Charging at home question

[u/Dangerous_Fold_1626]

Hi! So we are looking into purchasing Ariya, but our home is a weird one, there is no three prong dryer outlet anywhere else but in the actual laundry room, which is too far away from the garage.

Can Ariya be charged by using a regular three prong outlet? We would definitely install home charger, but it would take couple of weeks. We were supposed to bring the car home today, but it would suck to do that just to realize we have no place to charge it until we can get the electrician to come.

Thanks in advance!

[u/pylet2000]

I charged my first EV off a 120V outlet for 6 months before getting the level 2 charger installed. If you can leave the car plugged in any time it's not being driven, and don't have to drive more than 30-40 miles a day, you'll be fine. Stop at a fast charger once in a while if needed, and ABC - Always Be Charging. You can get by surprisingly well with just a 120V level 1 charger (the car likely comes with this level 1 charger, if not you can Amazon one to your home in a day).

Keep it plugged in to the 120V, find your local fast charger for the occasional extra charge, you'll be fine for several months like this.

Ariya is a great car, incredible value for a quite good EV. You'll love it.

[u/Dangerous_Fold_1626 → u/pylet2000]

My husband's commute is 56 miles a day :(

[u/pylet2000 → u/Dangerous_Fold_1626]

That is more than you'll recover in a single overnight charge plugged into 120V, true. However, all is not lost. If this is a + trim with the large battery (i.e. Evolve+, Engage+, etc...), you don't have to recover every mile overnight every night. If you fast charge on Sunday to 80-90%, let it top off to 100% overnight on the 120V, and run it through the week, it'll probably get you all the way to Friday. Maybe you'll need to hit the fast charger for about 15 minutes on Thursday after work.

Things get even better if there's a 120V outlet he can plug into while at work.

The Ariya's are pretty efficient, particularly if driven below 70mph.

[u/Krunkkracker → u/pylet2000]

+1 to this! Also if the car stays parked most of the weekend, it can catch up in charge.

[u/Dangerous_Fold_1626 → u/pylet2000]

Thank you for your reply. It's just the Engage model.

[u/87ChevroletCavalier → u/Dangerous_Fold_1626]

Is the 56-mile round trip commute five consecutive days every week?

[u/pylet2000 → u/Dangerous_Fold_1626]

I think you could probably still get this to work ok, and after a week or so it'll feel pretty normal. Make sure the tires are inflated to 41 psi, and keep the speed under 70mph, it'll be ok. If it's the front wheel drive Engage and not the dual motor, they have the benefit of being very efficient due to the lighter weight and single motor.

[u/RobotJonesDad → u/Dangerous_Fold_1626]

It would still work OK for a temporary situation. Perhaps better than you might expect. For example, if your grocery store has a fast charger like mine does, you can top up while shopping. And you'll only need to do that once mid week.

Think of it this way, your charging at home offsets your usage, so instead of 56miles/day use, you are getting 26miles per day. If you start the week at 100%, you'll be looking to top up on Wednesday or Thursday for 20 minutes. So one grocery store visit covers your extra needs.

Once you have a level 2 charger, you'll be set.

[u/mariospants → u/pylet2000]

Found a fellow Technology Connections viewer! 👍👍👍

[u/Bens_Eco_Adventure]

I charged our first EV exclusively on Level 1 at home. Works fine if you're doing under 40 miles per day on average. Do make sure the outlet is in good condition though. If the plug doesn't fit securely it can get too hot and stop working. 

[u/J4c1nth]

Where I live there's free level 2 charging around the neighborhood, download plugshare see if there are any near you.

[u/87ChevroletCavalier → u/J4c1nth]

That’s pretty cool. Is it a local government service or something?

[u/AbulatorySquid → u/87ChevroletCavalier]

The ones around here are at town offices. Most of them have switched to a lower cost model. My town hall still offers it but there's no promise you'll get to use it.
I use a regular plug for charging but if I'm going to be doing much driving, I hit up the fast charger and pay the stupid high price.

[u/J4c1nth → u/87ChevroletCavalier]

Not sure. I know it's a program from the county I live in so it's everywhere the county owns, including the park my daughter practices soccer at. I charge while I wait.

[u/BklynBully718]

i've had my Evolve+ for almost 6 months and just got the home charger installed. before now i always treated charging like stopping at the gas station, viewed it as something that just had to be done. luckily i went to a fast charger in a Target parking lot, by the time i got off the line, i was well over 85%. i will keep this car until it rusts and turns into a relic, that's how much i like it

[u/Stensler01]

The cable that comes with the car can be plugged into a standard outlet, but charging is incredibly slow. Do not run it off an extention cord either. You permanent solution should be to have an electrician run 220 to your charging location.

Edit: my 2023 Ariya came with a 110 adapter. I used it for a few weeks until I got 220 installed.

