Highest Amps for Plug - In wall charger

SnBGC

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I am between the two Home Depot chargers. Chargepoint and Juicebox. I get a 10% military discount. Chargepoint looks beefier but Juicebox can be controlled via Alexa. I will charge at 40A, 14-50 on a 50 amp fuse with 60A wiring all installed by an electrician. Opinions?
Both are quality units. Go with the one that you like best.
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bruceski88

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Both are quality units. Go with the one that you like best.
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I would advise people on this forum not to use the common Leviton 14-50 outlet. I saw on the Tesla forum that this brand does not contact the whole wiper, it is made for dryers not multi-hour car charging. This design will decrease the lifetime of this outlet by 4 to 10X due higher current density and local joule heating.
 

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Love my 40a plug-in clipper. Gives me reliable 7.2 kWh without fail - Iā€™ve had it for 3 years and never had a single issue (despite numerous neighborhood power failures, youngest son driving through the back of the garage, etc). Iā€˜ve heard their next-gen tech is equally reliable.
 

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I am between the two Home Depot chargers. Chargepoint and Juicebox. I get a 10% military discount. Chargepoint looks beefier but Juicebox can be controlled via Alexa. I will charge at 40A, 14-50 on a 50 amp fuse with 60A wiring all installed by an electrician. Opinions?
Consumer report, if you're a member, has a good review of the two. I bought the juicebox for the app. But I've read the two are basically a tie. I just liked the look of the juicebox better but I've of been happy with either one I imagine.

https://www.consumerreports.org/hyb...-home-wall-charger-for-your-electric-vehicle/
 


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Consumer report, if you're a member, has a good review of the two. I bought the juicebox for the app. But I've read the two are basically a tie. I just liked the look of the juicebox better but I've of been happy with either one I imagine.

https://www.consumerreports.org/hyb...-home-wall-charger-for-your-electric-vehicle/
it looks like they didn't test the very-popular-on-here Grizzl-E (or OpenEVSE for that matter). I know they are somewhat limited because of their "we buy it out of pocket" way of doing business, but like with desktop and laptop computers, I feel like this is a product area that may be out of their league. I think sometimes they need to make that call - "this is a product area we just aren't able to test properly and so we won't" - and they don't seem to be willing to.

(and I'm saying that as a long-time paying subscriber)
 

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it looks like they didn't test the very-popular-on-here Grizzl-E (or OpenEVSE for that matter). I know they are somewhat limited because of their "we buy it out of pocket" way of doing business, but like with desktop and laptop computers, I feel like this is a product area that may be out of their league. I think sometimes they need to make that call - "this is a product area we just aren't able to test properly and so we won't" - and they don't seem to be willing to.

(and I'm saying that as a long-time paying subscriber)
I am a subscriber as well, and I try to take CR's advice as generally good but not conclusive data. My feeling is that the more I know about a particular type of product (bicycles, communications services), the shallower I find CR's advice and conclusions, and I notice the obvious absence of particular models/manufacturers/etc in their ratings. I know little about household appliances except when I need a new one, so I lean more heavily on those ratings because it's much better than nothing, IMO.
 

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I am a subscriber as well, and I try to take CR's advice as generally good but not conclusive data. My feeling is that the more I know about a particular type of product (bicycles, communications services), the shallower I find CR's advice and conclusions, and I notice the obvious absence of particular models/manufacturers/etc in their ratings. I know little about household appliances except when I need a new one, so I lean more heavily on those ratings because it's much better than nothing, IMO.
completely reasonable take.
 

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I currently own an i3. I went a slightly different route with my EVSE. I like to tinker with things, so I built my own EVSE using a kit from https://store.openevse.com

I also ran my own 14-50 socket to my garage using 6awg wiring. It was a PITA to run that thick of cable.
 

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Doing a 14-50 plug on a 60A line and fuse. Which charger gives the most amps for the car while plugging into the 240V outlet? Looks like Grizz-e will do 40 amps. Any others? I do not want to hard wire it.
I'm new here. What is the advantage of getting an after market charger? The MME one will charge at 32 amps. Isn't that enough?? I will be using a 50 amp breaker and appropriate wire with a 14-50 outlet.
 

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I'm new here. What is the advantage of getting an after market charger? The MME one will charge at 32 amps. Isn't that enough?? I will be using a 50 amp breaker and appropriate wire with a 14-50 outlet.
There's a lot of posts on this topic, but general thought is that yes, the one the MME comes with is enough for most use cases; however, most people want to keep that in the trunk for emergencies and you don't want to constantly plug/unplug the NEMA 14-50 outlet/plug as it will wear it out much faster. So you keep the provided one in the trunk and buy a separate plug-in EVSE. The Grizzl-e is $399 - 30% tax credit. So not a huge cost for peace of mind of keeping the charger in the car.
 

