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Comment by NegativeK | Hacker News Reader

I was charging my car on a 120V, 15A circuit (12A draw to the car) for over a year. I'd use about 8kWh per day with a 20 mile round trip commute + extras; that translated to needing about 5.5 hours of charging.

It really was fine, but it was near the limit of what's practical without using a fast charger. Extra trips around town would put me at a deficit, and it'd take a few nights of charging to bring things back up to my set point of 80%. Additionally, I had to think a few days out for when I'd know I'd be doing a bunch of driving to make sure I gave myself enough buffer. Now, having a charging circuit that can put out over 9kW means I can think about it a lot less.

But I thoroughly agree with you: a normal mains outlet is often fine, and holiday road trips can be messy.

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Your daily travel was around half of the average American's[0], and as you said, that was near the limit of what's practical. It follows that for the average American, a normal outlet is not fine.

[0] https://www.axios.com/2024/03/24/average-commute-distance-us...

But using two outlets, on opposite phases, would give you double the voltage. Might be too much to expect people to identify two suitable outlets and have a “Y”extension lead that would bring them together.

Somewhere a copy of the NEC is bursting into flames.

You'd be better of installing a new circuit with proper equiptment. Most homes would be able to at least accommodate a 20amp 220v socket, which takes about 40% of the charging time of a regular socket (15amp 110).

OTOH I see no fundamental reason that one couldn’t build an EVSE that connected to two different outlets and drew from both of them. Two branch circuits supplying the same device is not especially rare.

I've never seen that. With the right protection circuits it could work safely. However, most garages seem to only have one branch anyways, so might as well add a 20amp+ 220v branch.

In a (large, recently constructed) garage, it seems likely that you've got multiple circuits with outlets. If you've got multiple outside outlets, they're probably all on the same circuit. If the hots are the same phase, I don't know if there's a way to determine if they're behind the same breaker or not. If the hots are on different phases, you need to return to each neutral or the gcfi that's likely to be present on an outdoor outlet will trip.

>I don't know if there's a way to determine if they're behind the same breaker or not.

Turn the breaker off and plug something in and see if it turns on

Well yeah, but it'd be a bad idea to make a charger with two 120v plugs, because chances are people will plug them both into the same circuit.

I'm not defending the idea of using two out-of-phase 110V circuits, but... this theoretical EVSE could detect its two inputs not being out-of-phase, blink its red "110V only" light, and only use one of the inputs to charge at 110V instead of 220V.

I’ve seen carpet cleaners where their machine had two 120v cords that needed to be on different breakers

If either circuit had arc fault or ground fault (or both) it would trip if you tried drawing power from both. Which is going to include pretty much any plug outside or in a garage in the past 30 years.

Yes, it'd create a multi-path circuit causing the trip.

This (multi-path circuits) is not uncommon when homeowners try to wire up a smart switch requiring a neutral to a switch-circuit without a neutral (as most light switches actually only need to switch the hot) and so they "borrow" a convenient neutral from a neighboring circuit which causes it to immediately trip!

If you are going to that effort do a 220v with a 60amp, should cost almost the same but is typically the top of level 2 charging specs.

Yeah, I put 20amp because the higher amps are nice, but many panels aren't going to handle an additional 60amp circuit (and be NEC compliant). Most panels should be able to handle an additional 20amp circuit though.

Any outlet that is safely usable outdoors will have a gfci, and using two outlets on different phases would be indistinguishable from a ground fault.

Many (if not most) residential electrical in North America is split-phase, not multi-phase. This is why residential high-power sockets are usually 240V, and industrial 2-phase is most often 208V.

There is a big carve out in your residential is 240 rule. A lot of apartment buildings have two phase and are also 208.

Why are you spit-balling bizarre and dangerous fixes to an already solved problem?

A certified electrician will know how to cable up a higher-capacity appliance such as an electric oven or level 2 home EV charger.

>> Why are you spit-balling bizarre and dangerous fixes to an already solved problem?

Darwin Awards don't just win themselves, you have to be creative about it, right?

Seriously. It's wiring up a dryer outlet. Takes very little work if the breaker box is nearby, to do it the right way.