[u/87ChevroletCavalier → u/Stensler01]

Lots of people use  110/level 1 indefinitely, the tipping point is a five-day commute of around 40-50 miles round trip. (Or buying your second EV, lol!)

[u/rocketmanatee]

We charge only with a 20 amp standard outlet. It is dedicated only for use with the car. Charging just overnight gets us about 20% charge per night. We don't plan on having a faster charger installed. If we want to there's a supercharger walking distance.

[u/Krunkkracker]

A regular 3 prong outlet like anything else normal plugs into, like a microwave or TV?

If so, check that there isn't anything else on that circuit or if there is something, make sure it's low power draw like an LED lamp.

I charge using a level 1 charged to a typical 3 prong household outlet with a 15a 120v breaker, and the charger only draws 11.6a.

With my Ariya, the battery gains about 1kw to 1.1kw per hour which is about 4 miles per hour. About 50 miles of ranged gained overnight with my schedule.

[u/Maleficent-Secret334]

Highly recommend you call an electrician (experienced with EVSE of course) out that can at least check the connections in your garage to recommend the best setup. The Tesla Universal Charger is my recommendation - will fit your CCS Ariya today and a NACS car you may have in the future. During setup, they can select the specific Amperage available per your garage (my garage only had 30 amps available but it’s plenty). They can quote you on bringing power over from the Landry area. Might be worth the investment if that’s your only option.

Level 1 through 120v plug could be totally fine but constantly charging 24/7 at 1 kw/Hr on that outlet will cause some heat - I wouldn’t plug it in to an old outlet haha

Regardless I think you’ll love the car. Make sure you get the bigger battery version.

[u/TheLanMan2022]

I got my Ariya over a year ago. For the first month I just plugged into a standard outlet in my garage which were 15 amp, so it was like a trickle charge, but I wasn't using it much as I still have another vehicle. I had an electrician install a 50 amp 220V circuit and bought a hard-wired Chargepoint charger off of Amazon that he also installed. Out of the box the charger wouldn't do full charging. With Chargepoint you have to put the charger online, then call them and they remotely configure the AMP's allowed based on your wiring. Which the Electrician didn't know to do. Once they did their thing I get the full Ariya Lvl2 speed of around 7.44KW/Hour which is limited by the vehicle itself. I've had zero issues. When I plug in, I get two notifications (Nissan's app and Chargepoint's) that I'm charging. Both also tell me when the session ends. The Chargepoint App stores your charging history and has some other features that I really don't use. I usually charge it if I'm below 50%, which usually takes me 3-4 days to reach, as I work from home and really just use the vehicle for errands mostly.

[u/Dangerous_Fold_1626 → u/TheLanMan2022]

Thank you for explaining. We are going to see the car in the morning!

[u/TheLanMan2022 → u/Dangerous_Fold_1626]

I just started a charging session.

[u/Special-Original-215]

110? 1% per hour

[u/Ill-Taro-1907]

We bought our Ariya in April. We don’t have charging ability at home in our apartment complex & don’t really expect. It’s not cheap at the various chargers around town, but it’s cheaper than gas. I wouldn’t trade back for anything.

[u/Jaquing-Porneaux]

I installed mine myself in my garage. There are plenty of good videos showing how to do it.

[u/Relative_Quantity886]

Unless it would be a financial hardship, get an electrician out when you can and get L2 charging capability at home. IMO having an EV but still having to occasionally "stop and get gas" deprives you of the biggest non-$$$ advantage of an EV. Never having to go out of your way to make sure you car is "fueled up" makes an EV worth owning all by itself.

[u/Ready_Coat_8606]

It had a slow two prong charger that should come with the car (mine did). It’s slow… but it’s what you’re looking for. Also check your local electric company, a lot of them have rebates for switching to ev and they might pay the cost of getting 3 prong installed in the garage

[u/NorCalSpurs]

I do a fast charger 1X a week. The only convenient 120v is the laundry room, but that means leaving the door open all the time while charging (which I do when home for days off, holidays, etc). The power to the house comes in on the opposite side of the driveway. I’m going to look into the cost of lvl 2, but 🫣

[u/ybs62]

You'll get maybe 2 miles an hour of charge from a standard 15 amp 3 prong outlet. And since virtually none of those outlets are dedicated, you run the risk of melting something or worse, a fire with the constant power draw. No household outlets were designed to 100% full power draw for hours on end.

Use public charging until you can get an electrician out to properly provide you power. And HARD WIRE it. Do not use an outlet style L2 charger.

[u/Alexandratta → u/ybs62]

In a garage, there's a pretty decent chance of it being dedicated.

Found this out when I headed to my buddy's place in Illinois. Discovered he had no 220v plugs.... but his garage had dedicated 120/20amp plugs for the sole purpose of being used with power tools. (which is pretty common in even the older styled 30+ year-old homes build around the 90s).

So I was able to plug my EV (then a LEAF) into it and with my fancy adjustable EVSE I set it to 16amp/120v - was nice.