What are your electric vehicle plans?

In My Humble Opinion
2006

It’s gonna cost a few hundred bucks at least. Which is about the difference between a typical mobile charger (what you call an EVSE) and a wall charger (permanently mounted, doesn’t use an outlet).

I keep a mobile charger in my trunk for trips and didn’t feel like rolling it up each time I was done charging, so I bought a second, which I kept plugged in permanently (also, the plugs themselves have a limited lifetime, so it’s best to keep the plugging cycles to a minimum). Eventually I got a wall charger and gave the spare mobile charger to my sister.

2007

Nitpick: The wall units at home and slow public units are not chargers per se. They are delivering AC at 120 or 240v that a rectifier in the auto then sends on to the traction battery. There is also handshaking that goes on between the two for the auto to tell how much power it can receive, to stop sending the power when the battery is at its charge set point (say, 80% SOC) and to stop sending power if the plug is disconnected before the set point is reached – prevents arcing.

In the J1772 connector below the yellow are AC, white the handshaking, and green is ground.

For DC fast charging (DCFC) hundreds of DC volts at hundreds of amps are sent in two additional pins down below, with PP and CP doing the same functions as they do at home.

In Tesla/NACS connectors the yellow pins are have AC 110/240v at home and high voltage DC on the same pins at a Supercharger station so you’re not fooling around with the much bulkier CCS1 plug.

2008

The electricians noted that the panel was unbalanced, so we’ve made it a very soon priority. Sadly, there have been several major semi-unplanned expenses eating into all our discretionary funds. When my wife bought the PHEV, I took over her old car, to find it has about $1400 in very needed service/updates (new tires and sparkplugs mostly), AND our 23 year house A/C unit is showing it’s age, but uses no-longer-legal refrigerant, which means it’s replace, not repair time (estimate is $7k).

We just did all the car work, and we plan to do the Panel next, with some financing (we’ll put off the Level 2 charger and cut about $1200-1500 because the PHEV is fine on level 1, and we’re not planning on next next vehicle for 3-5 years :crossed_fingers: ) and if we can swing the rest of the financing, try to replace the A/C in late fall. Being an adult does suck sometimes. However, while frustrating, and meaning more debt than we want, it’s all vaguely doable.

And this ties to what I just said. The PHEV has a stated 42 mile all-electric range, though normally it’s 10-20% above that in good weather driving for my wife. We have it set to start charging at 8pm, and my wife leaves for work a little after 6am in the morning, so 10ish hours of charging. It’ll get around 40 miles (ie nearly full) of range in that much time, even with the low levels of charge we offer, and given a 26 mile round trip commute for the wife, that’s plenty for all her normal driving and a few errands.

2009

It will probably be a few years before I replace my current (ICE) car, but I always assumed that if I were to someday get an EV I would be able to use the existing dryer outlet in my garage for charging without needing to have anything installed by an electrician. This discussion made me research that a little more, and I came to the realization that that dryer outlet is an old three pronged NEMA 10-30 outlet. And from what I gather, charging from a 10-30 outlet is not recommended, because they’re not grounded (they use neutral as “ground”). So I’m assuming I have 2 options if I want L2 charging at home: 1) Have an electrician install a grounding wire and upgrade the outlet to NEMA 14-30. 2) Have an electrician install a hardwired charger.

But like @eschereal mentions, 120V L1 charging would probably be adequate for 99% of my driving, so I might not even bother with L2 charging at home whever I eventually get an EV.

2010

The outlet I started with was a 3-prong 6-50 (not entirely certain that the breaker can handle 50A, but my car only seems to want about 25). The owner’s manual contains an electrical diagram showing Gnd•-•N, and my friend who is an electrician tells me most grounds just go to the neutral rail anyway, so I bridged the two contacts and it works just fine.

2011

My EV mobile charging kit came with NEMA 10-30 adapter. No issues. And, guess what plug I have in my garage and use to charge with? 10-30. No issues.

We could also get by with L1 for home charging. We have one big trip per week, then the car basically sits. Even if we had a 10-15 mile commute each way, L1 would work for us.

