Short version: those inexpensive portable charging cords sold on Amazon for around $250-300 are dangerous, can melt the charge port on your car, and shouldn't be bought or used. The glowing Amazon reviews are manipulated.
I keep seeing questions about these specific portable EVSEs on various EV forums, so I'm posting a broad warning. It doesn't matter what amp rating it has or which label it carries (Lectron, Morec, Besenergy, and so on) -- this particular unit is bad news.
Charging technology is part of my day job. After noticing owners describe two recurring faults, I picked up one secondhand through Facebook Marketplace to check for myself. Fault one: the pins inside the J-plug get too hot. Fault two: the unit tells the car it can supply more current than it really can, which makes fault one far more dangerous. Owners' groups have plenty of accounts of melted charge ports, with people stuck waiting months for parts or paying several thousand dollars out of pocket for repairs.
My sample definitely has the first problem. My Bolt EV tops out at 32A thanks to its 7.2kW onboard charger, and this supposedly 40A unit still got badly hot in under 30 minutes. That means it was running at roughly 20% below its rating, yet the J-plug contacts hit 95°C (over 200°F). (Please don't poke things, metal especially, into a J plug. I test EVSEs regularly as an engineer and understand the hazards.)
The cord sat in a cool garage, and I regularly charge this same car on other EVSEs at my employer's lab without any heating trouble. I even repeated the test there the next day, same car, with a reputable EVSE: the contacts stayed under 25°C, only about 2°C over ambient. 95°C won't melt the plastic by itself, but it's a glaring warning of a design or build flaw. Run it for 8 hours instead of 30 minutes, at full power, outdoors on a hot day, and it's easy to see how something could melt. Some owners say theirs has been fine, but they probably can't see how hot the pins get inside, perhaps right at the edge of failure without having crossed it yet. Maybe their unit lacks the defect; maybe it has it and just hasn't gotten hot enough.
I haven't verified the second fault, since my Bolt can't draw beyond 32A and I won't plug this into a colleague's car to find out. But owner forums, Facebook groups, and Amazon reviews are full of reports of cars and the units themselves showing current well above the rating. Some background: EVSEs use a simple signaling scheme to tell the car how much current is available -- essentially "you're connected to an EVSE and my maximum is X amps" -- and the car then draws what it needs without going over X. Whoever designed this unit either got sloppy or misunderstood the scheme, because it advertises far more current than it's rated to deliver. Combine that with the overheating hardware and you get melted ports. Picture a Mach-E, which can pull 48A, on this 40A-rated cord that was already near scorching at 32A after half an hour. If the cord signals 48A or more, the car takes 48A and things get very hot. That's how ports end up melted.
Listings and manuals often include a note that cars sometimes pull too much power, but that's a smoke screen. For one, plenty of cars don't let the driver lower the charge current as the sellers suggest. For another, signaling the correct available current for the rating is entirely the cord's responsibility. No excuse exists for advertising unsafe current and then blaming the car or driver for not turning it down. That's just false.
If you own one, seriously consider stopping use. It not feeling hot on the outside doesn't mean you're safe. I'd only be comfortable with one if the car pulled 32A at most and the J plug stayed ice cold after an hour or more. When I measured pins above 200°F, the handle's exterior only felt warm, not hot. Not every unit is necessarily faulty, but enough are to warrant real concern. And again, don't push thermometers into a J-plug the way I did unless you fully grasp the safety risk of deliberately bypassing touch-safe design around dangerous voltage. That the pins are supposedly dead when unplugged is little comfort with a device that has known safety problems.
So why are the Amazon reviews decent? Because the sellers game the system: paying reviewers, launching fresh listings when an old one's rating slips, and so on. I left a negative review on just one of the many listings, and the seller emailed me right away offering cash to remove it -- $45. Their ratings near 4.5 stars come from paying to erase bad reviews and likely rewarding good ones.
Sadly, there's no easy way to separate cheap Amazon EVSEs that are fine from the hazardous ones. I've used a budget Duosida 16A unit for years without worry, but a lot of bad ones are out there. It would be terrible for a new EV owner to buy a highly-rated EVSE, have it melt the port on their brand-new car, and lose their only transportation. You can gamble if you're comfortable with that, but unless you're ready to do your own testing, I strongly recommend buying a reputable brand with certification from a Nationally Recognized Test Lab (UL, ETL, Intertek, CSA, TÜV, etc.) and verifying it on that lab's website. The point of Listing is that consumers can look the product up, and listed items genuinely passed standardized testing. Unfortunately many of these sellers falsely claim UL or TÜV approval.
Stay safe.
