Choosing a home Level 2 charger for an electric vehicle can take a lot of brain power. Hardwired or NEMA? Which brand? How many amps? NACS or J1772? It’s a lot to take in. In a move that should simplify this, Ford is throwing in a Level 2 electric vehicle charger and simple installation for everyone who decides to pick up a new Ford EV. It’s an excellent play, but it also highlights how North America still has some serious work ahead before everyone has access to Level 2 charging at home.
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As a brief explainer for context, there are three levels of charging for most electric cars:
- A Level 1 charger just plugs into a 120-volt socket, much like you’d plug in a laptop or a toaster.
- Level 2 charging requires a charging unit supplied with 240 volts, and that charging unit can take some serious amperage, up to 50 amps in some units.
- DC fast charging is the ultra-fast charging standard for when you’re out on the road and need to pump between 50 and 350 kW of power into your battery pack ASAP. Pretty much nobody installs this tech at home.
Now let’s get back to Ford’s offer. In a blog post on LinkedIn that later became a press release, Ford CEO Jim Farley stated the following:
It’s simple. Buy or lease a retail Ford Mustang Mach-E, F-150 Lightning or E-Transit and take a complimentary home charger with you or have it delivered, and when you’re ready, an expert comes out to install it at no charge for a standard install. This takes the guesswork out of installation, including costs, to help you save time and money by filling up at home. Less stress, more convenience. If you’re a Ford Pro fleet customer, we have you covered with a commercial charging cash incentive.
While Ford isn’t the first company to include a Level 2 charger with the purchase of a new EV, it’s still a smart move. Sure, rebates from power companies and governments exist, but that still means paying upfront and filing for a rebate, hoping it comes through in a timely manner. Having everything included from the start expedites setup, and should make everything as seamless as possible for new EV drivers.
However, not everyone who buys a Ford EV will actually be able to take advantage of a free Level 2 charging station. See, CleanTechnica reports that more than 40 million American households still have 100 amp service, and if you have 100 amp service, air conditioning, and an electric range, you just don’t have the headroom to add a breaker for EV charging without exceeding your home’s service. An upgrade to 200 amp service can cost thousands of dollars, and while you will make that back eventually through the savings of charging at home, the up-front cost can be hard to stomach.
At the same time, 21.28 million American households exist in the form of multi-family buildings consisting of five or more units, and that situation brings up a host of other complications. Shared parking facilities might not be feasibly upgradable with Level 2 charging, and if it is technically feasible, these renters, condominium owners, and co-op members may still have to battle with their property managers, condo boards, or co-operatives to get Level 2 electric vehicle charging stations installed.
Therein lies the rub for quite literally millions of people. The promises of cheap charging that can happen while you sleep, and promises of only having to visit DC fast chargers when you’re on road trips, they might not come true for people who don’t have access to a Level 2 charger at work and can’t simply have an electrician wire a Level 2 charger into their panel at home on a whim.
I’m not just saying that out of sympathy, I’m saying that out of experience. I don’t have Level 2 charging at home, and yeah, it sucks whenever I’m driving an EV. Sure, plugging into a 120-volt socket for a Level 1 overnight charge adds some range, but it rarely replenishes electricity used the day before, and the somewhat frequent visits to public DC fast charging stations aren’t nearly as convenient as simply filling up a gas tank. Public chargers may be out of order, located in sketchy spots, or simply vandalized.
To get everyone aboard the promise of clean electric daily drivers, we need to do some serious work to expand at-home Level 2 charging. While one automaker throwing in a free home charging station with a new EV helps, there’s still a long way to go. It should come with time, but before you pull the trigger on a new EV, if you have your own breaker panel, check to see if you have the capacity to support a Level 2 charging station, otherwise you might be in for a surprise.
(Photo credits: Ford)
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I’m not seeing how getting a $2000 discount is bad for anyone, if they aren’t able to have a charger installed.
Here’s my personal scenario: My wife and I own a house in the suburbs. She drives an EV for her 60-mile round trip commute each work day. We have a Level 2 charging station in our home garage. I drive a gasoline fueled vehicle a similar number of miles per work day on my commute. We could take her car on long trips and use DC fast charging, but instead we just take my car.
Are you saying that only 10% of people in the USA fit that pattern?
1. You said it works for only 10% of people in the US. My point: EVs would work for a LOT more than 10%. Certainly not everybody, though.
2. I have a 6.5kW solar generating system on my roof. I’ve had it since 2016. It provides all of the electricity to run my house with A/C & pool in the hot, inland SoCal environment. It also provides much of the electricity needed to charge my EV too. Solar electricity & and an EV work hand-in-hand.
Well, geez. YOU certainly don’t have to like or drive an EV. Here’s another data point, though: a friend of mine in Cincinnati runs up 20k miles a year – or more – on his Tesla Model 3 Performance. He loves the thing, and with the super-cheap electricity rates there he is laughing all the way to the bank. His wife drives an SUV of some sort so they have a bigger vehicle too, although the wife & kids do fit in the Tesla. So anyway – using an EV as your daily driver is not just a coastal phenomenon.
I don’t get why Ford (and others eg Hyundai) can’t do what Tesla does with their chargers. The Tesla mobile chargers are Level1 and Level2 capable right out of the box. You just need to get the right plug for the AC part (eg you can get a plug for your electric dryer if you are really short on 220V) you are good to go. Granted you can’t get the theoretical 80A, as NEMA maxes out at 50A, but you don’t need to hard wire and more compatible with most existing houses.
That’s what GM did with out bolt. level 1 and 2 in the same little box. And GM also paid to have a 40a 220v plug run to your garage.
The optional “dual voltage charger” that came with my 2024 Subaru Solterra can do 32 amps if plugged in to 240. It came with two AC plugs: one of the style that clothes dryers use (I don’t recall the NEMA type) and a 3-prong 120v type. It came in a Toyota parts box, so I presume that Toyota and Lexus sell it too for their EVs.
For completeness sake.. dryer plug is NEMA 14-30 the last 2 digit is the maximum amperage the connection can draw.. so it will try to draw actually draw 24Amps.. as there is a 20% safety factor. Another misunderstanding is there is software monitoring the wire temperature / resistance etc that control these chargers. If it doesn’t sense the right hand shake from the car, it won’t connect.
I know having plug non hardwired would not qualify for any free / government rebate installation, but I think it is the most convenient / flexible. Especially with the evolving standard.
Hmmm. I just looked at my dual voltage charger and the spec label says 32A max. The plug that comes with the unit is marked NEMA 14-50, 40A 250V. I have never used this unit because I already had a Clipper Creek 32A Level 2 EVSE wired up in my garage from the Chevy Bolt that we used to have. A quick web search shows that a 14-50 plug is not exactly the same as a 14-30. This leads me to wonder who could actually use this unit at 240V?
You can use your unit with a NEMA 14-50 plug. 14-50 is the newer standard and usually new builds would have it. You can use your charger at 240V. There are adapters from 14-30 to 14-50 and vice versa.
14-50 has maximum amperage of 50A with 20% safety margin that is 40A.
Hardwired you if you have a 60A breaker you can get 48A. However once you are above 30A, you have to double check the specifications of your car to see if it can take any higher.. eg 3/Y RWD can only take 32A, AWD can take 48A.. S and X can do higher. That’s one of the few things Tesla did to their Wall Connector, their Gen 2 have the ability to do 100A at the breaker, but most owners are 3/Y so they took the higher amp features out in Gen 3 charger, since most of the cars only can do 48A max.
The take home is home charger is only a part of the home charging equation for higher amperage charging. Most cars won’t do more than 50A. I just don’t get the hysterics of charging collapsing the grid, unless everyone owns 80A capable cars (which I doubt because that adds cost).
