Tesla Wall Charger or Nema 14-50?

[TexasEV]

What is your basis for this? I’m not an electrical engineer, but volts are equivalent to pressure and amps are equivalent to flow. I’ll have more parasitic losses but what does that cost me, $.20/day? Who cares? If charging too fast is necessarily a bad thing, just like filling a bucket with a fire hose is a bad idea, why wouldn’t filling the bucket with a slow drip be better and just let some of it spill over? Seems analogous but I honestly don’t know.

@Rocky_H gave a good answer to your concern, but maybe this analogy would be helpful given your user name— oil spills in the ocean are bad, but does a 2 gallon spill cause more damage than a 1 gallon spill, given the size of the ocean?

Model 3 owners really should stop thinking about (some would say obsessing over) the battery. Charge away, let the battery management system manage the battery, and just enjoy your car.

 

[davewill]

What is your basis for this? I’m not an electrical engineer, but volts are equivalent to pressure and amps are equivalent to flow. I’ll have more parasitic losses but what does that cost me, $.20/day? Who cares? If charging too fast is necessarily a bad thing, just like filling a bucket with a fire hose is a bad idea, why wouldn’t filling the bucket with a slow drip be better and just let some of it spill over? Seems analogous but I honestly don’t know.

It's that 40-48a charging is still pretty slow for these batteries, so the proper analogy would be filling the bucket with a trickle or with a small garden hose. You aren't getting the benefit you think you are by going to 12a, so why do it?

 

[OilAndGas]

It's that 40-48a charging is still pretty slow for these batteries, so the proper analogy would be filling the bucket with a trickle or with a small garden hose. You aren't getting the benefit you think you are by going to 12a, so why do it?

Fair enough, I’m probably babying it too much since it’s brand new. Thanks for y’alls input.

 

[SSedan]

For those in cold climates higher charging amperage is a good thing.
I realize this isn't a factor for everyone hit it matters. A 30amp connection last winter here near Green Bay I found marginal not from an ability to charge angle but from a slow warmup and battery ise during warmup even while plugged in angle. Not cold cold here yet but by letting it charge at 50amps right before leaving seems to be warming enough to stop Regen limiting down to 30f anyway. I will allow it is possible Tesla changed battery heater settings too, but even so, now the connection can deliver enough to warm the cabin and battery without using upiles too.
Also redundancy is a good thing, what happens when your one UMC is damaged or fails?

 

[eprosenx]

A perfect anecdote from today as I am taking a weekend trip right now:

My Model 3 is in the shop as it came with a tiny paint defect. I have a loaner Model S with I think an 85kWh battery. It has dual 40a chargers.

I charged it to 90% last night and then did my daily commute plus stopped on the way home at an industry event before finally going home. I wanted to charge at the industry event, but the charger nextdoor was offline. So when I got home I plugged into my wall connector and let it charge for an hour while I packed up my clothes and electrical tools for a project this weekend. I was VERY glad to be able to charge at 48 amps (60a circuit), but I vastly would have preferred to be able to max the 80a of charging capacity in the car. I wish I had wired it up as a 100a circuit (or at least as an 80a circuit that could do 64 amps of charging as I could fit that in the same 3/4 inch EMT conduit without going to 1”.

These are the “edge cases” where overbuilding becomes valuable.

I ended up at my destination at 30% battery, but I wish I had started with more. Where I am at is so remote that it has no cell phone service. We are at the end of the end of the power grid. I always want enough juice to get back to another good charging location in case of emergency (like say we have a family medical emergency or something).

Having extra reserve capacity is worth something to me.

 

[TexasEV]

Or you could have charged to 100% last night as you were going to need the range.

 

[eprosenx]

Or you could have charged to 100% last night as you were going to need the range.

Yes, I should have, but I forgot. But also, that would have involved leaving the car all day at work at say 94% SOC before driving it to the event (at which point it would drop below a 90% SOC.

Not optimal, but also likely not the end of the world.

 

[nawar29]

Thanks for your input everyone! I ended up installing a nema14-50 outlet in my garage and its been charging relatively fast ~30 miles per hour @40 Amps to use for emergencies or when I'm low on juice, superchargers are still my main source of power so far.