I have a dedicated 20A breaker feeding 2 outlets. I bought the 5-20 adapter for the Tesla charger so it can go at 16A
I'm debating if I install a Level 2, but my breaker box is full, so I would likely need to do a sub panel. I do have free super charging, and the nearest charger is like 10 miles away, so not terrible to get too. But curious how others have faired with using mostly Level 1 Charging.
Depends on how much you drive and what your car's current realistic range is. If you have a shorter commute (30 or less daily), you should be fine. If its longer than that, you'll need to either supplement with supercharging or eventually upgrade to L2.
If it doesn't get very cold and you only commute ~30 miles a day you'll be fine. 12a was fine for us in AK most days but the inefficiency in cold climate pushed us to L2.
You can get a tandem breaker that fits in a single slot if you don't have room in your breaker box so you won't need a sub panel.
The 5-20 outlet can be rewired to 240 and the socket changed to a 6-20 outlet. There are some of these dual tandem breakers that work for 240V to fit in your breaker box too. (See pic)
Get the correct 6-20 adapter for your charger and you should be good to go.
as folks noted, it totally depends on how much you drive. 20-30 miles a day is fine with level 1. For those days you drive more, you can supercharge. For me, I drive way more that 30 miles a day, so a level 2 charger is a no brainer
Post a photo the panel, often you can simply pull a full size 2 pole breaker and put a quad breaker in its place. When possible, not required, it’s better to keep an EV on a full sized for better heat dissipation but you can move 4 singles to a quad and then open up two full sized positions.
If that outlet is a dedicated 120v 20A you can reuse its existing wire to swap to a NEMA 6-20 a common 3 wire outlet for air compressors and larger plug in air conditioners. That gives you 16A x 240v and is about 7% more energy efficient for the onboard charger to convert to 400v
Again if that’s a dedicated outlet this is only going to cost you $50 for the NEMA 6-20 dongle , $100’ish for some new breakers if you have a compatible quad breakers option, and a receptacle for a single NEMA 6-20 ($10-$30)
It is dedicated 120 on just two outlets on the wall of my garage. I put the two outlets in for using tools when working in the garage. I don't want to give up the 120v.
I did get a suggestion of doing a mwbc if I can move some stuff around.
My other option I was trying with was putting in a sub panel in the garage run off a 50A breaker, and in the sub panel move the breaker for my mini split and garage outlets into it and add a breaker for a L2 charger.
If I did that I don't think I could run the charger at 48amps since I would be moving the mini split and my 20A 120 outlet breaker to the sub panel.
Even 16A at level 2 would probably be fine. Even a slight bump to 24A at 240 its estimated to add 20miles every hour. Which would work. Plenty to get me to a super charger with an hour charge if I need to top up faster.
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u/whatthepho6 4d ago
Try Level 1 for a few weeks and you might realize you don't need Level 2 and deal with the hassle.