Welcome to Tesla Motors Club
Discuss Tesla's Model S, Model 3, Model X, Model Y, Cybertruck, Roadster and More.
Register

"Official" recharge times

This site may earn commission on affiliate links.

TEG

Teslafanatic
Moderator
Aug 20, 2006
22,101
9,490
We had pretty much deduced this by doing the math, but here are the "official" numbers of hours to fully recharge a Roadster as seen in the 2008 Roadster owners manual:

Charge Time / Connection
4 hours - 240V@70A <== Tesla Home Charger
5 hours - 240V@60A
6 hours - 240V@48A
7 hours - 240V@40A
10 hours - 240V@32A <== old RAV4EV/RangerEV "Level II" standard
15 hours - 240V@24A
18 hours - 240V@16A
20 hours - 240V@12A
40 hours - 120V@12A <== Common household outlet



Interestingly they say you can define different current limits for different locations and it uses the cars GPS to determine if you are parked at a particular charger that you want to have set for a particular current limit.
 
Last edited:
Many US households can't even do that without upgrades.
I don't think they support anything higher for home use.

I suspect they have been experimenting with a much higher current commercial fast charge station, but that may require a different connector to the battery pick if they ever do it.
 
Can the charger handle anything over 240/70? Is anything over that possible in a typical US household ?

If I recall properly, the cars internal charger can handle higher current, but 70 amps is the biggest circuit you are allowed in a residence in the U.S. Tesla have hinted that it might be possible in the future to have faster recharge times plugging the car in at a business with a bigger circuit. To my knowledge they have not created a wall charger capable of that for businesses yet.
 
Tesla have talked about the possibility of three-phase but a) if you're used to several hours of overnight recharging and b) more power means more energy needed for cooling I can't see any advantages until supercaps get established.

At present, faster recharging would just damage the batteries: "Avoiding very high charge rates. Charging faster than about C/2 (two hour charge) can reduce the cell’s life."
Tesla Motors - think

I'm not sure domestic three-phase will be allowed anyway.
 
Charge Time / Connection
4 hours - 240V@70A <== Tesla Home Charger
5 hours - 240V@60A
6 hours - 240V@48A
7 hours - 240V@40A
10 hours - 240V@32A <== old RAV4EV/RangerEV "Level II" standard
15 hours - 240V@24A
18 hours - 240V@16A
20 hours - 240V@12A
40 hours - 120V@12A <== Common household outlet

I was trying to make a "Miles Charged Per Minute", "MCPM", and a "Miles Charged Per Hour", "MCPH" chart for each of the above.

That way it will be easy to do the 'top off time' math based on available power sources.

Are we using the 220 miles or 244 miles per full charge these days?
 
From Tesla's charging shop:
HPC_Charging_small.JPG
 
The slowest (120V 12Amps) is considerably less per minute..

You can just take the bottom entry (240V@24amps) from that chart and divide by 4 (1.44kW/5.76kW) to extrapolate for 120V@12amps.

So,
20amp breaker, 120V@12amps, ~40hour recharge time, ~4.75 miles added every hour.
 
Last edited: