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A major consideration when joining the EV car crowd is how you’ll charge your expensive new pet. While you can use a standard 120V plug, or if you’re lucky, a 208-240V available at your home, these charge your car significantly slower than an EV charger. Your own EV charger will allow you more flexibility, time savings and actual cost per kilowatt over what you pay at a supercharge station. The reason more people don’t do it is cost: Installing a level 1 or 2 charger could run $1000, and that doesn’t include the cost of the charger.
This is what makes Leviton’s announcement about updates to their EV Series Smart Home line so welcome. The most exciting part of the news is that there are now options to just plug in the charger, rather than hardwire it to your electrical panel. While the line offers home chargers from 32-48 amps (their entire line goes up to 80 amps), only the 40 amp model is available as a plug-in. They require a NEMA 14-50 receptacle, which Leviton also sells. Leviton will start shipping the model soon, and it starts at a very reasonable $473.57.
Note that the plug-in charger will only deliver the same electrical voltage that the wiring supports, but it still has some advantages. One reason to go with Leviton for a charger is that it plays nicely with the My Leviton app, allowing you to manage and schedule your charging from your phone, so you can take advantage of off-peak utility hours to save money and qualify for incentive programs. You can remotely start and stop charging from anywhere, and get a bevy of status reports.
Leviton EV chargers work on with any industry standard SAE J1772™ cable, so EVs from Audi, BMW, Ford, Honda, Subaru, and Tesla are covered (the Tesla requires an adapter).
