New Owner Pending: Battery Inquiry

[N7Roadster]

Hey everyone,

i’m currently looking into purchasing a Tesla Model 3 standard range. Bare minimum bells and whistle’s. I’m a big fan of the car, one concern is the mileage. I drive fairly often on long drives, unfortunately though there are no supercharging stations in my area. The closest one is about 30 to 45 minutes north. I would be mostly dependent on charging at home. So my question is, how big of a pain will it be to rely on home charging? Considering how long it takes to charge and how little miles you get to a charge compared to a 2 minute fill up at a gas station for a gas car.

 

[Dan123]

There are a lot of things you are not saying. Do you live in a house with a garage, or in an apartment? are you planning to install a 240 volt outlet/charger, or are you planning to use the regular 120 volt outlet for charging?

With a regular 120 outlet you will be limited to about 5 miles per hour, so you will get 60 miles during 12 hour overnight charge. In cold weather, it may be less.

With a 240, 32amp charging (maximum on standard range), you will get about 30 miles per hour, so you will get a full charge overnight.

 

[bpham25]

We have a standard range plus with 240 miles and we charge 90% daily at night for 215 miles. We drive about 140 miles daily and charge at home every night. We love it for it's much cheaper to charge at home then super charge. Plus we plug it in at night and wake up and it's ready.

 

[vickh]

I have a SR. You will need a good home charging. Look into 6-20 charging as well for 15 mi/hr charging at home too.

You can't really compare a SC trip to a gas station. It's only fine if you eat/shop etc multitask while it's charging

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

Hey everyone,

i’m currently looking into purchasing a Tesla Model 3 standard range. Bare minimum bells and whistle’s. I’m a big fan of the car, one concern is the mileage. I drive fairly often on long drives, unfortunately though there are no supercharging stations in my area. The closest one is about 30 to 45 minutes north. I would be mostly dependent on charging at home. So my question is, how big of a pain will it be to rely on home charging? Considering how long it takes to charge and how little miles you get to a charge compared to a 2 minute fill up at a gas station for a gas car.

If you do a lot of road trips I would recommend a vehicle with more range unless you like slow road trips. For the 310-mile range vehicle, the typical use case for a road trip is to drive about 150-200 miles per leg before charging is required. For the SR+ at freeway speeds (80mph) it will be closer to 100-150 miles. Remember you only charge the vehicle to at most 80% when using a Supercharger for minimum travel time. Furthermore, the SR vehicle does not add miles as fast at a Supercharger as the LR.

For the home charging - the whole point is to rely on home charging - Supercharging is really only for road trips or the rare people who do a lot of driving during the day. Just be sure to invest in 240V charging and you will probably be fine.

 

[Rocky_H]

I would be mostly dependent on charging at home. So my question is, how big of a pain will it be to rely on home charging? Considering how long it takes to charge and how little miles you get to a charge compared to a 2 minute fill up at a gas station for a gas car.

Well. I will say...congratulations? This is about the strangest question I've ever seen about electric cars.

The vast majority of the time, people are concerned about the possible hassle of the time for charging while on long road trips. Like...excessively so...like people talk as if that is 100% of their car's use. They won't bother to ask about charging at home, because it's so dead simple. It's like 5 seconds to grab the cord off the wall and plug it in. It's the easiest, most convenient, and wonderful thing about having an electric car and is a lot more convenient than a gas car. So comparing it to filling up a gas car? Yeah--faster and quicker, and provides a nice level of peacefulness knowing that you never have to stop for gas when you are really trying to get somewhere. And no, a gas station fill up is not as short as 2 minutes.

 

[ewoodrick]

Hey everyone,

i’m currently looking into purchasing a Tesla Model 3 standard range. Bare minimum bells and whistle’s. I’m a big fan of the car, one concern is the mileage. I drive fairly often on long drives, unfortunately though there are no supercharging stations in my area. The closest one is about 30 to 45 minutes north. I would be mostly dependent on charging at home. So my question is, how big of a pain will it be to rely on home charging? Considering how long it takes to charge and how little miles you get to a charge compared to a 2 minute fill up at a gas station for a gas car.

Pain charging at home? You have this completely backwards. Charging at Superchargers is painful. I charged at home last night, took none of my time to do it and the car was full in a few hours.
Charging at home is the best EV experience. Anything else is a compromise.
It NEVER takes 2 minutes to fill up at a gas station. Time it, from the second that you turn off of your normal route until you get back on it. I suspect that it will be 10-15 minutes. Charging at home 10-15 seconds.

In the last year, a Supercharger was built about 10 minutes away from me. While I pass it all the time, I've never charged there. Never a need to. The Superchargers at about 100 miles away are the ones that I tend to use most

 

[kiwi]

Here's my personal experience:

As everyone has said... filling at home is much nicer than going to a gas station.
Once or twice a week I plug in, and in the morning I come out to a full car. I spend
*less* time filling the car than when I had an ICE, even though I might do it more often.

Some people go for a super fast home charger to get the charging time down to a few
hours. For me that didn't make sense. When I charge at home its always over night.
So I've got a relatively slow 240v/25A (6kW). For the longest time we had 16A, and
10A when we were at the beach.