This article is… not very well-informed.
First, just because EVs can charge at 50A or more doesn’t mean you have to charge at that rate. A new 15A circuit at 240V (2.88kW after 80% continuous-load NEC derate) is a fairly small addition, and can recharge 85 miles for a 3mi/kWh EV in 10 hours. That’s more than enough for most commutes.
I charge my ID.4 on a 15A/240V circuit because I had a spare #14 run going to the garage that was easy to upgrade from 120V to 240V just by swapping the breaker from single-pole to double-pole without affecting anything else. It gets the job done (recharges my 40 mile round-trip commute in under 5 hours) just fine and I didn’t have to tear walls apart to run new wiring.
Second, the L2 charging protocol was designed with a feature that can be used to avoid requiring service upgrades. The EVSE (wall box) tells the EV how much current it is allowed to draw, and it can change the value at any time. The EVSE can be paired with current monitor on your electrical service wires so that it can dynamically tell the EV exactly how much power it can draw without overloading the service depending on what other loads are active (never exceeding the EVSE branch circuit size, of course). This technology would let you put a 50A EVSE on a 60A service without overload (actual charging speed would be slowed according to other active loads). This adds some cost to an install but generally an order of magnitude less that what a service upgrade would cost.
“I had a spare #14 run going to the garage that was easy to upgrade from 120V to 240V just by swapping the breaker from single-pole to double-pole”
huh, wut? There are only 2 conductors in a 14-2. You can’t use that for 220v without adding a conductor. Please don’t say you just used the neutral conductor for the second phase and are using the ground as your neutral.
too late to edit, assuming that the charger is itself running on 120. Maybe not all of them do that.
EVSEs don’t want a neutral. They want two hots and a ground.
Some of the chargers need a neutral as their onboard stuff runs on 120. I neglected to consider that some may not need 120 and could be hardwired with only 2 conductors.
I’d like to see one. It would be insane to design an EVSE that needed neutral when passing 240V (L1/L2) to the EV.
87846852 242532 | Chevy Parts Pros
not sure if links work. but this is the one I have.
A NEMA 6-50 (like welders use) has two hot conductors and a ground with no neutral. The ground is a safety feature and does not normally need to conduct current. I recently wired my Clipper Creek Level 2 EV charging station to a NEMA 6-50 so I can plug my new welder in to the same socket. It works fine.
EVs do not use neutral when fed by 240V in the US, just the two hots (and ground). The J1772 connector has only two current-carrying pins (plus ground and two singling pins). My hardwired Emporia EVSE has only two current-carrying input terminals, so no neutral in 240V mode. Same for the Tesla Wall Connector and likely every other EVSE. Requiring a neutral connection in 240V mode would make no sense.
Plug-in L2 EVSEs do typically come with a NEMA 14-50 plug, because that is the most common 240V receptacle “in the wild” (popular at RV parks, mostly). The plug/socket has a neutral pin (because RVs need it for their 120V loads) but EVSEs do not use it. The NEMA 6-50 would be perfectly suitable for EVSEs but it would be pretty useless because there aren’t many of those to be found.
I also found the assertion, “Sure, plugging into a 120-volt socket for a Level 1 overnight charge adds some range, but it rarely replenishes electricity used the day before,” suspect. My Volt charges slowly as level 1 charging goes, and it still manages 50 miles in 12 hours. Is it a full battery if you’ve just come back from a road trip? No. Is it good for most Americans’ commutes? Yes.
I had the same reaction to thhat sentence. I’ve owned an EV since 2017 and the opposite is true for me: I want a L2 or faster charger roughly once a month. If I didn’t have a gas car for longer trips, I’d want a faster charger more often… but even then, the fast charging would mostly happen away from home.
I have 200A service with 100A of that fed to my detached garage.
It’s my dream to have a bi-directional charger plumbed to the detached garage so that my future PHEV daily can be a backup generator for my house.
