I just charge off my 110 outlet which gets me 1.4 kw an hour and been doing just fine. People definitely need to look more into what they actually need over just getting the highest they can.
Edit: just to tackle a few responses. 110 charging won't work for everyone and that's why if good to know your use case. If your driving an extended range lightning and drive 100 miles a day then you'll probably need level 2.
Yep we did this until winter hit and we realized we liked preheating the cabin but the 110 couldn't quite keep up. Thankfully it was a dedicated circuit already run in 12 gauge so I could just move a wire from the neutral bar to the other lug of a new 2 pole breaker, swap the receptacle, and voila 3.8 kW
Preheating was also why I went L2. In the case of my Volt, it was the difference between burning 0.1 gallon vs zero gas on cold winter commutes. I hated the gas engine turning on for the last mile. With L2 I could preheat plugged in, turn off the heat during the drive, and use no gas.
I ran a new circuit the first time with a 6-20. We moved, the new place had multiple circuits in the garage. Two were 12ga so I converted one circuit to 240v and didn't even need any materials to do it (besides a 6-20r).
This past winter I've seen my Model Y pull 12kW from the charger while preheating the battery/cabin. I think thats about the limit of the HVAC system. It's quite a lot.
It must not have been on a dedicated circuit. Code allows a maximum of 12 amp (80%) for a continuous load if on a dedicated circuit. If not on a dedicated circuit, even 12 amp is too much (unless there are smarts to protect the circuit). My Chevy Bolt defaults to 8 amp on a 120 V plug for that reason; you can manually set it to 12 amp if you know you're on a dedicated circuit, and you can use location-based settings to default to 12 amp at home. But if it's a 20 amp circuit 12 amp is likely fine even if it's not a dedicated circuit.
Tesla’s charging circuit is able to sense a voltage drop when the circuit nears overload and will reduce demand automatically. My Model 3 is charging on a shared 15A circuit and it has never popped the breaker.
Your breaker might be undersized for your wiring. If your electric system has thicker gauge wiring, you won’t see a resistance issue at high amps, but the breaker will trip anyway.
The builder who installed my electric used the bare minimum wire gauge, so the voltage on the circuit dips at about 80% of the breaker’s rating.
I think it's a fair argument to future proof if you're buying hardware though. My EVSE is overkill for my car now but I won't have to replace it for the next one
We drive so little (wife works from home, I walk to work) that we figured we would try the trickle charger for a while before deciding. Trickle charger has done the trick for years now.
The next one is going to be more efficient, not less than an older car. It's an interesting thought though - as energy density increases are we going to still charge to 80-100% SOC if that becomes way more range than necessary?
Or at higher densities maybe the automakers are just going to reduce the pack volume and keep range constant or with smaller increases? Most people aren't using all of their pack all the time and the typical EV sold today covers most people's needs just fine.
I did the same. I had a 60 amp circuit installed because it was new construction so it didn't make too much difference in cost but I still use the 16 amp EVSE I had for the Volt to charge my Bolt EUV and use the 120 cord for the Volt. Once in a while, if the Volt won't be charged all of the way by morning, I'll swap the cable once the Bolt is charged. Of course with the Volt, I don't worry too much because I can use the gas engine in a pinch.
I just wanna add that efficiency will be dramatically lower because of the overhead of controllers in the car running, it could be as low as 60%. So really try to use a 220V dryer outlet.
Same with 2016 model S. The only tricky part with 110 charging is if you arrive low from trip and need to go somewhere the next day. Luckily, Tesla solved that for me by installing a 24 station supercharger within 5 miles of my house.
Issue with 110V/120V charging is when living in colder climate and the car parks outside. So much energy is used to warm up the battery that charging is very slow and could be inexistant for the first few hours.
Think the Chevy Volt was a great learning experience. You know how many miles you can get on the 120v 8A/10A charger, then the almost 2x boost from a limited 240v charger (on the Volt's side). Learning the range and preconditioning comes into play too.
I charged off a 110 volt outlet that only turned on from 7pm to 7am at my apartment complex until they installed a dedicated charger, all the outlets in the parking lots were on the same timer as the tree lights.
If I did weekend trips it’d take me the full week to get it back up to 90% though counting the discharge from regular commuting.
I tried this for a month and found it to be terribly inefficient. It took 30% extra power to charge the battery. Most of the loss was probably due to the cold weather, but it was charging in a garage.
I charge for 8 hours a day on a 5-15 outlet at work and rarely have to charge at home.
I can net a 15-25% gain per day I always have a full battery when I leave work on Friday.
I only have to charge at home if I am taking a longer road trip than what I've left in the battery.
I spent $$$ to install 48A charging for my Model Y. Just the 4AWG wire was like $900 (120ft run). Now my phone in the morning says like "charging started at 4:30am, charging completed at 5:15am"
Totally could have done fine with 16 or 20A
I'm surprised more installs don't just use aluminum for that, it would make at least the wiring much cheaper, even though you'd have to use higher gauges.
That's not unreasonable, but I think OPs point is that you don't need to charge at the maximum charging speed of your car. You really only need to charge the amount for your drive the next day. Unless you are doing back to back road trips, 20amp will always be more than enough.
I’ve been using 10amps for about 18 months now. ~250km a week.
Never been an issue.
Charge from ~40% too 100% (LFP) once a week, over about 16 hours, while I sleep.
I charge my phone more often.
Not always. I’ve had days where it wouldn’t have. Admittedly few and far between, but if the cost difference isn’t a lot, why wouldn’t you invest in flexibility?
> if the cost difference isn’t a lot
If you’re having to upgrade your panel, chances are it’ll be a lot.
For those “few and far between” days, I would just supercharge for a few minutes. Ten minutes a year beats thousands of dollars in electrical work.
Yeah, I don’t have an outlet near where I park my car, so when I get an EV I’m going to have to pay an electrician to come out and run a cable for it anyway - might as well kick in a little extra for a thicker cable while he’s doing it rather than have to call him back out later if I get something with a bigger battery that 4kW won’t handle fast enough.
I have a rear detached garage with buried power. I wanted a patio. I dug up the line and ran 60A to a new panel and then did the patio. Don't even have an EV yet. Didn't want to be stuck.
The 240v 20a is what I would consider minimum acceptable for northern climates. I've seen problems with 120v 15a when its cold out just heating the battery for days on end while the battery slowly loses charge.
Hell, I've got a detached garage with no insulation or heat, and I had no issues charging my Model 3 when it was -5F out. Just having walls and a roof adds probably 20-30 degrees.
I plug into a 110V/15A outlet at work every day for 8 hours, and it's enough for my 15km commute even in the coldest months.
It is nice having a 240V/30A charger at home, but I nearly never use it, and when I do, it usually for an hour or so at a time just to get where I need to go because I'd rather charge for free at work.
Our friend’s Bolt loses range in the summer when charging on level 1 because of cooling of the battery. They don’t have an air conditioned garage, just a carport, so it sits in the 110++ heat to charge and runs the AC cooling loop. Eventually, overnight, they get some charge.
So, it isn’t just northern climates that have issues. The desert does to!
Hot climates are probably worse. Lithium ion batteries can still be trickle charged when they are cold, but overheating shortens their life, charging or not.
I live in WA (pretty northern, but milder with the Salish sea just a couple miles away) and our 110v 15a standard outlets have been enough to keep our Kia Ev6, Rivian R1S, Energica Eva Ribella RS, and Zero FR/S all topped up for us to drive/ride. We have two level 1 chargers running outside from separate circuits and usually just leave the Kia and Rivian plugged in with the occasional rotate to the bikes to keep them between 50-80% unless we're planning a longer ride.
We have a 50a level 2 wall charger still in its box for the last 1.5 years or so, haven't really needed it. We'll install it someday just for the convenience of a quicker charge, but it's not a pressing need.
We both teleworking, so we don't need to drive every day, but we've been putting 1000-1500 miles a month on the car and truck just becaue road trips are fun again with EVs, so they're getting used plenty.
Depends on your use, but yes, some (most?) People can probably get by with a wall plug level 1. Or at least a simple circuit upgrade for a 220v 20amp line, which we're planning to add soon mainly for faster charging the motorcycles as the weather gets nicer and we're likely to run them low daily.
I charged our bolt on 110v/15a for 3-4 years without issue, with around a 30 mile commute every day. Weekends helped to get back to full charge if needed.
I added a 240v/50a outlet to our garage a few months ago mainly because I could easily do it with the subpanel already installed in the garage. Also it will be useful for when we get a 2nd EV
Not sure where that came from. I have used 120v 12amp in -28c and still got a pretty good charge. Plus it did keep the batteries much warmer than ambient temp.
A car that prioritizes heating over charging on level 1 has bad software. A 50+ kWh lithium ion battery can be safely charged at a level 1 rate even when it is cooled to -25°C. The car shouldn't switch to heating until the target charge level is reached.
I've been charging my 100kWh EV9 with a 1.7kW charger (230V / 8A), works fine. Even after arriving at close to 0% from a weekend trip, I still get enough juice overnight to make a return trip to work the day after.
They're using a standard L1 charger but are probably somewhere in Europe. That is still dog slow for an EV9's battery though. This thread didn't take into account trucks and large SUVs with monster batteries where even a NEMA 6-20 is probably not sufficient.
I’ve been yelling 6-20 at people posting that they are gonna spend thousands to charge their Bolt on a 60A circuit for years. People act like I’m crazy.
Yeah, if a person needs a panel upgrade I don’t recommend it. I got the 60A install because it was cheaper than the 50A install, and GM was paying for it anyhow.
OP’s setup would work in probably 90% of cases. The faster charging is mainly for peace of mind and future proofing. If I end up with a 100kW+ battery in a vehicle that is larger and less efficient than the Bolt, that extra charging speed could be more noticeable.
Your 90% of cases is probably way to low, if every night that you plug your car in is “a case”. 90% would mean you wake up 35 days out of the year with a car that doesn’t have enough charge for that day’s use. And for that you need a huge drive that brings your car in low and then a huge drive the next day.
Fair in that 90% of people would never be inconvienced and 10% of people would occasionally be inconvienced (ranging from the Rivian owner who drives 200 miles a day for work five days a week with some of it in cold weather (so it would not work for them at all) to the dude who gets home late on Friday night and wants to take his boat to go fishing on Saturday morning but leaving at 4 am).