On long trips, we stop to charge every 3-4 hours. Honestly, the kids are ready to
go crazy if we dont get out and run around for a bit. That break really works
for us.

I occasionally show the car at car shows in the EV section and talk to a lot of people
about driving EVs, and the biggest challenge is to get people to stop expecting an
identical experience to an ICE:
- 5 min fill up every week or two.
- drive for 600 miles between breaks.
- drive anywhere without planning.

Instead, with an EV, you get:
- overnight fill (come out to a full car every morning if you want).
- on a long trip take a 20 minute break every 3-4 hours.
- plan your trips

You are gonna love it - we have two EVs now (MX and Leaf) and just can't go back to ICE.

 

[animorph]

Number one on my list of reasons to buy an electric car was to be able to charge at home. It's great and super easy.

However, if you're going to frequently exceed your full charge range in a single day and need to drop by home for a quick refill for another 100 miles then you should buy the larger battery to avoid the extra charge. If your time isn't quite as limited, maxing out your charge speed at home will minimize your wait time. For range, consider that the battery capacity will degrade during its lifetime (whatever that is), battery health should be better if you only charge to 90% and don't discharge all the way to 0%, and there are numerous factors like temperature, wind, rain, elevation, and driving style that can reduce your range below the EPA rating. If the SR looks in anyway marginal for your daily driving a larger battery would be much better.

 

[ucmndd]

I leave the house every morning with a “full tank”.

“Pain” to rely on home charging? On the contrary, it’s probably the single biggest benefit of an EV.

 

[Rottenapplr]

Hey everyone,

i’m currently looking into purchasing a Tesla Model 3 standard range. Bare minimum bells and whistle’s. I’m a big fan of the car, one concern is the mileage. I drive fairly often on long drives, unfortunately though there are no supercharging stations in my area. The closest one is about 30 to 45 minutes north. I would be mostly dependent on charging at home. So my question is, how big of a pain will it be to rely on home charging? Considering how long it takes to charge and how little miles you get to a charge compared to a 2 minute fill up at a gas station for a gas car.

Home charging is the best thing about the electric car. Supercharging for me, is for road trips. I have anywhere from 230 miles or 250 miles or 290 miles each morning depending if I set charging limit to 70%, 80%, and 90%. I have never used a supercharger for local trips except for the first three weeks when I didn’t have my home charger me a 14-50 hooked up.

I’m in California and I was SHOCKED To see $4.29/gal this week. I haven’t paid attention to the gas prices!!

 

[Rottenapplr]

Here's my personal experience:

As everyone has said... filling at home is much nicer than going to a gas station.
Once or twice a week I plug in, and in the morning I come out to a full car. I spend
*less* time filling the car than when I had an ICE, even though I might do it more often.

Some people go for a super fast home charger to get the charging time down to a few
hours. For me that didn't make sense. When I charge at home its always over night.
So I've got a relatively slow 240v/25A (6kW). For the longest time we had 16A, and
10A when we were at the beach.

On long trips, we stop to charge every 3-4 hours. Honestly, the kids are ready to
go crazy if we dont get out and run around for a bit. That break really works
for us.

I occasionally show the car at car shows in the EV section and talk to a lot of people
about driving EVs, and the biggest challenge is to get people to stop expecting an
identical experience to an ICE:
- 5 min fill up every week or two.
- drive for 600 miles between breaks.
- drive anywhere without planning.

Instead, with an EV, you get:
- overnight fill (come out to a full car every morning if you want).
- on a long trip take a 20 minute break every 3-4 hours.
- plan your trips

You are gonna love it - we have two EVs now (MX and Leaf) and just can't go back to ICE.

Agreed never go back to ICE (unless I needed an extra truck to tow but it won’t be a daily). I look forward to getting another EV in a few years.

 

[dmurphy]

So my question is, how big of a pain will it be to rely on home charging? Considering how long it takes to charge and how little miles you get to a charge compared to a 2 minute fill up at a gas station for a gas car.

My wife had exactly the same concerns and comments before we bought the Model 3 ...
Keyword: HAD.

It's a complete and total non-issue. We pull in the driveway, take (literally) about 3 seconds to grab the charger off the wall and plug it in, and go inside. That's it. It's a whole lot of nothing.

The magic is that every single time I go out, I've got a full charge. To the point where I n.e.v.e.r. think about range or distance. The only time it's a concern is whenever I'm going 200+ miles in one run, and that's honestly just once every couple of months.

I've used a Supercharger exactly twice. Once on a road trip from NJ to Dover DE. The other was a surprise, middle-of-the-night run up to Connecticut so my brother could catch a flight when his cancelled.

Otherwise, it's pretty much ALL charging at home.

7100 miles, 6 months, grand total of $269 in operating costs.

This thing's amazing ...

EDIT TO ADD: I see you're in NJ. Whereabouts? I'm in Morris County, and have no problem driving down to the shore and back. Don't even think about it. Even Atlantic City and back is doable. Plenty of chargers around if you need 'em... but that hasn't been an issue, at all.

 

[wdolson]

Charging at home is vastly more convenient than going to gas stations. All you need is very minimal change in your habits when you get out of your car. You need to remember to plug in the car most of the time, but if you do life is so much easier. You will never have to worry about running out of fuel again.