Combiner instead of special charging outlet.

[MY-user]

Has anyone tried to use this or similar combiner?

Parkworld 61544 Combiner, Household Regular (2) 5-15 Plug Male to RV 14-50 Receptacle Female, (2) 5-15 to 14-50R V Adapter Cord

 

[sleepydoc]

I haven’t seen or used that before but there are multiple potential problems with it and it seems like an accident waiting to happen.

First, it specifically says not for use with EVs.

Second, you are taking two 15A circuits and combining them into a 50A circuit? It doesn’t work like that. The wiring is still only capable of 15A (maybe 20A depending on the circuit.) You theoretically could get 30A off of dual 120V circuits but the setup assumes proper current balancIng. If you’re running on GFI circuits (which you should be in a garage) any current mismatch will cause the GFCIs to trip.

Third, you would need to plug each of the 120V plugs into an outlet that was on a separate leg of your service to actually get 240V meaning you need two 120V receptacles on different legs adjacent to each other. Odds are you won’t have this so it won’t work without rewiring or adding a circuit, in which case you might as well do it right.

If you read the description carefully, they state the wire and connectors are UL approved, not the device. I would steer clear.

 

[ATPMSD]

The 14-50 plug has four legs, L1, L2 are power, N is neutral and G is ground. What this adapter does is take the “hot” line from one of the 5-15 outlets to L1 and the hot from the second to L2. In a RV this is fine since the RV sees two 120V circuits, L1-N and L2-N. But since both 5-15 plus are likely on the same breaker this is still a 15-amp circuit.

In the case of an EV, the charger looks for voltage across L1 and L2, which will be zero since they are on the same cIrcuit.

 

[TomServo]

I bought this - NEMA 14-50 Y Splitter – EVSE Adapters

For use with my existing NEMA 14-50 outlet when we owned a Volt and Y. Since the Volt could pull a max of 12 amps and the Y using the UMC pulls a max of 32, my plan was to allocate 12 to the Volt and < 24 amps to the Y when BOTH cars need to charge at the same time.

Turns out that scenario never materialized and I never needed to use this adapter. So now I need to sell it since we sold the Volt and installed a Gen 3 WC.

 

[ucmndd]

Has anyone tried to use this or similar combiner?

Parkworld 61544 Combiner, Household Regular (2) 5-15 Plug Male to RV 14-50 Receptacle Female, (2) 5-15 to 14-50R V Adapter Cord

This would “work”, IF you ran each 120v plug to a different circuit in your home AND those circuits were on the opposite phase of each other in your panel AND you manually lowered the charging amperage in your car to ~12 amps.

But don’t do that. You bought a ~$50k car. Charge it correctly.

 

[MY-user]

This would “work”, IF you ran each 120v plug to a different circuit in your home AND those circuits were on the opposite phase of each other in your panel AND you manually lowered the charging amperage in your car to ~12 amps.

But don’t do that. You bought a ~$50k car. Charge it correctly.

Thank you! I was only considering this option for traveling to friends or family.

 

[Exelion]

Thank you! I was only considering this option for traveling to friends or family.

In that case, there are other *better* plugs to buy such as:

-NEMA 5-20. This is a real gem of a plug, and one of those opportunities you don’t expect to see, but find often. Helps give you 6 miles every hour vs 3-4.

-NEMA 14-30. Seen pretty often in newer homes for electric dryer outlets. Between this and the 14-50, you should have almost all home 240V outlets covered.

-NEMA 14-50. Gives the max 32amps from the mobile connector, this is a very common 240V outlet.