My partner and I did it in less than a day in conduit in our garage. No jury rigging necessary.

That product exists, and it's called Quick220.

The Y extension lead would work, except that if either outlet has line and neutral swapped, you have a dead short, and if you pull one of the male ends while charging, you have a live male prong.

Quick 220 mostly resolves this, but you still need a 3 lamp tester, IIRC.

https://hackaday.io/project/4818-a-quick-220-clone

https://quick220.com/

My EV charging, at 32A, draws more power than the rest of the house combined at peak load. The battery capacity is also equivalent to the house's max power usage for an entire day. Even when the low temperature is 90F/32C.

I hired an electrician to come out and install the 240V 50A circuit. I'm sure I could've, but our local code requires it, I don't want our insurer to deny our claim if something goes wrong. I, obviously, think people should be pretty careful with 10kW (or more) continuous load for hours at a time.

I definitely don't think people should lean on janky solutions that are technically feasible when it comes to EV power.

you must be driving great distances if you're charging at 32A?

i've got 240V 40A and I trickle charge at at most 10A overnight, and it's way way beyond adequate. i don't drive super far daily...but easily could still.

At the moment, I'm WFH -- charging at 32A lets me utilize my solar panels instead of selling the energy to the power company at a discount and then buying it back at full price. It's also a bit more efficient, since the car's electronics consume 300W continuous during the charging process, which means shorter charging times use less total power.

But as I mentioned in my comment way above, 120V12A works, but 240V32A is notably more convenient.

yep, agreed. didn't realize the power company pricing dynamics would make it preferable: that's interesting!

> It follows that for the average American, a normal outlet is not fine.

Yes, that's why it's recommended to install a home "Level 2" charger (1). that's that's several times faster than "a normal outlet". It's both fine and practical to do that.

Not everything in a typical house runs on just "normal outlet" power. e.g. electric ovens also do not.

https://www.caranddriver.com/shopping-advice/a39917614/best-...

https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-electric-veh...

We really need a device that can replace our current electric meters to charge a few EVs. Meters are often on the side of the house by the garage or driveway.

Having a device installed by the power company would be ideal.

Why replace the meter? Are you just suggesting that doing that would be easier than running a new high amp circuit from the circuit breaker?

The L2 chargers are often quite programmable to e.g. use the cheaper late-night electricity. And because what new gadget these days doesn't come with software and an iPhone app?

And some chargers would have an integrated meter as well. Would this suit you? But we don't really know what your intended for that meter use is.

I think street parking should be phased out. Private parking should be mandated. Then it'll be the matter of parking lot billing.

Totally.

As a person who doesn't drive I'm getting pretty sick of the expectation that I pay for parking spots every drivers may want to go, and find the exasperated and demanding attitude that drivers display when they can't find convenient parking to be utterly childlike behavior. God forbid you have to walk a block. You know how many blocks I walked to get here?

Also we need to have a discussion about the hoarding going on in suburban garages. People buy these tacky box houses and then cram all kinds of dumb shit in their garage where their vehicles are supposed to go and then park on the street and bitch about their neighbours friends stealing 'their spot.'

This is all so insane.

I have seen streetside chargers near me.

https://www.evstreetcharge.co.uk/

The electricity delivery infrastructure actually already exists, and has for a long time: street lamps were spec'd before the transition to low power LED lights.

Does it follow? I'd expect the average daily travel to be significantly higher than the median daily travel.

I said "average" twice, and "median" zero times, so yes, one statement does follow from the other. But you're right that the median may be different.

My point was that when the median of something is much lower than the average, the "average" member of the group can be way below the group average for that thing.

Consider a group of 200 people, where 50 drive 10 miles a day, 100 drive 20, 20 drive 30, 5 drive 40, 5 drive 60, 5 drive 80, 5 drive 100, 4 drive 200, 4 driver 400 and 2 drive 600.

That's 8100 miles per day by 200 people, giving an average daily drive of 40.5 miles. If we assume 40 miles is too much for an overnight charge on an ordinary outlet to cover then we might think this means the average person would find they need more than an ordinary outlet.