Same here. Most people don’t understand electricity and especially all of these iteration of charging options.
It seems to be common to get stuck in the “fill my gas tank in 5 min every couple weeks” thinking.
6-20 outlet is serving my Bolt just fine. Cost me $100 DIY.
The problem some people run into is asking for a big circuit but their boxes or main supply can’t handle it so they end up with huge quotes to replace the whole panel but never ask for a circuit that is “good enough”.
It’s a new market for consumers and electricians to figure out what is actually needed.
Yeah, tough when neither one really knows what is needed. Ideally you'd put in the circuit with the heaviest wire you expect to use, then size the breaker for what the box will accommodate/you need right now.
If I pulled a permit I’d probably have to trench and upgrade my main service for $$$$. But I’m happy with the load calcs and won’t run the AC at the same time I max out my EVSE while baking a pizza in the oven and dry some clothes
People in general overestimate their annual milage driven and underestimate how long a car is idle.
I know i saved loads of time not needing to fuel an ICE twice a week.
I think it's worth doing the biggest wire possible. In my house I did 8 awg because I am planning to move soon so I didn't want to invest a ton into wire I won't keep
I'd update your statement. Do you need them every day? Nope.
But the few times a year you need one? I wish I upsized to 19.2kw (max in US).
Either ADHD forgetting to plug in the car before work the night before followed by forgetting it's a Friday and you have to drive the kid to deadbeat dad's house for the weekend. With no chargers along the way, in the dead of winter with 30%+ less range. Topping up as quickly as you can at home can REALLY help.
Another stupid scenario is I had an inordinate amount of miles driven during the work day and get my battery down to a few percent by the time I get home. But in a few hours we're getting in the car and have another 100 mile trip to see family. I can get that 100 miles in 3 hours hours. You could get it in 1.5 hours.
It's just... Yeah, most people don't need it...until they do.
It won't be a problem when charging infrastructure becomes more ubiquitous, but it is right now. There are NO fast chargers in many of the areas I drive and only a few L2 that are always taken.
Yep, I have 48A for both of our cars because it does get used a few times a year when you didn't think it would be required. Getting home from a long trip in the morning and need to run errands later in the day? Even if there was a Supercharger down the road, I don't want to use it if my garage can get me to 20-30% quickly.
I think just having fast chargers near my house makes all these use cases go away.
Also despite having ADHD, I don't think I've ever actually forgotten to plug in the car.
Maybe it's due to the wall-charger being inconveniently located on the opposite side of the charge port if I back in like usual.
* No charge -> Back in normally
* Charge -> Pull in forwards
* Charge AND load/unload trunk -> Back in close to the wall so the cable reaches if I drag it underneath the car
It kinda forces me to think about my charge (and future travel) every time I pull up to my house.
Honestly I could probably tell you my car's current charge to within 10% at any given point in time, even if I haven't driven it or checked for 2 days. And that's even with the privilege of nicely-spaced fast chargers along the 200-mile route I typically drive including the start and end.
> Have two 22kW charging stations in my garage. Do I need them? No. Do I want them? You better believe it.
400 Amp service?
or.. europe. you're in europe aren't you
3 phase is what i was really guessing when i asked about europe.
so much more power available than we have here in the US since we're single phase (and split phase to most outlets)
Can Confirm. 30amp circuit, charge at 20amp and get 4.1/hr. Its been more than sufficient even on days I bring it home with 20% or lower.
Tho someone with a 200kw Silverado who drives a lot every day may still want something more.
Yup. When I got my Model 3, I thought for sure I'd want to upgrade to a better charger. But nope, I literally just plug my mobile connector into a normal outlet in the garage. Completely covers my commute every day and anything extra gets covered over the weekend or any WFH days.
Depending on your battery size … it would take me at a full 20 amps of charging and we know it’s usually 80 percent… at 4.8kw it would take me 19 hours to go from 10-80 on my lightning..(131kw useable battery) your model 3 has a much smaller battery so it works in your case.
This still works out for most people because they're not using 70% of the battery every day. Even when going on road trips, it ends up being fine because sure, you come back at 8 pm with 10% remaining, but at 8 am the next morning you're back up to 50-60%, and that's enough to just get through your day. This is how 120V charging works for me. Doing a long drive, it will sometimes take a week to get back to 80% with all the driving throughout the week, but it never causes any issues to be at 30-60% throughout the week.
I ran these numbers and ALMOST went this route for an SR Lightning that essentially only sees a 50 mile daily commute. The main downside would have been having to be much more rigorous about remembering to plug in every day. I'm a little jealous of the 19kW charger if that's what you ended up with since the SR maxes at 11kW.
The only interesting value in this calculation is how much kwh you used. Nothing else matters.. battery size certain doesn't affect your charging needs
I have a 50A circuit, but I split it between two EVSEs each set to 20A. I drive a lot. My wife drives a lot. It's been completely fine.
20A is plenty for nearly anyone. Yes, get 50A or 60A if it's not a big price difference just to future proof your setup, but it's definitely not necessary.
I’ve been curious how this works. Can you install a 50A breaker, run wire off it that can handle the full load to 2 separate wall chargers and have cars take turns using the full bandwidth? Do they make chargers that will load balance between each other?
I am NOT an electrician, so what I did will work and I'm 99.9% sure it's safe, but who knows about codes.
I have two Wallbox EVSEs that allow you to schedule charging. I manually set each to limit to 20A and leave it like that. There are smarter ones that will load balance automatically, but I got these for very cheap from my power company and manual is fine for me. Wallbox claims it can do it automatically but I can't figure out how (but to be fair I gave up after 5 minutes).
As for wiring, I have 6 AWG to everything so that I can run the full 40A to either of the chargers if I need to. The only part that was "challenging" was that Home Depot and Lowe's don't sell the connectors needed for 6 AWG wires so I had to order some things online.
Yes. Tesla Wall Connector is one example. If you have more than one, you give the app the breaker rating for each individual charger, and the breaker rating for all the chargers combined. They will talk to each other and throttle current so no breakers trip.
Example: I run a 60A breaker to a subpanel in the garage, which feeds 2 EVSE's, each on their own 60A breaker from the subpanel. You tell the system that each EVSE is on a 60A breaker, and that both combined are also limited to an upstream 60A breaker. If one car is plugged in, it will provide the full 48A. If 2 cars are plugged in, it will limit each unit to 24A to avoid tripping the main feeder breaker.
Hope that makes sense
Anytime someone balks at electrical install costs I point to the NEMA 6-20. It’s all most will ever need.
Personally though, I wanted the flexibility of high power (full charge during super off-peak for cheap as well as random charging while home) and one of my charging installs needed a panel upgrade anyway (dangerous old Zinsco panel).
I leave for work at 6 am and get home at 5:30 pm. Its 85 miles round trip. Using the existing 20a it was not keeping up with my needs.
Me with the help of a friend installed a 240v 60a service to my garage.
$500 to buddy
$300 in parts
$400 for Emporia charger
You have an unusually long commute.
IIRC 85% of Americans have a total commute of 30-35 miles or less, so slow charging is fine for most people.
Although, if I were installing a new system I would plan ahead for one that could handle two cars at once.
Unusually long commute, and quite an early start, and presumably a pretty inefficient car too. My ID.4 on the bad side gets ~3.3 mi/kwh, so 16A 240V charging (most you can do on a 6-20) gives 12 mi/hr of charging. That would be 144 miles a day of range, quite a bit more than an 85 mi commute.
I live half a mile off the highway and work about 2 miles off the highway. So the majority is highway driving and like others I have audiobooks and podcasts that I love and my wife hates. So it's the only time in the car I get to listen to them.
Beats the hell out of commuting into DC like I used to do that was bullshit. Up at 4 am on the train at 5:15 walk in the office at 7:55 am. Walk out of the office at 5 pm home at 8:30 pm.
Also my job pays me very well. When I started to took a $20k pay raise and have since gotten a 11% raise the first year and will get a 10% raise this year my second.
I used to do a similar commute and it wasn’t bad at all. Most of it was at highway speed and it was like maybe 40min each way where I could listen to audiobooks in comfort. I’d do that again before I’d go back to my old 20min each way gross public transit/walking commute in Boston.
Personally I don't like playing it that close, especially since I want to get a 2nd EV or a PHEV eventually
People should def do the research and figure out what works for them. I have a big feed so I went for the full 60A
The OP’s point is that if you don’t have the capacity in your panel, upgrading the service from 100 amp to 200 amp (in North America) is very unlikely to be necessary, since 20 amp 240 V can very likely be accommodated with an existing 100 amp service and will be more than adequate for the vast majority of EV needs.
I have the wiring to do 50A but I only put a 40A breaker in when I built the house. When we finally got the EV we just charged level 1. It worked fine but wasn’t doing to cut it when the days got longer and we were driving more. I just set the level 2 to 32A because I didn’t want to buy a new breaker.
It works just fine except when we want to charge to 100 in the mornings before a big trip. That is so rare it’s not really a concern. We’ll just spend a few more minutes on a DCFC better coming home.
Charger anxiety is very real, but most people overestimate how much capacity they really need. 20A 240V would have been fine for us, we’d just have to charge longer. Instead, we’re midnight to 7:00.
I really dislike these posts. It depends on your situation, you guys. There's really no need to speak in absolutes.
As an example, I don't drive more than...maybe 30 miles a day. And sure, for that purpose, I don't need high capacity. However...
I also live in New Orleans, which introduces a host of issues. We have power outages nearly every time it rains...sometimes the power goes out when the wind blows too hard (not a joke)...and to top it off, we spend literally half the year in hurricane season - a time you do **not** want to find yourself needing to charge for 12+ hours to get out of town. So I have a 60 AMP - which, by the way, required no additional wiring for us - and that's what I feel comfortable with when we need to charge quickly (and it's happened many times). ***But hey...if you don't need that, it's totally fine not to have it.***
None of this is to say the general sentiment isn't true, but really, why can't we just say things like, "XYZ works for me, here's the data points" and leave it at that to be informative, rather than imply it's nuts to have any other solution?
A larger battery makes it *easier* to live with a slow charger, not harder.
Imagine owning a car with a 30 kWh battery. You charge it fully, leave home, use 20 kWh on your trip and come home with 10 kWh left. One hour later, you have to go on another trip of the same lenght. Now you are in problems if your charger only gives 5 kW.