I live rural, and the power regularly goes out for one to six hours at random intervals every winter.
If my daily could avoid me installing and maintaining a full backup generator setup, I’m all for it.
It’s worth noting that many power companies will provide a rebate or subsidize a 200A upgrade for the sake of EV readiness. It’s worth looking into if you have own your own home and have 100A service.
my power company will rebate $500 like .. hey it’s not nothing but not going to make or break affordability when it costs thousands ….
Man, I’d love to get this Ford level 2 charger for my Chevy Bolt.
The Bolts came with a level 2 charger. Actually, the charger that came with them are both a level 1 and level2. At least they were in the last couple years of their run. Did you not get one?
Oh, and GM also paid to have it installed including running a 40 amp plug to your garage.
No, mine was used, but came with a Level 1? charger. I’ll go check, but I think it’s only level 1. I will be installing a new subpanel in my garage to support a kitchen remodel. Once that is done, I’ll install a hardwired level 2 myself. My electric company gives a $500 rebate for the charger, so it will only cost me about $200 with materials, plus my time.
My GM charger has two cords. One is a 110 plug or I can swap for the other that is a 220 cord. With the 220 cord it charges up to 30 amps I think. There was a storage compartment in the trunk under the floor on mine where all that stuff was.
I checked my level 1 charger last night, and it is indeed only level 1. 1440W/120V. It’s fine for now. But, I will likely get a Chargepoint Wifi one and get the rebate. We have deals that also give a break if we charge at certain times. I believe I can get up to $350 over the course of the complete year, which is about 1 full bill for me now, less the new EV load.
A co-worker was just getting some electrical work done on her house, and her 100 amp panel was maxed out. The electrician quoted her to add a 25 amp panel, so I asked if she planned on getting an EV at some point, and if so, to quote a 200 amp panel. The 200 amp panel would only have been an extra $1000, but the lines to her house were too small to handle 200 amp, which would have meant digging up the lines to the transformer and replacing them at a cost of $15,000. About 70% of the subdivision she lives in has 100 amp service. If all tried to upgrade to 200 amp, the transformers probably couldn’t handle it. Our infrastructure was not built for an all electric future.
It won’t happen if someone doesn’t start. But…. $15k seems like way too much to dig a trench. Won’t the electric company cover some of the cost?? I know my gas company was more than happy to install lines and a meter at my house for free knowing they would get their return.
At least where I live, if you need a new or replacement power line installed, other than after an emergency or disaster, that’s going to be your expense. There are state subsidized incentives for certain upgrades, but there’s going to be some expense no matter what, and it’s not necessarily cheap, at least in my experience.
$15k seems like way too much to dig a trench.
Not to me if I’m the one digging that trench.
If I have to pay that much I would consider adding solar panels and a few server rack batteries.. They are nearing $1kUSD for 5kWh.
I’m in the same boat but got a quote of about $12k just for the 200amp install. Opted out at that point.
Okay color me an idiot. I thought if you had the ability to charge at home on a 110 you could fully charge your EV from 8PM until morning. Now I hear you can’t charge an EV FULLY in 12 hours? Why do we even have EVs?
Yeah, 110 charging is super slow. We use it with our Lightning when we are on the road (better than nothing) but it gets us 1-2% per hour. I think for PHEVs you can get by fine on 110 though
Yup we have a PHEV and it charges in ~10 hours on 110.
110V is very slow… 110V*20A=2.2kW. Most residential 110V outlets are 15A, which is 1.65kW. Assuming you charge the car for 10 hours, with no losses or the car not doing cabin/battery preconditioning or anything, that’s 16.5kW. On some vehicles that’d actually plenty for daily use, of you drive an EV that gets 3+mi/kWh, that’s almost 50 miles of charge from 10 hours on 110V.
