I bought my 2015 Nissan Leaf used back in 2017. When I bought it the people at the dealership knew basically nothing about it, and in the trunk I found a wireless/plugless charger from this company: https://pluglesspower.com
I’ve never used it, because it requires a 240 volt outlet and my garage doesn’t have that. Instead I just plug in and trickle charge every night, which works just fine. Now we are moving to a new house and having some other electrical work done and I found this thing sitting in my basement and wondered to myself whether I should install it and use it.
The cost would be whatever it costs for my electrician to put a 240V outlet in my garage (I don’t have a quote on that yet). The only benefit would be saving me the minor hassle of having to plug my car in every night. I also worry about it being less efficient than the trickle charger that came with my Leaf, but I’ve seen conflicting info on that. Also (please tell me if this is crazy) I have some fears about a giant magnetic field in my attached garage giving me cancer, like living under a high tension power line.
Anyway, I’d love to hear your thoughts!
If you have an electric stove, you know it’s 240V, right? Your clothes dryer? 240V. You AC? 240V. Your electric service panel? 240V (they split into two phases of 120V).
Meanwhile, high voltage lines are like something like 750,000V…so, not even remotely similar.
A L2 charger can be a game changer. My Prius Prime has only 25 usable miles on the battery. For the first 2 years I only used a 120V charger. During that time, I’d get about 1000 to 1200 miles per tank (10 gallons or so of gas). Now, with my Level 2 charger, I’m getting anywhere from 1800 to 3000 miles per tank of gas. The difference is that on weekend (or evenings), I can plug in a very quickly add a meaningful amount of charge. In just 20 minutes I can go from 0 miles to say 6 to 8 miles, so enough to go run an errand and not need gas.
If you can, make the update.