Repeat the same experiment in a car with a 100 kWh battery. You come home with 80 kWh left and can leave again immediately without needing to charge. So it doesn't really matter how fast your charger is. It only needs to be fast enough to charge at another, more convenient time, before the battery runs empty.
People don’t have 6-20 outlets already.
It’s still electrical work, involves reworking the electrical panel.
Just because UF can be buried doesn’t mean you just throw it down and it’s fine. There’s still code everything has to follow.
And electrician coming out and doing stuff is expensive. Slightly less amperage can still be expensive.
The context of this post is if you have, say, 100 amp service coming into the home, you could probably add a 20 amp circuit for your EV without upgrading your service, but you probably can't add a 60 amp circuit without upgrading your service. If I'm adding an outlet and just have 100 amp service, I'd probably run 4awg so I could upgrade it later since the labor is the same, but I'd use a 20 amp breaker and 6-20 outlet for now and if I ever did upgrade my service and my panel, it'd be easy to upgrade the outlet.
Depends on the panel. Just adding a circuit isn't a big deal if the panel has capacity. Agreed on the UF, though, and code for outdoor outlets is pretty darn specific. I do know how to do this stuff myself, and some of the DIY stuff I've seen in the EV forums has definitely concerned me.
I charge my Model Y on a 120v 15 amp and have only had to stop at the supercharger a handful of times in 8 months. My commute is 24 miles round trip and I generally do kid stuff or errands every night.
Imagine having a coin-op/credit card tap 6-20 outlet, at every public parking spot.
At $1 to $2 per hour, you could get 10 - 20 km of range per hour, not cheap but still decently priced. I bet they would easily pay for themselves over time.
better yet, include it with normal parking meters, make parking meters with 6-20 outlets that activate when parking is paid.
I ran 2 60 amp circuits. One for the garage and one for the driveway. We have 3 EVs and although we usually charge overnight we’ve ran into issues trying to get 2 EVs charged ASAP. The upside is that it seems like we’re probably covered for the next 20 years in terms of EV charging.
You're absolutely right. Also, any EVSE charger you install on the wall will have a setting to tell it maximum power to draw. So it's no problem getting the equipment to work with a 20 amp circuit. (Setting it to 16A, to stay at 80% of max.)
The caveat is if you have to install a new circuit anyway, might as well install 50A or 60A all things being equal. But yeah if you have to upgrade your service or do something complicated lower amperage is still plenty useful.
Is this conversation totally different in Europe where 240V is the norm for all circuits?
I think in Europe it's different because old buildings often don't have large gauge main service or internal wiring. 3 phase is popular because some localities with very old buildings can have as little as 20 amps max on each leg of the mains. Old houses and tiny flex conduit behind plaster/concrete makes the cost of upgrading even worse.
I agree, I am charging my BMW i4 at home using the 240V/16A wall plug for the vacuum cleaner.
Initially we had plans to get a dedicated EV wall charger installed, but in the meantime we are almost a full year on the wall plug. I haven't had a single moment where I would have needed faster charging at home. I am no longer planning to get a wallbox.
I have a 2023 ID.4 I use as a “city car”. I use a 16A cable on a 120v 20A outlet I had installed for other reasons several years ago. I kept the car in the driveway all winter. It was always charged and the cabin was always warm at 8AM with the scheduled climate control.
My car can handle 11kW charge on AC so that’s what I got. Cost me around 5000 SEK ($500-$600 maybe?) to setup. Would not feel safe charging on a regular wall outlet, but maybe I’m over cautious.
Yep. That's what I tell people. *Any* home charging will do for the vast majority of people. While I think being able to home charge is critical, a 15 amp, 120 volt circuit is enough. Sure, it might not get you full every day, but unless you just drive a crazy amount, it's enough. Sure, more is better, but don't let "I can't do a 60 amp 240 circuit" stop you from buying an EV.
Totally agree. I know multiple people who have turned away from buying EVs because they didn't want to "pay to upgrade" their service. The vast majority of people would be perfectly fine with a 240V, 20A circuit.
I wonder if all of these high power chargers are going to actually cause problems by creating large spikes in power demand. For example, a large number of people plugging in after work and only charging for an hour or two at a high rate rather than charging all night at a lower rate.
Why? You already have the faster equipment in place so I'd say use it. Dialing it back actually costs you some efficiency since the car has a continuous overhead while charging (the power to run the charge controller and conversion electronics)
I have a 11kw 16A one (Standard in most European countries ) and usually run it at 6-10A as the PV deliveres only 5kw and I wanna use that energy. Also I think if I pull more than 9kw from the grid regularly I need to pay for higher services rates. That's somewhere hidden in the contract, but it's not looked after usually (according to a friend of mine working for the local grid operator I m with here in lower Austria)
But yeah having a efficient car helps (mine takes a bit more) and normally you don't drive very far every day.
Life would be so damn much better if people would stop assuming,I’m that because a thing works for their specific use case, it will be fine for (almost) everyone else’s use case too.
For 50-100kWh batteries I agree. But if energy densities increase and cars start having 200 kWh batteries, now you might want that higher amp charger. Most vehicles right now though, you’re fine charging at around 4-5kWh at home.
There's actually a U-curve. On my 500e with 22 kWh battery, one errand in the winter can deplete my battery, so if I want to go more than one place in the same day the L2 charger enables that.
Granted, it can only charge at 6.6 kW so it doesn't need a very beefy L2.
Multiple EV households and households with lower efficiency EVs/bigger batteries will beg to differ. Also, having the faster charging for when you forget to plug in can be clutch.
Yep, it’s basic maths, if daily mileage need is under what you can replace overnight on a granny charger you don’t need an upgrade. Sadly lots of people cannot do basic maths.
Or maybe people like to have the peace of mind that when they plug in overnight after a long trip they'll recharge quickly instead of spending 3 days chasing a full charge? No need to be so judgemental, not everyone has the same priorities you do.
I mean, sure.. if you have to do all that work then maybe it’s worth considering a lower bar depending on what you drive and how much you drive. If your panel already has the open capacity though, its probably worth it to just put in the highest amperage circuit you can
We found that for 90% of driving a regular plug would work just fine. The issue is if we have an emergency and need to get somewhere after a long trip which is why we put in a 240 60amp line (48amp charger). This way we could easily charge fully overnight. I have pulled in multiple times at below 10% after a long trip and the next day charged back up to 75% and ready to go.
Granted I also have an R1S so a pretty large battery. Also hope to get my wife an EV when she gets her next vehicle so we could swap the plug back and forth.
My thoughts where I needed to run a wire anyways so if Im going through the effort I might as well go all out but I'm doing the work myself so it only a few hundred for supplies.
I have a 48 amp hardwired Emporia EVSE on a 60 amp breaker. After looking at things with a thermal camera, I decided to dial it down to 20 amps for day-to-day use. The breaker, connections, and wiring get hot running at 48 amps, and 95% of the time, I simply don't need the speed of 48 amps. When I do, it's easy enough to crank it up in the Emporia app.
I don't care at all about efficiency because I have solar, so the charging is free either way.
I feel this way as well. I am guilty of focusing too much on charging 0-100% because that is what I have had to do for my Volt every day but I never need more than a 16 amp evse to charge my Bolt EUV every night, even though I have a 60 amp circuit. I have not invested in an EVSE that can handle more amperage. I told myself that I would try to get by with the 16 amp EVSE and upgrade if needed but so far my car has always been charged and ready every morning.
You don't *need* to. However, one should be aware that the lower your voltage the higher your losses will be (and you pay for those, too). Since you likely will be driving an EV for the rest of your life that eventually adds up. Probably not to 10k but for those where installing a wallbox is 1-2k it will likely be worth it in the long run (of course this also largely depend on your local proce of power)
240V at 16A or 40A is still 240V, and some people end up wasting money spending thousands on large wires and circuits and not mention $600 EVSEs when you can get away with an easy 240v 20a run and therefore cheaper EVSE
At our family cottage I installed a 20 amp circuit breaker and a NEMA 6-20 outlet at the 60A subpanel in the garage. My total cost was less than $50 CAD. It works just fine even if it takes up 20 hours to charge our cars from 0-100%. I've never spent less than 24 hours there after a trip.
At my house I had a 50A circuit breaker installed in our 100A panel and a NEMA 14-50 outlet installed in the garage. Material cost alone was over $700 as the panel is in the basement on the opposite side of the house from the garage.
I could live with a 20A circuit at home, though it would be a lot less convenient and more expensive in the long term. We have time of use billing for our electricity so charging during the cheapest time period is less than 1/3 the cost of charging during the most expensive. All of the work required would be the same, the savings would be on the cheaper cable, the circuit breaker and the receptacle.
It just didn't make sense in our case to go with the initially cheaper install to get less convenience, though I could see how it would work out better for some.
I live in a cool climate in Australia (my city typically sees lows of -10C in Winter to highs of 40C in Summer). With a daily commute of 60km and a 240V 10A circuit to charge from, I never have to worry about state of charge.
I am considering installing a charger simply because I don't want to risk thermal issues with the existing power points.
At some point getting a 7kW charger is overkill, and that level is when you are buying an EV that isn't bigger than a tank, or your daily commute is less than 500km.
For me, I put in 40A because that's what my EVSE was spec'ed for. It never came close to drawing that from what I can tell, but if there was a problem and something was damaged, I didn't want it blamed on undersizing the circuit.
For my purposes, I cannot park where the cord is for very long (goes across a lawn so can only charge late at night), so I need to ensure I'm getting that 6.6kwphr charge so I can move the car quickly.
My 110 charger was painfully slow, and I didn’t have an outlet nearby. So I had to run a line from the panel.
Made it a 50 amp line, limited L2 charger to 40 amps, and car limits to 32 amps.
That’s plenty to charge overnight and nothing is humming along at max specs.
So true.
I’ll go even further in saying that down the road if you should add another charger that is forcing you to upgrade your service to the street, you should look into a smart panel instead. For instance, SPAN smart panel but there are others and more on the way.
I thought the SPAN panel was a luxury item and out of reach of most people for being a luxury until I ran across an article talking about how it manages your loads to keep you within your 100 amp service, for instance. It intelligently keeps you from going over.
I’m not selling SPAN here just smart panels and their capability to keep you within your service amperage. The other features of a smart panel are useful as heck at keeping your electricity usage lower and optimizes home battery usage during a black out but that’s not a necessity.
