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Comment by mikestew | Hacker News Reader

From just the headline, I thought to myself, "aww, isn't that cute, someone got a new electric car. Let's read the insights they gathered that us old-timer EV owners already know."

I've owned a Leaf for eight years, and it was worth a read. The first half, if you already own an EV, is blah, blah, blah. But there were some good insights in the second half, including that you might not need a Level 2 charger in your garage, a (US 120V) Level 1 might do. I will say that one might be capable of installing a 240V outlet oneself and save $2000.

But most insightful were the observations of how the whole system is "rigged" (for lack of a better word) for ICEs. A lot of the poo-pooing of EVs would go away if we didn't build a system that assumes one will plop their ass in a emissions-spewing two-ton wheelchair to go get a quart of milk.

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>I will say that one might be capable of installing a 240V outlet oneself and save $2000.

It took us fifteen minutes (excluding the run to home depot for the socket, breaker, wire and a steel pipe) to run a new 240v socket from our electrical panel in the garage to a few feet away from it. I can't imagine ever spending $2000 on the installation of a single 240V socket right next to the panel.

I can't imagine ever spending $2000 on the installation of a single 240V socket right next to the panel

You can’t? Here, I’ll throw you a softball: service panel upgrade because your 6Kw charger is way more than your 1960s house can handle.

Most common case, of course, is run a piece of conduit from panel, some wiring and a plug, sorted in 30 minutes. But not everyone.

In my case the panel is in the basement and about 50 feet away. More importantly, I would need to be upgraded to 200 amp service which my older house doesn't have. So well over 2k.

We don’t know it was next to the panel.

It's not clear to me from the description, I understand that in the US the wall sockets don't put out a lot of juice, (120 volts at 15 amps = 1.8kW) but is "Level 2" like my household wall sockets (240 volts at 13 amps = 3.1kW) or is it more (e.g. some of my friends installed 240 volts at 30 amps = 7.2kW to cut their charging time in half) ?

[ Also, presumably Americans do have electric ovens right? So your ovens can't be 120 volts at 15 amps, that'd be like a kid's toy, there must be beefier power inside a typical American house already, albeit maybe not near the car? ]

Electric ovens generally run on level 2 sockets. They're usually 30 amps but some run as high as 80 for dual chargers and whatnot. You can also find really low ones too, it's all over the place.

Many Americans (including myself) have gas ovens.

I spent the first month and a half on a level 1 set up, basically an extension cord in my driveway and I was surprised that I only had to go to a faster charging station twice. One of these two times was just because I was curious to try it. You could argue the second time was just anxiety because my remaining charge never went lower than 20%.

The only reason I still got a level 2 chargers at home was because I have doubts a level 1 will be enough to charge in the colder months of winter.

L2 chargers aren't that expensive to install. I paid an electrician $300 to run a line from my fuse box to garage and install the outlet. Then the actual charger, a Siemens VersiCharge, is $450. I still need to do a bit of drywall repair from where the electrician had to cut to run the line, but that's trivial.

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