But 75% of those people drive 20 miles or less per day, and 85% of them drive 30 miles or less per day.

In standard usage, "the average member of the group" simply refers to the hypothetical member whose relevant attributes are those of the group's average.

> it'd take a few nights of charging to bring things back up to my set point of 80%

But is that an issue? As long as you always have enough juice to get to a fast charger, and you can always get back to 80% by Friday morning, isn't that enough?

Sure, it's nice to have a 9kW charger, and I'm glad I do. But if I would have been forced to pay $5K to upgrade my mains connection I would likely have just kept the $5K and charged on 120V.

I've been doing 120V for just over a year with the Chevrolet portable charging cable. It's mostly been fine, the main issue is that it stops working every so often and has to be unplugged and plugged back in.

My Bolt lets me say that the circuit is dedicated to it at home and pulls 12 amps instead of the 8 amps it would pull anywhere else. It's trying to make sure it doesn't overload the circuit.

We are moving to a newer home and I already have the 240V charger installed there. Looking forward to 25-30 miles of range per hour (running at 32A normally but have a dedicated 60A circuit) instead of the 3 I'm getting now.

At this house, the 200A panel is full so I would have had to add another panel.

Emporia makes a load balancing charger. You hook an anmeter around the mains and it can pull anything less than the max the box can handle.

My 200 service was also "full" but when monitoring the energy, we rarely pull above 40 amps. We'd only hit 200 if the emergency heat was running at max for both HVACs, the oven was on, the water heater was going and the dryer was running. Pretty hard to do by accident, nigh impossible if you think about it

I probably would've stuck with 120V charging if I didn't also want the 240V outlet for machine tools/etc in my garage. And like you, I wouldn't've paid to upgrade the panel if that was necessary. Fortunately there was capacity.

I had been doing a similar 1kw trickle charging setup for 3 years. While it was sufficient for daily driving we would go on longer drives regularly, mostly on weekends so 2-4 times a month.

It was annoying mental overhead to have to plan out the charging so often.

Three months ago we ran 240v to the garage and now have 12kw charging at home. It has been a game changer! We don’t have to think or plan around the charging. Every morning the car is at 75% (the limit we have set). And if we are going on a long drive I can move it to 90% or 100%.

I really regret not getting the level 2 charger years ago when we got our first EV.

You know, there's a car train between the northern US and further south. Your car goes on one train car, you get to relax in the train. And I know the UK/france tunnel is like this too.

Seems like an optimal solution in some respects, if optimized. For example, millions of Canadians travel to Florida each year for the winter, a lot by car. If such a train ran once a day, it would help many with range anxiety for such cases.

But imagine if major cities had such trains between them daily? These can still carry commuters without cars, too! And of course, we don't need everyone to be covered by this solution today, because the goal is to keep the transition to electric happening. This would help.

Looking at prices, the chunnel car shuttle seems to be $200 for a 50 mile trip. If a regular American car was driving this distance it would cost about $10 in gas.

I don't see this catching on for links between cities.

the chunnel goes _under the sea_ for 30 miles.

Yes. But most of the cost of the ticket will be operating expenses for the train and associated service. The cost of building under a body of water, which is large, does not make most of the ticket price difference.

The cost of the Channel Tunnel (by car) is determined by what the market will sustain: the only alternative to move a vehicle is a ferry. The train is a bit faster.

A more realistic comparison is something like Villach in Austria to Edirne in Turkey, which is 1400km by road, and €259 one-way for a car plus €149 for one person (https://www.seat61.com/motorail-trains.htm).

For comparison, math for the Villach to Edirne trip comes up with USD 158 in gas for the average US car mileage and gas price for 1400km, versus USD 443 for the car + person tickets.

I'd gladly pay 300 dollars not to drive 1400km. Once or twice a year, I drive 320km, and I think about twice that (to and fro) is the limit of what I am reasonably willing to drive over a couple of days.

Those are rookie numbers. I used to drive 100km for dinner sometimes or to visit friends on a Saturday afternoon. This is in a major US metro.

Driving 100km on a straight highway with driver assist is nothing.

Driving 100km on a nauseating mountain serpentine can easily take 2-3x longer.