SpringsMarty

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There's a lot of posts on this topic, but general thought is that yes, the one the MME comes with is enough for most use cases; however, most people want to keep that in the trunk for emergencies and you don't want to constantly plug/unplug the NEMA 14-50 outlet/plug as it will wear it out much faster. So you keep the provided one in the trunk and buy a separate plug-in EVSE. The Grizzl-e is $399 - 30% tax credit. So not a huge cost for peace of mind of keeping the charger in the car.
Over the past few days I replaced a LEAF with MME. While I had the LEAF, I ran 8/3 cable to 14-50 with 40 amp breaker and used the LEAF 32 amp EVSE, so all was good. I installed that myself as a temporary solution. When I bought the MME, I decided I did not want to unwrap the included EVSE so I picked up a cheap one on a Cyber Monday sale. It is a 40 amp EVSE that arrived last night.. I plugged it in and tested it and it worked.

Everything was good except I realized that I am running a 40 amp continuous load on a 40 amp breaker and 8 AWG wire. If the breaker starts tripping, I may replace it with a 50 amp breaker to buy me some time until I can get a hardwired EVSE, which will require 6 AWG wire, a new panel, and a service upgrade. I might be more nervous running 40 amps continuous on 8/3 wire except the wire loss is about 1.5%, so the heat dissipation in the 20-foot wire is only some 160 Watts. The wire only needs to shed about eight watts per foot, which I assume is fine.
 

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I really vote for the electrician checking any situation where their might be a wiring question and here is why and particularly on older homes.. garage sub panels, undersized wire, and aluminum wire. Our garage has a 2nd story full electric apartment and the sub panel is rated for 125 amps but has.. two baseboard heaters, big hot water tank, dryer outlet, welder outlet, range/oven, washer, utility outlets and lighting and a big outside hot tub. I found a 60 amp circuit wired with AWG 8 copper. I shut off about 100 amps (hot water tank, hot tub- then took out the hot tub as it was old and failing, welder circuit). Thankfully no aluminum wire. Iā€™ll have to hire an electrician to upgrade the panel to 200 amps.
 

Maquis

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I really vote for the electrician checking any situation where their might be a wiring question and here is why and particularly on older homes.. garage sub panels, undersized wire, and aluminum wire. Our garage has a 2nd story full electric apartment and the sub panel is rated for 125 amps but has.. two baseboard heaters, big hot water tank, dryer outlet, welder outlet, range/oven, washer, utility outlets and lighting and a big outside hot tub. I found a 60 amp circuit wired with AWG 8 copper. I shut off about 100 amps (hot water tank, hot tub- then took out the hot tub as it was old and failing, welder circuit). Thankfully no aluminum wire. Iā€™ll have to hire an electrician to upgrade the panel to 200 amps.
Thereā€™s really nothing wrong with aluminum wire as itā€™s used today in larger sizes. Most feeders and services are now aluminum due to the skyrocketing cost of copper.
The past problems were with branch circuits (smaller wire size) terminated on devices with terminals unsuited for aluminumā€™s temperature coefficient.
In any case, utilizing a competent electrician is always a good idea!
 

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Over the past few days I replaced a LEAF with MME. While I had the LEAF, I ran 8/3 cable to 14-50 with 40 amp breaker and used the LEAF 32 amp EVSE, so all was good. I installed that myself as a temporary solution. When I bought the MME, I decided I did not want to unwrap the included EVSE so I picked up a cheap one on a Cyber Monday sale. It is a 40 amp EVSE that arrived last night.. I plugged it in and tested it and it worked.

Everything was good except I realized that I am running a 40 amp continuous load on a 40 amp breaker and 8 AWG wire. If the breaker starts tripping, I may replace it with a 50 amp breaker to buy me some time until I can get a hardwired EVSE, which will require 6 AWG wire, a new panel, and a service upgrade. I might be more nervous running 40 amps continuous on 8/3 wire except the wire loss is about 1.5%, so the heat dissipation in the 20-foot wire is only some 160 Watts. The wire only needs to shed about eight watts per foot, which I assume is fine.
Not a good idea to run 40 amps "continuously" on wire rated for 40 amps. Also... definitely DO NOT put a higher capacity breaker on lower-capacity wiring. The whole point of the breaker ... is to prevent your house from burning to the ground.

Breakers can trip for a number of reasons. One reason is heat. They include a bi-metal strip inside that is designed to bend as it gets hot (Basically it acts as a crude thermometer). If it gets hot enough, it will bend the strip far enough... that it trips the breaker off. That heat in the breaker is ALSO heat on your wires. The breaker senses that things are getting too hot to be safe and shuts down the power. You didn't complete charging your car... but at least your house didn't burn to the ground with your family sleeping inside. By putting in a higher amp breaker but not also upgrading the wiring ... you create a situation where as the wire gets too hot to be safe ... the breaker will not yet be hot enough to trip.
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