I tried charging an EV at home and it was a shock I wasn't expecting

[admin]

I finally got to charge my first EV at home, but I was shocked by how it turned out. Here's what every new and first time EV driver needs to know about charging at home.

I tried charging an EV at home and it was a shock I wasn't expecting : Read more

 

[branchms]

The level onr charger that's comes with the Ioniq 6 is terrible the default setting is very low amps. If you change the setting you will get closer to 60 miles over night which is much more like what you'd need for a daily commute. I love my Ioniq 6. There are some really great deals on level 2 chargers all the time.

 

[nigelboor]

What did you expect? Treat the domestic plug in as an emergency only. 120V is barely adequate to charge an iPhone.
A dedicated home charger will fill your battery overnight and should be factored in when you buy the car unless you are lucky enough to have one at home already.

 

[Elterrible]

My 220 was run to the front of my house and my juice box was about $500. I can charge an Ioniq 5 or 6 in about 6 to 7 hours and it will be at 100%.

If your house has a modern electrical box and at least a 200 AMP capacity, it is under $1300 to be setup to use the EV. My house was upgraded when I went Solar and now I drive for free too.

 

[ScootzB]

This should not have been a shock. Level 1 charging can work if you have a short commute and if your charge every night to replace the miles you drove that day. Otherwise, you need a Level 2 charger. I have a Bolt EUV. GM gave me a $1,000 credit toward having a Level 2 charger installed (or more accurately, the outlet for it) in my garage. The credit fully covered the cost. I live in an old house and the best we could do was a 20 amp dedicated circuit. So I bought a 16 amp Level 2 charger and I have no complaints about charging overnight.

 

[DaveG11]

My Tesla gets 5 miles of range per hour of charge on level I. What you haven't said is if you are plugging directly into the socket or using an extension cord. And also all extension cords are not the same. They come in different gauge (thickness) wires. I use a 10 gauge (thickest ext cord available) which means it can deliver more current for a further distance. It delivers 12 amps from the socket to the extension cord to my level I adapter to the car. If you aren't getting 5 miles per hour range..you're doing it wrong.

 

[Apistofirered]

Level 1 is not shocking that it's slow. It should only be used for when you really really need to add a few miles.. Whether it be an emergency or just a small commute
If you're going to buy an EV, you should really invest in a level 2 charger as well. Also, check local incentives. My city was offering a rebate at the time and I ended up paying $0 for the charger and installation. They covered the permit cost as well. Some car companies also cover installation as well and I could have also went with GMs offer if I had to

 

[bjrosen]

If you can charge at home you should and it should always be done with a Level 2 EVSE. If you can afford to buy the car you can afford to put in a proper EVSE. It's not expensive. My electrician charged me $750 to run a 60A 240V line and hook up my 11KW Tesla EVSE. That's the same as the optional paint colors for a Tesla.
Unless you have no means of charging at home you should never use Superchargers as your primary means of charging, those are for road trips. It's bad for the battery and it's a huge waste of time. It's not just the time it takes to charge, it's the time it takes to get to and from the Supercharger. Plugging in at home is the biggest benefit of owning an EV because it only takes 10 seconds of your time, there is no weekly gas station trip. Going to a Supercharger for your weekly charge is worse because there are fewer of them so they are not as likely to be conveniently located as your local gas station.

 

[omglolwut]

If you were shocked, that's on you. If you had done any research, you would understand some of the basics.

In particular wattage. Watts = Volts x Amps. In the US, 120V outlets provide 15 amps at best. Do the math and that equates to 1800 W. The Ioniq 6 has > 77 kWh capacity, which is on the high-end of EVs today. That approximates to 43 hours to charge from 0 to full, assuming constant rate.

For an Ioniq 6, you should be charging at home on a 240 V connection @ 48 amps (using a 60 amp breaker). This yields 11.5 kW which is > 6 times faster than a Level 1 and would charge your Ioniq 6 in less than 7 hours, which is plenty for 99% of folks for their day-to-day. If you need faster for the occasional road trip, there are Level 3 fast chargers available which are typically another 8x faster than Level 2.

TL;DR: Have a Level 2 charger installed at home if you're going to buy an EV or rely on those that are publicly available. Expecting to use Level 1 as your primary is just plain silly.

 

[oldhaapi]

The range of the Chevy Volt is around 35 miles on electric, and as you found, that's about what you can charge with an L1 overnight. Makes sense now, eh?

Just had an estimate done for L2, and it was around $1000 to add a charging unit in our garage to our 150 amp panel.

