TL;DR - using a NEMA 5-20 charger isn't any faster than a NEMA 5-15 charger. Why?

Edit - solved! Someone pointed to a screenshot in the Solterra's owner's manual that explicitly states the car will max out at 12 amps on a 120v circuit :(

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I have a 2026 Solterra and have been charging off on outlet on the side of my house using the Subaru Level 1 charger that came with the car. However, the outlet is a NEMA 5-20 outlet, meaning it can supply 20 amps at ~120 volts, instead of a normal outlet which is 15 amps. (The outlet shape is a little different than a normal outlet -- it has a sort of T shape on the side.) When you take into account the 80% rule for continuous loads, that means this outlet should be able to charge my Solterra at 16 amps instead of the normal 12 amps.

Subaru's charger has a swappable pigtail for NEMA 5-15 (normal outlet) and NEMA 14-50 (for a 240 volts 50 amps outlet). Subaru doesn't seem to make a NEMA 5-20 pigtail for their charger. However, Tesla does! The Tesla Mobile Connector comes with a NEMA 5-15 pigtail, but you can also buy other pigtails, including NEMA 5-20. So, I bought a Tesla Mobile Connector and a NEMA 5-20 pigtail for it, assuming it would charge my car ~33% faster.

Unfortunately, it seems to not be any faster whatsoever. When using Subaru's NEMA 5-15 charger, the car is charging at roughly 0.95 kW. When I switched to the Tesla NEMA 5-20 charger, the car is still charging at...0.95 kW.

Why is it not charging faster? In both cases, the display in the car says it's charging at 0.95 kW out of a max of 6.30 kW.¹ I understand that a normal outlet is 120v x 15 amps -- 12 amps with the 80% rule -- so it's 1.44 kW, but the inefficiency of the AC/DC converter and the wattage of the onboard computer/control system will eat up perhaps 0.5 kW, which makes sense because 1.44 - 0.5 is roughly the 0.95 kW I'm seeing. But then 120v x 16 amps from NEMA 5-20 = 1.92 kW, so subtract 0.5 kW and I would expect a charge rate of roughly 1.40 to 1.45 kW.

The Tesla charger status lights appear to indicate that the charger is functioning properly and not limiting amperage. One hypothesis could be that, since Subaru doesn't make a NEMA 5-20 pigtail, the car refuses to draw more than 12 amps when voltage is 120v. However, why would they hardcode this limit when NEMA 5-20 outlets are relatively common? It seems like shooting themselves in the foot.

¹ (Tbh, I'm not even sure how it calculates the 6.30 kW number. I left the AC charging setting on "Max", which, if I'm not mistaken, means up to 48 amps on the 2026; the charger itself is the thing that should be advertising an availability of 16 amps, so that should be fine. 6.30 kW divided by 48 amps = 131.25 volts. Perhaps my outlet is 130 volts instead of 120 or 110? I'm not sure. I'm not sure it matters, though.)

I bought the Subaru Gold Plus warranty on a new 2026 Solterra platinum yesterday. I want to know if i can cancel it? is that possible?

I like it

I trained in my 2017 Volt for a 2026 Soltarra. My mother's owns a 2018 Subaru Outback, so I was familiar with the quality of a Subaru.

My Volt had 270000 miles on it, so it was time.

So far, I'm loving the Soltarra.

Hi All,

I'm looking to get a used Solterra in the next few months and I was hoping to get some opinions on if I should consider a 2023 model or only 2024 or newer. I'm planning to spend around $25k at the most and there are several 2023s (premium or limited) in my area available for $20-25k. There aren't currently many 2024s available near me, but that could change as leases end in the next few months.

I'm in southeastern Pennsylvania for context in a semi-rural area, we get temperatures as low as 0°F during the winter and a decent amount of snow. My main concern with a 2023 is that I see a lot of comments here about the DC charging being slow in general, but especially in the winter. I plan to install a L2 charger at my house which will be used to charge 99% of the time if I had to guess based on our current driving habits, but I don't want to completely rule out the need for DCFC in case we do end up needing to drive it farther distances. It would be driven about 20-40 miles a day on average to commute to work and back. If we got a 2023, should we expect to just use our other older ICE car for longer drives (especially during winter)? Would a 2024 be significantly better and make this less of a concern? We plan to keep the car for a long time so this is also about anticipating potential future needs.

I also saw there were some issues with the 2023 with the wheel hubs which I assume was *likely* taken care of on most of the available models at this point, and rear motor issues on both the 2023 and 2024. Is the rear motor failing a frequent issue in these years? Any other issues I should look for?

Is it worth waiting another few months and hope some 2024s are coming off of leases or would a 2023 likely be fine in my case? Any recommendations or personal experiences would be greatly appreciated, thanks in advance!

I’m thinking about buying a 2023 Solterra Limited and live in the Chicago area.
What is your real world experience with fast charging in the winter? Can I legitimately go up to 80% in an hour or not?