Tell me about chargers

[Lost in the Scout]

I'm looking for general advice on electric car chargers. I'm familiar with electrical installs, and don't need advice there, but i have zero experience with electric vehicles.

Are all Level 2 chargers similar? Any reason not to go to Lowes and grab whatever hardwired level 2 system is one the shelf? Should I wait and see if Scout is going to releases something?

 

[J Alynn]

I'm looking for general advice on electric car chargers. I'm familiar with electrical installs, and don't need advice there, but i have zero experience with electric vehicles.

Are all Level 2 chargers similar? Any reason not to go to Lowes and grab whatever hardwired level 2 system is one the shelf? Should I wait and see if Scout is going to releases something?

There are some good discussions already underway on chargers. If you use the search function and chargers it may help or maybe someone else recalls the thread. It helped me out a lot

 

[SpaceEVDriver]

You should wait an see what Scout offers. Many manufacturers offer a charger with the vehicle, but not all do.

If you're impatient, you have a pile of questions you want to ask yourself:

• How many miles a day do you drive?
• How aggressive is your acceleration?
• How much of your usual daily drive is on the highway?
• How often do you road trip
• How often do road trips or long day trips happen back-to-back?
• Will you be parking inside a garage?
• Do you care about controlling the charger with your phone?
• Do you have an electric utility that might offer a discount for a smart charger?
  • Are you willing to let the utility control when your can charge?

We don't know the size of the battery on the Scouts, but it's likely to be in the 180-200 kWh size range.
We also don't know the maximum L2 charge rate the Scouts will allow. Most EVs max out at 11 kW charge rate on L2. The Lightnings up to and including 2023 model years had two L2 chargers built in with their extended range batteries, so those of us with at least a 100A space in our panels could get 80A of charge, or almost 23 kW.

If you drive less than about 40 miles a day most days, and the Scout gets about 2 miles/kWh (pretty typical for this sized vehicle), then you'll use about 20 kWh per day of battery. You'll be charging for around 8-12 hours a day at home, so the daily use will be replaced every night and you don't need a massive charger.

However, if you sometimes take a road trip, get home at low state of charge and need to go some distance the next day, having an 11 kW (60 Amp circuit, 50A hard-wired charger) charge rate, would give you more flexibility.

There's even more to consider, but this will get you started.

 

[RebelliousPeasant]

I'm looking for general advice on electric car chargers. I'm familiar with electrical installs, and don't need advice there, but i have zero experience with electric vehicles.

Are all Level 2 chargers similar? Any reason not to go to Lowes and grab whatever hardwired level 2 system is one the shelf? Should I wait and see if Scout is going to releases something?

@SpaceEVDriver brings up a lot of excellent points but at the end of the day and to answer your question simply that all level 2 EVSE's do basically the same thing. They're all just fancy switches that safely allow AC electricity to flow into your EV.

That said; some are basic and some are fancy with integrated wifi and apps; some are made of plastic and some are made of metal; some look like basic electrical boxes and others look like alien technology. To that end it doesn't really matter which one you buy, they all do the same basic job but your personal preferences and budget will likely be the determining factors on which EVSE you ultimately go with.

When people ask us which EVSE to get, for now we usually recommend the Tesla Universal Wall connector. It's the best value for money right now for most people and the most future proof. It's a decent price and offers enough durability that it should last a long time in most climates and has enough smarts that it should suit most people's needs.

Personally however I prefer EVSEs that are simpler and more robust so I went with a Flo G5. It cost about as much as the Tesla charger and is technically less capable making it expensive for what it is but I've had it on an exterior wall at the front of my house in all weather conditions for almost a decade now and it has never let me down once.

Some people get hung on the speed of Level 2 chargers, whether they're 7 kW or 11kW or more, 32 A vs 50 A vs 80 A. Generally the higher the amps the more expensive the install and the less likely you'll find room on the panel for it. Regardless of power they're all going to charge a given EV basically overnight so I personally don't think it matters all that much. More and more people are going with 11 kW and that's fine. Mine is 7 kW and that has served me well across three plug-in vehicles for almost a decade and does the job just fine

Personally I optimized for durability, simplicity, and cold weather performance. That's why I spent more for what on the surface looks like a pretty basic "dumb" charger. I wanted a charger that always works, no question or doubt, no matter what the weather. For the same money I could have bought a "smart" charger with an app and wifi and stuff like the Tesla one but I see it more as an appliance that 'just needs to work'. The Flo I have is made of cast aluminum (so it won't degrade from UV or get brittle at cold temps), has a silicon-covered charge cable (to stay flexible at cold temps), and has no smarts whatsoever so there's less likelihood it'll get bricked by an errant update or stop working due to software or connectivity issues. Pretty much all EVs have built in timers and apps so I just do that kind of stuff from the car instead of the charger.

As SpaceEVDriver said though, ultimately it's up to you and what you want and how much you want to spend but they all basically do the same thing.

 

[J Alynn]

Thank you both for the insight!

 

[Lost in the Scout]

You should wait an see what Scout offers. Many manufacturers offer a charger with the vehicle, but not all do.

If you're impatient, you have a pile of questions you want to ask yourself:

• How many miles a day do you drive?
• How aggressive is your acceleration?
• How much of your usual daily drive is on the highway?
• How often do you road trip
• How often do road trips or long day trips happen back-to-back?
• Will you be parking inside a garage?
• Do you care about controlling the charger with your phone?
• Do you have an electric utility that might offer a discount for a smart charger?
  • Are you willing to let the utility control when your can charge?

