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The "standard" car charger is usually overkill—but your electrician might not know that [32:26]

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  • You explained how it's doable when you drive 60 miles

    Read it again. I said 60 miles the day after driving it to 0%. People don't "usually" need this.

    Average EV has 293 miles of range currently; even if you arrived home with 20% battery remaining and you only wanted to recharge to 80%,

    Thats 176 miles of range. People don't "usually" need that.

    At least once every few months we take a day trip to the nearest "big" city, which is 105 miles away.

    You said all of this already and I already replied to it.

    I'm certainly not saying that a L2 charger is a must for...most people. But I would not agree that L1 is enough for most people.

    🤔 Wat. Do you think there's like a L1.5 or something?

    Wat. Do you think there's like a L1.5 or something?

    There's the option of a level 1 charger at home, supplemented with an occasional stop at a fast charger.

    The L1 charger is not quite enough to keep up with their usage, but their usage isn't enough to make an L2 absolutely necessary.

  • In recent test of a German auto club they found out that it‘s cheaper/ more effective to charger faster. You loose a lot of energy if you load slow over hours.

    This energy is taken by the electricity of the car. So, while charging the car is on and takes some Watts. There are just a few brands that have decoupled the charger circuit from the overall electric circuit of the car.

    Can’t find the article now, but I think charging a PHEV through a standard power plug had about 20% energy lost. It was clearly visible that a charger is a good choice.

    Edit: link https://www-adac-de.translate.goog/rund-ums-fahrzeug/elektromobilitaet/laden/ladeverluste-elektroauto-studie/?_x_tr_sl=de&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=de&_x_tr_pto=wapp

    You‘ll loose

    • ~10-30% AC 2.3kw Standard Power Plug
    • ~ 5-10% DC 11kw Wallbox
    • Internal car electronics are crucial: Is the loading circuit de-coupled or the entire car On?
    • Temperature or pre-heating the battery before loading reduces losses at DC charging

    Did that account for battery lifetime, because if not, that could offset efficiency gains as fast charging degrades batteries.

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    I watched the video and it seems to make good points, but no matter how many times I see something related to US power circuits it just feels so ... antique? I have 3x25A fuses on the house and several 3x16A outlets around so getting 11kW out is just a matter of plugging in a socket.

    Obviously it would be a good thing to have controls so that water heater, floor heating or sauna stove aren't all on together but I think I've replaced a single 25A fuse over 10 years we've lived on this house and I'm pretty sure that was caused by a small(ish) surge on the grid and not our load.

  • This post did not contain any content.

    We have a granny charger that came with one of our EVs that we use as a backup and with our caravan to charge on sites that allow it. As I am UK it tops out at 2.4kw (10A @ 240v) and its annoyingly slow even charging for more than 12 hours at a time.

    Our main home charger is 7kw, and as we get cheap electric every night for 7p a KwH for 5 hours, we can charge about 40kwh in that time period. Means even our largest battery is fully charged in two nights from completely empty. If we tried that with the granny charger it would cost significantly more, as it would be up to 40p a KwH outside of the main hours and take 40 hours to charge the same amount.

    Now if you doing only a few miles a day, less than 40 miles (4 miles per KwH, charge for the 5 cheap hours using the cars charging timer, charge 10 KwH), it might work out ok for you, but then charging every day cannot be good for the battery? I know it would get annoying quite quickly. It would also get pretty painful if you have more than one EV, we have three between us and the kids, so its not remotely practical.

  • We have a granny charger that came with one of our EVs that we use as a backup and with our caravan to charge on sites that allow it. As I am UK it tops out at 2.4kw (10A @ 240v) and its annoyingly slow even charging for more than 12 hours at a time.

    Our main home charger is 7kw, and as we get cheap electric every night for 7p a KwH for 5 hours, we can charge about 40kwh in that time period. Means even our largest battery is fully charged in two nights from completely empty. If we tried that with the granny charger it would cost significantly more, as it would be up to 40p a KwH outside of the main hours and take 40 hours to charge the same amount.

    Now if you doing only a few miles a day, less than 40 miles (4 miles per KwH, charge for the 5 cheap hours using the cars charging timer, charge 10 KwH), it might work out ok for you, but then charging every day cannot be good for the battery? I know it would get annoying quite quickly. It would also get pretty painful if you have more than one EV, we have three between us and the kids, so its not remotely practical.

