Most people buying an electric vehicle are told to install a Level 2 charger, and most of them do it before checking whether they need one.
A decent number do not.
The difference in one paragraph
Level 1 is an ordinary 120 volt wall outlet, using the cable that came with the car. It adds roughly 6 to 8 kilometres of range an hour, so about 60 to 80 kilometres overnight.
Level 2 is a 240 volt circuit, the same kind of supply as an electric dryer or range, at 30 to 60 amps. It adds roughly 30 to 40 kilometres an hour, so a full battery overnight regardless of how empty you arrived home.
Do the arithmetic on your own driving
This is the part that gets skipped.
Work out what you actually drive in a normal day. Not the longest trip you took last year — the ordinary Tuesday.
If you commute from Belleville to Trenton and back, that is roughly 40 kilometres. Level 1 replaces that in about six hours, plugged in overnight, with hours to spare.
If you drive to Kingston and back regularly, that is closer to 180 kilometres, and Level 1 will not keep up on consecutive days.
The rough test: if your daily driving is under about 60 kilometres, Level 1 will probably do. Between 60 and 100, it depends on whether you have long evenings at home. Over 100 regularly, get Level 2.
Plug-in hybrids are almost always fine on Level 1, because the battery is small enough to fill overnight either way.
When Level 2 is worth it regardless
- Two electric vehicles in the household
- You drive long distances unpredictably and want the car always full
- You get home late and leave early, so the charging window is short
- Winter. Cold weather reduces range and increases what you need to put back
- You have a large battery and let it run low before charging
That last one is the real argument. The bigger the battery, the longer Level 1 takes to recover it, and the more likely you are to be caught out.
If you go Level 1, check the outlet
This is the part nobody mentions.
A Level 1 charger draws around 12 amps continuously for eight to twelve hours a night. That is a genuinely demanding load for a general-purpose receptacle, especially an old one on a shared basement or garage circuit.
Have it looked at. Ideally have a dedicated circuit run for it — that is a small job, far cheaper than a Level 2 install, and it removes the risk of running a continuous load through a fifty-year-old receptacle that also feeds the freezer.
If you ever notice the plug or the outlet running warm, stop using it and read what to do about warm outlets.
Can your panel take Level 2?
Do not buy the charger before finding out.
A load calculation adds up what your house already draws and compares it to your service size. It takes an electrician about twenty minutes at your panel and it is the difference between a $950 job and a $4,000 one.
200 amp service with gas heat: almost certainly fine.
100 amp service with gas heat, gas water heater: often fine, sometimes tight.
100 amp service with electric heat, an electric range and an electric dryer: usually not, without doing something about it.
If the answer is no
Two options, and the cheaper one is not the obvious one.
Upgrade the service. A bigger job and a bigger bill. Worth doing anyway if the service is 60 or 100 amp and old, because you will hit the same ceiling with a heat pump or a finished basement. See panel upgrades.
Fit an energy management system. A device that watches the whole-house load and throttles or pauses the charger when the dryer and the oven are both running. Fully code-compliant, considerably cheaper than a service change, and in practice you barely notice it — the charger simply catches up later in the night when the house goes quiet.
For a lot of homes on 100 amp, the management system is the right answer and nobody offered it to them.
What a Level 2 install involves
- Load calculation and a decision on circuit size
- A new breaker in the panel
- Cable run from the panel to where the car parks
- Charger mounted, connected, tested
- ESA notification filed and the installation inspected
Three to six hours on site. Your power stays on apart from a few minutes at the panel.
Cost runs $950 to $2,100, and the biggest single factor is the distance from the panel to the car. A panel on the garage wall is the cheap end. A basement panel at the opposite corner of the house from a detached garage is the expensive end, and most of that difference is cable and labour.
Two things worth knowing
Size the circuit for what you need, not the maximum. A 40 amp circuit charges any current EV overnight comfortably and uses less of your service capacity than a 60. Going bigger costs more in cable and gives you back very little.
Get the permit. A new 240 volt circuit is notifiable work, so it gets inspected and you get a Certificate of Inspection. It is in a legitimate quote. It also matters more than people expect — an uninspected DIY high-current circuit in a garage is a bad thing to be explaining to an insurer afterwards.