 

[Teddan96]

My initial reaction was the same as many of the commenters. However, after thinking about it, I thought a few points needed clarification.

There are definitely situations where people can get by with just a Level 1 charger and their home's power outlet. Many homes, especially garages, have 20A breakers for outlets. You can check your breaker box to see how much capacity you have. However, the capacity of the Level 1 charger depends on the brand of the charger and the settings in the car. Most should allow you to get 3-5 miles of added range per hour of charging.

Chargers have no idea what the capacity is of your wiring or your breaker. However, for safety reasons, if you use an extension cord with a charger, you want to ensure it is rated for the current load and length of the cord. For example, a 10ft cord carrying 20 amps doesn't require as thick wire as a 100ft cord carrying the same amperage. See the charts at this link.

In general, if your daily drive is less than about 30 miles (this varies a lot depending on car, charger and settings), you could get by with Level 1 charging if you plug in whenever you're home. You'd want to keep the car charged to 70-80%, run it down during your daily drive, then bring it back up when not in use. Level 1 chargers will give you 3-5 miles per hour of charging, and since most cars sit at home for 8-12 hours per day, you'll be able to replenish 24 (=3x8) to 60 (=5x12) miles of range. If you keep the car at about 80%, you'll have plenty of range if you need to drive more one day. Conversely, if you don't drive one day, you'll be able to add more range. So, for people with short daily usage (i.e. an around town vehicle for shopping etc.), there's little problem sticking with a Level 1 charger. I did this for several years with a couple different EVs and a Chevy Volt (that I only ran on battery 99% of the time). It worked great but required some planning.

However, the convenience of having the speed of a Level 2 charger is well worth the added expense for most EV owners. Being able to fully charge over night is very convenient so you do not have to balance your daily charging regimen with your usage. You just plug it in when the range drops below your comfort zone, knowing that you'll be back up to full capacity the next morning.

 

[jrharbort]

You should configure the car to pull more amps from the portable charger when charging on L1 (and on a circuit with enough non-shared capacity to do so) and also plug in every day. It's only 5 seconds and covers most people's driving range needs. L2 is the answer if you drive more than 40 miles a day.

EVs are smart enough to know that a 115v outlet tends to be on a shared circuit and it will derate to the lowest setting so you don't pop a breaker. You have to tell the car you know the circuit has enough free capacity for a higher charge rate. There's usually no need to configure for L2 circuits as those are typically dedicated.

It's articles and titles such as this that continue to spark unnecessary FUD and throw fuel to certain media who will quote without context. Gone, it seems, are the days where Tom's has writers with tech understanding and ingenuity to look into problems to solve them.

 

[Apteran_Aaron]

Idk how you weren't expecting level 1 charging to be slow. If you want to get the most out of your EV you should absolutely install a level 2 charger at your home.

This article also does a disservice to non educated EV owners by encouraging them to rely on public fast chargers which is not only more expensive as noted but is also bad for the health of your EV battery. Frequent fast charging, level 3, degrades batteries faster than steady level 1 or 2 charging at home.

And while the author notes that his ioniq 6 received ~25 miles of range over night on a level 1 charger that won't be true of all EVs, or all level 1 chargers. Charging speeds largely depend upon the efficiency of a vehicle. For example an efficient EV like the Aptera which is poised to get 10 miles per kWH will charge far faster than a Hummer EV which gets 1.5 miles her kWh. That means you need nearly 10x the energy from the charger to get just 1 mile of range put into your battery for the Hummer vs Aptera example.

 

[rdj1ss]

An additional thing to consider with lv1 charging, is to make sure it has its own circuit. Before I change things around, I believe my charger circuit shared a TV and a light and that was enough to trip it.

 

[Retired Don]

This is the most civil set of comments I've ever seen! Seriously, very nice with lots of right calculations. I've got 95k miles on my 5 1/2 year old Model 3. Yeah, the regular plugin is for dire emergencies and someone who barely drives. If you buy a $45k vehicle, best to get a level 2 charger at home. Maybe $1k extra for that, and so convenient. I get 44 miles per hour of charging on my level 2 Tesla charger in my garage. Cost is about $4 for about 200 miles of range while charging at home where my electricity is 7.8 cents per kwh.