But yeah, 300 dollars in Turkey is a lot of money that most people will be willing to save.

Depends on the roads, obviously, but my limit is around 12 hours a day, however far that gets you.

I’ve driven 680 km each way on interstates to my in-laws’ home. There on Friday, back on Sunday. Had to drive because I was bringing gifts, way too much for air travel.

And to most Americans, that’s not a particularly long drive. It’s all a matter of what you’re used to. I’ve done 4800 km in eight days and didn’t do anything but local driving on three of those days. That’s a bit more than Madrid to Berlin and back. It’s a lot of driving, but it’s definitely doable even if you’re not twenty years old.

Madrid to Berlin is not comparable to the same distance across the USA. The population density means the roads are much busier and have many more junctions etc.

I take it you’ve not driven from Boston to Miami and back.

Interesting.

In my own little world, I don't worry too much about 1400km in one day. I'll probably stop and take a long break at some point (and maybe catch a nap), but I don't think I'd be willing to pay $300 to avoid the drive.

It's a long day of driving, but I enjoy the diversions on trips like that. There's a whole world of stuff between A and B and it's nice to be able to stop and take some of it in whenever I feel like it when driving alone, which I can't do with a train that has my car loaded on it. (My solo driving style suits me very well.)

Or: With passengers, we can take turns driving and the cost per-head decreases instead of increasing.

1400km in Europe is significantly more taxing than in the USA. The density means more junctions, traffic, variations in speed etc -- I think it's twice the mental effort of the same distance in North America.

Something like a drive between Denver to Kansas City is utter torture for me because it's nearly void of any mental stimulus, doesn't matter that I can cruise along at a high speed in a straight line the entire time, I'm worried about myself or other drivers around me falling asleep at the wheel midway through the utter nothingness that is Kansas. Give me cities and terrain to navigate so that I'm doing something with my body while just sitting there for hours and hours and hours on end.

With the average EU consumption (6.0L/100km) and the average price (€1.59) it's €133.

(Though for a journey this long people with multiple cars would probably be taking the larger one.)

The train costs more, but means families can play with their children (around a table) rather than having them stuck in the back seats for hours, and probably part or all of the journey is overnight.

Yes, it does. It does to recoup costs, even decades later, and it does so because the alternative is a ferry, and so they can charge this price.

Also a lot of the cost is load/unload time.

There is one single car train route on the east coast that goes between Virginia and Florida with no stops.

I am skeptical about the ease of scaling this, especially given the state of non-car distance travel on Amtrak.

I looked into this a few years ago. It cost more and took longer than if I just drove it. Not sure how that calculation would work out today, though.

I've looked at it a bit tonight, since I do drive from DC-ish to Orlando-ish for a thing every year.

It looks like ticket prices vary considerably based on date, and tend to get cheaper as dates grow closer if bookings are sparse, much as airfares or hotels behave.

Depending on date, it looks like I can take one direction of that trip on a train for as low as $360. That's $75 for (what looks like decently comfortable) "coach" seating for 1, and $285 for a "standard size" vehicle.

To drive between those same two points is 811 road miles. At $0.67 per mile (the IRS reimbursement rate, which is supposed to include consumables like fuel and also less-visible things like insurance and depreciation), that's $544.

So the Auto-Train can be cheaper.

It can also be more expensive: Again, depending on date, I've seen coach seats as high as $280 -- a couple hundred bucks higher than the cheapest fare of $75 -- which makes it more rather more expensive than driving.

Trip time, if driving solo, looks close-enough to the same. It's 12-ish hours to drive straight-through, plus stops for fuel, libations and probably at least one nap of indeterminate length to combat fatigue. That seems close-enough to the auto train's ~17-hour trip to not be worth thinking too much about.

And theoretically, after getting off of the train, I won't be worn out from having spent an entire human day driving. That seems like it would be nice -- I can have a cocktail or two and play some Factorio instead of just...driving all damned day.

Fascinating stuff, I think.

I'll check out prices before I head out to make that trip again in the spring.

Who knows: Maybe I'll wind up taking the train.

If you used to sleeping in a very quiet room, I suggest getting some Loop Earplugs or similar.

