People who haven’t yet made the transition to electric vehicles typically cite three challenges that cause them to hold onto their gasoline-powered cars: range, availability of chargers, and the time it takes to charge an electric car. On the issue of charging time, people hear estimates of several hours to charge an EV on household electrical current and think, “no thanks, that’s a deal breaker.”
But how long does it really take to charge an electric car in real-world conditions, and how do charging times compare to time spent pumping gasoline in a car powered by an internal combustion engine?
For most electric car owners, we spend less time charging our cars than other people spend pumping gas.
For most electric car owners, we spend less time charging our cars than other people spend pumping gas. To repeat, less time charging, not more. And it’s much more convenient to charge than to pump. That’s especially true for EV owners who have a charger in their garage or another dedicated parking space.
“Fueling” an EV uses a paradigm that is entirely different than putting gasoline in the car. When you “fuel” an EV, the car does that while you’re parked to do something else.
What most people don’t understand is that “fueling” an EV uses a paradigm that is entirely different than pumping gasoline in a car. The simple version is this: when you fuel your gasoline-powered car, you go to the gas station and spend time to do that. When you “fuel” an EV, the car does that while you’re parked to do something else. Yes, it takes longer to pump the electrons into a battery than it takes to pump gasoline into a tank. But that’s irrelevant if the charging takes place while you’re doing something else. (See the end of this article for the details on charging times.)
Charging at Home
Most of the time, the something else an EV owner is doing while the car is charging is sleeping. At home, our electric car takes a couple of hours to charge after daily driving. But it doesn’t really matter whether it’s two hours or ten hours. All we care is that we have a “full tank” every morning. Do you know how long it takes your cell phone to charge at night? Probably not, because all you really care is that it’s fully charged in the morning.
For local driving, EV owners spend essentially zero time charging.
In fact, for local driving, EV owners spend essentially zero time charging. Our EV charges while we’re sleeping, and we never go to the equivalent of a gas station. No stops at gas stations in the rain and the cold, or when we’re in a hurry to get home. Instead, there’s a gas station in our garage. So unless you count the few seconds it takes to plug in the charger when we get home and unplug it in the morning, our charging time is essentially zero. And the convenience of charging at home rather than at a gas station is actually a major advantage of an electric vehicle.
With a charger in the garage, charging time is essentially zero, and the convenience of charging at home rather than at a gas station is actually a major advantage of an electric vehicle.
For people without access to chargers at their home, another good option is charging at work during the day, especially as businesses offer chargers to attract and retain employees. And in the future, daytime charging will be the least expensive way to charge an EV as electricity generated from solar power becomes abundant and cheap. In fact, in some locations like California and Hawaii where substantial amounts of solar power have been deployed, peak electricity generation during the afternoon hours can exceed demand, creating the so-called “Duck Curve”—a condition where daytime power is abundant and close to free. (For more information, look up the Duck Curve on Wikipedia.)
Charging on the Road
Now, you’re probably asking, what about road trips? Doesn’t it take forever to charge on the road, when you can’t charge overnight at home?
The latest version of Tesla’s Supercharger pumps electrons at a 250 kilowatt pace, fast enough to charge EVs with 80-100 kilowatt-hour batteries in about 15-20 minutes.
Charging on the road relies on fast chargers that operate at 480 volts—much faster than home chargers that use 240-volt electric circuits. And the rate they pump electrons into EV batteries is constantly increasing. For example, the latest version of Tesla’s Supercharger, Version 3, pumps electrons at a 250 kilowatt pace, fast enough to charge EVs with 80-100 kilowatt-hour batteries in about 15-20 minutes. Some Electrify America fast chargers operate at 350 kilowatt-hours. (For more information on types of fast chargers, see article on Types of Electric Vehicle Chargers.)
Even the fastest chargers will probably never match the speed of a gasoline pump, because hydrocarbons can’t be beat for their speed in pumping energy-dense fuels into a vehicle. But like the time to charge my car overnight at home, the time required to charge with a fast charger on the road becomes unimportant if it’s less than the time to stop for a meal or a rest break.
The key point is that you don’t stop to charge like you stop to fill your tank at a gas station. You stop for a meal or a rest break and charge while you’re parked to do those other activities.
The key point is that you don’t stop to charge like you stop to fill your tank at a gas station. You stop for a meal or a rest break and charge while you’re parked to do those other activities. So unless the charging takes longer than the main activity, you’re not spending any time charging—just as we don’t spend time charging at home.
We’ve used Supercharger Version 3 stations a couple of times—the ones that pump electrons at 250 kilowatts—and their speed is impressive. As an example, we stopped at a Supercharger V3 in Connecticut on the way to Cape Cod in 2020. We plugged in—the charging starts immediately and the cost is automatically charged to your Tesla account—and then went into the rest station to use the restroom and order Chipotle takeout. By the time we got back to the car, it was almost ready to go.
As more people make the transition to electric vehicles, more restaurants will offer chargers in their parking lots as a way to attract customers.
Tesla locates their Superchargers along highways and near restaurants. As more people make the transition to electric vehicles, more restaurants will offer fast chargers in their parking lots as a way to attract customers. And they can use the space in their parking lots for solar canopies—solar panels mounted above parking spaces—so that their customers can use inexpensive solar power to charge, especially for the lunch crowd stopping at mid-day.
Charging time during road trips starts to fade as a concern as EVs approach 300-mile range as a standard.
Charging time during road trips starts to fade as a concern as EVs approach 300-mile range as a standard. With ranges in the 300s, even a full day of driving will generally require only one charging stop. And that will probably be for lunch—enough time for an EV battery to recharge with enough juice to power the second half of a driving day.