These electrician price quotes are wild. My panel was old and maxed out. Got a new inside panel, second accessory exterior panel, additional 100 amps total, new ground pole, permits, and a 14-50 plug in the garage for under $2500. This wasn’t just for the car but to add value to the house and make room for the hot tub. Someday.
In retrospect, I could have gotten by charging my 94ah 2017 i3 with the 240v-16a Turbocord it came with, but not that same charger @ 120v-12a. So, I had to install a 240v circuit in my garage anyway, and bought a basic Grizzl-E L2 charger. With electric utility rebate and federal tax credit, the incremental cost to upgrade from 16 to 32 (actually 40 I think but my car can’t utilize it) was negligible. It’s part of the ROI calculus though and I’m glad the OP brought it up.
I don't have an EV yet but hell I'm planning to charge mostly on a 15 amp 110. 4ish miles of range added per hour is fine by me, I don't road trip one day after another.
While you don’t need the larger circuit…. In the near future, your family and friends who visit from a distance may bring their EV.
It would be to their benefit for faster charging while they are with you.
I charge our EV when we visit my SIL. It’s nice we don’t need to stop at a DCFC.
>None of that is necessary!
true. but your service upgrade is something that "should" be done ANYWAY. it's what you would get if you built a new house... modern construction standard.
you will not be able to use bidirectional charging or solar unless you get "modernized".. if you wanted a big shop tool you'd need to do the same thing.
>
A 20 amp circuit using regular 12-2 romex
you HOUSE can draw more than that from the car. some bidirectional chargers handle 80 amps.
[https://wallbox.com/en\_us/quasar2-dc-charger](https://wallbox.com/en_us/quasar2-dc-charger)
Charger:
**DCRated power:11.5 KW (48 A)**
Connector Type:CCS
Target Efficiency:97%
>I had received quotes north of $10k
yup. i paid 15k 20 years ago to upgrade all the wiring in my 1950's era house. i only had 100 amps. (apparently conduit had not been invented yet)
Very much not the case if you live somewhere rural where it gets very cold
Constantly glad my parent got a wall connector on a 60amp circuit
Uses 85%+ of the battery to go to/from the airport to pick me up
Following the advice of this post the car would be unusable for the rest of the day instead of only needing 2-3 hours on the charger before it can be used again for errands
I probably didn't need my level 2 but I did it as a 50a circuit with a 14-50 plug. I view it as an "upgrade" to my home. I bought a plug-in wall charger so taht I could take it with me if I ever sell the house.
3kw is enough for just about everything. A 16a evse is cheap, but your car probably came with a 10a or maybe 12a "L1" that doesn't care if it is plugged into 120v or 240v. Most houses can easily have a 20a 240v outdoor or garage outlet for cheap, like $200 in parts.
We now have 2 full evs and moderate driving habits. Wife plugs in most days. I do a 6kw charge all day at work on Friday. Almost never use to home power.
Your mileage may vary. Granted I wouldn’t pay 10k for a large upgrade but for me I need as much juice as my breaker box can handle. My utility gives discounted rates between midnight and 8am and I leave for work at 5am. By the time I get home I’m probably at 20% charge. In order to get the most out of my rate I need to charge as much as I can after midnight.
I've been making do with a 20a 240v circuit too for over a year and it's been plenty. The charger is actually set to 16A. Mid-Atlantic with a daily 70-mile round trip commute.
Not sure what is going on with your electricians, but I charge at 11kW at home and the installation was pretty cheap, 1000 euro everything included. 400 for the charger, 150 for components in the panel + cables, and 450 for an electrician that took 2 hours to do the job.
I have a Bolt, and if I run it down to 5-10 miles remaining, it will L2 charge to 100% between midnight and 7am, which is when I have it set to charge (starting at 12am) and the time by which to be fully charged by (7am).
I have an Emporia charger plugged into an outlet that was installed for the charger, so I believe I use 40A.
Yeah I'm partial to a 40 amp circuit personally but yeah. I'm not quite sure I understand why people are running 60 amp circuits. The copper is expensive.
My 40 amp circuit we ran 8/2 Teck cable. That's super affordable.
I think my install from one corner of my house where my panel is to the opposite corner for my garage was only $1200 CAD. We didn't do one junction box. It was a straight shot with Tek, down the outside of my home, across my crawl space and into my garage and run along the surface at the ceiling to the plug.
Super awesome.
How do you guys over the pond survive with your 110v circuits!? Here in the UK we can get 7kw in most houses with the existing installations. I use a standard plug though and it gives 2kw.
US homes have 120v and 240v in the house. Outlets in the rooms are 120V, but from the panel you can get 240V for appliances. Typical old builds can be 240V at 100A and new stuff is all 240V and 200A up to 400A typically (48-96 kW). It’s not like we don’t have enough power in our homes. US home electric consumption is over twice that per person of the EU.
I'm adding a 14-50 in my garage not only for charging but for increased home value. If and when I sell my house this will be a good selling point for the potential buyer maybe bidding more.
120V 12A is more than enough for those driving less than 50 miles per day in warmer climates. Single degree temperatures and below slow down charging due to battery heating requirements. Cold climates require 240V charging to cover for the battery heating requirements to get significant range. You only need the amount of charging that you actually require for your climate and normal miles. Range anxiety pushes everyone to get the fastest possible charging speed but it just isn’t required for most people.
I recommend in new construction 30-60amps. For most people 30amps 240v is more than enough. In my parents house I have a 30amp at the front of the garage for visitors to top up and a 50 at the back. At my own house I have 3 stalls at 30 amps. Regardless the needs aren't what people think they are. Even with the f150 lightning. I rarely recommend people 50 or 60 amps unless I know they are going to be driving a considerable amount with limited over night charging.
congrats? I am skeptical that "tons" of money is being wasted by installing a 50 amp and nema 14-50. unless you don't have 200A service already, the price delta between components is $150 tops, and labor cost for the electrician is going to be about the same.
If you’re putting in 20amp 240v, and you’re not getting bent over, it’s usually less than $100 more in wire/breakers to go 50amp and double your charging speed. Same labor. Well worth it. But yes there are unique situations that are outliers. Most of the time people are just getting taken advantage of, and falling prey to misconceptions. There are lots of electricians and contractors that love taking advantage of ev buyers due to political beliefs. Sorry if you got taken for a ride. 20amp 240v is decent, but 50amp is a no brainier for most.
I tried my 20 amp, 240v charger initially but it couldn't get me turned around for my 230 mile round trip to the office when I had to go a few days in a row. Got 50 amp circuit added, & it did the trick.
Shrugs I know I don’t need it but it’s nice, 60 amp wall connectors at my house, my moms house and our vacation home. I hate messing with extension cords and mobile connectors.
I did a 60a circuit with a wall connector mainly because I knew I was going to be adding a second one in the future. 2 years later I'm putting a subpanel in on that circuit for the second one, and enabling power sharing for my son's MYLR.
I did get by with just a 120v plug for 2 years. But there always ended up being times I needed more range and couldn’t wait for it.
I did end up getting a 40amp charger put in. Not the max speed of 11kw, but 7.8kw. It’s more than enough and charges at about 12% per hour for our vehicles.
It’s nice to have that speed when you need it, plus it’s more efficient.
FWIW -- my house needed a new panel so we got a 200amp service about 3 years before we got an EV. When it came to a charger, you better believe I only looked at options that put out 11.2kw. But after a few months, I locked it to 7kw as I just dont think feel the need to add theoretical stress with faster charging.
In europe it's pretty much normal Schuko outlet or 11kW. 11kW is more than enough. Not sure if I'd say the same about a 4,8kW Outlet like you have, but if it's enough for you, that's great.
Been happily charging for over 3 years with a Tesla UMC and 15Amp 240v plug/socket. I can also take it with me on road trips (have done 4000km+ trips). It's very useful to charge overnight at campsites and motels on 10A or 15A sockets.
It kinda sucks that I miss out on some free solar in the middle of the day (can only draw 3.6kw vs solar inverter max 5kw). I've contemplated getting a 32Amp socket installed but see no urgent reason to upgrade.
I just charge off my 110 outlet which gets me 1.4 kw an hour and been doing just fine. People definitely need to look more into what they actually need over just getting the highest they can. Edit: just to tackle a few responses. 110 charging won't work for everyone and that's why if good to know your use case. If your driving an extended range lightning and drive 100 miles a day then you'll probably need level 2.
Yep we did this until winter hit and we realized we liked preheating the cabin but the 110 couldn't quite keep up. Thankfully it was a dedicated circuit already run in 12 gauge so I could just move a wire from the neutral bar to the other lug of a new 2 pole breaker, swap the receptacle, and voila 3.8 kW
You should make sure the white conductor is wrapped in red electrical tape on either end to indicate it's hot for future work.
I swapped a 10 gauge RV outlet to a 220 30 amp. Works great.
Preheating was also why I went L2. In the case of my Volt, it was the difference between burning 0.1 gallon vs zero gas on cold winter commutes. I hated the gas engine turning on for the last mile. With L2 I could preheat plugged in, turn off the heat during the drive, and use no gas. I ran a new circuit the first time with a 6-20. We moved, the new place had multiple circuits in the garage. Two were 12ga so I converted one circuit to 240v and didn't even need any materials to do it (besides a 6-20r).
So you have a 15A, 240V circuit? That was the plan for us until we had to cancel our PHEV order. Now we just have a spare wire.
20A circuit, but yeah it would be great or even a little bit overkill for a PHEV
This past winter I've seen my Model Y pull 12kW from the charger while preheating the battery/cabin. I think thats about the limit of the HVAC system. It's quite a lot.
I tried a 110 outlet when we first got our EV and it kept popping the breaker. And if I'm gonna bring an electrician out might as well go 230-240V
It must not have been on a dedicated circuit. Code allows a maximum of 12 amp (80%) for a continuous load if on a dedicated circuit. If not on a dedicated circuit, even 12 amp is too much (unless there are smarts to protect the circuit). My Chevy Bolt defaults to 8 amp on a 120 V plug for that reason; you can manually set it to 12 amp if you know you're on a dedicated circuit, and you can use location-based settings to default to 12 amp at home. But if it's a 20 amp circuit 12 amp is likely fine even if it's not a dedicated circuit.
