Electric car charger recommended amperage

[YeahPete]

I'm renovating my garage and I plan on owning an electric car in a few years. Is 30 amps 240v enough for a decent charging station?

[Ryland]

30amps would be 6.6kwh, or what is common for an on board charger to max out at, but charging stations you can adjust their max output, down to 10 amps on some.
The question is, do you want options in the future?
You then have two options, conduit running to the breaker box, or run the next size larger wire, 8 gauge would be plenty big for 40 amps.

[gone-ot]

Go as BIG as possible with the (a) circuit breaker(s) and (b) wiring. Remember, you can ALWAYS use less, but trying to get MORE through small breakers & wire AFTER they've already been installed is "short-sightedness." Also, bigger wires will ALWAYS waste LESS power due to their inherently lower resistance.

[freebeard]

Like the people who ran Ethernet all over their new house before they sealed the walls up because it's easier then; just before Wi-Fi came to market.

Consider that if it's a few years out, the car will probably have a DC fast charger, and your house will have a Solar City Powerwall.

Then it can dump enough power to power your house for a day, into your car in 20 minutes.

[Ryland]

I don't think dc fast charging will ever be wide spread at home, higher amp ac charging might be, for example look at tesla, if your wiring well support it you can draw 80 amps from your home charging station and their plug is good for 120 amps, the J1772 is designed for up to 80 amps.
Even with a tesla power wall, you'll need decent sized wire going to the breaker box and their power wall is to high of dc voltage to legally have inside the living space.
So if it's easy to run conduit I'd go that route, otherwise 8 or 6 gauge wire.

[P-hack]

Originally Posted by freebeard

just before Wi-Fi came to market.

wired still performs way better, dare I say it will always perform better.

(I often remote to other computers on my subnet, big difference, to the internet, not so much, but that is lightyears better than 4g)

[freebeard]

As an example...

Any battery storage in the home will be DC.

[ocnorb]

I would run a 50 amp service if you can swing it.

Mine is 50 amp, which I thought was major overkill. And it was for one EV. But, we are now a 2 EV family and the 50 amp service runs both EVSE devices each night.

Both cars are 3.3kw right now, but I can easily see at least one 6.6kw per car future on the horizon.

Of course, if you are sleeping for 8 hours a night anyway, there is no hurry unless you are on a Time of Use agreement with your power company.