Good News & Bad News, page-6496

Certainly can. So, we are driving an Outlander PHEV (yes not a full EV - yet, have something on order for later which changes that situation significantly). With any car to be charged you have some options for home charging. Firstly using what many call a “granny charger”. These come with most cars and depending on type of car might be either 10amp or 15amp. They have a standard 3 prong wall GPO plug. If 10A (like our Outlander), you can plug into any 10A socket. Some argue it ought to be on a stand alone circuit ... ours is a standard socket in the carport on a circuit with other household loads and no problems. If 15A then you’ll want a 15A circuit and likely better to be dedicated (but some 15A granny charger can be selected to charge at a slower rate (ditto for some 10A models). With this option you tend to just plug in when come home and unplug when leaving gaining charge depending on the charge rate of the onboard (car) charger. In my case the Outlander maxes out at a charge rate of about 3.3 kW. I’m running on just a 10A simple version which came with the car which means about 4-5 hours to fully recharge and that charge is good for 30-45 km of just EV driving (plenty for my usual daily run).

Up from there are dedicated wall mounted charging units. These are hardwired to a circuit of their own but can draw up to 32A depending on model. It’s only useful to have one of these if your car’s onboard charger can take that higher input. These tend to run to 7kW up to 15kW models. So twice to four times the recharge speed of the basic granny charger. Roughly they are around $1500-$2500 to install I think (investigating). The other potential reason to have one of those installed is if you can’t be bothered setting up the granny charger each time (say your recharging position is not publicly secured and you keep it not plugged in) or it’s not practical to run power to where the ca ris kept but you could mount a hardwired weatherproof model instead. For me ... it would be just cause sometimes I’m too lazy to spend the 30s getting it plugged in and would like the 10s option of taking the charger from the wall mount and plug in.

Up again from there are DC based charge units which pump much faster ... but frankly you’d have to have some significant standard driving distances to justify that option ... just top up mostly from a fast rate public unit on the way around your drive and top off overnight on one of the options above.

So short answer ... yep just plug it in. Longer answer, can speed up that recharge time with better units if you drive greater distances but again with those ... you just plug in when home.