Quote:
Originally Posted by Slava
There are options for the EV charger, and it's not as large an issue as some suggest. If you think you'll go this route, Emporia makes a wall charger to which you can add a monitor, which will ensure that you're not overdrawing the electricity. For example, you have a 100A service and want to add a charger. Some people will tell you that you need to upgrade to 200A, which will cost you about $15k. You don't need to do that, with this. You could put a 40A breaker in, and the monitor will track how power the whole house uses, and limit the EV charger to what's available. You could also set a timer and have it charge overnight, when there is no draw, so that you can charge at the full 40A.
I suggest that it is entirely unnecessary. Just charging at 16A is fine; you don't need the absolute fastest charge. You generally charge to 80% anyway, and it depends on how regularly you need to drive, say, 500 km a day. I would suggest that the overall range anxiety and issues like that are way overblown.
|
Very much agree with this. My wife and I have 2 EVs that we charge on standard level 1 plugs without issue.
In the future, we'll likely add a level 2 charger just to ensure we have no issues topping up after heavy driving days when needed, but it hasn't been required at all for our regular driving.
With regards to energy usage, we found that both EVs cost about 10% of what it would take to fill their ICE equivalents with gas.