I think you didn't catch my joke. What I was referring to as the battery bank on wheels that you can drive away was saying you could just have an entire redundant spare car at home. The snide joke about it is that this really would be about the same price as these insane things people are trying to do to install a level 3 charger.
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Installing a level 3 charger at home
- Thread starter hunnypuppy
- Start date
bradtem
Robocar consultant
Ah. There are companies that make battery based DC Fast chargers. At first they thought they would be used by roadside service trucks to rescue people who stranded their cars. Turns out that almost never happens, much less than people run out of gas, so they do things like fleet charging. (Hertz locations often don't have their own charging and they call one of these if a car needs to be turned around fast.)
ucmndd
Well-Known Member
I don’t find it all that difficult to fathom a reason why someone might need to charge faster than 11.5kw at home.
When you factor in the cost of the dcfc equipment I bet the need drops right off.
ucmndd
Well-Known Member
I don’t see any reason why a say ~25kw DC charger needs to be particularly expensive. It’s basically taking a couple onboard chargers from an EV and hanging them on the wall instead of building them into the car. Maybe a few thousand dollars if someone was determined.
But yes I generally agree, the market for such things will remain quite small.
yep, this is why it is likely to be expensive. Of course when 90% of cars on the road are EVs, this may be different.
There’s also the issue of most homes not having the available capacity, it would take more than half of a typical 200A service.
bradtem
Robocar consultant
Well then, please name some of those reasons as requested? Note by the way that a Model X or S can charge at 17kW from level 2 AC, though the Y and Cybertruck are at that 11.5kW max rate.
It would be a very rare night one is not parked for 10 hours, given 8 hours of sleep, and some time to got to bed, wake up, have breakfast and live. So that can offer over 110kWh. In places with only 7 hours of off-peak power, you might want to keep it under 80kWh but who charges that much in one night? You would need to have gone close to 0 and want to get close to 100, which is pretty much unheard of at home. And if you actually needed more (you don't) you could charge a bit of mid-peak. Costs a little more on those rare days, but vastly less than the cost of putting in DC Fast since I doubt you do it more than a few days a year. (Besides, and day you need to be full is a day you're going near a supercharger.)
So that leaves somebody needing to recharge in the middle of the day. If you woke up full, just when are you going to need a charge, at home, before you end your day? It's possible, but I am surprised you don't find it difficult to come up with reasons. How many days a year do you think that will happen?
The core remaining reason is to handle when you make a mistake and forget to charge or fail to charge. Then you might want a fast charge at home. There should be better solutions for that -- tools that will alert you when this happens, for example. I agree those tools are not easily set up, but they could be, and for a lot less cost than home DC Fast, for those few days in which it happens. In this case, do you live somewhere with no other fast chargers? You might have a point. But for most people, there are other fast chargers within 30 miles, and any day you are driving that much is a day you will go close to one.
ucmndd
Well-Known Member
Plenty of people have blurred lines between personal and business uses of their vehicles where the ability to charge faster than 11.5kw on their own property with no downtime would be beneficial. Construction or other trades would be an easy example off the top of my head. Contractors can put hundreds of miles a day on their vehicles going between job sites and home base, towing heavy loads, etc. Time is money, sitting idle at a supercharger parking lot is not always a viable option. They may be edge cases, but like I said, it doesn't take a particularly active imagination to come up with them nor are they extremely far-fetched. Farming would be another super easy example.
There's also the obvious observation that not everyone lives in Sunnyvale with bountiful fast chargers at their beck and call.
Available solutions like this that reduce barriers to EV adoption outside the cozy temperate enclave of the Bay Area that most Tesla owners like to pretend all EV owners live in can only be a good thing.
No Model X or S produced in the last 5+ years can...
bradtem
Robocar consultant
Yes, I outlined commercial uses as one of the few possible reasons for it in the earlier post. The question is what might call to have one in a private home. You're talking about having one in a construction yard, which happens to have a home at it. Even then, it's pretty hard to use up a full car's range regularly, unless you have bought small-battery vehicles, or heavy work trucks. Tesla only makes one truck and its range is long.
I live in a place with fast chargers around, and I have used my close charger once, for 10 minutes, in 6 years. Even when all I had was Level 1 at home. I used another charger 15 miles away early on as an experiment. So no beck and call.
The point about cold climates could be a valid one, though of course they affect fast charging the most, though if you are planning for that you're keeping the battery warm and not getting too many of the bad problems.
