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Quality at home charging, are charge ports really needed to be installed at home?
- Thread starter CLOONEY003@GMA
- Start date
If anyone is going to go the route of a NEMA 14-50 receptacle, do yourself a favor and buy a Hubbell or a Bryant branded socket and not the $10 Leviton one that is sold at the big box stores. It can be difficult to get good wire connections on the Leviton and they can melt. Plenty of folks have posted on TMC that have had that experience. But the Hubbell or the Bryant (now owned by Hubbell and cheaper) receptacles are the way to go for a solid connection...Don't forget, this connection can be one of the highest-powered appliance-type connections in your home, so you want to do it right...
...except that they are.
The Gen3 wall connectors have configuration available now, where you can turn on a whitelist of only certain VINs of cars allowed to charge on them. If that is enabled, then the 3rd party adapters to the generic J1772 connection won't work on other cars.
Yes, that can be a valid reason. It's not proprietary. I would still go for something more permanent and solid, though, instead of pluggable, like a hard wired J1772 station.
The costs have been documented in other threads, but with all of the extra junk you need to buy now to enable using an outlet, it's only about $200 over to buy a wall connector. And then you have the wall one at home, and the mobile one in the car. Choosing instead to buy a spare mobile connector is $275, so is more expensive, not cheaper.
These are weird. I'm not sure why people believe a wall connector is impossible to remove or not allowed to be removed. It can be taken with you very easily.
No, probably not. There is a very legitimate reason for that. Lots of people are using a lot of different ways to connect their cars now--6-20, 14-30, wall connectors, etc. Giving thousands of one particular type of plug, many of which will never be used, is kind of dumb and didn't make sense to do. Not everyone is going to use a 14-50, so why try to one-size-fits-all everyone?
No, that's not true either. There is a very good legitimate reason for this too. NEC allows putting 14-50 outlets on 40A circuits, and this is unfortunately pretty common. Those should only be used at up to 32A. There's some risk there, with having to rely on breakers working right and tripping if people are overdrawing by plugging into 40A circuits, and the old mobile connectors drawing 40A for many hours. It was more safe to have the mobile connector always limit to 32A, so it's always appropriate for those 50A outlet types, regardless of whether they were installed on 40 or 50 amp circuits.
They've been kind of all over the place on that. My 2014 car only has a 40A charger. I am going to be glad when we get our Model Y later this year, which has a 48A charger, so that's an improvement.
They are hit or miss, like the Gen3 wall connector being the same price but much worse than the Gen2, but the things you tried to point out do have good explanations of intelligence and best practice.
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strider
Active Member
This is absolutely WRONG. Stop spreading FUD and scaring people. The electrical code absolutely states that a 14-50 can sustain 40A continuous loads.
I had a Gen 1 mobile connector that charged at 40A. The melting/burning occurred where the adapter interfaced to the mobile connector, NOT at the 14-50 plug. The Gen 1 problems were 100% Tesla's fault for not building a product that could handle 40A. So instead of building a robust product they limited the current.
That is fine as far as it goes, but your assertion that Tesla lowered the mobile connector to 32A because of the 14-50 interface is flat out wrong. The proof is that the "Corded Mobile Connector" that has a hard-wired 14-50 plug will charge at 40A while the "Mobile Connector Bundle" uses adapters and will only charge at 32A. This tells you that the limitation is w/ the adapter interface and not the 14-50 plug.
Further, the Roadster MCUs are still to this day charging at 40A and have not had a problem.
strider
Active Member
Sure. But people have been using different plugs for years. They should do what they did in the Roadster days, which was ask you what plug you wanted. You got 1 free with purchase and then you could buy more if needed. It would be simple to include a little drop-down on the order page or have a bunch at the delivery centers and you picked the one you wanted when you got the car. Not it's just another little gotcha to make an extra $40 on every car.
Like I said, my Volvo came w/ a 5-15 and 14-50 adapters for their plug. Oh, and it will happily charge at 9.6kW (240/40).
More connections, more points of failure. Thanks for the data point. Hardwired is the way to go.
Installing a NEMA 14-50 is the antithesis of future proofing. Single phase charging on J1772 can take up to 80A; the NEMA 14-50 can only supply half of that to a continuous load. You want to maximally future proof your setup? Go with 2 or 3 AWG wiring that can carry 80A of continuous load and then hardwire your Wall Connector to it. If you get something else in the future that can charge at 80A, then remove the Wall Connector and install a 80A EVSE, then change the breaker in your panel (but you shouldn't ever have to open walls or run wiring again).
