Well, that didn’t work as planned.
After five years of charging our Tesla Model 3 on a 120-volt socket at home, we installed a Level 2 charger. A few factors drove the move.
1) We’ve loved having the electric Model 3 as our primary car. It’s peppy, quiet and reliable. We can power it with renewable energy, and it is cheaper to run and maintain than the V8 dinosaurs I otherwise buy.
2) However, the Tesla travel charger we used for home charging was becoming finicky. Unless we plugged it into the Model 3 just right, the car would not latch to the charger handle. We were going to need a new charger.
3) Since we recently moved to a house with a tiny driveway, we’ve been guilty of blocking the sidewalk while charging. Upgrading to a faster L2 charger would let us keep the sidewalk clear for more hours of the week.
4) Finally, when we only had slow L1 120-volt charging at home, ending a trip with an empty battery was dicey. L1 charging added less than 20% (~50 miles) in a 10-hour charge. Starting a workday with so little juice induced range anxiety.
So we anted up: we bought a $620 Tesla Universal Wall Charger and paid $2,620 for the installation.
And indeed, the Wall Charger lets us fill our Model 3’s battery in less than 10 hours, which is a great improvement over the +25 hours at 120-volt speeds.
(Our Model 3 is RWD, so it charges at just 32 amps for ~30 miles of range per hour. AWD Model 3s can charge at 45 amps or 44 mph on the same Wall Charger.)
I was happy with our new charging lifestyle until the Tesla App pointed out that I was spending more money powering the Model 3 than I would have spent on gasoline for a gas car with 30-mpg economy.
The problem wasn’t our Model 3’s efficiency—it is still one of the most efficient vehicles—but rather our aggressively climbing electricity costs. PG&E hiked our rates from less than $0.40 per kWh in 2023 to over $0.50 per kWh in 2024. I signed up for the power company’s electric-vehicle rate plan, but it only knocked a few cents off our rate.
With the sky-high rates, the Tesla Supercharger network is now cheaper than charging at home. Morning hours at my closest Supercharger cost $0.35 per kilowatt hour, and even peak afternoon hours are $0.45 per kWh, which is still 10% better than my home rate. So, charging from 10% to 80% costs $14 if I pair it with Saturday morning grocery shopping or $20 at home. Ouch.
This is why I’m now doing everything I can to avoid charging our EV on our new $3,240 L2 Tesla Wall Charger. Oops, my bad!
Mike's Steering Column 