    Granny chargin', not triple phasing like you should.

  • I watched the video and it seems to make good points, but no matter how many times I see something related to US power circuits it just feels so ... antique? I have 3x25A fuses on the house and several 3x16A outlets around so getting 11kW out is just a matter of plugging in a socket.

    Obviously it would be a good thing to have controls so that water heater, floor heating or sauna stove aren't all on together but I think I've replaced a single 25A fuse over 10 years we've lived on this house and I'm pretty sure that was caused by a small(ish) surge on the grid and not our load.

    I'm not sure what you mean by this. Any modern US house would have a similar capability, it's just older homes that would struggle since there would never be a need for such high power devices in a garage.

    Most older garages would only need enough power to run a single lightbulb, if it was slightly newer, maybe a low power automatic garage door opener.

    It's the same in any country with buildings over 100 years old.

  • Granny chargin', not triple phasing like you should.

    You almost had me charging? You never had me charging - you never had your car charging, it had tripped the socket

    Pedantic but: 7kw isn't three phase in the UK, just 30A. Three phase electric can give you up to 22kw in the UK for charging, obviously not every EV can charge that fast, most only go up to 11kw AC. I would kill for that extra charging speed but I can't justify the extra cost and effort to get it fitted by the electric company

  • Did that account for battery lifetime, because if not, that could offset efficiency gains as fast charging degrades batteries.

    Any AC load you can throw at an EV is effectively “slow charging”.
    My car supports a maximum of 9.6kw from an AC charger, but up to 150kw from DC fast chargers. Even with the fast charging, its not like a phone, it has active thermal management which will cool the battery and slow down the charging if it gets too hot. phones don’t really have that and is mainly why they degrade faster if quick charged.

  • If you screw up, you can usually get to a charger a few blocks away and snag 50% of your battery in 20 minutes.

    I charge entirely off of a standard 120 outlet, and it easily handles my daily and weekly travel needs, along with my partner's numerous errands and extra trips throughout the week.

    you are assuming functional infrastructure, not everywhere has that.

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    My wife had to try charging on a 120V outlet last winter. The plug couldn't even keep up with the battery heating requirements to actually start charging; the battery percentage was going DOWN while plugged in. It was -25°C outside though, so it's a specific situation, but it's actually why she had to try to charge; it's a trip we can easily do without charging in the summer.

  • Any AC load you can throw at an EV is effectively “slow charging”.
    My car supports a maximum of 9.6kw from an AC charger, but up to 150kw from DC fast chargers. Even with the fast charging, its not like a phone, it has active thermal management which will cool the battery and slow down the charging if it gets too hot. phones don’t really have that and is mainly why they degrade faster if quick charged.

    It's a neat conversion for EV charging. 7kw x 2.5 miles per kwh is 17.5 mph. Most EV onboard chargers top out at 11kw, 27.5 miles per hour. So from the battery's perspective, 22kw is it's normal discharge rate at 60mph.

  • You almost had me charging? You never had me charging - you never had your car charging, it had tripped the socket

    Pedantic but: 7kw isn't three phase in the UK, just 30A. Three phase electric can give you up to 22kw in the UK for charging, obviously not every EV can charge that fast, most only go up to 11kw AC. I would kill for that extra charging speed but I can't justify the extra cost and effort to get it fitted by the electric company

    You don't double clutch on upshifts either (it was a drag race) so I'd say the parody is accurate

  • I watched the video and it seems to make good points, but no matter how many times I see something related to US power circuits it just feels so ... antique? I have 3x25A fuses on the house and several 3x16A outlets around so getting 11kW out is just a matter of plugging in a socket.

    Obviously it would be a good thing to have controls so that water heater, floor heating or sauna stove aren't all on together but I think I've replaced a single 25A fuse over 10 years we've lived on this house and I'm pretty sure that was caused by a small(ish) surge on the grid and not our load.

    Fuses sound antique compared to resettable circuit breakers. Though, if I remember correctly, your outlets have resettable breakers? Anyway, part of the wattage deficiency comes from the voltage being half of Europe's. The wires are similarly sized so they hit about the same max amperage (largely 15a for most circuits, 20a frequently in kitchens/garages/exterior outlets, 100-250a main breaker for the house) but halving the voltage halves the wattage available

  • You don't double clutch on upshifts either (it was a drag race) so I'd say the parody is accurate

    Well I did say I was being pedantic, which is absolutely the best way to watch fast and furious with friends

  • You don't double clutch on upshifts either (it was a drag race) so I'd say the parody is accurate

    Uh.

