You can make it work on 120V, it just uses ~20-30% more energy due to the overhead of running all the vehicle systems for so much longer while charging.

I rent a house. Our lease is explicit about no battery charging in the garage, including EVs. Yet they seemingly have no problem with my welder or RC cars...

I think that number is a bit off. Yes, there is overhead when charging a car to run its battery management system, heat losses in the wiring, etc. But it's not 20-30% of the ~kilowatt of power you'd run through level 1. A quick search says that 20% loss is at the higher end for level 1 (probably 15% on the lower end) but even level 2 has about a 10% loss.

The bigger issue is that level 1 just doesn't have nearly as much power as level 2. Most cars charge at level 1 at 8-16 amps. Most level 2 setups charge at a few times that, plus the voltage is doubled so the total power ends up being about 10x as much. But that's not to say everyone needs that power either. Honestly, for the average driver it's quite easy to make level 1 work.

Don't forget the 80% rule! Because those ratings are made for shorter periods of time drawing electricity, and cars usually charge for hours, you need to charge at 80% of the circuit rating. So really you'll charge at 120V x 12A =1.4kW. Not only that, but if you have anything else on that circuit you need to leave room for that too. My car defaults to 8A on level 1 unless you tell it to do 12, in which case you get just under a kilowatt.

People can't afford a new car, let alone an EV, let alone a carport or car hole.

This is just tone deaf poor blaming.

How much do you drive in a year? What kind of car are you looking at?

For the average driver, a 120V (normal) outlet on a smaller car is actually perfectly fine most of the time. If you think you might get a bigger car, or multiple EVs, you may want to look into a level 2 setup. And while you're at it, use thicker wires so you can run more power through it. But don't feel like you have to go overboard. I think the sweet "buy once, cry once, hard to come up with a situation where this isn't enough" number is a 50 amp 240V circuit running a 40A charge cord (always charge at 80% of your circuit rating, max).

But if your panel can't take it or you want to do it cheaper or whatever, a 20A 240V circuit is on the lower end of the level 2 spectrum and it can still do a lot... Like, more than double that "average driver" amount for level 1. And here's the fun part: everyone is so afraid of 240V and think it takes special wiring or whatever. It really doesn't. I've got a 240V air compressor outlet on a 20A circuit, just like what I suggested a minute ago. It uses the exact same wiring as the 120V next to it. The only difference? It's connected to two "opposing" hots with a double breaker (not terribly more expensive) rather than a single hot on a single breaker plus a neutral as you'd see on 120V. All you need to do is wrap the white wire (usually neutral) with a colored (not green, that's ground) electrical tape to indicate that it carries current. Do it on both sides. Easy peasy, up to code, and uses really affordable wiring.

Also, volts and amps are apples and oranges. Home electric circuits mostly run on 120 volts, but some bigger things like stoves and central air run on 240 volts instead. Amperage is the other piece of the puzzle. Wire sizing is largely based on how many amps the circuit can carry. Multiply the two together, and you get watts. Divide that number by 1000, and you get kilowatts.

My car's battery has a capacity of 65 kilowatt-hours, meaning it can run 65 kilowatts for an hour, 1 kilowatt for 65 hours, 13 kilowatts for 5 hours... You get the idea. Same idea goes for charging. My 240V 40A charging setup (which runs on a 50A breaker) can give almost 10 kilowatts of power, meaning my battery will be charged 0-100 in about 6.5 hours. A regular outlet gives about a kilowatt and can do it in about 65 hours. But before you think that's useless, remember that you can easily plug in daily and if you only use a fraction of your battery each day, it's no big deal at all!

What about transit? Why do Americans always have to drive. We need real alternatives to cars.

transit

"We mean electric cars, you commie! The next time you talk about that thing, you are going out that window."

\s

battery management system, heat losses in the wiring, etc.

No, that number corresponds to the WiFi you need to connect it to, to send all the telemetry and the LLM that will be running on some server in the US, picking data out of your telemetry and deciding which company to sell it to, while your car is powered.

Would you mind posting your phone book

Did you know that before cellular phones were a thing, the phone company regularly sent out books with everyone's name, phone number, and sometimes even their address in them?

You could even find such a book in public in these little things called "Phone booths".

I have a garage that could hold 4 cars if you parked 2 rows of them....

My single income household of 3 is just barely above the national poverty level.

I have replaced all that junk on my phone with a clean system I trust. cars not only don't have alternative software, but using it would be illegal too.

You could always pick up a 9-year-old Bolt

Chicken and egg situation, Americans drive because that’s how their cities and suburbs are laid out (excluding NYC, for the most part).

They don’t rely on alternatives because they are slow, inconvenient or non-existent; alternatives can’t be built up as the costs can’t be justified based on existing patronage levels.

Same here. Luckily our basement flooded and we were like “oh well, guess it’s all ruined and has to be thrown away ”

The suburban sprawl makes building transit a lot harder but to fix that we need to increase density but then it’s hard to increase density when you need space for cars because you have no usable transit

Nonsense, we have 60 years worth of junk in our basement and garage, granted it's been pared down some after a few moves but we manage with a Honda Fit, you can always rent something if you need something bigger temporarily, or get a dumpster delivered, there's a lot of options really.