The background noise should be much less than a plane, and the air pressure etc is obviously normal, but the erratic noise can be more -- e.g. some clunks if the train stops.

> To drive between those same two points is 811 road miles. At $0.67 per mile (the IRS reimbursement rate, which is supposed to include consumables like fuel and also less-visible things like insurance and depreciation), that's $544.

That IRS rate is incredibly high. It's probably around $150 or so in fuel depending on prices and efficiency to make that trip. I can't see food, insurance, and depreciation adding another $300. The ability to not drive is what can make it worthwhile for some, as you note.

Erm, $400 not $300. I guess I typoed that.

People will come up with the craziest solutions to problems solvable with 200 year old technology (trains). Why you need these heavy metal boxes instead of taking a train is beyond me. Cars are optimal for trips below 100-ish miles. Anything above is high speed train and airplanes.

You're making a very big assumption that once you get dropped off by the train at your destination that you aren't going to need a vehicle once you're there.

Rent one?

Have you rented a car recently? I'd rather drive my own car for 3 hours. Then I'll also have an easier time securely bringing a whole bunch of stuff, which I sometimes do also.

It's definitely worth reminding anyone that this is why you need train stations to have good bus service to the surrounding area. You can't even take a commuter rail (in a city with decent rail transit) unless your destination has good bus service or a friend to pick you up.

These things come hand in hand, if you want to make it work things either need to be walking distance from the station or with reasonably frequent buses. If a bus comes once an hour (actually the case in my city off rush-hour) it may as well not exist.

Or you take a folding bike with you. Brompton even make an electric version for those that need it.

Such an easy solution, all we need to do is raise every city and suburb in North America to the ground and rebuild them around a massively expanded rail network which we also need to build. It would be nice if NA cities were already amenable to walking and public transit and served by ubiquitous passenger rail but there’s a century of car infrastructure instead that nothing but a century of overhaul will fix.

> raise every city

raze = tear down

Absolutely, instead of actually fixing the problem, let’s invent muskisms like creating underground highways by boring tunnels underneath cities or ferrying said cars across long distances with a train.

That’s the public infrastructure equivalent of technical debt.

A better solution imho is to create a plan for building train capacity where it makes sense (high traffic areas where trips are such and such - Boston-NYC-Philly-DC) and fund them through public-private contracts.

> it was near the limit of what's practical without using a fast charger

> I had to think a few days out for when I'd know I'd be doing a bunch of driving to make sure I gave myself enough buffer

Its hard to accept a future that involves this sort of compromise and introducing new stresses for an inferior solution.

You have to think about gas too, you're just used to it.

And the future has enough fast chargers that it's hard to be caught out no matter where you go.

The future also involves more high power plugs, which would have removed the issue you quoted.

If you would mind that issue more than they did, then you just need to get a plug installed when you buy an EV.

Its a different order of magnitude. I don't need to think about fuel every day, and I don't have to consider my week if I have a busy day.

All of that gets removed if you have a bigger outlet. There are some people that mind that very little and won't bother to get the upgrade, but judging EVs in general based on the 120-volt situation is like judging pasta in general based on cups of instant ramen.

People who walk out every morning to an EV fully charged up on a home L2 charger (the "high power plugs" mentioned above) very seldom have to think about charge, and definitely not "every day".

How would you feel if your car automatically had a full tank of gas every morning? Even when near empty the night before. It's described as the complete opposite of "worry every day".

It sounds like you feel the same way I feel about a gas car - ie highly unconcerned about distance, fuel, etc.

However, going off the post I initially replied to, it seems that this person did have additional anxiety on account of their EV - ie the issues EV's have with charging, short distances, etc.

It wasn't anxiety -- it was just awareness after having to unnecessarily go to a supercharger a couple of times.

But like I mentioned: I installed a 240V50A outlet, like I think most people will do. 120V15A works with some awareness. 240V50A is easier than having a gas car.

I have to think about my fuel a lot more on my ICE than my EV. I just plug it in when I get home and it's taken care of. Outside of a couple of road trips that were as simple as punching in addresses and following directions that's been my experience.

