- Okay, I just got a thing, it said it stopped charging,
so I'm gonna try to plug it into a different outlet here.
It looks like it's fine to me.
That's not good.
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I get this question a lot,
do I need a high power wall charger or outlet
at my house in order to have a Tesla,
or any electric vehicle, really.
Generally, I say yes to this,
but I thought, why don't I give it a test,
and see what it's like to actually use
nothing but a regular wall outlet at my house.
Let's see what happened.
Okay guys, it is day one.
Typically here's what I have,
and that goes here.
So here's where I'm at now,
272 miles, that is the exact 90 percentage,
or 90% charge.
So, the question and the challenge is,
can you live, can you really,
you know, driving to work every day,
that kinda thing, just use a regular outlet,
a regular 110 outlet instead of a high power wall charger,
or a NEMA 14-50.
So, that's what I'm gonna do,
and I do have a commute now.
I used to work from home, but now I drive downtown.
It's not super far,
but I'll kind of document all that for you
and we'll recap at the end, all the data about it.
And here we go, day one.
Alright guys, night one, I'm going to plug in Tes,
that's my model three into just a regular outlet.
One interesting challenge is that the plug,
the charge port is on that side of the car,
but the cable is definitely not long enough for it.
Now Tesla does sell long enough cable, or longer cables,
and you also could run an extension cord.
So it's not that big of deal,
but gotta reverse the car and all that before I get set up.
Let's do that.
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Okay, plugged in, good to go.
It's definitely a different connector than the one
I have in my older model S,
but now let's check out what it's actually getting
when I start charging.
Alright well, it looks like it's gonna work,
but it's, as you can see there,
charge speed reduced, check for extension cord
or bad utility wiring.
I'm guessing that it's my home that was built in the 1950s,
but it still is getting enough to reach my 90% charge,
which is what you charge up to every day,
within six hours and 40 minutes.
And it'll be about 11 or 12 hours
before I need to get back in my car.
So really I'm not worried about it.
- You will be.
- It's plenty of time, maybe tomorrow what I'll do,
is I'll try the other outlet inside the garage.
Okay, I just got a thing that said it stopped charging,
so I'm gonna try to plug it into a different outlet here.
It looks like it's fine to me.
That's not good.
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Okay it says it's charging now,
it looks like it's going, hopefully it'll keep going.
Okay, success overnight charging.
We're back up to 90%.
It's plugged in to a little wall outlet, no big deal.
And checking out the car,
we're up to 275 miles, we got plus 22 miles overnight.
If my commute was as short as it is,
then that would be no problem.
So far, so good.
Okay, so I just spent most of the day out with Jack,
we were playing at the park, doing all this stuff,
and then I have to drive to get him to fall asleep
for nap sometimes, but we used about 50 miles of range,
and we're gonna go out later as well.
But I'm thinking that because I only have the 110 outlet,
I might plug in now just to get an hour or so
while we're here.
I know it won't be much,
but I feel like what you need to do when you only have
a regular 110 outlet, is charge it every moment you can.
So, you get home from the grocery store,
plug in, you know, you're gonna be leaving in an hour,
you plug in.
You don't, you know, waste any time,
because it takes so long to charge.
So, I'm gonna go do that now.
Okay, Monday, day four, I think,
and we got basically a full charge,
up to 275 miles of range now on the model three.
And that was basically after yesterday I only went
to the grocery store and went to the park with my son,
I didn't do a lot of driving,
so it basically charged all day long.
And you kind of need that it looks like,
because otherwise if you drove 40-50 miles per day,
it doesn't appear like you'd be,
have enough daily charge to get back
to where you needed to be.
You know, eventually you'd have a day
where you were just completely drained.
But, of course you could hit something like a Super Charger,
or one of those more high-powered public chargers.
After basically a full day of charging yesterday,
I'm back in business.
So after it was all said and done,
after the past seven days where I used
just that wall outlet, I can say it's doable.
I think it's possible to make this happen,
depending on your commute,
and maybe a few other factors.
Now of course, you're gonna be much happier
with one of those high power options,
either the NEMA 14-50 or the wall charger from Tesla.
And there are many other options as well,
but those are the ones they recommend.
So in any event, those are gonna give you
a really good result,
you're really never gonna have to worry about
how long you have to charge, or even when.
I'll go even several days without plugging my model three
into the wall at all.
But let's assume you don't have either of those options,
let's assume that you either can't install them,
you just don't wanna spend the money,
or whatever the case may be,
but you do have a regular wall outlet to plug in.
I think this is doable, but you're also going to want
to add in some of those public charging options,
or any other, you know, way that you can really get it.
And looking at the data, you basically see that each day
I would start out with almost a full charge,
around 272-275 miles of range,
which is 90% on a model three.
And then based on how much I drove,
I ended up with around 250 or maybe 240.
So there was one day, and I drove about 50 miles that day,
just out and about with my son,
kind of having a fun day,
and so in that case I actually ended up
all the way down at 209.
Now the following day, I didn't drive at all,
and that was nice because I actually ended up
charging for almost 19 hours straight
off that little wall outlet.
Now had I not been able to do that,
had I also needed to drive that day,
I don't think I would've actually made up the range,
and then been able to continue on my journey.
So, you can see that overall there's kind of a downward
trend here as the normal work week came into play,
where I wasn't able to get fully back
to my normal state of charge.
So a couple days of full charge at 275, then 269,
then 260, then 262, so I had some issues as you saw,
with the charging overnight
where it kept getting interrupted.
And just overall, if I had a longer commute,
and this was my only option,
I don't think that it would be entirely sustainable forever,
just using the wall outlet.
But I could have used the free level two chargers
at my gym, or there are other public options near
where I go take my son to play at the park,
or near my house, and even some near my office
here in downtown.
So, if I was just using that regular wall outlet at home,
it would give me, you know,
most of my commute back every single day.
I would slowly kind of trickle it away,
and then any time where I actually drive
for a bigger stretch, you know, 50-60 miles in a day,
you can see that I practically would not be able to
get that back the following day,
and eventually just run out of juice.
So, there are many other options and ways to supplement
your home charging, you don't necessarily have to install
one of these high power options.
So don't be too caught up on that
before you get your car, and if you can,
do it, of course it's gonna make life a lot easier,
but it's not actually required.
So don't worry about it if you can't do it.
Also, there is the Tesla Super Charger Network.
Now where I live, there's only one Super Charger
as of right now, and it is completely packed,
because there are three million people
that live here in this area, and one Super Charger,
and a ton of people owning Teslas.
So it really sucks, and it's basically just not an option,
unless you're traveling or happen to work there,
and you can get it at an off time.
So, you know, if you have a Super Charger available,
that's great, and in fact, they're quite a bit cheaper
than any of the other options that I've researched,
with the exception of your home charger being the cheapest
one of them all.
So I hope this helped you guys
if you like data and understanding the analytics,
and kind of the way that things work
in the world of EVs, and Tesla, and renewable energy.
Consider subscribing.
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And don't forget when you free the data,
your mind will follow.
I'll see you guys back here next time.
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