[walrus01]

If you live in an older condo building with an uncooperative board, and physical challenges/long distances related to surface mounted conduit routing in the underground parking garage, it could be $8,000 of licensed electrician work to run a new 240VAC circuit to your single parking spot.

edit: there are also a number of people who have street parking only. Look at any older neighborhood, it could range from Queen Anne hill in Seattle, to many parts of Boston. Houses may have neither garages nor alleyways.

[bluedino]

Some government agency is likely to step in and make this illegal, right? Just like the FCC allows me to put up a satellite dish no matter what my landlord or condo board says?

[yuhong]

AFAIK some states have such laws, but apartment 120V charging will still likely be the mainstream in the short term. Especially as apartment dwellers are likely to live closer to work for example, not to mention the cost if every parking spot had it (there is even power sharing with EVSEs).

[greglindahl]

Palo Alto has such a law.

[dsfyu404ed]

Don't count your chickens before they hatch. The government already stepped in to make sure that you had to pay $8k for an electrician to get the job done (actually you're probably paying for the licensed electrician to send out an apprentice to to the job). It's all about who's special interest group hires the better lobbyist.

[yuhong]

The state laws I have seen don't dictate the exact cost, though there may be other issues like unions which applies to many kinds of electrical work.

[dsfyu404ed]

I'm just saying that just because your side is "right" doesn't mean the other side doesn't have a better lobbyist.

[yuhong]

One of the things they did with the Model 3 was to improve the efficiency of 120V charging, partly for that reason. Trivia: In Canada, the CEC since 2012 requires a NEMA 5-20 outlet for EV charging at a minimum, and with the Model 3 6-7 miles per hour with it is not uncommon.

[walrus01]

It's still not going to be able to pull anything more than about 1700W from a 120V 15A circuit. Maybe slightly more efficient but the bottleneck is the amperage capacity of the circuit. Think of 120V charging as exactly like a hair dryer.

[dougmany]

We use 120 to charge our leaf. It charges at 4 miles per hour. Plug it in after a typical 40 mile day and it is ready in the morning.

[yuhong]

AFAIK for EV charging it is ~1400W for a 15A outlet and ~1900W for a 20A outlet (because the load is continuous), and the difference between the two for the Model 3 is probably around two miles per hour or so.

[sfteus]

Correct, assuming a dedicated circuit in the US, code dictates that it'd be 1440W and 1920W for a 15A and 20A outlet, respectively. Continuous loads can only pull 80% of the max circuit load.

In theory, you could also run a 100% rated breaker to pull more power, but the car would have to be able to support it as well.