Has anybody else decided not to get an L2 charger for home?

[garypen]

After a few weeks with the car, I'm seriously considering not getting an L2 charger for the house.
My commute is short, and there is plenty of time overnight to charge it up with the L1 charger.
There are also a plethora of L2 chargers in the area, as well as at my workplace.
And, there is even a handful of L3 chargers near my home.

So, I was wondering if others have made similar decisions, and, if so, how it worked out for them.
If I can save $500-700 or so for a charger and circuit, I'm more than happy to do it.
But, if it really is a necessity, I'm happy to spend it.

 

[miimura]

It all comes down to your driving habits. The most demanding situation I had in an EV was Thanksgiving. I had two airport runs in opposite directions and then I needed a full charge to make the round-trip drive for Thanksgiving dinner. I think this kind of out of the ordinary usage is a good time to use the L3 Fast Charge. In my case, I did not have Fast Charge available, so I had to use the 40A charging on the RAV4 EV to get through the day. We are getting by just fine with one L2 and one L1 charger for our two EVs.

The bottom line is that you have been getting by without it and you have faster alternatives in public if you need them. If you have a friend or relative that has a ICE vehicle you could borrow in a pinch, that also provides a another level of backup without resorting to a last minute rental.

 

[garypen]

I forgot to mention that we also have an ICE vehicle at home.

 

[czar]

Came to the same conclusion initially, but driving the car more, stretching with further trips and line at local chargers made me change my mind over summer. I so much prefer driving this car, I want to get it back online faster

 

[HabemusQuattro]

I will be buying a ChargePoint Home charger as soon as they are available but quite honestly I don't think I will be using it much. I have free changing available to me at work and so far that has been completely sufficient. That may change over time and having a way to quickly top off at home will be a "just in case" luxury.

 

[garypen]

Good point. I may get one as a just-in-case deal. But, as it isn't an everyday necessity, I probably won't opt for the ChargePoint model. I think I'd choose either a Seimans or the Blink HQ, which are both quite a bit cheaper than the equivalent CP model.

 

[RonDawg]

I used L1 only for the first 9 months I had my Nissan Leaf. My commute is under 15 miles each way so it's not a problem normally. But there were times that I wanted to drive the car for an extended period during the evening, but then I wanted to do so again the following morning, and L1 would not be sufficient to do both. What pushed me to finally get one was the pending expiration of a Federal tax credit for EVSE purchase and installation.

I guess if you have enough L2 and/or QC's in your area to allow for occasional situations like I mentioned above, and the outlet you plan on using is robust enough to handle many hours of continuous 12 amp draw, you might be able to make it work.

 

[bobk2824]

A consideration I had was the health of the battery and general flexibility in using the car. According to VW, the battery will last longest if is between 40% and 60% charged. Since I generally don't drive more than 30 miles in a day, that works out fine. I have the schedule and departure times set to charge it to 60%. If I do have a fairly immediate need to go a longer distance, it is good to know I can plug it in and in an hour and half be fully charged.

Other points: public chargers are NON-EXISTANT around these parts (southern NJ). Not even L2. Also, our ICE is not always available.

If you can get the charger and circuit for $700, you're doing pretty good. I got the Siemens ($550) and having an electrician wire it up was another $600. I suspect that all the constant construction around here since Sandy has jacked up the prices of having anyone come out to your house.

 

[vetaldj]

I decided to not to as simply can't install it in my apt garage

Charging at work and near close charger. Some inconvenience exists but nothing that I can handle, as of now. Will see...

 

[egolfuser]

My commute is about 15 miles round trip. I have EVS TOU2 , and this works out very well with L1 midnight to 5 AM charging. On weekends i tend to use the car more... And usually spill over the lowest TOU rate by a few kwh - cost wise this is not a factor for L2. If I were consistently not able to catch up with my driving needs I would consider a L2. At this time, the cost of L2 not worth it for me and I dont foresee buying one.

 

[s4alex]

I am about 2000 miles and 1.5 months into my ownership.

I have not charged at home once. Well, just once with the included L1.

I am 3.4 miles from VW ERL. Free L3. I am using the hell out of my NRG 2 month trial.

When I drive to SF, the garages I use have free L2. When my wife takes it to work at Stanford, free L2 usage there also.

I am going to go as long as I can without giving into buying a L2 relay. I don't want to give up cost of gas for electricity, as low as it would be.

 

[s4alex]

Should I be the first one to mention that the charger is built into the car and you are buying a relay, not a charger?

 

[garypen]

Should I be the first one to mention that the charger is built into the car and you are buying a relay, not a charger?

You should definitely be the last.

 

[Skryll]

I initially did buy the e-Golf as the secondary car, and we had no L2 charger in the garage, just using L1 trickle charger plus
got free charging at L2 charge point charger at the Gym and some cheap ones around town, and so it did not feel necessary.

But very soon we used the e-Golf as the primary car, because it is more fun to drive and cheaper to drive, and now my wife takes it all the time as she has the longer commute, and we ended up with having to switch cars for the second half of the day because it needed to be charged for longer, and things became a bit less convenient.

Being annoyed with PG&E charging me $250+ per month for electricity for the air conditioning in California, we finally ended up installing a solar panel system for the house, and in the process hooked up an L2 charger that I got from amazon.com.

So yes it works initially but eventually its nice to upgrade. The cost of installation easily matches the cost of the charging hardware, but if you can wrap it in with electrical work for a solar panel system that is less of an issue, and now whenever I step on the gas and drive fun and wasteful, I don't care as its all solar energy anyways. Great for piece of mind

We love the car even more now, and only charge outside when we go more far than 60 miles, i.e. on the way to Santa Cruz we stop one time at whole foods's EV Go DC fast charger in San Jose.