The other key to charging on the road is staying at hotels that offer chargers.
The other key to charging on the road is staying at hotels that offer chargers. Starting a road trip from home, you always have a “full tank” in the morning, so you should need to stop only once, at lunchtime, to charge along the way. Similarly, if you stay at hotels that offer chargers, you always start the next leg of your trip with a “full tank.”
Tesla has a coherent strategy for building an EV charging network—Superchargers that they build and operate along the highways, and what they call Destination Chargers at hotels and other establishments. They offer Destination Chargers to hotels, typically for free. These are 240-volt (“Level 2”) chargers that will charge an EV overnight, just like our charger at home. It’s a smart strategy for Tesla because it encourages the building of the charging network. And it’s good business for the hotels because they appear on the network map, and the availability of chargers attracts customers. Of course it’s good for the EV owners because they can start the next day with a full charge and usually get the overnight charging for free.
Other EV companies are starting to follow similar strategies, especially Rivian, which is a new company making electric pick-up trucks and SUVs. In addition to its “Adventure” fast chargers, it is building a network of “Waypoint” chargers, Level 2 chargers at hotels and restaurants. Installing chargers is good business for hotels. Like restaurants that offer chargers in their parking lots to attract customers, hotels that offer chargers attract the growing numbers of EV owners to seek lodging at their establishments.
We will soon see the availability of chargers as a desired filter on travel websites so EV users can easily find hotels with chargers. In the meantime, there is PlugShare, an incredibly useful wiki-based app that lists just about every charging station in the country. (See article on How Easy is it to Find Charging Stations?).
Summary
If you’re interested in an electric vehicle but have been hesitating because of concerns about charging times, get to a Tesla, VW, Ford, or other EV showroom or website as soon as possible to order your next car. Because while charging times are overstated by people who do not understand electric vehicles, delays in getting EVs are a real issue as their popularity grows and manufacturing companies experience delays in ramping up production of batteries and vehicles.
For local driving with an EV, you will spend essentially zero time charging—and certainly far less than you would spend stopping at gas stations. And electric vehicles offer a major advantage in convenience by eliminating trips to the gas station. For road trips, a growing network of fast chargers will allow you to charge while stopping to eat or rest. And unless you regularly drive more than 500 miles a day, eat while driving, and have an iron bladder, road trips won’t be meaningfully longer than they would be in a gasoline-powered car. Moreover, time is on the side of electric vehicles as charging stations become faster and more numerous.
You may also be waiting to make the transition to an electric car because of concerns about the life of the battery pack in an EV. Will the battery start to lose capacity after a few years like my iPhone, and will I get stuck having to spend several thousand dollars on a new battery? For information on battery longevity, see the article on How Long Do Electric Vehicle Batteries Last?
Charging Time Details
Now, here are the details on charging times.
To over-simplify a little, EV charging can be thought about in two types: regular charging at home or hotels with charging times measured in hours, and fast charging at stations along the highway with times measured in tens of minutes.
Charging at Home
Charging at home or a hotel is done with Level 2 chargers that operate at 240 volts. Depending on the amps provided by the electric circuit and the charging device, a Level 2 charger will provide roughly 20-30 miles of range per hour. For example, a Level 2 charger operating on a 240-volt circuit at 32-amps can add about 30 miles of range per hour (7.7 Kilowatt-hours of energy x 4 miles of range per Kilowatt-hour). A 40-amp charger can add about 37 miles per hour (9.6 KWs).
At those rates, an average day of driving—about 30 miles per day—can be recovered in about an hour of charging—longer as the battery reaches full capacity and the rate of charging slows. For most local driving, it would be rare to drain a battery to near empty. But with a 300-mile EV, even a battery near empty can be charged in about 10 hours—basically overnight.
Using the same charger, it’s also possible to charge an EV on a standard 120-volt electrical circuit—known as Level 1 charging—but at only about 2-3 miles per hour. That’s enough to recover an average day’s driving of 30 miles in an overnight charging session. But it’s not enough to recover from a long trip and a nearly depleted battery. For that reason, most EV owners invest in a dedicated 240-volt electrical circuit for their charger.
Charging on Road Trips
Charging on the road is done with fast chargers, also known as Level 3 or DC (Direct Current) fast chargers. Fast chargers operate at 480 volts and can pump electrons into an EV battery at rates of 150-350 Kilowatts. For example, the latest version of Tesla’s Superchargers, Version 3, can charge at 250 Kilowatts. In theory, a charger that fast could fill the 75 Kilowatt-hour battery in our Tesla Model Y in 18 minutes (75/250). However, that is not possible because charging rates slow as the battery fills.
For example, with a Supercharger V3, charging at 250KWs lasts only for the first few minutes and then tapers down. For this reason, it usually does not make sense to charge beyond about 80 percent of the battery capacity because the last 20 percent of charge would take an extended amount of time. The end result is that a Supercharger can provide about 200 miles of additional range in 15-20 minutes, but additional range beyond that is better achieved by a later stop at another charging station.
Charging rates can also vary by location, depending on the electrical service for the substation. Tesla Supercharger locations typically have eight to a dozen individual charging stations. If they are all being used at the same time, the rate of charging can drop significantly in some locations.
Currently, a complication associated with fast charging is that there are two main standards in the United States—basically two types of plugs. Tesla’s Supercharger network is the most numerous now, but CCS (Combined Charging System) charging stations are being built rapidly by companies like Electrify America, ChargePoint, and EVGO, as well as EV manufacturers like Rivian, which is building an “Adventure network” of DC fast chargers.
The problem of dual standards is starting to be addressed with adaptors, but not all fast chargers are currently available to all types of electric vehicles. (See article on Types of Electric Vehicle Chargers.)