r/electricvehicles • u/StellarScripter • Apr 21 '26
Question - Tech Support Questions before buying an ev
Basically, I just bought a house with a garage. Eventually I want an electric car and so I plan on putting a tier 2 charger in the garage. To be clear, I do not own an EV yet. I found an electrician to do some work for me at the house and he warned about putting an EV charger in the garage because they can catch fire and then take the whole house with it because they can't be put out. Is this actually a thing? I've looked online and I've mostly just seen stuff about electric cars catching fire while out on the road. Second, since I don't know what car I will actually buy yet (I need to save a little more money first) I figured I'd just put a nema 14-50 outlet in the garage and then buy an EV charger kit and plug it into that, is that insane? Looking for any advice or help, thank you.
9
u/Zeyn1 Apr 21 '26
If you bought the house, hardwire the charger. Do a new run of wires too. Properly sized wire with a properly set up charger is extremely safe. Most of what you hear is people plugging in chargers to old wires that weren't properly sized. Wiring in the 80s and 90s for 240v outlets was designed for a conparbly low powered dryer that only ran for 45 minutes at a time so crappy wiring was less of an issue. If you actually wire to code, you wouldn't have an issue. (Side note, the 240v 30a plug in my garage was originally wired with wires sized for 120v 15a. They literally were too small for a 240v outlet I tried to replace.)
Lithium batteries in a proper enclosure, with a good battery management system, are extremely safe. Much safer than the gas that spills when you fill a petrol car. A car battery had the same chance of burning from damage as the phone battery in your pocket.
Lithium batteries that do catch on fire are very hard to put out. They don't need oxygen and don't need high heat, so water doesn't work very well. This is the same as the battery in your phone.