We don't know the size of the battery on the Scouts, but it's likely to be in the 180-200 kWh size range.
We also don't know the maximum L2 charge rate the Scouts will allow. Most EVs max out at 11 kW charge rate on L2. The Lightnings up to and including 2023 model years had two L2 chargers built in with their extended range batteries, so those of us with at least a 100A space in our panels could get 80A of charge, or almost 23 kW.

If you drive less than about 40 miles a day most days, and the Scout gets about 2 miles/kWh (pretty typical for this sized vehicle), then you'll use about 20 kWh per day of battery. You'll be charging for around 8-12 hours a day at home, so the daily use will be replaced every night and you don't need a massive charger.

However, if you sometimes take a road trip, get home at low state of charge and need to go some distance the next day, having an 11 kW (60 Amp circuit, 50A hard-wired charger) charge rate, would give you more flexibility.

There's even more to consider, but this will get you started.

I didn’t think about checking with the utility company about chargers. Turns out they have a good incentive program.

I had calculated a 30 amp circuit would be plenty for my usecase. But it looks like the utility would prefer larger, making it easier to charge during off peak times. If they are picking up part of the bill, I can certainly pull in 6 awg instead of 10. That’s the biggest circuit I can do without pulling new feeders to my garage sub panel. I don’t see any info about my utility automating charge times though.

 

[RebelliousPeasant]

I didn’t think about checking with the utility company about chargers. Turns out they have a good incentive program.

I had calculated a 30 amp circuit would be plenty for my usecase. But it looks like the utility would prefer larger, making it easier to charge during off peak times. If they are picking up part of the bill, I can certainly pull in 6 awg instead of 10. That’s the biggest circuit I can do without pulling new feeders to my garage sub panel. I don’t see any info about my utility automating charge times though.

Most utilities won't have automated charging times yet. I'm currently a member of a small pilot program here in Ottawa with my local utility as they explore how best to implement such technology but it's early days still and not a solved problem. For now most utilities will offer some form of time-of-use pricing as a blunt way of trying to modify demand during certain times. You can absolutely set up you EV to charge only off-peak or during certain time windows based on that pricing if you want, either from within the car's software of if you have one of the 'smart' chargers I mentioned earlier. That's what most EV owners currently do. My car for example is set to start charging at 11:02 pm which is during the $0.026 ultra-low overnight pricing period. (yes, that's two and a half cents per kWh!)

The really savvy EV owner's even set their charge timer to start at an arbitrary time down to the minute during the night. One of the medium-term problems that utilities are looking to mitigate is having a bunch of EVs - all with precise, GPS-based clocks - hitting the grid at the exact moment when off-peak pricing starts. It's not a problem today and likely won't be a problem for several years but once everyone has switched over to EVs it could cause a demand spike as the clocks all tick over at the exact same moment. That's why my local utility is playing with automated demand management solutions now, so they have it ready to implement when the time comes.

 

[LastDayScout]

@SpaceEVDriver brings up a lot of excellent points but at the end of the day and to answer your question simply that all level 2 EVSE's do basically the same thing. They're all just fancy switches that safely allow AC electricity to flow into your EV.

That said; some are basic and some are fancy with integrated wifi and apps; some are made of plastic and some are made of metal; some look like basic electrical boxes and others look like alien technology. To that end it doesn't really matter which one you buy, they all do the same basic job but your personal preferences and budget will likely be the determining factors on which EVSE you ultimately go with.

When people ask us which EVSE to get, for now we usually recommend the Tesla Universal Wall connector. It's the best value for money right now for most people and the most future proof. It's a decent price and offers enough durability that it should last a long time in most climates and has enough smarts that it should suit most people's needs.

Personally however I prefer EVSEs that are simpler and more robust so I went with a Flo G5. It cost about as much as the Tesla charger and is technically less capable making it expensive for what it is but I've had it on an exterior wall at the front of my house in all weather conditions for almost a decade now and it has never let me down once.

Some people get hung on the speed of Level 2 chargers, whether they're 7 kW or 11kW or more, 32 A vs 50 A vs 80 A. Generally the higher the amps the more expensive the install and the less likely you'll find room on the panel for it. Regardless of power they're all going to charge a given EV basically overnight so I personally don't think it matters all that much. More and more people are going with 11 kW and that's fine. Mine is 7 kW and that has served me well across three plug-in vehicles for almost a decade and does the job just fine

Personally I optimized for durability, simplicity, and cold weather performance. That's why I spent more for what on the surface looks like a pretty basic "dumb" charger. I wanted a charger that always works, no question or doubt, no matter what the weather. For the same money I could have bought a "smart" charger with an app and wifi and stuff like the Tesla one but I see it more as an appliance that 'just needs to work'. The Flo I have is made of cast aluminum (so it won't degrade from UV or get brittle at cold temps), has a silicon-covered charge cable (to stay flexible at cold temps), and has no smarts whatsoever so there's less likelihood it'll get bricked by an errant update or stop working due to software or connectivity issues. Pretty much all EVs have built in timers and apps so I just do that kind of stuff from the car instead of the charger.

As SpaceEVDriver said though, ultimately it's up to you and what you want and how much you want to spend but they all basically do the same thing.

I’ll also say the Grizzl-e that is made in Canada is quite good and well made. Also, don’t forget that the flexible fast charger the vehicle usually comes with is pretty efficient with the 240v cable.