With Level 2, your charge speeds are vastly increased (depending on the max amperage the EV can take). 32A is pretty common these days for a lot of EVs on level 2, that’s ~7.68kW of power, which is 76+kWh from 10 hours of charging overnight… Which is enough to fully charge most things that aren’t a pickup or large SUV. For those vehicles with a larger battery, you need a higher amperage charger and service to get optimal charging performance if you want a full charge overnight. You can see how this becomes a problem when you’ve got a massive battery pack and questionable efficiency like the Hummer EV/Silverado EV/Escalade EV/etc
Two corrections:
1. US AC power voltage hasn’t been 110/220 for many, many decades now. It’s now 120/240 (more or less, depending on distance from your local transformer) and slowly edging up towards 125/250.
2. Continuous loads (with EVs/EVSEs are) may only draw 80% of the circuit rating: 12A on a 15A circuit, 16A on a 20A circuit, etc.
Thus baseline (15A NEMA 5-15 plug) L1 charging is 1.44kW. If you have a travel charger with a 20A plug (and a 20A circuit to use it with) 1.92kW L1 is possible, but as far as I know, rare.
These days, EVs typically have configurable settings for max amps on Level 1 charging. For example, my Solterra can be set to 12 amps (the default) or 8 amps. This is to accommodate older garages with only one, 120v circuit and other stuff running.
Code for new garage electrical installation in my state requires at least 1 20a circuit, and it has been this way for at least 8 years (the oldest garage installation I’ve done).
Mine seems to get about 5-6 miles of range for every hour of charge on 110v.
This is fine for my needs and hasn’t been a problem. If it had to commute 100 miles each way daily, I’d get something with a combustion engine.
It kind of depends on how efficient the vehicle is and how far you are driving it. If you are driving a Lightning or Hummer 120 miles a day then 12 hours on 110 isn’t going to cut it. But, a Chevy Bolt driving 40-50 miles a day, that’s easy.
Yeah, about that. I wish I could have an electrician do anything on a whim. Even with “cash on hand” the good ones (all two of them) in our area require about a six-month lead time to so much as change out a wall-plug. Luckily property owners are allowed to do their own work as long as it’s up to code – it’s given me a chance to learn basic home-wiring.
Where are you that as a homeowner or renter you can’t replace an outlet? If that requires an electrician I am leery of the level of service you are getting. A true quality electrician has more pride than suffering outlet changes. Heck in PA a electrical company will change 10 outlets for $100 just to get your business. And this is union electric members.
I’m in Iowa, and it varies by locale. A nearby city set things up so you’re only allowed to have certified electricians work on anything electrical-related. From what I’ve been told they have a handy list of one they’ve certified that a person can call.
I’ve talked to a couple of small-time landlord’s over there that got out of the rental business as they said two-year inspections are now mandatory, the city always finds a number of things needing immediate replacement, and the “city-certified” guys charge exorbitant rates. I never had the chance to personally inspect their properties, so I don’t really know, but it certainly gives off racket-vibes. Of course The big-players having their own city-certified electricians on staff doesn’t help.
If I really want something done, I can call in service from an area 40 miles away and probably have the project up and running in a week or so, but I prefer to hire local. So, far I’ve been able to do about 90% of what I need to by myself – lights, switches, fixtures, two-wire to three-wire conversion, and even my own Bosch 220 Level 2 setup out in the garage.
That suuuucks. In my city, you can do whatever you want to your own house, being a homeowner. Once you rent, things change. But, homeowners can basically do whatever they want, code or not. NOT that I recommend that, but it’s possible. No one enters my house for any sort of mandatory inspection. I’ve been able to do everything to my house myself. The exception would be anything from the pole to my panel. That’s a giant NOPE from me.
Oh yeah – some localities now basically act like HOAs. My sister lives in a newer development a few towns over where the city now requires automatic lawn-sprinklers and inspects those every few years. F-that.
Thankfully the town I live in remains nonsense-free. It’s like you describe: pole to panel is a no-go, but otherwise the owner is free to do what they will for the most part.