Car Talk recommends adding a dedicated 50 amp circuit to your home. Have your electrician install it, and have the municipality issue a work permit and do an inspection. Then, select the Level 2 charger that best suits your particular tastes and planned usage profile. Contact online >>
Car Talk recommends adding a dedicated 50 amp circuit to your home. Have your electrician install it, and have the municipality issue a work permit and do an inspection. Then, select the Level 2 charger that best suits your particular tastes and planned usage profile.
Car Talk recommends that you have your electrician hard-wire your Level 2 home EV charger. This can help prevent nuisance breaker tripping, and it is a safer arrangement as well.
Many highly-rated Level 2 home EV chargers are not UL-listed. Almost all use UL-listed components. It is an advantage, but many popular EV chargers are not UL-listed.
As electric vehicles become more and more popular, Americans are starting to install them in ever-greater numbers in their homes. Experts on the Car Talk team test and review electric vehicles nearly every week. If we''ve learned one thing from living with EVs, it''s that a home EV charger is essential for a happy electric vehicle ownership experience.
Our list of the Best Chargers For 2024 is still valid. The chargers on that list are all outstanding choices. For this article, we took a slightly different approach for Best Overall EV Chargers. We looked at what chargers and charging companies were creating the biggest buzz in social media clubs and set out to test the popular models ourselves to see if they lived up to their reputations. For 2024, the chargers we offer as best picks are all affordable, easy to install, widely available, and simple to use. We''ve used them ourselves with many different EVs, and they were trouble-free.
Home EV chargers are referred to as Level 2 chargers. They operate on 240 volts, not the 120 your typical household plugs use. When installed properly, they have a dedicated 50 or 60-amp circuit and breaker. We suggest always asking your electrician to hard-wire your wall-mounted home charger. It''s safer, you can operate it at a slightly higher power level, and you are less likely to have any false ground-fault breaker resets to deal with.
The first step in setting up your home EV charger is to contact a licensed electrician. Pick one with good reviews and a lot of experience installing EV chargers. Your electrician can visit and evaluate whether your home electric service panel can accommodate a new circuit. If so, you move on to pulling a permit from your local municipality, and the electrician will add the new circuit and then set up and install the charger you choose.
Some older homes require some service upgrades before you can install your charger. Don't be surprised if this is the case. Your author has upgraded the panels in three homes to accommodate new circuits. Speak to your electrician about the details.
Home chargers that mount on the wall of your garage or outside your home on a post or a wall come in two basic varieties. Those that you simply plug into the car, and those that offer an app with features such as a timer so you can charge at night to perhaps enjoy a discounted electricity cost. There is very little difference in price between these two options.
The standard in the industry has become a 48/40 amp charger served by a 50 or 60-amp circuit. This setup will add roughly 20 to 35 miles of range to your vehicle per hour it is plugged in. Temperature, state of charge, your vehicle''s efficiency, and your particular vehicle''s onboard charger capacity determine the exact rate at which charge is input. I write "48/40 amp" because chargers are rated a bit higher if you hard-wire them versus using a plug-and-socket arrangement.
Home EV chargers operated in a garage or outside in temperate climates all perform very similarly. The quality, safety, ease of use, and features are what set them apart from one another. We take all of these into account, plus two other metrics. We consider Amazon scores from owners and the score earned in testing by one of our colleagues, Tom Moloughney, on his review page, State of Charge, if the charger has been tested. Tom goes deep on all aspects of ownership, including drop-testing and extreme cold weather testing.
Emporia has been our top pick since this story was first published, and our testing of additional chargers hasn't changed our opinion. Emporia''s unit remains very competitive and has recently been introduced with an NACS charging handle. As our readers may know, the industry is moving away from the J-Plug that most non-Tesla EVs have been using to the Tesla standard. We tested the new NACS version of the Emporia charger on a borrowed Tesla Model 3, and it performed very well. It can even automatically open the Tesla charge door bay, just like Tesla-branded chargers can.
Emporia is a company that specializes in home energy management solutions. The company offers circuit energy monitoring, solar and storage products, and a novel way to avoid having to upgrade your panel (in some homes).
We found the Emporia 48 amp EV charger to offer a lot of features, UL listing, plus an app at a very attractive price point. We also like how this company seems laser-focused on home energy management. With its Load Manager system, owners who have a maxed-out panel may find that they can avoid costly upgrades.
The Emporia charger comes with a handle hook and cable hook built into the front of the unit. This will work best inside since the hook leaves the handle''s opening pointing upwards. The unit also has an easy-to-view LED status light bar. The app that comes with the Emporia unit loaded easily, was easy to set up, and is easy to understand. We opted for white, and the Emporia unit looks modern and neat in our garage. It is also available in black.
The Lectron V-Box series of chargers is our second choice. If you want something simple, the Lectron V-Box EV Charger is the way to go. There is no app. The operation is basically plug in and charge. Mounting is simple, and the charger just works right out of the box. You don''t have to do any app setup because there is no app. New for 2024 is a wifi-enabled version of this charger called the V-Box Pro that does have an app. Lectron has also added an NACS-compatible V-Box Pro to its portfolio.
We have tested and owned multiple chargers from Lectron over the past five years. They offer simplicity, reliability, and the J-hook and handle retainer accessories are so good we use them when we test other chargers! Of all the chargers we have tested, the V-Box''s large, lit, and clear front display makes the most sense to us. It tells you how much charge is going in and how much you have input during your charging period. What else do you really need to know? Well, temperature is handy, and the V-Box displays that as well.
The cable is 20 feet long. There is a dip-switch setting on the unit that allows you to de-power it if your home circuit is less than 50 amps. Overall, the V-Box gives you everything you want in a simple plug-and-play charger and nothing you don't want to bother with.
The EVIQO Level 2 home wall mount charger is an interesting unit for several reasons. First, it is the smallest charger of its type we''ve seen. Second, it uses some novel anti-theft hardware to ensure that it is not removed from your exterior wall. Third, its 25-foot charging cord was among the longest we''ve tested, reaching end to end in our garage.
This Level 2 charger has an easy-to-download and easy-to-use app. Its price is also very competitive, tied with the lowest-cost chargers we''ve tested of this style. Finally, this charger was selected as State of Charge''s top pick for 2024.
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