that has a normal NEMA 5-15 household plug on the other end (or whatever your geographically local version is) so that you can power normal appliances from your car.

The adapter is terribly simple, here’s what’s inside it:

For whatever reason, the official adapter from HMG/Kia is hideously expensive, like $500. After I took it apart and realized how straightforward it is, I decided it would make the most sense to sell the one that came with my car at a profit, and build my own for much less money, and maybe with better features so I did that. (Back in May 2022 when I actually did this project, there weren’t 3rd party adapters available everywhere like there are now.)

What I came up with was about $60 in parts (a J1772 plug, a pushbutton switch with AC-tolerant LED indicator, and an extension cord cut in half. With that, I get a slightly more compact adapter that fits any kind of plug and has a bit of length to the cord to bring the outlet to a more usable location for most appliances. (The original adapter has a recessed plug on the solid body itself, so things like wall warts often simply can’t plug in.)

photo of the plug hanging out of my charge port
The finished product
A mess of wires sticking out of the open COTS J1772 plug
WIP on the workbench
Photo of the open J1772 plug attached with alligator clips to my car
Testing to verify electrical design, in the super-safest way.

5 Comments

  1. Bennie
    May 1, 2026

    Hi, i like your work!!! Would this v2l plug work on the Chery Tiggo?

  2. May 1, 2026

    I couldn’t tell you! I’d say, if you can find other adapters in the market that advertise they work with both the Tiggo and the EV6/Ioniq 5/etc, then yes, probably. I don’t know if the Tiggo uses the same detection scheme though.

  3. Martin
    September 20, 2026

    Are you getting 240V or 120V out of it? Just wondering what resistor is used for 240V

  4. September 20, 2026

    120V only. The output voltage is set by firmware configuration at the factory based on sales market, unfortunately.

  5. Martin
    September 21, 2026

    I’ve built the V2L adapter exactly by your wiring schema and when it’s plugged into my Kia EV5 it thinks it’s a charger. When I tried to activate the “utility mode” it says “V2L conditions not met”. But strangely the power socket in boot doesn’t work either 🙁

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