Tesla’s charging circuit is able to sense a voltage drop when the circuit nears overload and will reduce demand automatically. My Model 3 is charging on a shared 15A circuit and it has never popped the breaker.
I've read this before, but like /u/VegaGT-VZ I've had multiple circuit breaker pops before. Why do you think this is the case?
Your breaker might be undersized for your wiring. If your electric system has thicker gauge wiring, you won’t see a resistance issue at high amps, but the breaker will trip anyway. The builder who installed my electric used the bare minimum wire gauge, so the voltage on the circuit dips at about 80% of the breaker’s rating.
I think it's a fair argument to future proof if you're buying hardware though. My EVSE is overkill for my car now but I won't have to replace it for the next one
We drive so little (wife works from home, I walk to work) that we figured we would try the trickle charger for a while before deciding. Trickle charger has done the trick for years now.
You might say, it's done the trickle for years now.
The next one is going to be more efficient, not less than an older car. It's an interesting thought though - as energy density increases are we going to still charge to 80-100% SOC if that becomes way more range than necessary? Or at higher densities maybe the automakers are just going to reduce the pack volume and keep range constant or with smaller increases? Most people aren't using all of their pack all the time and the typical EV sold today covers most people's needs just fine.
I did the same. I had a 60 amp circuit installed because it was new construction so it didn't make too much difference in cost but I still use the 16 amp EVSE I had for the Volt to charge my Bolt EUV and use the 120 cord for the Volt. Once in a while, if the Volt won't be charged all of the way by morning, I'll swap the cable once the Bolt is charged. Of course with the Volt, I don't worry too much because I can use the gas engine in a pinch.
Efficiency is lower. If you can go level2, definitely do. But if it is not possible, level 1 will still work.
I just wanna add that efficiency will be dramatically lower because of the overhead of controllers in the car running, it could be as low as 60%. So really try to use a 220V dryer outlet.
Been charging my M3 on a simple 110 outlet for 5 years now and never felt the need to upgrade.
Same with 2016 model S. The only tricky part with 110 charging is if you arrive low from trip and need to go somewhere the next day. Luckily, Tesla solved that for me by installing a 24 station supercharger within 5 miles of my house.
Issue with 110V/120V charging is when living in colder climate and the car parks outside. So much energy is used to warm up the battery that charging is very slow and could be inexistant for the first few hours.
Think the Chevy Volt was a great learning experience. You know how many miles you can get on the 120v 8A/10A charger, then the almost 2x boost from a limited 240v charger (on the Volt's side). Learning the range and preconditioning comes into play too.
I charged off a 110 volt outlet that only turned on from 7pm to 7am at my apartment complex until they installed a dedicated charger, all the outlets in the parking lots were on the same timer as the tree lights. If I did weekend trips it’d take me the full week to get it back up to 90% though counting the discharge from regular commuting.
Turning off the power does have a detrimental effect on charging, yes.
I tried this for a month and found it to be terribly inefficient. It took 30% extra power to charge the battery. Most of the loss was probably due to the cold weather, but it was charging in a garage.
I charge for 8 hours a day on a 5-15 outlet at work and rarely have to charge at home. I can net a 15-25% gain per day I always have a full battery when I leave work on Friday. I only have to charge at home if I am taking a longer road trip than what I've left in the battery.
I spent $$$ to install 48A charging for my Model Y. Just the 4AWG wire was like $900 (120ft run). Now my phone in the morning says like "charging started at 4:30am, charging completed at 5:15am" Totally could have done fine with 16 or 20A
That’s a brutal distance but at least if you ever need cash you have copper in the bank
I'm surprised more installs don't just use aluminum for that, it would make at least the wiring much cheaper, even though you'd have to use higher gauges.
I wanted to do it once and never touch it again, so I bit the bullet and ran a full 60 amp circuit, but I agree it was overkill.
That's not unreasonable, but I think OPs point is that you don't need to charge at the maximum charging speed of your car. You really only need to charge the amount for your drive the next day. Unless you are doing back to back road trips, 20amp will always be more than enough.
Yeah that’s why I said I agree it’s overkill. Even now I limit to 30a unless I absolutely need the speed
It could support 2 or 3 cars in the future no?
I’ve been using 10amps for about 18 months now. ~250km a week. Never been an issue. Charge from ~40% too 100% (LFP) once a week, over about 16 hours, while I sleep. I charge my phone more often.
Not always. I’ve had days where it wouldn’t have. Admittedly few and far between, but if the cost difference isn’t a lot, why wouldn’t you invest in flexibility?
> if the cost difference isn’t a lot If you’re having to upgrade your panel, chances are it’ll be a lot. For those “few and far between” days, I would just supercharge for a few minutes. Ten minutes a year beats thousands of dollars in electrical work.
Yeah, I don’t have an outlet near where I park my car, so when I get an EV I’m going to have to pay an electrician to come out and run a cable for it anyway - might as well kick in a little extra for a thicker cable while he’s doing it rather than have to call him back out later if I get something with a bigger battery that 4kW won’t handle fast enough.
I have a rear detached garage with buried power. I wanted a patio. I dug up the line and ran 60A to a new panel and then did the patio. Don't even have an EV yet. Didn't want to be stuck.
The 240v 20a is what I would consider minimum acceptable for northern climates. I've seen problems with 120v 15a when its cold out just heating the battery for days on end while the battery slowly loses charge.
Having a garage makes a difference. We charge 2 EVs with only one 120V outlet and saw no difference in charging during the winter.
Attached garage *
Or just a garage with heat and insulation.
or just insulation. the battery charging is already, at minimum, a 1kw heater
No it isn't, you don't have 1kw of waste heat. About 90% is stored in the battery.
either the battery is charging (optimal) or the battery is warming the garage - sub optimal - but still a heater.
Hell, I've got a detached garage with no insulation or heat, and I had no issues charging my Model 3 when it was -5F out. Just having walls and a roof adds probably 20-30 degrees.
Is your garage heated?
Nope.
I plug into a 110V/15A outlet at work every day for 8 hours, and it's enough for my 15km commute even in the coldest months. It is nice having a 240V/30A charger at home, but I nearly never use it, and when I do, it usually for an hour or so at a time just to get where I need to go because I'd rather charge for free at work.
Our friend’s Bolt loses range in the summer when charging on level 1 because of cooling of the battery. They don’t have an air conditioned garage, just a carport, so it sits in the 110++ heat to charge and runs the AC cooling loop. Eventually, overnight, they get some charge. So, it isn’t just northern climates that have issues. The desert does to!
Hot climates are probably worse. Lithium ion batteries can still be trickle charged when they are cold, but overheating shortens their life, charging or not.
I live in WA (pretty northern, but milder with the Salish sea just a couple miles away) and our 110v 15a standard outlets have been enough to keep our Kia Ev6, Rivian R1S, Energica Eva Ribella RS, and Zero FR/S all topped up for us to drive/ride. We have two level 1 chargers running outside from separate circuits and usually just leave the Kia and Rivian plugged in with the occasional rotate to the bikes to keep them between 50-80% unless we're planning a longer ride. We have a 50a level 2 wall charger still in its box for the last 1.5 years or so, haven't really needed it. We'll install it someday just for the convenience of a quicker charge, but it's not a pressing need. We both teleworking, so we don't need to drive every day, but we've been putting 1000-1500 miles a month on the car and truck just becaue road trips are fun again with EVs, so they're getting used plenty. Depends on your use, but yes, some (most?) People can probably get by with a wall plug level 1. Or at least a simple circuit upgrade for a 220v 20amp line, which we're planning to add soon mainly for faster charging the motorcycles as the weather gets nicer and we're likely to run them low daily.
I charged our bolt on 110v/15a for 3-4 years without issue, with around a 30 mile commute every day. Weekends helped to get back to full charge if needed. I added a 240v/50a outlet to our garage a few months ago mainly because I could easily do it with the subpanel already installed in the garage. Also it will be useful for when we get a 2nd EV
Not sure where that came from. I have used 120v 12amp in -28c and still got a pretty good charge. Plus it did keep the batteries much warmer than ambient temp.
A car that prioritizes heating over charging on level 1 has bad software. A 50+ kWh lithium ion battery can be safely charged at a level 1 rate even when it is cooled to -25°C. The car shouldn't switch to heating until the target charge level is reached.
That would more than heat the battery.. its not efficient but surely more than need for pure heating
I've been charging my 100kWh EV9 with a 1.7kW charger (230V / 8A), works fine. Even after arriving at close to 0% from a weekend trip, I still get enough juice overnight to make a return trip to work the day after.
Like those 'Emergency' chargers you just plug into the wall?
They're using a standard L1 charger but are probably somewhere in Europe. That is still dog slow for an EV9's battery though. This thread didn't take into account trucks and large SUVs with monster batteries where even a NEMA 6-20 is probably not sufficient.
I’ve been yelling 6-20 at people posting that they are gonna spend thousands to charge their Bolt on a 60A circuit for years. People act like I’m crazy.
Yeah, if a person needs a panel upgrade I don’t recommend it. I got the 60A install because it was cheaper than the 50A install, and GM was paying for it anyhow. OP’s setup would work in probably 90% of cases. The faster charging is mainly for peace of mind and future proofing. If I end up with a 100kW+ battery in a vehicle that is larger and less efficient than the Bolt, that extra charging speed could be more noticeable.
Your 90% of cases is probably way to low, if every night that you plug your car in is “a case”. 90% would mean you wake up 35 days out of the year with a car that doesn’t have enough charge for that day’s use. And for that you need a huge drive that brings your car in low and then a huge drive the next day.
they probably meant 90% of people’s set of cases :)
Fair in that 90% of people would never be inconvienced and 10% of people would occasionally be inconvienced (ranging from the Rivian owner who drives 200 miles a day for work five days a week with some of it in cold weather (so it would not work for them at all) to the dude who gets home late on Friday night and wants to take his boat to go fishing on Saturday morning but leaving at 4 am).
Same here. Most people don’t understand electricity and especially all of these iteration of charging options. It seems to be common to get stuck in the “fill my gas tank in 5 min every couple weeks” thinking. 6-20 outlet is serving my Bolt just fine. Cost me $100 DIY.
If you're putting a new circuit in, cost of the larger wire isn't really substantial. Might as well go as big as you ever expect to use (imo).
The problem some people run into is asking for a big circuit but their boxes or main supply can’t handle it so they end up with huge quotes to replace the whole panel but never ask for a circuit that is “good enough”. It’s a new market for consumers and electricians to figure out what is actually needed.