On my ICE, I think about if gas is expensive or cheap now, maybe I should go ahead and stop at Sam's/Costco while I'm out, but I still have a bit more than a quarter tank, maybe I'll get gas next time. Or I think darn I'm low, I guess I'll have enough, better stop on my way home. And then when I'm there I have to negotiate payment, stand in the 100F heat for several minutes, worry if this pump has a card skimmer on it, and get ads blasted at me. Rinse and repeat every couple of weeks.

"Thinking about gas" for 99% of people means either glancing at the fuel gauge when you get in the car and making a 15 minute detour + pit stop if you think it looks a bit low for your trip, or just ignoring it and making the 15 minute detour once the low fuel indicator comes on.

Electric is on the whole better & cheaper, but insisting the downsides around charging and endurance do not exist isn't going to help convince anyone

> glancing at the fuel gauge when you get in the car and making a 15 minute detour

You realize for a home-charged EV, that literally never happens, right? Your car is always charged, always ready. You never need to make a "detour + pit stop", ever. EVs are the superior solution in this regime, not a compromise. This is 100% not a "downside", period.

Repeating another comment further down - an EV is like an ICE that just magically has a full tank of gas again every morning.

All the comments on here calling them inconvenient seem to be either people who are clutching at straws because they want to believe that EVs are bad for whatever reason, or people with transport requirements well outside the norm (e.g. >~200km per day fairly regularly.)

I don't think it's intentional clutching at straws, but there are definitely people that are quick to notice the inconvenience of a 120v outlet and extrapolate that into the future when they shouldn't, and into more situations than it's actually relevant.

It matters that many people don't have outlets at all, but when we're talking about "how many EV charging stations does the US need" that lack of outlets is a problem that will be fixed.

This is only really true if you have a 240v charger at home, not everyone has the ability to have that kind of setup.

This is true enough, but it's advice of the same form as "Don't buy a pickup if you live in NYC and only have street parking". It's a valid exploration of the solution space but not a fundamental indictment of flatbed technology.

"We shouldn't say EVs are good because they aren't good in all ways" is... kind of a dumb point. And in particular the specific point you tried to make is, as I pointed out, actually incorrect for the bulk of actual owners.

>You have to think about gas too, you're just used to it.

Have you travelled in the past 40 years? There are gas stations on every corner across the USA. Even the smallest hovels have them.

> Even the smallest hovels have them.

Not sure what you are looking for, but it isn't sensible to use "hovel" (="a small, squalid, unpleasant, or simply constructed dwelling") here. "Hamlet", maybe?

I never think about gas. In 20 some years driving only once I ran into an empty gas station during an end of holiday weekend rush. I just drove to the next station and got gas there. I can drive around with less 1/4 tank knowing I can stop at gas station and in and out in 5 minutes with a full tank of gas.

> And the future has enough fast chargers that it's hard to be caught out no matter where you go

For sure. I will happily sit here waiting for the future. It’s just probably good to acknowledge this isn’t the future yet.

Most homes have access to 240V outlets that charge much faster, at a rate of 20 to 30 miles of range per hour.

The solution to this is an extra 240V AC circuit that’s basically the same wiring you already have to power your electric clothes drier or oven. It isn’t free, but it’s also a modest one-time investment that will eventually have to be made (either by you or some future owner), since it will soon be expected in the same way that electric/gas lines are expected to be available in the kitchen and laundry room. The upshot of making this investment is that it pays for itself in 2-3 years worth of gas savings, and your “tank” is always full.

The anecdote was about charging a car on a 120V 15A wall outlet, the kind of thing that a toaster usually saturates. Absolutely not about charging a car with household electricity.

Does your home have an electric dryer or oven? Use a circuit like that. Does it have that outlet in the garage or parking area right now? No, likely not. But the question is about running cable, not "introducing new stresses for an inferior solution".

> that translated to needing about 5.5 hours of charging

How much time do you have available for charging? I'd have thought you'd spend a lot more than 6 hours a day at home. And chargers at work would allow charging the car near constantly when it's not being driven (other than days when you travel elsewhere), so I think that's an important part of transitioning to EVs.

