this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2025
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Electric Vehicles
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I've never owned an EV but have been casually considering what it would entail. Like would I really need level 2 charging at home? I'm sort of thinking not at this point. The commute for me or my wife would be something in the 20 km round trip range. We don't live in a big city. Errands could increase that somewhat. But if let's say the charger could add back even 5 km/hr, which I think is a pretty conservative estimate. That should be plenty to handle our needs with overnight charging on 120V.
As for intercity, well, you'd likely be using some public fast charger right? So that's kind of a moot point as far as what you need at home.
I don't know if I'm missing something though in this analysis? Like I've heard winter driving affects range fairly considerably. And that's unfortunately also the time I'd be more tempted to drive over riding the e-bike everywhere. But even so, I doubt I'd ever exhaust the battery in my home town?
I've owned an EV for 5 years, and I still don't have a level 2 charger at home. It works for me, but it mostly depends on your daily drive.
It is less efficient than a L2 charger, so I am spending money on electricity that just disappears as heat, so I'll probably get one installed eventually.
That's interesting. I hadn't considered the efficiency aspect. L2 would be a pain to install where I live, I'm thinking. It's a bungalow and the breaker box is about as far from the driveway in the basement as is humanly possible. So lots of wiring and drilling to bring the power out to where it's needed seems likely.
From what others are saying, I probably do not need L2 for my modest driving needs, but the efficiency aspect could imply it would eventually pay itself back in energy savings. But if I have essentially what amounts to the worst case scenario in terms of upfront installation cost, that could take a long time…
Off the top of my head, I think L1 is like 75% efficient and L2 is closer to 95%, so it's a pretty significant efficiency drop. For me though, it's a similarly difficult install, and I've just got so many other other projects on the go that I've just never made it a priority. Maybe one day if I ever get solar installed...