But my challenge remains. I would like to see some concrete examples, since it's apparently easy to think of them, for DC Fast in a residence. As I noted above if you are driving Uber in a suburban place, and putting in 2 shifts, it could happen. I would not rate that as a frequent use example. It's also challenging, because for this to make sense, you need to drive for 250+ miles (if you drive this much you should buy a long range car) and then you need to be at home for an hour, and then go out and drive for another 100 miles or more. Regularly. If you just do it a couple times a month, just use fast chargers on your route. You may not have any fast chargers near your home, but if you are driving 250 miles, it's pretty likely there are some far away that you will go by. But there might be exceptions, so would be interesting to see one outlined.
But if you're not driving long drives every day for a living? Just living life, commuting, errands, etc.? What's the use case to need 50kW? Or even 25kW? The latter is getting cheaper, but 50kW is not going to be so cheap for a residence since 400a+ service is rare there.
Now I have written for a while that it would be good to see 50kW public stations show up at places like RV parks and rural areas. But that's not for residential use. Even the folks at the residence in an RV park should largely never use it.
ucmndd
Well-Known Member
Living in a rural area of the state, I know countless people in the trades and agriculture whose primary place of business is their home. The lines blur easily and often.
Unless you dare to haul something, or tow something, or drive in the cold, or or or...
You're kinda building a straw man here by saying "Ignoring all the non-normal use cases, what's the use case to need 50kw?"
Agree that I don't think we're ever gonna see the day where ~50kw chargers become a thing in homes. 20-25kw DC? That seems well within the realm of reason. As you pointed out yourself, Tesla used to sell cars with ~20kw onboard chargers and EVSEs to supply them. Some people clearly found that useful. Probably doesn't make a lot of sense to stuff 20kw worth of rectifiers into every car coming off the production line, but selling the equivalent equipment that hangs on a wall - again - doesn't seem to be so absurd as to dismiss out of hand.
bradtem
Robocar consultant
The OP wanted a level 3 in his/her home, and never came back with more details. Anyway, it's well understood why people sometimes want fast charging at work sites, particularly with fleet operations. That's not generally the reason we see people ask about having them in a home.
I should note that there's an argument that if you could start from scratch, you would only have DC charging, and no AC charging. That didn't make sense at first because there is AC everywhere and that was the easiest way to let a car charge in other places. Today you might do a different math. A DC charger is built into every car, but there are many more cars than charging locations, so it would be cheaper to have public charging stations all be DC with no charger in the car, if you give up the idea of mobile charging cords which would then need their own DC charger in them. We're not up to that yet. It would mean that each owner could decide how much charging they actually wanted in their house, regardless of their car. My Model 3 only does 7.2kw and sometimes there are times it would be nice if it could do more. (Though usually not.)
Indeed, it would not be too expensive to make 12kw DC chargers for homes, and could become cheap to have 25kw. But the reality is, almost nobody needs one, not in a home (and not in most offices either...) I would say that almost every request I have seen for DC Fast at homes or even offices is due to remnant gasoline thinking, not actual need. In an office with many cars, much better to have one slow (even really slow, like 3kw of even 2kw) charger for every car than to have a fast charger and require the staff to constantly be moving their cars in and out to use it. The average car requires just 10kWh per day, so even mostly 1.5kw with a couple of 7kw for those few cars that need much more than average is a better use of the money than a smaller number of 7kw or 50kw stations requiring constant coordination of who uses it, and when they move their cars.
"Charge where you park, don't part where you charge" is my mantra on this. And since most cars are parked 95% of the day, there's little need for speed except on long distance road trips.
I should note that there's an argument that if you could start from scratch, you would only have DC charging, and no AC charging. That didn't make sense at first because there is AC everywhere and that was the easiest way to let a car charge in other places. Today you might do a different math. A DC charger is built into every car, but there are many more cars than charging locations, so it would be cheaper to have public charging stations all be DC with no charger in the car, if you give up the idea of mobile charging cords which would then need their own DC charger in them. We're not up to that yet. It would mean that each owner could decide how much charging they actually wanted in their house, regardless of their car. My Model 3 only does 7.2kw and sometimes there are times it would be nice if it could do more. (Though usually not.)
Indeed, it would not be too expensive to make 12kw DC chargers for homes, and could become cheap to have 25kw. But the reality is, almost nobody needs one, not in a home (and not in most offices either...) I would say that almost every request I have seen for DC Fast at homes or even offices is due to remnant gasoline thinking, not actual need. In an office with many cars, much better to have one slow (even really slow, like 3kw of even 2kw) charger for every car than to have a fast charger and require the staff to constantly be moving their cars in and out to use it. The average car requires just 10kWh per day, so even mostly 1.5kw with a couple of 7kw for those few cars that need much more than average is a better use of the money than a smaller number of 7kw or 50kw stations requiring constant coordination of who uses it, and when they move their cars.
