We are looking at purchasing our first electric car. It will be primarily used for comuniting to and from work so less the 50km/30miles a day. The dealers tell us this would recharge in a few hours on a 240v 10amp gpo at home. I have no reason to not believe them but is this the best thing for the life of the battery? Or should the plan be to run the battery down and charge for longer at home or visit a fast charger once a week?
Also for not it will be used for longer trips 2 or 3 times a year. Up to 1200 km round trip.
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The only thing with “level 1” charging off a socket is, PEN faults. Some areas in 230V-land supply houses only “Live” and “combined Neutral & Earth (PEN”). Houses have no local ground rod/spike to force local dirt to the same voltage as PEN. (notice how I said that?)
So if the PEN wire from the utility breaks, the normal loads will pull your end of PEN up to line voltage (230V) which means both your neutrals and your grounds/earths are floating at 230V above the dirt your house sits on. The result is you have a “hot skin” on your EV.
So, in those areas, EV charging equipment has extra internal kit to detect PEN faults (neutral voltage gets too close to live) and sever live and neutral and earth to the EV. You need to consult with local codes about what protective equipment is needed for the EV socket, or make sure your equipment does that.
The USA banned that in 1965 for all but ranges (hobs) and dryers - PEN to the dryer allowed. But mysteriously, people kept dying from hot skin on ranges and dryers. So they outlawed it in 1996. USA houses do not trust utility neutral and have their own local earth spikes, however, utility neutral is bonded to local earth.
Slow daily charging is good charging. Fast chargers are worse.
You can expect around 8 miles of range per hour with a regular wall socket / 3-pin this article lists some good options that you can set an adjustable charge speed up to 13A https://topcharger.co.uk/best-ev-chargers/ or you can get a Type 2 charger for up to 7.4kW which adds around 28 miles of range per hour. Remember to get an off-peak tariff so charging your car costs less than usual.
Get a home charger. Home outlets are not made to run for hours at a time. Risk of fire
Quite literally they are, what house do you live in?!
What would it draw. 2kwh? So it would take 30 hours to fill a modern battery. I’d that safe to leave for 30 hours? What’s the point in home charger then?
I’ve been doing this for several years. You only need to replenish what you use. Your home will have at least a couple outlets under constant or at least very common use, like for a refrigerator.
It won’t hurt the battery. You can charge once a week or every day. Doesn’t matter. You can slow charge at home or fast charge at fast charging station. Doesn’t matter.
Really the only thing that matters is that you don’t run your battery too low (say, less than 5%) AND let it sit at that state of charge for days…or charge it too high (say, above 95%) AND let it sit at that state of charge for days.
In each case you’re pushing lots of lithium ions into the anode/cathode respectively which makes them swell and can develop microcracks (which is what degrades battery health)
To make it clear: it’s perfectly fine to charge to 100% if you need the range and leave relatively soon (e.g. within an hour) when you reach that state of charge. Similarly it’s OK to run the battery down to 0% if you immediately plug in to charge again.
It won’t have any detrimental affect on the battery whatsoever. In fact charging somewhat slower than the more normal 32A/7.2kW can help it last longer. There’s no particular reason to visit a fast charger, but running the battery down and fully topping it up occasionally does help, but we aren’t talking weekly.
Work out if 10A 2.4kW is going to give you what you need, simply Size of Battery / 2.4 will give you the hours to charge from 0-100% then take some fraction of that since you’ll never be charging from zero.
Keep in mind the main failure mode here is in using the normal domestric plug, it’s worth getting it checked by an electrician first, often they can install more robust versions.