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by devwastaken 1279 days ago
U.K. is 220v @ 13A for an average socket. That's almost double what a common 120v 15A does in the U.S.
1 comments

In the US it's 30A minimum for an average "220v" (it's actually 240 V) outlet such as a dryer or AC, that's more than double what 13A 220V gives in the UK.
You will not find a 240 in the u.s. outside of specific installations, while in the UK a common plug already is 220 13a.
It depends on what you call "specific installations", in my house I have two 240V 30A outlets for the dryer hookup and for an electric oven and one 240V 40A for the air conditioner.
We are talking of an outlet for a car in winter. It is much more common to have a common outlet outside than to have a 240v outlet. Even if there were a 240, it would be in the nema format that electric vehicles don't accept directly.

This is also the same problem with electric kettles in the U.S. they boil much faster in the u.k. because almost double the power for a common outlet.

If having 240V in an outlet was sufficient to charge a car, we could have installed a transformer and inverter in a car and charge it from a 1.5V AAA battery by pulling up the voltage to 240V. Plugging a car to a 240V outlet with a 13A breaker will only give you 2650 Watt charging power (provided there is the same code that requires 85% of maximum draw in continuous application), which is just 1 kW more than plugging into a 120V 15A outlet. Not a huge difference that would make charging bearable when the car uses more than 1.5 kW just to keep the battery warm.
An extra 1KW would actually charge the car given time. Not just keep the battery warm. 1kwh is supposedly about 4 miles. Charge for 12 hours overnight, you have enough to get to the supercharger.