Continue with 6-20 (15 miles/hr) or go with wall charger?

[MorrisonHiker]

- So what the point to have an 80 A Wall Connector if the maximum on board charger is 48 A.

1. People with cars with dual chargers (from before the April 2016 refresh) can charge at up to 80 Amps. When the S was refreshed, charging changed from 40 Amps or 80 Amps to 48 Amps or 72 Amps.
2. People with multiple Teslas and with multiple Gen 2 WCs can charge multiple cars at once because they are load-balanced. I have 3 signature wall connectors which share 64 Amps. I can charge 1 car at 48 Amps, 2 cars at 32 Amps each or 3 cars at 21 Amps each. If I had an 80 Amp breaker, I could charge 1 car at 48 Amps, 2 cars at 40 Amps each or 3 cars at 26 Amps each. You can actually have up to 4 WCs connected together on a shared breaker.

 

[miimura]

- So what the point to have an 80 A Wall Connector if the maximum on board charger is 48 A.

The Classic Model S was available with dual 40A on-board chargers for a total of 80A single phase (240V x 80A = 19.2kW) charging capacity. In Europe, the chargers were three phase and the dual chargers were 16 amps each for a totoal of 32 amp three phase (230V x 32A x 3ph = 22kW) charging.

In addition, the 80A setting is also useful for the power sharing function in the Wall Connector. You can have up to 4 units dynamically sharing those 80 amps.

Edit: MorrisonHiker just barely beat me to it...

 

[Big Earl]

The Classic Model S was available with dual 40A on-board chargers for a total of 80A single phase (240V x 80A = 19.2kW) charging capacity. In Europe, the chargers were three phase and the dual chargers were 16 amps each for a totoal of 32 amp three phase (230V x 32A x 3ph = 22kW) charging.

In addition, the 80A setting is also useful for the power sharing function in the Wall Connector. You can have up to 4 units dynamically sharing those 80 amps.

Edit: MorrisonHiker just barely beat me to it...

And if powered by a 277 volt single phase circuit (one leg of 480 volt 3-phase service in the USA), the dual 40 amp chargers can provide 22 kW.

 

[miimura]

And if powered by a 277 volt single phase circuit (one leg of 480 volt 3-phase service in the USA), the dual 40 amp chargers can provide 22 kW.

Are you sure? I thought they were software limited to 10kW each. I thought people observed the amps decreasing when the voltage went over 250VAC. I could be wrong though.

 

[Big Earl]

Are you sure? I thought they were software limited to 10kW each. I thought people observed the amps decreasing when the voltage went over 250VAC. I could be wrong though.

I'm pretty sure they can go higher than 10kW, which is how twelve of them can provide 135 kW in a supercharger. 12 x 40 x 277 = 132,960

 

[Rocky_H]

Thank you for the update. What bother me is that I cannot find any specification for on board charger on Tesla.com.

But may be I'm wrong? I would be happy then to find a web page or any documentation.

I think you're mostly right, unfortunately. I just looked around the web page fairly thoroughly, and it is very hard to find. Going through the order configurator doesn't show the power of the onboard charger, and even if you go to the full, complete specification listing page, which absolutely should show it, they never display the power level of the onboard charger. I consider that really wrong to not list it even in the full specifications.

However, the place people spotted it was when they changed the charging recommendations page for home charging, where they listed what maximum charging rate people could get for various circuit sizes per each specific model of car. That got changed so that it listed that a 60A circuit, providing 48A current would max out the charging rate even on the 100D or P100D. And 80A or 100A circuits didn't provide any faster charging rate. Here's that page.
Wall Connector

Extract from the WALL CONNECTOR, 8OA SINGLE PHASE INSTALLATION MANUAL (page 12)

[...]
- So what the point to have an 80 A Wall Connector if the maximum on board charger is 48 A.

As others mentioned, this isn't about the wall connector capabilities. This is about what is included in the cars now. And there are still plenty of good reasons for a business to install a wall connector with a good high rate, so that even older faster charging cars can get good benefit from it. Even at this point, it might be possible for me to get the second charger added to my 2014 car to get 80A charging capability. (Might have a long wait to get the part, though.)

 

[Glamisduner]

jjrandorin - Yes, want vs need.

ijaaz - Yeah, I've been doing a bunch of reading and it seems like there's the NEMA 14-50 crowd, and then the hard-wired wall charger crowd. At 50 amps, the wall charger will give you 37 miles/hour, vs. 44 at 60 amps. Not sure why you'd intentionally go with 50 amps and a separate plug, unless your service box is limited, and the extra 10 amps would incur the cost of upgrading to a larger service box.

Because 1) you don't have buy a wall connector
2) you can charge other vehicles other than the model 3, or use it for other things (like a welder).

I'm currently in the processes of upgrading to HPWC because I got the HPWC for free, but so far the 14-50 hasn't let me down.

 

[ratsbew]

Welcome to the NEMA 6-20 club!! I've been using mine since July (it cost me $15 to DIY upgrade a 5-20) and haven't looked back. There's only been one occasion where a faster charge could have been useful...but in the end 6-20 pulled me through without delaying my departure.

It's fast enough for me to recover my ~40 daily miles while on off-peak pricing.

15mph is enough for 180 miles of charge in 12 hours over night.

 

[miimura]

I'm pretty sure they can go higher than 10kW, which is how twelve of them can provide 135 kW in a supercharger. 12 x 40 x 277 = 132,960

Actually, the current Supercharger label says 192 amps per phase, which is 48 amps to each of 12 chargers at 277 volts for a gross input of 160kW. That still doesn't necessarily mean that a classic Model S will use draw than 10kW per first gen charger.