"Charge where you park, don't part where you charge" is my mantra on this. And since most cars are parked 95% of the day, there's little need for speed except on long distance road trips.
For a non-starter idea, this has sure turned into a very long thread.
At the moment, per hunnypuppy, they were last seen Feb 14, 2024. I wouldn't waste any more time discussing this until they come back with a reply/replies.With no OP participation
davewill
Active Member
I could actually make a case that the bro-dozers should have higher power chargers on-board...but that doesn't seem to be the trend. I mean, what good is having a high powered charger if nobody has charging stations to match it? We saw that with the 80a and 72a capable MS and MX cars. You could install 80a charging at home, but virtually none of the destinations could deliver that much, and you don't really need it if you have all night to charge.It seems obvious OP doesn’t really know what they’re asking for and is probably never coming back, but I can actually see a market emerging for say 25-50kw residential DC charging solutions, particularly given the American infatuation with gargantuan inefficient bro-dozers like the Hummer EV and Cybertruck.
Indeed they already exist:
Delta EV Wallbox Level 3 DC Quick Charger Charging Station
This level 3 DC fast charger, with SAECombo connector, is the perfect low-cost solution for high-powered fast charging. The Delta Wallbox delivers 25kW of power and starts at less than half the cost of competitors' units.www.evchargesolutions.com
25kw, takes everything from single phase 240 to 3-phase 480.
Basically, let the people who “need” charging faster than ~11kw do it this way instead of stuffing a bunch of expensive charging equipment in the car itself.
All that said, J3400 is taking AC charging of commercial vehicles into account by adopting the three phase euro connector for "bring your own cable" charging like they have in Europe. I think that tops out around 50kW or so. If that ever became commonly available, putting high powered chargers in big trucks might make more sense.
Define "big trucks". Did you know SAE also defined J3068 ? This is three phase charging connector using Type-2 AC and CCS Type-2 mechanical connectors for North American Medium Duty trucks. It supports a wide variety of grid voltages up to and including the Canadian 347Y600V commercial power standard. Unfortunately, it uses yet another communication standard "LIN-CP". LIN is a very common low speed bus used in automotive applications. In this case it's used much like Tesla uses single wire CAN on their charging connectors. However, I have not heard of widespread deployment of this standard on vehicles or EVSEs. Anyway, I think that "high powered chargers in big trucks" would be more likely to want to use 3 phase power than J3400 single phase AC power.
davewill
Active Member
Yeah, we're referring to the same thing I just didn't dig into the nitty-gritty. The idea is that the same EVSE can offer J3400 OR J3068 (see below). I admit to being ambiguous about "big trucks". I could see both situations where enough higher powered stations makes offering 70a single phase chargers in consumer pickups more plausible, or 3 phase chargers for heavier duty work trucks, commercial delivery vans and bigger.
https://www.sae.org/blog/j3400-NACS-standard-rodney-mcgee
"Allows EVSE to optionally supply three-phase AC power (via SAE J3068). This is important for the electrification of medium- and heavy-duty vehicles, which often charge at locations with three-phase power; it allows these vehicles to reach AC charging power levels just above 50 kW at 480/277 VAC, all while permitting single-phase vehicles to charge at the same charging station."
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doghousePVD
My grandfather’s car
Your ignorance and provincialism is astounding.
Tesla’s truck has a minimal range towing, about 100 miles. Many people towing, especial around farms, ranches, and commercial fisherman would be towing all day, back and forth.
Here in Maine lobstermen often have to schlep traps and other gear from a public wharf to home to store them for the winter. Transporting construction material and agricultural material (feed, hay), often not economic to hire a big truck, is back and forth for multiple loads. Midday charging would be important. Farming and ranch areas don’t have SC.
Pickups with large batteries, such as Silverado (233 kWh) or Humvee, won’t fully charge overnight on a 48 A charger. During crunch season 200+ kWh is not sufficient for all day towing, and recharge is needed. “Crunch days” could easily be 12-15 hours.
Towing with my X I have often used more than 300 kWh a day. If I had a truck and could drive faster, eg 70 mph not 55 mph, I would use even more.
A lot of us do not live in suburbia and drive little cars like a Y or 3. A SC every 100 miles on the Interstate does not help when none of one’s trip is on highways. And even when a SC is available, unhitching frequently is a huge waste of time when you are working.
doghousePVD
My grandfather’s car
Actually, I’m aware of many Tesla installed 80 amp chargers in national parks in Canada, and Baja California all the way to San Lucas. There still aren’t any SCs in those areas. I appreciated them with my 2018 X.
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