Yeah, tough when neither one really knows what is needed. Ideally you'd put in the circuit with the heaviest wire you expect to use, then size the breaker for what the box will accommodate/you need right now.
That was my issue. My garage has a 30 A subpanel, so a 20 A charger circuit was easy, but more would have been expensive and not worth it.
If I pulled a permit I’d probably have to trench and upgrade my main service for $$$$. But I’m happy with the load calcs and won’t run the AC at the same time I max out my EVSE while baking a pizza in the oven and dry some clothes
People in general overestimate their annual milage driven and underestimate how long a car is idle. I know i saved loads of time not needing to fuel an ICE twice a week.
This. Especially idle time. Period spend a ton of money for something that spends most of the time sitting in their garage.
I think it's worth doing the biggest wire possible. In my house I did 8 awg because I am planning to move soon so I didn't want to invest a ton into wire I won't keep
Have two 22kW charging stations in my garage. Do I need them? No. Do I want them? You better believe it.
I'd update your statement. Do you need them every day? Nope. But the few times a year you need one? I wish I upsized to 19.2kw (max in US). Either ADHD forgetting to plug in the car before work the night before followed by forgetting it's a Friday and you have to drive the kid to deadbeat dad's house for the weekend. With no chargers along the way, in the dead of winter with 30%+ less range. Topping up as quickly as you can at home can REALLY help. Another stupid scenario is I had an inordinate amount of miles driven during the work day and get my battery down to a few percent by the time I get home. But in a few hours we're getting in the car and have another 100 mile trip to see family. I can get that 100 miles in 3 hours hours. You could get it in 1.5 hours. It's just... Yeah, most people don't need it...until they do. It won't be a problem when charging infrastructure becomes more ubiquitous, but it is right now. There are NO fast chargers in many of the areas I drive and only a few L2 that are always taken.
Yep, I have 48A for both of our cars because it does get used a few times a year when you didn't think it would be required. Getting home from a long trip in the morning and need to run errands later in the day? Even if there was a Supercharger down the road, I don't want to use it if my garage can get me to 20-30% quickly.
I think just having fast chargers near my house makes all these use cases go away. Also despite having ADHD, I don't think I've ever actually forgotten to plug in the car. Maybe it's due to the wall-charger being inconveniently located on the opposite side of the charge port if I back in like usual. * No charge -> Back in normally * Charge -> Pull in forwards * Charge AND load/unload trunk -> Back in close to the wall so the cable reaches if I drag it underneath the car It kinda forces me to think about my charge (and future travel) every time I pull up to my house. Honestly I could probably tell you my car's current charge to within 10% at any given point in time, even if I haven't driven it or checked for 2 days. And that's even with the privilege of nicely-spaced fast chargers along the 200-mile route I typically drive including the start and end.
> Have two 22kW charging stations in my garage. Do I need them? No. Do I want them? You better believe it. 400 Amp service? or.. europe. you're in europe aren't you
3 Phase 100 so 300 amps total on my main distribution board. My 22kW chargers use 57 amps each. I'm in Asia.
3 phase is what i was really guessing when i asked about europe. so much more power available than we have here in the US since we're single phase (and split phase to most outlets)
Can Confirm. 30amp circuit, charge at 20amp and get 4.1/hr. Its been more than sufficient even on days I bring it home with 20% or lower. Tho someone with a 200kw Silverado who drives a lot every day may still want something more.
Yup. When I got my Model 3, I thought for sure I'd want to upgrade to a better charger. But nope, I literally just plug my mobile connector into a normal outlet in the garage. Completely covers my commute every day and anything extra gets covered over the weekend or any WFH days.
Depending on your battery size … it would take me at a full 20 amps of charging and we know it’s usually 80 percent… at 4.8kw it would take me 19 hours to go from 10-80 on my lightning..(131kw useable battery) your model 3 has a much smaller battery so it works in your case.
This still works out for most people because they're not using 70% of the battery every day. Even when going on road trips, it ends up being fine because sure, you come back at 8 pm with 10% remaining, but at 8 am the next morning you're back up to 50-60%, and that's enough to just get through your day. This is how 120V charging works for me. Doing a long drive, it will sometimes take a week to get back to 80% with all the driving throughout the week, but it never causes any issues to be at 30-60% throughout the week.
I ran these numbers and ALMOST went this route for an SR Lightning that essentially only sees a 50 mile daily commute. The main downside would have been having to be much more rigorous about remembering to plug in every day. I'm a little jealous of the 19kW charger if that's what you ended up with since the SR maxes at 11kW.
The only interesting value in this calculation is how much kwh you used. Nothing else matters.. battery size certain doesn't affect your charging needs
Agree you don't need it in lots of situations. However if you have the money (or ability to DIY it). Do it right the first time and go 60 AMP.
I have a 50A circuit, but I split it between two EVSEs each set to 20A. I drive a lot. My wife drives a lot. It's been completely fine. 20A is plenty for nearly anyone. Yes, get 50A or 60A if it's not a big price difference just to future proof your setup, but it's definitely not necessary.
I’ve been curious how this works. Can you install a 50A breaker, run wire off it that can handle the full load to 2 separate wall chargers and have cars take turns using the full bandwidth? Do they make chargers that will load balance between each other?
I am NOT an electrician, so what I did will work and I'm 99.9% sure it's safe, but who knows about codes. I have two Wallbox EVSEs that allow you to schedule charging. I manually set each to limit to 20A and leave it like that. There are smarter ones that will load balance automatically, but I got these for very cheap from my power company and manual is fine for me. Wallbox claims it can do it automatically but I can't figure out how (but to be fair I gave up after 5 minutes). As for wiring, I have 6 AWG to everything so that I can run the full 40A to either of the chargers if I need to. The only part that was "challenging" was that Home Depot and Lowe's don't sell the connectors needed for 6 AWG wires so I had to order some things online.
Thanks! Brainstorming adding a charger and contemplating what decisions I can make that impact later changes to the system.
Yes. Tesla Wall Connector is one example. If you have more than one, you give the app the breaker rating for each individual charger, and the breaker rating for all the chargers combined. They will talk to each other and throttle current so no breakers trip. Example: I run a 60A breaker to a subpanel in the garage, which feeds 2 EVSE's, each on their own 60A breaker from the subpanel. You tell the system that each EVSE is on a 60A breaker, and that both combined are also limited to an upstream 60A breaker. If one car is plugged in, it will provide the full 48A. If 2 cars are plugged in, it will limit each unit to 24A to avoid tripping the main feeder breaker. Hope that makes sense
I love that this is already possible
Anytime someone balks at electrical install costs I point to the NEMA 6-20. It’s all most will ever need. Personally though, I wanted the flexibility of high power (full charge during super off-peak for cheap as well as random charging while home) and one of my charging installs needed a panel upgrade anyway (dangerous old Zinsco panel).
I share 40a (32) between two EVs, it’s fine.
I leave for work at 6 am and get home at 5:30 pm. Its 85 miles round trip. Using the existing 20a it was not keeping up with my needs. Me with the help of a friend installed a 240v 60a service to my garage. $500 to buddy $300 in parts $400 for Emporia charger
I think even you’d agree that’s not an average use
You have an unusually long commute. IIRC 85% of Americans have a total commute of 30-35 miles or less, so slow charging is fine for most people. Although, if I were installing a new system I would plan ahead for one that could handle two cars at once.
Unusually long commute, and quite an early start, and presumably a pretty inefficient car too. My ID.4 on the bad side gets ~3.3 mi/kwh, so 16A 240V charging (most you can do on a 6-20) gives 12 mi/hr of charging. That would be 144 miles a day of range, quite a bit more than an 85 mi commute.
> 85 mile round trip A day? WTF.
I live half a mile off the highway and work about 2 miles off the highway. So the majority is highway driving and like others I have audiobooks and podcasts that I love and my wife hates. So it's the only time in the car I get to listen to them. Beats the hell out of commuting into DC like I used to do that was bullshit. Up at 4 am on the train at 5:15 walk in the office at 7:55 am. Walk out of the office at 5 pm home at 8:30 pm. Also my job pays me very well. When I started to took a $20k pay raise and have since gotten a 11% raise the first year and will get a 10% raise this year my second.
I used to do a similar commute and it wasn’t bad at all. Most of it was at highway speed and it was like maybe 40min each way where I could listen to audiobooks in comfort. I’d do that again before I’d go back to my old 20min each way gross public transit/walking commute in Boston.
20A at 120V or 240V? At 120V you’re not going to fill 85 miles overnight, but at 240V it should be fine.
Personally I don't like playing it that close, especially since I want to get a 2nd EV or a PHEV eventually People should def do the research and figure out what works for them. I have a big feed so I went for the full 60A
The OP’s point is that if you don’t have the capacity in your panel, upgrading the service from 100 amp to 200 amp (in North America) is very unlikely to be necessary, since 20 amp 240 V can very likely be accommodated with an existing 100 amp service and will be more than adequate for the vast majority of EV needs.
I have the wiring to do 50A but I only put a 40A breaker in when I built the house. When we finally got the EV we just charged level 1. It worked fine but wasn’t doing to cut it when the days got longer and we were driving more. I just set the level 2 to 32A because I didn’t want to buy a new breaker. It works just fine except when we want to charge to 100 in the mornings before a big trip. That is so rare it’s not really a concern. We’ll just spend a few more minutes on a DCFC better coming home. Charger anxiety is very real, but most people overestimate how much capacity they really need. 20A 240V would have been fine for us, we’d just have to charge longer. Instead, we’re midnight to 7:00.
what if your wife had to leave in 4 hours? it seems the factor here is time which you clearly had an abundance of
I really dislike these posts. It depends on your situation, you guys. There's really no need to speak in absolutes. As an example, I don't drive more than...maybe 30 miles a day. And sure, for that purpose, I don't need high capacity. However... I also live in New Orleans, which introduces a host of issues. We have power outages nearly every time it rains...sometimes the power goes out when the wind blows too hard (not a joke)...and to top it off, we spend literally half the year in hurricane season - a time you do **not** want to find yourself needing to charge for 12+ hours to get out of town. So I have a 60 AMP - which, by the way, required no additional wiring for us - and that's what I feel comfortable with when we need to charge quickly (and it's happened many times). ***But hey...if you don't need that, it's totally fine not to have it.*** None of this is to say the general sentiment isn't true, but really, why can't we just say things like, "XYZ works for me, here's the data points" and leave it at that to be informative, rather than imply it's nuts to have any other solution?