I did the same thing. My daily use averaged 24 miles and 110v worked just fine.

Since then, batteries have gotten bigger, I have a 220v charger than can easily fill the large battery overnight with cheaper power, many parking garages have chargers, and high speed fast chargers have become commonplace.

I kind of wonder if the people purchasing cars for these theoretical events have a first aid kit in their car, emergency food in the house, or savings for a few months out of work.

I think getting a older big gas SUV with plenty of storage space is a good backup. You can haul things too big or dirty for your EV, use gasoline when electricity for some reason doesn't work, and haul around a big family visiting from out-of-town. You can also lend it to the people who don't understand EVs.

An acquaintance of mine lost his lease on house he was renting and temporarily moved his family out of state while looking for a new place here. As you can imagine, this turned into many months of them being gone.

He left his Chevy Bolt parked across the street from his former residence (or rather, across from the construction site that replaced it).

Eventually, the car got impounded and I got roped in to go bail it out and bring it to another friend of ours who had space to store it legally.

When I got the car, the battery was almost completely discharged. When dropped off the car I don't actually know how it was still moving. We plugged it in to a regual home wall outlet be cause that's all there was. The car computer said it would take SIXTY HOURS to charge to full.

That's two and a half DAYS.

Completely unsurprised. Just consider the energy density of gasoline or a modern EV battery.

The fact remains that a full EV battery can really take you a long ways.

It really can't.

A fully charge bolt (when it's still new) will take you about 250 miles.

You won't find a gas car that can't go 300 miles on a tank.

I currently have an old prius (which is admittedly far above average compared to regular cars) and it can go 450 miles on a tank.

And that tank gets filled up faster than the time it takes to walk inside and buy a bag of chips.

Very normal. You have to consider how long you need to 'replenish' the the range you used from your daily driving.

Assuming you plug in when you get home, you likely have ~10 hours of charging time. Standard wall outlet is 12A continous, so 1440W. Most 120V is relatively 'inefficient' due to needing to run all the cooling infrastructure which tends to be a fixed overhead. A good number is roughly 4 miles of range per hour of charge on a 120V standard outlet for most normal vehicles (Bolt, Model 3, Ioniq 5, etc)

So, as long as you're driving less than 40 miles per day, 120V outlet will always keep you topped up. If you charge longer (i.e., plug in at 8PM, leave at 7AM) then the numbers look even better. Some considerations for cold climate and whatnot, but 40 miles in a day is a good commute.

> That's two and a half DAYS.

yes, the largest possible charge on the slowest possible charger is not fast. That's why a higher capacity "level 2" charger at home is recommended.

The upside is that you don't have to attend this home charging. It's usually done overnight while the car owner sleeps. So the vehicle has "a full tank of gas" automatically, every morning.

This reply was to someone saying regular wall plug charging was good enough.

It's often good enough for most people.

0-100 is incredibly rare. If I had to deal with that commenter's situation back when I was only on 120V and actually needed 100% soon (this is getting pretty contrived,) I would've charged to 10-20% and then gone to a level 3 charger. Admittedly, this still isn't going to be fast -- but it's not going to take 60 hours.

> near the limit of what's practical without using a fast charger

"fast charger" usually means one of those fancy DC systems, not just a bigger outlet.

Confusingly, Level 2 charging can refer both to 220V AC or fast DC charging. Context is key, but home level 2 (AC) can get up to about 20kW, while DC Level 2 easily delivers up to 400kW.

"Fast charger" in the context of home charging means 20-50A at 220V, which is enough to fully charge the battery in a few hours. Basically, you can roll in on fumes at midnight, plug in and go to sleep, and wake up and leave the next morning with a full tank.

I’ve always heard DC Fast Charging called “DC Fast Charging” or “Level 3”. I don’t think I’ve ever heard it called Level 2.

Because if you use the wrong terminology it's more clear, but SAE J1772 specifies two levels of DC fast charging.

No one calls DC fast-charging "level 2". It's a mistake. Let's not confuse the issue by starting now.

I dunno what you want to happen here: SAE J1772 refers to level 1 and level 2 DC fast charging.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAE_J1772

I stand corrected. Someone has called it that.

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