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80 amp Home Charger?
- Thread starter blrt
- Start date
Good Morning,
Charging speed is controlled via the charger on the car. The connector between the AC and your car is merely a conduit for the electricity. The car can only accept the max the onboard charger is able to convert.
Charging speed is controlled via the charger on the car. The connector between the AC and your car is merely a conduit for the electricity. The car can only accept the max the onboard charger is able to convert.
Further to jimmy's point, the fastest any model 3 can charge is 48 amps, with 32 the limit on the RWD:
www.tesla.com
You can always run fat wire for "future proofing", but I wonder how fast Level 2 really needs to be. How often are you really coming home on a low charge and need to run out for another long trip in a limited time?
Onboard Charger | Tesla Support
The onboard charger, which is built in your vehicle, converts the AC power into DC energy so that it can be stored in the battery of your vehicle.
You can always run fat wire for "future proofing", but I wonder how fast Level 2 really needs to be. How often are you really coming home on a low charge and need to run out for another long trip in a limited time?
New Teslas have 48 amp onboard chargers (32 amp for standard range). There used to be an option for 80 amps but I don't believe that has been available for a long time.
As I recall there are other EV manufacturers that are using 80 amp charges in their vehicles. 80 amps with 240 volts is the fastest that the AC charging protocol allows.
As I recall there are other EV manufacturers that are using 80 amp charges in their vehicles. 80 amps with 240 volts is the fastest that the AC charging protocol allows.
If you really want to charge at 20kW at home, you can buy a DC charger. It's not cheap, but it's possible if you are motivated.
For example, this Delta 24kW charger is available in CCS or CHAdeMO and can charge Tesla cars with an adapter. You would need a 125A 240V circuit for that. I don't know if it's configurable to use smaller breakers like the same 100A breaker you would use for a 80A Wall Connector. Of course, that would necessarily throttle it to 19kW output.
This one from ABB can run on a 240V 100A breaker.
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It's a matter of sizing. Speaking as a maniac with a MY and M3 in the garage, one gets around 46 miles of charge per hour with 240 VAC @ 48A. The point is, "One has to sleep sometime!"
Normal charge limit is around 80% of full charge; at 330 miles range, this is about 265 miles of range. Say one let the car discharge to its last electron as one rolled into the garage. Then, 265miles/46miles per hour = 5.7 hours. Even if one was going on a trip the next day and wanted the full 330 miles (from zero!) the next day, the time to do it would be (very roughly) on the order of 7.5 hours.
Most people charge the car, worst case, when the car's at 10% or so, or 33 miles. (265-33)/45 = 5.2 hours. All of this qualifies as, "Overnight".
And, if one has a Standard Range car that has a 265 mile range, max, that reduced charge rate of 32A is sized to the battery. It also saves money on rectifiers in the car.
And, one final point: The Teslas tend to be, compared to other cars out there, unusually efficient. So, if some company like VW or Porsche says, "We got the same range as a MY!", but they do, say, 350 W-hr/mile as compared to a MY's 270 W-hr/mile, said VW/Porsche would have to have a much bigger battery to get that advertised range. And if they want that battery charged overnight... They're going to need a heck of a lot more current to do it. Um. This comes under, "It's not a feature, it's a bug!"
Now, come the day when the Cybertruck and its 500 mile range (I think?) comes into play, tows and all, then a higher-current Tesla Wall Connector may very well come into existence.
By the by: The Gen 2 TWC in the garage can do 80A, with the right set of breakers, wires, and all. This was, apparently, for early Model S's. Current 3s, Ys, and Ss, and Xs max out, I think, at 48A.
That's probably not ever going to happen again, since Tesla's history over the last decade has only been REDUCING the home charging power capability.
Back in the old 2012 to 2015 time frame, you could choose options of either a 40A or 80A charging configuration, and the wall connectors could do 80A.
With the introduction of the Model X in 2015 and refresh of Model S in 2016 to match, maximum charging was 72A.
Then, a few years later, they moved down to 48A being the highest charging the cars could do. And a year or so later, they replaced the wall connectors with Gen3, which could only supply 48A maximum.
So the nail is in the coffin on that. It's not going back up.
I tend to agree with this. 80A was only important because the Supercharger network was either not available yet or was in its infancy. Now that it's nearly ubiquitous in North America, there is no need for high power AC charging for Tesla vehicles.
