Charge Your USB Type-C Device Quickly While Driving with the Verizon USB-C PD 2.0 Vehicle Charger with USB Power Delivery

The USB-C PD 2.0 Vehicle Charger was sold by Verizon as a newer version of the Verizon Vehicle Charger with Fast Charge Technology  which closely resembles each other. Rather than supporting both USB Power Delivery and Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0 technology like its predecessor, the Verizon USB-C PD 2.0 Vehicle Charger only provides USB Power Delivery 2.0 based charging over USB Type-C.

While the previous charger offers up to 30 watts charging, the Verizon USB-C PD 2.0 Vehicle Charger only allows max 27 watts output through USB Power Delivery using 15 watts (5 volts @ 3 amps) and 27 watts (9 volts @ 3 amps) power profiles.

The same pricing still applies for the Verizon USB-C PD 2.0 Vehicle Charger since we last purchased the Verizon Vehicle Charger with Fast Charge Technology some time ago (see this review). The newer charger also has the same affixed coiled USB Type-C cable connector that is also USB PD 2.0 certified to connect to Type-C devices for quick charge up inside the car.

Using the USB Power Test App from Granite River Labs with the Granite River Labs USB Power Delivery Compliance C2 Tester, we performed the following tests for the Verizon USB-C PD 2.0 Vehicle Charger.

The USB Power Test App first negotiates a power contract for every PDO supported by the Verizon charger, and increases the load gradually to find the threshold where over current protection (OCP) kicks in and voltage and current start to drop for safety reasons. However the charger is not able to recover from 5V PDO OCP where the charger was observed to drop VBUS voltage to 5V when reaching 9V PDO OCP without dropping current or renegotiating PD contract.

The USB Power Test App reports out all the PDO's supported by the Verizon charger and their OCP thresholds. OCP thresholds for the Verizon charger are set at about 15-20% above the maximum current levels for the fixed PDO's.

PDO	OCP (A)
PDO#1 Fixed: 5V 3A	3.63
PDO#2 Fixed: 9V 3A	3.46

The USB Power Test App from Granite River Labs takes this data to produce an I-V curve which graphically shows the relationship between voltage and current for each PDO. We can observe after the current increases beyond the 5V PDO OCP threshold, the voltage just drops to 5V from 9V PDO OCP threshold without dropping current.

Using the USB Power Delivery Compliance C2 Tester from Granite River Labs to run just a subset of the full USB Power Delivery compliance test suite, some compliance failures were observed for the Verizon USB-C PD 2.0 Vehicle Charger.

USB-IF High Level Mapping Summary

Sl No	Test Category	Test Group Description	Test Result
1	PHY_PRIMARY_TX	BMC Physical Layer Transmitter	PASS
2	PHY_PRIMARY_RX	BMC Physical Layer Receiver	PASS
3	PHY_PRIMARY_MISC	BMC Physical Layer Miscellaneous	PASS
4	PROT_PRIMARY	Protocol Specific Primary	FAIL
5	POWER_PRIMARY	Power Source/Sink Primary	Pass

Result Summary

Sl No	Test ID	Test Name	Test Result
1	TDA.2.1.1.1	TDA.2.1.1.1 BMC PHY TX EYE	PASS
2	TDA.2.1.1.2	TDA.2.1.1.2 BMC PHY TX BIT	PASS
3	TDA.2.1.2.2	TDA.2.1.2.2 BMC PHY RX INT REJ	PASS
4	TDA.2.1.2.1	TDA.2.1.2.1 BMC PHY RX BUSIDL	PASS
5	TDA.2.1.3.1	TDA.2.1.3.1 BMC PHY TERM	PASS
7	TDA.2.2.1	TDA.2.2.1 BMC PROT SEQ GETCAPS	PASS
8	TDA.2.2.3	TDA.2.2.3 BMC PROT SEQ DRSWAP	FAIL
9	TDA.2.2.4	TDA.2.2.4 BMC PROT SEQ VCSWAP DFP	PASS
10	TDA.2.2.6	TDA.2.2.6 BMC PROT SEQ PRSWAP	PASS
11	TDA.2.2.7	TDA.2.2.7 BMC PROT BIST NOT 5V SRC	PASS
12	TDA.2.2.8	TDA.2.2.8 BMC PROT REV NUM	PASS
13	TDA.2.2.9	TDA.2.2.9 BMC PROT GSC REC	FAIL
14	TDA.2.3.1.1	TDA.2.3.1.1 POW SRC LOAD P PC	PASS
15	TDA.2.3.2.1	TDA.2.3.2.1 POW SRC TRANS P PC	PASS

BMC Eye Diagram

We can also see from the load trace below captured using the GRL-USB-PD C2 Compliance Test Solution App that shows the Verizon USB-C PD 2.0 Vehicle Charger also supports different voltage and current levels for charging.