2012

It isn’t too big of a deal, because the charger should be going from hot to hot, and won’t use neutral or ground. Most EVSE (electrical vehicle supply equipment, which doesn’t really help explain what it is) will contain many safety features, such as GFCI and circuit breakers.

As part of the safety check, the Tesla mobile charger (the EVSE that is connected with a plug to the wall) will complain if it expects neutral and ground, and they are not tied together. Normally, those should be tied together at only in the electrical panel.

The proper option with the Tesla mobile charger, and other EVSEs, is to get the 10-30 plug (3 prong) instead of the 14-30 plug (4 prong). This will tell the mobile charger to not expect a ground connection.

It is possible the electrical box your dryer connection is in is grounded, and it would just be a matter of connecting ground on the 4 prong receptacle to the box.

This is probably fine, but can result in energizing the ground if for some reason the EVSE were to connect hot (either one) and neutral. There exist adapters that let you convert a single 14-30 or 14-50 type receptacle (220 volt) into one or two 5-15 or 5-20 circuits (110 volt). You would not want to use one of those on a receptacle which is really a 10-30 or 10-50 (no neutral), but just happens to have a four prong receptacle installed.

I do not know if other EVSE will have as many safety features as the Tesla mobile charger. For example, normally a sustained load is 80% of the maximum load. So a 15 amp circuit can provide 12 amps of continuous charging power, etc. I have a friend who uses level 1 charging from a cheap Amazon EVSE adapter. It is plugged into a 5-20 (20 amp) outlet. The EVSE has a 5-15 plug (just a normal electrical plug), but it happily will provide 15 amps of continuous charging.

The wiring and circuit breaker are happy at 15 amps, but when the Tesla mobile charger has its 5-15 lead connected it will only provide 12 amps. If the cheap EVSE were connected to a regular 5-15 receptacle (which it will plug into), it would be providing more current than the circuit can handle.

TLDR: lots of wiring codes are there for a reason, don’t trust some random EVSE to have your back when you cut corners.

2013

It’s also the case that truly continuous high loads were real rare until home EV charging became commonplace. So the weakness in the code that a 15A circuit is not truly 15A all day every day didn’t really matter. Not so much anymore.

IOW:

It’s one thing to draw 15A through a 15A circuit for 15 minutes drying hair or 30 minutes running an air fryer.

It’s something quite different to run the same 15A for 10 hours charging an EV.

The only good news is these can be smart devices that self-limit to 12A. The bad news is they don’t need to be. And Joe Dumbass-Consumer would rather buy the cheaper faster dumber EVSE. And cook their wiring every night until the fire finally starts.

2014

Ours pulls 12A.

I’m in northern climates so a better analogy is the 1500W space heater you bought on Amazon or Temu that runs 24/7 while plugged into a surge protector and your house is on the verge of burning down. My EV is a lot safer to charge.

Not around these parts. I’ve seen space heaters used since I was young. I’ve also seen a lot of houses burn down. I even saw a Fire Department burn down due to a space heater plugged into an extension cord (true story). Edit to add: Faulty memory. the FD did burn down, but it was due to a frayed extension cord and not a space heater connected to extension cord. Fire was in June so not much of a chance for a space heater to be used.

2015

The code (NEC) differentiates between continuous loads (over 3 hrs) vs. not, and continuous loads should be 80% of the non-continuous rating. Space heaters and EV chargers are considered continuous loads and should only draw ~12 A. Something like a blender can draw 1800 W. So in principle this case is handled as long as everything is to code.

The Tesla charger at least also has temperature sensors in the plug. I’ve seen this trip a few times in my own experience. It’ll reduce the current until the temps go down. Much better than continuing to pull full amps from a dodgy outlet that overheats and catches fire. Which is what will happen with a $20 space heater from Wal-Mart.

I think it’ll also detect dodgy wiring. You can’t tell much from the absolute voltage, but you can measure the voltage drop when you pull higher currents. If there’s a high-resistance path in there (due to corroded outlets or junctions, underspecced wiring, a crappy extension cord, etc.) it can sense that and also reduce the current.

2016

In my Bolt the default current limit the car sets for level 1 charging is 8 amps but I can bump it to 12 amps if the circuit can handle it. How enthusiastic the EVSE is does not matter so much then.