Ford F-150 Lightning has 80A charging and the big battery partially justifies it, but the lack of reliable CCS charging also reinforces the need. As Supercharger access becomes common, this vehicle will also have a fading need for 80A charging outside of rural work truck use cases.
No offense, but I think you're missing the point. It takes about 5 hours to charge an 80 kW-hr battery at 11.52 kW under normal circumstances. Let's see: Here's a list of current Tesla vehicles, each with the long range or P that has the biggest battery size, and how long it takes to charge it at 48A, and how long it would take to charge at 80A:
| Car | Battery Size | 240 @ 48A Time | 240 @ 80A Time |
| Tesla Model 3 LR | 75 kW-hr | 6.5 hours | 3.9 hours |
| Tesla Model Y LR | 75 kW-hr | 6.5 hours | 3.9 hours |
| Tesla Model S Plaid | 95 kW-hr | 8.24 hours | 4.95 hours |
| Tesla Model X Plaid | 95 kW-hr | 8.24 hours | 4.95 hours |
That time is presuming that one could charge at the rate (11.52 kW or 19.2 kW) all the way from zero to max charge. Which all of you know isn't true; the charge rate with AC charging slows down as one gets above 80% SOC. So, in reality, actual charging time to, say, 80% of full charge would be, with 48A, either 5 hours or 6.6 hours, depending upon the car.
Both of those times are of the class, "Overnight".
What, exactly, does one get by going to 80A? Well - lots shorter times, 4 to 5 hours. But.. more cost: More charging hardware in the car to handle the bigger currents. More cost for copper in the house. Heftier components in the Wall Connector (that's thicker wire - I've got the Gen 2 WC to prove it.) And.. is it really necessary? As I said in a previous post, "You have to sleep sometime."
I think that Tesla took a look at all this and decided to save on costs, both for themselves and their customers.
Now, come the day when a Cybertruck comes along with a 200 kW-hr battery pack (no idea what it does come with), then maybe this all gets revisited. But that's not quite today.
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Im going to defer to those a lot more knowledgeable about this topic than me on this, but I also seem to remember that at least in the US, circuits larger than 60amp need "something" additional as far as hardware is concerned. Maybe it was a disconnect, visible from the installed location of the device requiring that size circuit?
...which will mean that people will have even MORE leftover range in their cars at the end of each day, requiring even LESS charging power to refill it back to the point of range they need. That's the opposite of what you are thinking.
I don't think that's me who is doing that.
This is that weird fallacy we see frequently from people who don't own or use electric cars. They look at the time it takes to completely fill the entire battery, and then apply that to people needing to do that every night, 365 days a year. That's not how that works. People drive however far they drive. They live whatever distance they are from work. That's the amount they need to refill in a night. It doesn't matter if the battery size is 80 kWh or 180 kWh or 1800 kWh. They only need to replenish however much they used that day--not the entire battery.
That's definitely not true. The tapering curve is there, sure, but people are only impacted by it with the really high power from Superchargers. People see the power dropping from 200kW to 150, to 100, etc. This home power of 11kW is so extremely low that the tapering curve doesn't need to reduce it until about 98-99% or so, which most people never see during regular home charging because they have a charge limit set lower than that. So home charging is effectively always at full power and doesn't have that "slower above 80%" thing.
I saw people positing that about the Cybertruck, but when they killed the Gen2 wall connectors that were awesome and did higher current and replaced it with the inferior, lower power Gen3 wall connectors, that was their indication that it was not going to happen.
Yes, you're remembering correctly. Above 60A requires the disconnects you mentioned. Although, depending on the inspector, if the breaker itself is in the same area and accessible, they might consider that as the disconnect.
Without the rest of my comment that would be very true. But the vehicles being made now from Ford, Rivian, GMC, Porsche ... They are consuming more energy as well. Which is really what I was getting at. With more energy storage the vehicle can use the energy less efficiently and still have decent range. But you have to be able to put that increased consumption back at the end of the day.
ucmndd
Well-Known Member
I could see a future scenario where home DC chargers become more common for situations where people really need or think they need 80-100 amp charging. Put the expensive conversion equipment on the wall instead of in every car when so few people need it.
I can see it coming too, but most of the V2X DC capable equipment is being developed in the 7-10kW range, not 10-20kW. Even these equipment developers want to push the value proposition (ie. keep the equipment price down) and don't see the value in going above 10kW.
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