    I drove semi trucks in the US for years....

    You'd better either double clutch or float those gears, because if you don't, you're destroying your clutch brake, which means you'll have trouble getting it into gear from a dead stop. That applies for both upshifts and downshifts.

    Ever sit next to an old truck or bus and hear them grinding gears to get into gear?

    That's due to the clutch brake failing to stop the flywheel.

    All semi trucks in the US use synchro-less manual transmissions.

    When shifting a syncro-less transmission, YOU are the synchro.

    The clutch in these trucks has 2 positions. You either just barely engage the clutch enough to break contact, or you depress it fully to engage the clutch brake and (attempt to) stop the flywheel from spinning.

    If you do the second one while shifting a moving vehicle, you're causing undue wear and tear on the aforementioned clutch brake.

  • I watched the video and it seems to make good points, but no matter how many times I see something related to US power circuits it just feels so ... antique? I have 3x25A fuses on the house and several 3x16A outlets around so getting 11kW out is just a matter of plugging in a socket.

    Obviously it would be a good thing to have controls so that water heater, floor heating or sauna stove aren't all on together but I think I've replaced a single 25A fuse over 10 years we've lived on this house and I'm pretty sure that was caused by a small(ish) surge on the grid and not our load.

    What they do here for (a good amount of) home car chargers is read out the electricity meter using their serial port and dynamically adjust the charge current to never take more than those 3x25A.

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    It's not fucking overkill. There's no such thing.

    I'm really disappointed with the video. That dude usually knows his shit, but he's way off the mark here. It's just plain wrong.

    Getting a smaller charger might save a few hundred, but it will also increase your chances of burning the house down. Good fucking advise, huh.

    Fuck that. You'll always want to charge as fast as your main circuit breaker will allow.

  • you are assuming functional infrastructure, not everywhere has that.

    Gonna go out on a limb here, and guess that people living in a cabin where the electricity only works a few hours a week aren't going to buy an electric car.

    As for access to public chargers... I just spent the weekend in a rural area and had no problem finding a charger within 20 miles of me.

  • I think “might be overkill” would be a better title and position than “usually overkill.”

    It factually is not.

    most people would fall behind anytime they drive further than the average number of miles.

    Assume you drive it all the way to empty, then park it and plug it back in at 7PM. Leave it for 12 hours until you leave again in the morning at 7AM. A typical small EV will charge at ~5MPH on a 110V, 1.2kW connection (faster on a 20A circuit). So 5MPH x 12 hours means you already have 60 miles of range again for the next day. And I would say that's a pretty extreme scenario.

    Realistically you would never drive it to 0% and you would probably leave it parked longer than 12 hours.

    I use L1 almost exclusively, BTW.

    Probably if you have a Hummer or something you might want something a bit faster.

    Congrats on finding a solution that works for you. I have a short commute (16 miles round trip) and was OK to use L1 charging on a "usually" basis. However, I do more things in my life than just going to work and back. After work I might drive another 90 miles round trip to meet some friends at a brewery. Or I might drive only a couple miles to a buddy's house and not get home until 11pm, so I now only have 7 hours to charge at L1 instead of 12 hours. And on weekends when I'm maybe driving a couple hours to hike in the desert and come back, I now have 16 hours to charge for work on Monday after driving 210 miles round trip.

    Switching from L1 to L2 charging at home made driving an EV go from a daily chore to something I almost never thought about.

  • Congrats on finding a solution that works for you. I have a short commute (16 miles round trip) and was OK to use L1 charging on a "usually" basis. However, I do more things in my life than just going to work and back. After work I might drive another 90 miles round trip to meet some friends at a brewery. Or I might drive only a couple miles to a buddy's house and not get home until 11pm, so I now only have 7 hours to charge at L1 instead of 12 hours. And on weekends when I'm maybe driving a couple hours to hike in the desert and come back, I now have 16 hours to charge for work on Monday after driving 210 miles round trip.

    Switching from L1 to L2 charging at home made driving an EV go from a daily chore to something I almost never thought about.

    This is not about me or you, this is "usually".

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