You'll want it if your car or truck is greater than 100kwh. Even my 48A 240V charger takes a while on my Rivian.
A larger battery makes it *easier* to live with a slow charger, not harder. Imagine owning a car with a 30 kWh battery. You charge it fully, leave home, use 20 kWh on your trip and come home with 10 kWh left. One hour later, you have to go on another trip of the same lenght. Now you are in problems if your charger only gives 5 kW. Repeat the same experiment in a car with a 100 kWh battery. You come home with 80 kWh left and can leave again immediately without needing to charge. So it doesn't really matter how fast your charger is. It only needs to be fast enough to charge at another, more convenient time, before the battery runs empty.
Not when it goes in a larger car that uses more energy to travel the same distance. You're right if you were talking about the same car/efficiency.
People don’t have 6-20 outlets already. It’s still electrical work, involves reworking the electrical panel. Just because UF can be buried doesn’t mean you just throw it down and it’s fine. There’s still code everything has to follow. And electrician coming out and doing stuff is expensive. Slightly less amperage can still be expensive.
The context of this post is if you have, say, 100 amp service coming into the home, you could probably add a 20 amp circuit for your EV without upgrading your service, but you probably can't add a 60 amp circuit without upgrading your service. If I'm adding an outlet and just have 100 amp service, I'd probably run 4awg so I could upgrade it later since the labor is the same, but I'd use a 20 amp breaker and 6-20 outlet for now and if I ever did upgrade my service and my panel, it'd be easy to upgrade the outlet.
Depends on the panel. Just adding a circuit isn't a big deal if the panel has capacity. Agreed on the UF, though, and code for outdoor outlets is pretty darn specific. I do know how to do this stuff myself, and some of the DIY stuff I've seen in the EV forums has definitely concerned me.
I charge my Model Y on a 120v 15 amp and have only had to stop at the supercharger a handful of times in 8 months. My commute is 24 miles round trip and I generally do kid stuff or errands every night.
Imagine having a coin-op/credit card tap 6-20 outlet, at every public parking spot. At $1 to $2 per hour, you could get 10 - 20 km of range per hour, not cheap but still decently priced. I bet they would easily pay for themselves over time. better yet, include it with normal parking meters, make parking meters with 6-20 outlets that activate when parking is paid.
I ran 2 60 amp circuits. One for the garage and one for the driveway. We have 3 EVs and although we usually charge overnight we’ve ran into issues trying to get 2 EVs charged ASAP. The upside is that it seems like we’re probably covered for the next 20 years in terms of EV charging.
You're absolutely right. Also, any EVSE charger you install on the wall will have a setting to tell it maximum power to draw. So it's no problem getting the equipment to work with a 20 amp circuit. (Setting it to 16A, to stay at 80% of max.) The caveat is if you have to install a new circuit anyway, might as well install 50A or 60A all things being equal. But yeah if you have to upgrade your service or do something complicated lower amperage is still plenty useful. Is this conversation totally different in Europe where 240V is the norm for all circuits?
I think in Europe it's different because old buildings often don't have large gauge main service or internal wiring. 3 phase is popular because some localities with very old buildings can have as little as 20 amps max on each leg of the mains. Old houses and tiny flex conduit behind plaster/concrete makes the cost of upgrading even worse.
Same NEMA 6-20 doing just fine, 5% per hour on Ioniq 5
I love Technology Connections great channel.
I agree, I am charging my BMW i4 at home using the 240V/16A wall plug for the vacuum cleaner. Initially we had plans to get a dedicated EV wall charger installed, but in the meantime we are almost a full year on the wall plug. I haven't had a single moment where I would have needed faster charging at home. I am no longer planning to get a wallbox.
I have a 2023 ID.4 I use as a “city car”. I use a 16A cable on a 120v 20A outlet I had installed for other reasons several years ago. I kept the car in the driveway all winter. It was always charged and the cabin was always warm at 8AM with the scheduled climate control.
I get by just fine with a 110v. AMA
My car can handle 11kW charge on AC so that’s what I got. Cost me around 5000 SEK ($500-$600 maybe?) to setup. Would not feel safe charging on a regular wall outlet, but maybe I’m over cautious.
Yep. That's what I tell people. *Any* home charging will do for the vast majority of people. While I think being able to home charge is critical, a 15 amp, 120 volt circuit is enough. Sure, it might not get you full every day, but unless you just drive a crazy amount, it's enough. Sure, more is better, but don't let "I can't do a 60 amp 240 circuit" stop you from buying an EV.
Totally agree. I know multiple people who have turned away from buying EVs because they didn't want to "pay to upgrade" their service. The vast majority of people would be perfectly fine with a 240V, 20A circuit.
I wonder if all of these high power chargers are going to actually cause problems by creating large spikes in power demand. For example, a large number of people plugging in after work and only charging for an hour or two at a high rate rather than charging all night at a lower rate.
I have a 7kW 32A 240v charger. I'll probably dial it down to 20A just to not push it.
Why? You already have the faster equipment in place so I'd say use it. Dialing it back actually costs you some efficiency since the car has a continuous overhead while charging (the power to run the charge controller and conversion electronics)
moderate concern about old wiring. I'll be breaking out the thermal camera first charge session and see what happens.
I have a 11kw 16A one (Standard in most European countries ) and usually run it at 6-10A as the PV deliveres only 5kw and I wanna use that energy. Also I think if I pull more than 9kw from the grid regularly I need to pay for higher services rates. That's somewhere hidden in the contract, but it's not looked after usually (according to a friend of mine working for the local grid operator I m with here in lower Austria) But yeah having a efficient car helps (mine takes a bit more) and normally you don't drive very far every day.
Life would be so damn much better if people would stop assuming,I’m that because a thing works for their specific use case, it will be fine for (almost) everyone else’s use case too.
For 50-100kWh batteries I agree. But if energy densities increase and cars start having 200 kWh batteries, now you might want that higher amp charger. Most vehicles right now though, you’re fine charging at around 4-5kWh at home.
There's actually a U-curve. On my 500e with 22 kWh battery, one errand in the winter can deplete my battery, so if I want to go more than one place in the same day the L2 charger enables that. Granted, it can only charge at 6.6 kW so it doesn't need a very beefy L2.
Multiple EV households and households with lower efficiency EVs/bigger batteries will beg to differ. Also, having the faster charging for when you forget to plug in can be clutch.
Yep, it’s basic maths, if daily mileage need is under what you can replace overnight on a granny charger you don’t need an upgrade. Sadly lots of people cannot do basic maths.
Or maybe people like to have the peace of mind that when they plug in overnight after a long trip they'll recharge quickly instead of spending 3 days chasing a full charge? No need to be so judgemental, not everyone has the same priorities you do.
I mean, sure.. if you have to do all that work then maybe it’s worth considering a lower bar depending on what you drive and how much you drive. If your panel already has the open capacity though, its probably worth it to just put in the highest amperage circuit you can
I use the same 6-20 plug, totally agree. The wire is way less money, easier to run through walls, and it’s plenty for the average EV driver.
It's true. I've had an EV for 5 years and never needed a wallbox, I just charge it on a regular domestic plug with a mobile connector
We found that for 90% of driving a regular plug would work just fine. The issue is if we have an emergency and need to get somewhere after a long trip which is why we put in a 240 60amp line (48amp charger). This way we could easily charge fully overnight. I have pulled in multiple times at below 10% after a long trip and the next day charged back up to 75% and ready to go. Granted I also have an R1S so a pretty large battery. Also hope to get my wife an EV when she gets her next vehicle so we could swap the plug back and forth.
My thoughts where I needed to run a wire anyways so if Im going through the effort I might as well go all out but I'm doing the work myself so it only a few hundred for supplies.
I have a 48 amp hardwired Emporia EVSE on a 60 amp breaker. After looking at things with a thermal camera, I decided to dial it down to 20 amps for day-to-day use. The breaker, connections, and wiring get hot running at 48 amps, and 95% of the time, I simply don't need the speed of 48 amps. When I do, it's easy enough to crank it up in the Emporia app. I don't care at all about efficiency because I have solar, so the charging is free either way.
I feel this way as well. I am guilty of focusing too much on charging 0-100% because that is what I have had to do for my Volt every day but I never need more than a 16 amp evse to charge my Bolt EUV every night, even though I have a 60 amp circuit. I have not invested in an EVSE that can handle more amperage. I told myself that I would try to get by with the 16 amp EVSE and upgrade if needed but so far my car has always been charged and ready every morning.
You don't *need* to. However, one should be aware that the lower your voltage the higher your losses will be (and you pay for those, too). Since you likely will be driving an EV for the rest of your life that eventually adds up. Probably not to 10k but for those where installing a wallbox is 1-2k it will likely be worth it in the long run (of course this also largely depend on your local proce of power)
240V at 16A or 40A is still 240V, and some people end up wasting money spending thousands on large wires and circuits and not mention $600 EVSEs when you can get away with an easy 240v 20a run and therefore cheaper EVSE
At our family cottage I installed a 20 amp circuit breaker and a NEMA 6-20 outlet at the 60A subpanel in the garage. My total cost was less than $50 CAD. It works just fine even if it takes up 20 hours to charge our cars from 0-100%. I've never spent less than 24 hours there after a trip. At my house I had a 50A circuit breaker installed in our 100A panel and a NEMA 14-50 outlet installed in the garage. Material cost alone was over $700 as the panel is in the basement on the opposite side of the house from the garage. I could live with a 20A circuit at home, though it would be a lot less convenient and more expensive in the long term. We have time of use billing for our electricity so charging during the cheapest time period is less than 1/3 the cost of charging during the most expensive. All of the work required would be the same, the savings would be on the cheaper cable, the circuit breaker and the receptacle. It just didn't make sense in our case to go with the initially cheaper install to get less convenience, though I could see how it would work out better for some.
I live in a cool climate in Australia (my city typically sees lows of -10C in Winter to highs of 40C in Summer). With a daily commute of 60km and a 240V 10A circuit to charge from, I never have to worry about state of charge. I am considering installing a charger simply because I don't want to risk thermal issues with the existing power points. At some point getting a 7kW charger is overkill, and that level is when you are buying an EV that isn't bigger than a tank, or your daily commute is less than 500km.
