I spend a lot of time on car blog sites which are frequented with comments like “I’ll never buy an electric car considering it financing a tuft of money to put a charger in my home” or some such crap. I bought a Chevy Bolt for well-nigh 1/2 price in Jan of 2001 without any way to tuition it at my wife’s house which is over an hour yonder from everything. This vendible is well-nigh how I dealt with having an electric car without overly installing a home charger and how increasingly than 1/2 of the electricity I’ve put into it over the last 18 months has come from self-ruling sources (not my house). What does this have to do with ebikes? Pretty much nothing except I once wrote a long vendible on Anarchistic’s Guerrilla ebike charging well-nigh 6 years ago here. Things with electric cars are quite a bit variegated hence the new vendible and this vendible is for Gentlemen not Anarchists. Yup, you know who you are.

Quit whining well-nigh the price of gas and do something well-nigh it

First off I want to talk well-nigh my forfeit savings. Since I have solar panels at my house and I get electricity wherever I can get it for self-ruling I save well-nigh 33 cents a mile for every mile that I don’t have to momentum my Tundra thesping gas is $5\gal. At 15mpg with gas at $5/gal : 5/15 = 33.33333 cents a mile. The stereotype American drives 14,263 miles a year so that would be a savings of $4,754.33333333 a year for your stereotype oversized truck the size of a Sherman tank that you probably really don’t need. Now we are unquestionably talking well-nigh real money here so pay sustentation kids.

There are three ways to tuition electric cars, level 1, level 2 and Level 3. Level 1 connector that came self-ruling with my Bolt gets me well-nigh 4 miles of range per hour at 12 Amps and 3 miles of range at 8 amps. Since many unseemly 15 amp outlets will unquestionably melt if you try to tuition at 12 amps continuously and considering 3 miles of range per hour sucks I’m going to say here that guerrilla charging at 120v/8amps is a total waste of time. Unless you find a spot that is near a place that you live and sleep it’s scrutinizingly certainly not worth it (maybe a neighbor you don’t really like). Level 3 is DC fast charging which unchangingly financing money so I’m not going to discuss it here considering I’m unseemly and don’t like to pay money for anything.

Don’t waste your money installing a home charger, get a Level 2 charging subscription instead

People think a home charger has to forfeit between $600-2000 several thousand dollars for an electrician to install it. Honestly I think this is totally nuts. I installed a 30 amp 240v plug from Lowes that forfeit me well-nigh $12 with a scrap of 2′ 10 AWG copper wire that I had kicking virtually in well-nigh 10 minutes. I was so lazy I didn’t plane mount the outlet properly and it sort of tilts at a janky wile which I sort of like (although the electrical inspectors don’t find it quite as endearing). Instead of ownership and installing a car charger I just bought a 30 Amp charging subscription from Wren for $299 here (side note: Most car chargers are just a charging subscription with a fancy box you don’t need and some pretty shimmer lights, the charger is inside your car). This plugs into a standard 30 amp dryer plug that you might once plane have somewhere in your garage or utility room. Go ahead, squint around.

You might want to consider getting a 50 amp connector (that will only tuition at 40 amps continuous vs 24 amps continuous for the 30 amp adapter) which will tuition well-nigh 66% faster than the 30 amp connector I got but realize that doing that will make it increasingly difficult to use 30 amp plugs. There are adapters that will indulge you to plug in a 50 amp charger to a 30 amp plug, but you’d have to make sure to set the charger to tuition at 24 Amps (not 40) surpassing you plug it into your car and wrack-up their breaker so that setup is really not recommended. If you forgot to set it to the lower tuition rate and the breaker didn’t trip then the wiring could melt and rationalization a fire (fire=bad). Please note as well that a 50 amp spin can only tuition at 40 Amps continuous and a 30 amp spin can only tuition for 24 Amps continuous. If you buy a 50 amp charger and a 30 amp plug connector and then set the tuition rate to 30 Amps (instead of the correct 24 Amps) then the wires will overheat without tripping the spin breaker and will probably melt and rationalization a lot of problems and expense for the owner of the plug.

Now just get a 50 amp adapter, and maybe flipside TT-30 amp adapter

For well-nigh $12 you can get a upper quality NEMA adapter, I got mine on ebay and the unravelment read “50Amp NEMA 14-50P to NEMA 10-30R Power Plug String Adapter” (go find your own). I can plug my 30 amp charger into the 50 amp connector and tuition at well-nigh 24 Amps out of any NEMA 14-50 plug (these are pretty standard at parks and RV areas). The most worldwide 30 amp plug at campgrounds is the NEMA TT-30 so if you want to use those plugs as well you will need flipside $12 ebay connector that goes from NEMA TT-30 Male to NEMA 10-30R Female. For virtually $325 you can now tuition at NEMA 10-30R, NEMA TT-30 and NEMA 14-50P which are by far the most worldwide 240v plugs in the US. Alimony the charger and the adapters in your car everywhere you go and start looking for self-ruling places to charge.

