Can I Charge A Tesla At Home With The Dryer Outlet?
“Yeah, just use a dryer outlet. High power, easy to install, and low cost“
Elon Musk
Despite the entire automotive industry devoting a near-infinite amount of time and resources to developing efficient, affordable electric vehicles, the only electric name on Joe Public’s lips is Tesla.
But before actually committing to buying a Tesla, you would be wise to check out the home charging situation. So if your garage (or utility room) has a NEMA 6-50 or 14-50 plug, you can use what already exists. After all, if the CEO of Tesla says you can use your dryer outlet, then you are good to go.
Now, let’s dive into the topic a little further!
Charging Your Tesla From The Dryer Outlet
The answer to the 110-volt problem is the dryer outlet. You don’t have to take our word for it. Elon Musk is on record (he said it on Twitter) as saying that the best solution to charging your Tesla at home was to plug it into the dryer outlet and charge it from there.
It is, and I quote, “high power and low cost,” and those are Elon’s words, not ours.
The even better news is that Tesla sells an adapter that allows you to plug your standard charging lead straight into the dryer outlet, and when you do, the change in charging speed will absolutely knock the wind right out of your sails.
To get up to 40% of full charge from a 240-volt outlet takes around three hours, from 40% to 80% takes roughly an hour and from 80% full to all the way full takes another two hours.
Using the dryer outlet to charge your Tesla from entirely empty to absolutely full takes anywhere between six and eight hours. Nevertheless, it seems like an ideal way to power your car and drive straight into the world of tomorrow.
Charging Your Tesla At Home
This is where the company really made a massive difference to the mainstream perception of electric cars, as every Tesla is supplied with an adapter (NEMA 5-15) and the necessary equipment to plug the car straight into a 110-volt socket and allows you to charge your Tesla with a regular outlet without having to install a specialist charging station or spend any extra money.
Sure, it’ll increase your utility bills, but it does mean that the price that you pay for your car at the dealership is how much it costs, and there are no “hidden” extras waiting in the wings to surprise you.
Don’t pour the champagne or start celebrating just yet, as there is a teeny tiny problem with charging your Tesla from a standard one-hundred-and-ten-volt outlet.
And that problem is speed. It’s an incredibly slow and laborious process and only adds between two (2) and four (4) miles to the car’s range for every hour plugged into the socket.
Given that the average range of a Tesla is between 250 and 300 miles, filling your car up from empty using a household socket can take any from 20 to 40 hours!
So, what’s the solution?
Get yourself a home charging station for your Tesla that uses a 240-volt socket. If your home doesn’t have one, then I’d suggest you look into getting the outlet installed.
The Tesla Supercharger Network
We know it sounds like the name of a progressive rock band from the early nineteen seventies. Still, the Tesla Supercharger Network exists and is a remarkably affordable alternative to charging your Tesla at home.
Providing, of course, that there’s a charging station relatively close to where you live.
One of the things that consistently puts many drivers off electric cars is how long they take to charge. From the moment that you plug your vehicle in. To the time that you can leave a charging station can often be interminable as the juice slowly trickles into and refills your car’s batteries.
The supercharger changed that, or more accurately, it changed it for Tesla drivers.
The good news is that a Tesla supercharger can add more than two hundred (200) miles of range to your car in just fifteen (15) minutes.
Of course, that figure depends on the model you’re driving and the supercharger you use, but it doesn’t vary all that much. And it was more than partially responsible for altering how the idea of charging an electric car was viewed.
However, there is one sticking point that makes the supercharger a little less attractive, and that’s the price you’ll inevitably pay at the gas pump.
Superchargers charge twenty-five cents per KW (Kilowatt), which means it can cost anywhere between $15 and $25 to fill your Tesla at the charger, which is still much cheaper than gasoline.
And the even better news is that if your Tesla was bought before January 2017, it’s absolutely free to fill up at any station in the supercharger network.
Knowing Elon Musk, it’s probably his way of rewarding long-time customers and clients.
Final Thoughts
Elon Musk made the electric car desirable. And almost overnight managed to change its image from the staid, clunky, and overweight vehicles that looked like they’d been designed by a first-year University student in their spare time into the sort of swish, sexy rides that every driver dreams about.
People who used to fantasize about owning a Ferrari or Lamborghini now idle their days thinking about Teslas. And every model in the brand’s range is imbued with style, comfort, and speed.
All of the old-fashioned ideas surrounding electric cars have gradually been dispelled and dissipated by Tesla, who flipped how drivers and car fanatics felt about battery power on its head and transformed the idea of what a supercar was, is, and could be.
The brand was responsible for the most radical overhaul of the automotive industry in more than a century. Part of what made, and makes their cars so attractive to the average motorist isn’t just how surprisingly affordable they are. But how easy and cheap to run they are.
Tesla made it simple for their customers to charge their cars, and because they made it straightforward to charge their vehicles, it made them a far more attractive and realistic prospect for most would-be owners.