We just did a 7,000 mile trip (Puget Sound WA to Toronto and back to visit relatives, see the eclipse. Superchargers were plentiful. But superchargers are more like 32 cents per kwh so it's more costly (but still below the cost of gassing up even a Prius). The supercharger stops were mostly 15 , maybe 20 minutes (mostly 250kwh superchargers ). We barely had time to hit the bathrooms, toss the frisbee a few times for our dog, and grab a coffee before it was time to go. (Queue up Yakety Sax!).

I think the biggest EV challenge today is what people without a garage can do to conveniently charge their vehicle. Supercharging is not as convenient as home charging. Nothing beats the 10 second "plug in the car" and walk into your house after you park in your garage with your own charger.

Disclaimer: l love my Tesla and the supercharger network. Musk, not so much.

 

[Kristopher1971]

I finally got to charge my first EV at home, but I was shocked by how it turned out. Here's what every new and first time EV driver needs to know about charging at home.

I tried charging an EV at home and it was a shock I wasn't expecting : Read more

This is not the experience I have had with my Tesla's (an S and a Y). I also have two chargers, the level 1 mobile connector, which charges at 1KWh per hour or 4 miles per hour and a level 2 wall connector which charges at 11KWh or 44 miles per hour. Both are sufficient, if I use the level 1, it takes longer but has not been an issue. On a side note, having multiple road trips in the Tesla, I would not buy anything else simply because of the charging network, no other charging source compares.

 

[sailtovictory]

I finally got to charge my first EV at home, but I was shocked by how it turned out. Here's what every new and first time EV driver needs to know about charging at home.

I tried charging an EV at home and it was a shock I wasn't expecting : Read more

Wow a technical writer didn't know about the different levels of ev charging. I am glad you didn't try to use your phone charger to charge the car.

This article is already been shared on forums where anti EV guys are using this as an argument to belittle ev cars. Such tomfoolery was not expected from a site like Tom's Guide. Maybe stick to writing about what you guys know best.

 

[Haggemano]

EVs come with level 2 chargers built in. It's a matter of what you plug them into. They typically come with charging equipment (or you can buy your own such as a Level 2 charging station) that lets you use an appropriate plug for the outlet.

The charging station isn't a charger, but a device that passes current through unchanged after the appropriate handshake.

People who charge at home rarely charge from empty to full, but replenish what they used for the day. It's easily under an hour for many cars with level 2, and can be done overnight with some EVs if you average 40 miles per day. And if you have hundreds of miles of extra range, having a few days where you don't replenish overnight means still having enough range for the next day, and catching up over time. Then public chargers can help you in a pinch, but if you ran down your range, chances are it was a long trip and you charged on the road anyway.

For most people, L2 is preferable even if they could get by with L1, and is about the same effort as getting a dryer outlet installed.

 

[Haggemano]

What did you expect? Treat the domestic plug in as an emergency only. 120V is barely adequate to charge an iPhone.
A dedicated home charger will fill your battery overnight and should be factored in when you buy the car unless you are lucky enough to have one at home already.

L1 can charge a cell phone in under an hour and can charge an EV overnight for an average day's use in the US. That's from 11 pm to 7 am but must people could start charging earlier.

L2 is much more convenient, but people need to add back enough for the next day and typically have hundreds of miles of extra range. Even after a long trip, most people aren't going to make another long trip the next day. Those who will should have L2. Most people are better off with it anyway.

Of course L2 is better, but L1 is better than just emergency only. For some people it's all they need.

 

[Sumanster]

One of the paradigm shifts new EV owners need to make is, don't wait until it's empty to refuel.

If you have a clothes dryer outlet in or near the garage, you can plug a portable L2 charger into that. You might need an adapter, and you might want to use a splitter to avoid repeated plugging/unplugging at the wall outlet itself (from what I've read, older style dryer outlets aren't that rugged and are more susceptible to damage, increasing the risk of a fire).

Make sure the L2 charge setting in the EV and of the charger is below the current limit for that circuit. I've seen recommendations from electricians not to exceed 80% of a circuit's limit for devices used for several hours at a time, to reduce heating of the wiring. For a 30 Amp circuit that would be 24 Amps.

Since my MINI Cooper's L2 current settings are either 32 A (too high) or 16 A, I use the lower setting and bought a 16 Amp L2 charger, adapter, and splitter, all for about $200. I can add about 11 miles of range per hour of charging, which is enough for most of my needs. Keeping my battery between about 50-80% only requires a few hours a day of charging, and not even every day generally. During off-peak hours my cost per mile is about 3 cents, which is like getting around 150 mpg on $4.50 gas.

L1 charging gets old fast. There are inexpensive options for L2 home charging.