As the title says. I am having some electrical work done that includes some work in my garage. I don’t currently have an EV but might in the future and even if I don’t have one before selling this house, an appropriate outlet would be a nice selling point.
Here is my totally-professional-and-absolutely-to-scale-architectural-drawing of my garage with a few suggested locations. Based on where ports are located on most cars what location would be best? https://imgur.com/9VfLfbq
First place is D. Can reach four parking spots, two inside and two outside. Next is A. It can reach two parking spots, one inside and one outside. Next is C. It can reach the two inside spots. Not B. It can only reach one spot and it would cross a foot traffic area.
Our garage is similar except the door to the house is where your door to the deck is, and we put ours roughly at B and then a little to the left of where you have C, at the top of stalls 2 and 3. Our electrical panel is on the other side of C but in the basement. So in theory a standard 25 foot cable could reach from C to all three stalls, or from B to the right two; we park our two EVs at 1 and 2.
Plugging in a car that’s in the driveway was not on our radar, but it’s possible that the B plug could reach out the garage door. We also had a regular outlet installed next to B that could reach out that far. In retrospect maybe we could/should have put the B plug at A in case someone visits us who needs a charge.
The panel location is a huge factor if the installation cost is important to you.
That aside, I think D is the best spot if you have a Tesla, but will certainly be the most expensive to install
“… most expensive to install.”
While “D” is the longest run, I suspect that 90%+ of the run would be in the open attic space with only the drop down portion requiring wall work. So yeah, most expensive, but the difference shouldn’t be that bad as the biggest driver is labor cost.
Tesla puts its chargers on the back left of its cars (left from the driver position). Other car manufacturers will do other things, but eventually follow Tesla’s design since their cars will be using Tesla’s super charger network. So back left is going to be standard. The real question is, are you a back into the garage or a nose into the garage person? That will give you your answer.
The more likely scenario is Tesla puts longer cables on their chargers. The entire industry is not going to agree to be hamstrung by Tesla’s arbitrary design design for the next several decades when they can just tell Tesla to change out the cords.
Tesla can also just tell the industry your cars won’t work on our chargers and nobody will buy your cars because they won’t work on our chargers and then Tesla will continue to dominate the US EV market. Standards are good for everyone and it is clear that in the US that Tesla is going to set the standards.
At which point, the government takes away all charger subsidies from Tesla because the system is no longer open. And then CCS build out continues using government subsidies and eventually exceeds Tesla.
NACS is a standard CCS charger with a different plug on the end. So it’s trivial to switch back and forth, and newer chargers will have both CCS and NACS plugs because of this. Many Tesla owners already use CCS chargers because they are cheaper than the Superchargers.