Consider a Tesla Adapter

A Tesla Tap gets you wangle to 4,500 Destination chargers in the US, most of which are FREE (they are level 2 , the connector won’t work with superchargers). You can get the Tesla Tap for $159 here although there are moreover a tuft of clones out there for well-nigh the same price. The forums make it sound like the Tesla Tap is the way to go, although honestly I have never used mine so I really have no opinion. Seems like a lot of money for a little adapter, I like my $12 ones better. A Tesla Destination charger will add between 30 and 44 miles of range per hour which makes them well-nigh equivalent to a 50 amp charging cable.

Extension cords, if you’re going to get one, get the right one

Although they sell J1772 Extension cords for electric car charging you should not get them considering getting a NEMA 10-30R extension string is well-nigh 1/2 the price. It financing well-nigh $75 for a good quality 25 foot subscription and $125 for a 50′ cable. I think it’s unwise to get longer than a 50′ cable. The charging subscription is 25′ which for me has unchangingly been plenty long enough. With a 50′ extension that ways you only have to get your electric car within 75′ of a 240v outlet. There is a spot under the trunk of the Bolt where a spare would go if the car shipped with a spare (it doesn’t). Instead there is a large woodcut of foam where the spare should be (crash protection? mouse prefab housing?), that would be a unconfined place to store your 30 amp extension cord. I alimony my charging subscription overdue the passenger seat since I pull it out wontedly when I need to charge.

Also note that every electric car charger I have overly seen says implicitly in the transmission to not use an extension cord. I have washed-up it and not had issues, but if you use an extension string that has a gauge of wire that will not support your load then that subscription will melt the insulation and at weightier wrack-up the breaker and at worst start a fire.(fire=bad) You have been warned.

Shame the people you love into installing a NEMA plug for you

I told my dad that I was getting an electric car and I wanted to tuition it in his garage with a 30 amp NEMA plug. I was shocked and amazed when he showed me that he had once wired a plug there for his emergency generator. To think I didn’t plane have to pull the ‘if you really love me dad you’ll let me install this plug in your garage with my questionable wiring skills’. If there is a place that you go wontedly that is far yonder consider installing a $12 NEMA 10-30R surface mount receptacle like this one here.

Ask surpassing you charge, generally you will find people don’t mind as much as you’d think

This is America, everyone has guns and is pretty territorial. I unchangingly ask surpassing I plug in and make sure the person I am getting electricity from has a good idea of how much it’s going to forfeit them. The weightier way to tideway it is to tell them how much it financing per hour of stuff plugged in and then how long you want to charge. In NY electricity is well-nigh 14 cents a kWh. The charger goes at 24Amps x 240v = 5.7Kw per hour x $.14 = 80 cents an hour. What does 80 cents an hour of someone else’s money get you? For me it’s well-nigh 25 miles of range which makes it well worth the trouble (think well-nigh how much it would forfeit in gas to go that 25 miles in your big trappy truck, well-nigh 10x as much). A good way to start the conversation is to offer to pay for the electricity you plan to use. You will find that most places will refuse to take your money (especially if you are patronizing their business) but won’t mind you using their outlets.

I have gotten permission to tuition at the park that I unchangingly kiteboard at (they are looking into installing EV chargers at my urging) as well as my home and my parents house. All of these things are over an hour yonder from each other. I spend 50% of my time slaving yonder at my wife’s house which is moreover an hour yonder from all 3 of those things and I have no place to tuition my car at my wife’s house. With the Bolt recall I can’t tuition over 80% and I loath to let the car get unelevated 40% considering of the risk of it bursting into flames. I know it sounds like I am exaggerating but I’m really not, this is what GM recommends. I unquestionably like driving a car that could splash into flames at any moment, sort of feels like how I live my life, just a little on the edge. It’s not for everyone of course, and for those scaredy cats out there you can unchangingly do the Bolt buyback program. I’ll never sign up. You can pry my electric car from my unprepossessed sufferer hands.

Finding 30 or 50 amp 240v plugs

These things are everywhere if you know where to look. Most wontedly they are used for dryers but moreover I’ve seen them just preinstalled into garages, basements or utility rooms not plugged into anything and sometimes installed for a generator hookup. The weightier 240v outlet to use is one you once have, so if you have a variegated 30 or 50 amp outlet then buy the car charger that goes with the NEMA outlet you once have and then purchase the adapters you need as you find other plugs to tuition at. For lots of money they sell auto-switchers for 30 amp plugs which will indulge you to share your electric car charging with your dryer. To me that is a waste of money, just unplug your dryer and plug in your charger when you need it or wire up flipside defended breaker for your car charger. It only takes well-nigh 10 minutes to do.

If you don’t know how to wire up a new outlet to your home, then you should either rent a licensed electrician (the smart thing to do) or just watch a tuft of youtube videos and do it yourself (what I unchangingly do). Probably not legal in whatever nice state you live in, but still legal here in trappy rural NY.

Most parks with any kind of campgrounds, marinas or anyplace that allows for plugging in large RVs or Boats will often have 30 or 50 amp plugs that are tropical to places you can park. Once you start looking for upper voltage plugs you’ll be amazed at how many you can find.

Ride On.