ATPMSD
Active Member
Nope. You will have modified the unit from how it was certified, that voids the warranty.
We're talking about two different things then. Earlier in the thread, people were talking about the positive feature that you can have the wall connector "locked", as in permission locked down to only your own cars, so unauthorized people can't use it. That is a feature people have asked for for a while and is a benefit. You said "that's not real", and I thought you were indicating that wasn't an existing function.
But I see now you mean "locked in", like being captive to a proprietary infrastructure, like when Apple prevents you from transferring things out to other formats. I get it now.
I think the Wall Connector should be the first choice, for all the reasons cited in this thread--but, if (for whatever reason) that's not how the OP decides to go, I agree with having a "permanently" plugged-in connector in the 14-50 outlet.
Moreover, I would suggest the "corded" Mobile Connector:
Corded Mobile Connector
The Corded Mobile Connector features a NEMA 14-50 plug and improved charging speeds in comparison to the Mobile Connector with NEMA 5-15 Adapter. Includes: 1x NEMA 14-50 Corded Mobile Connector - 20’ cable 1x storage bag Corded Mobile Connector Manual Note: The Corded Mobile Connector is...
shop.tesla.com
Instead of using the Mobile Connector with the 14-50 adapter--capable of up to 32A of charging--the "corded" connector is permanently wired to a 14-50 plug... and is capable of up to 40A of charging (the max a 14-50 outlet is good for). I don't own one of these--but, if I had a reason to avoid a Wall Connector and had access to (or chose to install) a 14-50 outlet into which I could leave the connector plugged more or less permanently... this is how I would do it.
Again, though: based on everything the OP has stated so far, the Wall Connector is the right choice IMO.
Proppilot
Member
Poor OP just wanted to know if he should by that Tesla connector off Nextdoor..... 
No, you’re not modifying the unit. You need to feed it power. You can feed it with romex, conduit or a cord. It doesn’t affect the Wall Connector and Tesla would never know how you fed it.
I’ve installed 4 of these. How many have you installed to make such an assertion? If you had actually installed one you’d understand.
I don’t recommend putting a cord on one though. That would be worse than running a mobile connector.
SO I bought these and will have my electrician install them. I was thinking of just running 6AWG wire but after reading more here, maybe the 3AWG is the way to go to "futureproof" the connection.
Also, currently I don't plan on using the Tesla for long road trips since I have 2 other gasoline guzzlers and as for my job which is only 30 miles away they don't have chargers for EV's. I would never be unplugging anything from the outlet to take with me.
Everything will stay connected and in the garage.
Proppilot
Member
The comment and posting about the cord was only because the poster mentioned that it would be nice if Tesla had a wall connector with a cord. If they did, it would have pretty much exactly what I posted as a link. A #6 AWG cord set. If someone was really bent on doing it, Tesla not offering it would not be a showstopper and using a cord set on it would not be a code infraction because, as stated, you can feed power to it any way you want as long as the wiring/breaker size and coordination are per code.
You realize that the 6-50R is not the same as the 14-50 as has been discussed up to now, yes?
Your Tesla doesn't need the neutral wire, so either one will work (assuming you have the correct connector--since it sounds like you're determined to use a Mobile Connector, you'll need to be sure you have the right adapter, and the "corded" connector I suggested earlier won't work in a 6-50 outlet). However, you're certainly not getting the "universal" solution you said you desired, since there are plenty of applications out there for a 50A circuit which do require a neutral....
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It would not violate code or warranty.
But it is a BAD IDEA.
All plugs from Tesla NOW have temperature sensors in them. To help prevent a FIRE.
I don’t feel one bit sorry for OP. I feel sorry for his, correctly concerned wife.
Sniff sniff I smell something burning honey.
strider
Active Member
Whatever dude. You can do whatever you want. If you want to overbuild and overpay, be my guest.
My whole point is that 9.6kW is plenty for anyone not running a taxi service and a 14-50 (or 6-50) is THE most universal way to access that power. That is a dead to full Model S/X in 10 hours. 3/Y in what, 8 hours?
I truly do not get this obsession with charging at ridiculous rates at home. You are literally just wasting money. More current creates more heat so the car has to spend more energy cooling itself so less goes into the battery. Idk if anyone did the test w/ the modern cars, but in the Roadster days, Tom Saxton determined that 240V/32A was the most efficient - above or below that a smaller percentage of power from the wall actually went into the battery. Was it a lot? Not really, but unless you are on the road, you have all night to charge. Why be in a hurry?
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