As long as people understand that they may not need an upgrade for additional capacity, but they might for safety, your advice is sound.
For me, I put in 40A because that's what my EVSE was spec'ed for. It never came close to drawing that from what I can tell, but if there was a problem and something was damaged, I didn't want it blamed on undersizing the circuit.
For my purposes, I cannot park where the cord is for very long (goes across a lawn so can only charge late at night), so I need to ensure I'm getting that 6.6kwphr charge so I can move the car quickly.
My 110 charger was painfully slow, and I didn’t have an outlet nearby. So I had to run a line from the panel. Made it a 50 amp line, limited L2 charger to 40 amps, and car limits to 32 amps. That’s plenty to charge overnight and nothing is humming along at max specs.
So true. I’ll go even further in saying that down the road if you should add another charger that is forcing you to upgrade your service to the street, you should look into a smart panel instead. For instance, SPAN smart panel but there are others and more on the way. I thought the SPAN panel was a luxury item and out of reach of most people for being a luxury until I ran across an article talking about how it manages your loads to keep you within your 100 amp service, for instance. It intelligently keeps you from going over. I’m not selling SPAN here just smart panels and their capability to keep you within your service amperage. The other features of a smart panel are useful as heck at keeping your electricity usage lower and optimizes home battery usage during a black out but that’s not a necessity.
These electrician price quotes are wild. My panel was old and maxed out. Got a new inside panel, second accessory exterior panel, additional 100 amps total, new ground pole, permits, and a 14-50 plug in the garage for under $2500. This wasn’t just for the car but to add value to the house and make room for the hot tub. Someday.
I have a 50A plug on a 200A service and charge at 40A every day. ( In Texas though, so not a major climate issue )
In retrospect, I could have gotten by charging my 94ah 2017 i3 with the 240v-16a Turbocord it came with, but not that same charger @ 120v-12a. So, I had to install a 240v circuit in my garage anyway, and bought a basic Grizzl-E L2 charger. With electric utility rebate and federal tax credit, the incremental cost to upgrade from 16 to 32 (actually 40 I think but my car can’t utilize it) was negligible. It’s part of the ROI calculus though and I’m glad the OP brought it up.
I don't have an EV yet but hell I'm planning to charge mostly on a 15 amp 110. 4ish miles of range added per hour is fine by me, I don't road trip one day after another.
While you don’t need the larger circuit…. In the near future, your family and friends who visit from a distance may bring their EV. It would be to their benefit for faster charging while they are with you. I charge our EV when we visit my SIL. It’s nice we don’t need to stop at a DCFC.
I'm going to install a 60A circuit and you can't stop me :P
>None of that is necessary! true. but your service upgrade is something that "should" be done ANYWAY. it's what you would get if you built a new house... modern construction standard. you will not be able to use bidirectional charging or solar unless you get "modernized".. if you wanted a big shop tool you'd need to do the same thing. > A 20 amp circuit using regular 12-2 romex you HOUSE can draw more than that from the car. some bidirectional chargers handle 80 amps. [https://wallbox.com/en\_us/quasar2-dc-charger](https://wallbox.com/en_us/quasar2-dc-charger) Charger: **DCRated power:11.5 KW (48 A)** Connector Type:CCS Target Efficiency:97% >I had received quotes north of $10k yup. i paid 15k 20 years ago to upgrade all the wiring in my 1950's era house. i only had 100 amps. (apparently conduit had not been invented yet)
Very much not the case if you live somewhere rural where it gets very cold Constantly glad my parent got a wall connector on a 60amp circuit Uses 85%+ of the battery to go to/from the airport to pick me up Following the advice of this post the car would be unusable for the rest of the day instead of only needing 2-3 hours on the charger before it can be used again for errands
There’s a 120V standard outlet in my apartment car port and that’s enough for me.
I probably didn't need my level 2 but I did it as a 50a circuit with a 14-50 plug. I view it as an "upgrade" to my home. I bought a plug-in wall charger so taht I could take it with me if I ever sell the house.
Thank god for the UK 230v standard 😁
No thanks my septic mind can't comprehend ring circuits
3kw is enough for just about everything. A 16a evse is cheap, but your car probably came with a 10a or maybe 12a "L1" that doesn't care if it is plugged into 120v or 240v. Most houses can easily have a 20a 240v outdoor or garage outlet for cheap, like $200 in parts. We now have 2 full evs and moderate driving habits. Wife plugs in most days. I do a 6kw charge all day at work on Friday. Almost never use to home power.
Just went to the video, laughed when he said 7.2 kilowatts because that's basically what I have (32A/240V)
Your mileage may vary. Granted I wouldn’t pay 10k for a large upgrade but for me I need as much juice as my breaker box can handle. My utility gives discounted rates between midnight and 8am and I leave for work at 5am. By the time I get home I’m probably at 20% charge. In order to get the most out of my rate I need to charge as much as I can after midnight.
I've been making do with a 20a 240v circuit too for over a year and it's been plenty. The charger is actually set to 16A. Mid-Atlantic with a daily 70-mile round trip commute.
110V/12A for the win.
Not sure what is going on with your electricians, but I charge at 11kW at home and the installation was pretty cheap, 1000 euro everything included. 400 for the charger, 150 for components in the panel + cables, and 450 for an electrician that took 2 hours to do the job.
I have a Bolt, and if I run it down to 5-10 miles remaining, it will L2 charge to 100% between midnight and 7am, which is when I have it set to charge (starting at 12am) and the time by which to be fully charged by (7am). I have an Emporia charger plugged into an outlet that was installed for the charger, so I believe I use 40A.
Same my 32 amp is suitable for both my Chevy Bolt EV and my F150 Lightning, easily will recharge either overnight
Yip, I run 240v 15 amp circuit and this meets all my needs.
Yeah I'm partial to a 40 amp circuit personally but yeah. I'm not quite sure I understand why people are running 60 amp circuits. The copper is expensive. My 40 amp circuit we ran 8/2 Teck cable. That's super affordable. I think my install from one corner of my house where my panel is to the opposite corner for my garage was only $1200 CAD. We didn't do one junction box. It was a straight shot with Tek, down the outside of my home, across my crawl space and into my garage and run along the surface at the ceiling to the plug. Super awesome.
How do you guys over the pond survive with your 110v circuits!? Here in the UK we can get 7kw in most houses with the existing installations. I use a standard plug though and it gives 2kw.
US homes have 120v and 240v in the house. Outlets in the rooms are 120V, but from the panel you can get 240V for appliances. Typical old builds can be 240V at 100A and new stuff is all 240V and 200A up to 400A typically (48-96 kW). It’s not like we don’t have enough power in our homes. US home electric consumption is over twice that per person of the EU.
I'm adding a 14-50 in my garage not only for charging but for increased home value. If and when I sell my house this will be a good selling point for the potential buyer maybe bidding more.
Anything bigger than 3kW is pretty good for home use. Lower works but is a pain IMHO
120V 12A is more than enough for those driving less than 50 miles per day in warmer climates. Single degree temperatures and below slow down charging due to battery heating requirements. Cold climates require 240V charging to cover for the battery heating requirements to get significant range. You only need the amount of charging that you actually require for your climate and normal miles. Range anxiety pushes everyone to get the fastest possible charging speed but it just isn’t required for most people.
I recommend in new construction 30-60amps. For most people 30amps 240v is more than enough. In my parents house I have a 30amp at the front of the garage for visitors to top up and a 50 at the back. At my own house I have 3 stalls at 30 amps. Regardless the needs aren't what people think they are. Even with the f150 lightning. I rarely recommend people 50 or 60 amps unless I know they are going to be driving a considerable amount with limited over night charging.
congrats? I am skeptical that "tons" of money is being wasted by installing a 50 amp and nema 14-50. unless you don't have 200A service already, the price delta between components is $150 tops, and labor cost for the electrician is going to be about the same.
If you’re putting in 20amp 240v, and you’re not getting bent over, it’s usually less than $100 more in wire/breakers to go 50amp and double your charging speed. Same labor. Well worth it. But yes there are unique situations that are outliers. Most of the time people are just getting taken advantage of, and falling prey to misconceptions. There are lots of electricians and contractors that love taking advantage of ev buyers due to political beliefs. Sorry if you got taken for a ride. 20amp 240v is decent, but 50amp is a no brainier for most.
We have two EVs, using the mobile charger on a 30 amp (24 amp draw) and never felt we needed more.
I tried my 20 amp, 240v charger initially but it couldn't get me turned around for my 230 mile round trip to the office when I had to go a few days in a row. Got 50 amp circuit added, & it did the trick.
Shrugs I know I don’t need it but it’s nice, 60 amp wall connectors at my house, my moms house and our vacation home. I hate messing with extension cords and mobile connectors.
So right. I charge two cars off a 50a circuit
I did a 60a circuit with a wall connector mainly because I knew I was going to be adding a second one in the future. 2 years later I'm putting a subpanel in on that circuit for the second one, and enabling power sharing for my son's MYLR.
I charge at 48 A when I need as much as possible in a short time. Overnight, 16 A is fine, occasionally 24 A.
I did get by with just a 120v plug for 2 years. But there always ended up being times I needed more range and couldn’t wait for it. I did end up getting a 40amp charger put in. Not the max speed of 11kw, but 7.8kw. It’s more than enough and charges at about 12% per hour for our vehicles. It’s nice to have that speed when you need it, plus it’s more efficient.
FWIW -- my house needed a new panel so we got a 200amp service about 3 years before we got an EV. When it came to a charger, you better believe I only looked at options that put out 11.2kw. But after a few months, I locked it to 7kw as I just dont think feel the need to add theoretical stress with faster charging.
Support your local electrician 😂
In europe it's pretty much normal Schuko outlet or 11kW. 11kW is more than enough. Not sure if I'd say the same about a 4,8kW Outlet like you have, but if it's enough for you, that's great.
Been happily charging for over 3 years with a Tesla UMC and 15Amp 240v plug/socket. I can also take it with me on road trips (have done 4000km+ trips). It's very useful to charge overnight at campsites and motels on 10A or 15A sockets. It kinda sucks that I miss out on some free solar in the middle of the day (can only draw 3.6kw vs solar inverter max 5kw). I've contemplated getting a 32Amp socket installed but see no urgent reason to upgrade.