Many get confused about charging.  I will try to simplify charging in this short post. There are a few types of charging that we use today. Level 1 which would be coming from your normal outlet at home, Level 2 which would be like a dryer type outlet or an outlet that is 220v+ and 20amps or so up to about 50 amps. These can also be directly wired to what you see in the picture and most think is the charger. This is where you need to understand how it works. Whether it is the 120v-

240v wall outlet or directly wired 220v+ 50 amp connection, the apparatus hanging from your wall and plugged into your EV or PHEV is NOT doing the charging. The charger is located inside your vehicle.  It is called an OBC, On Board Charger. Really the only thing your connection is doing or the fancy box on the wall is providing the power source for your charging socket. The OBC inside your car actually takes the AC current and switches it over to DC current in order to charge the high voltage battery on board. This happens on Hybrid cars as well. Doesn’t matter if they are plug in or not. Your car also uses this OBC to convert power from regeneration taking it from AC power from the electric motors and converting it to DC and feeding the high voltage battery with the power it needs. When you visit a DC charging station, then the charger is in fact what you are plugging into the vehicle. With Tesla you will notice the plug standard is much easier to handle than with the CCS DC Fast Charging cable. The reason for this is that Tesla technology is far advanced and they figured out a way to force the power through that small connection. Now with the latest v4 Tesla DC chargers you will be able to charge at 1,000v rates and through the same size cable they use now but liquid cooled. This will be used on CyberTruck and Semi and by 2024 trickle down to the smaller cars and allow 200 miles within 5 minutes. The CCS connector in our opinion will be phased out. We attached a link so you can see how ridiculous the CCS 2 connector is in regards to size compared to the Tesla standard which is now the accepted North American Charging Standard (NACS).

 

So.....A conventional wall, J1772 Charger, or a Tesla Destination Charger is NOT really a charger at all.  It is a power station. A charge power station. A true stand alone charger is a DC Fast Charger otherwise YOUR car is doing the work. Lots of terms and words have been thrown out to the public over the years and nobody really knows what’s going on. And furthermore if your vehicles on board charger is limited to 8KW (Kilowatts) that is all it will charge to when plugged into a power source on AC current. So all cars are not the same and all power sources are not the same. Just because you arrive at a power station or fast charger that is maxed out that doesn’t mean your car will use all that station has to offer. Beware of false advertising by 98% of these manufacturers. The only manufacturer that is telling you the truth IN REGARDS TO CHARGING AND INFRASTRUCTURE as of 2022 is Tesla. Yep. It’s Tesla. And no, we don’t have over 40,000 charging stations like our Government leads you to believe. Now you know after reading this that we may have over 40,000 sources of AC power you can plug into and wait a very long time to charge your car. DC Fast chargers are what will get you back on the road quickly. Make sure the EV you choose has at least 5,000 stations at an available 150KW or more before you decide on your purchase. Planning a Trip? That’s a whole other blog. (: