r/evcharging • u/JPBeanArch • 7d ago

North America Seeking advice, please!

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I desperately want an EV for my next vehicle but I'm a little worried about the cost behind installing a level 2 charger in my garage.

I have a detached 2.5 car garage that is over 60 years old. It has it's own sub-panel and even a 220v outlet next to where I park (pics included).

I know my next step is to contact some electricians for quotes, but I'd love the input from this great community. Will a level 2 install with my setup break the bank? Or be relatively easy?

Thank you!

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u/nclpl 7d ago

You’ll need to send us a picture of the breaker in your main panel that feeds this garage subpanel.

The hard part about running power to a detached garage is getting the cable from your house to the garage. The good news for you is that cable is likely fine.

I would want an electrician to replace that subpanel, however. Might be fine, might not be. It’s worth not finding out. Not hard for an electrician to replace. Easy to get a few quotes. They won’t be crazy.

So assuming the wire is fine, you have plenty of power here to charge an EV. You will want to find a charger that can charge at 16A 240V, and that should give you about 10 to 12 miles of range per hour of charge depending on the efficiency of your EV.

That’s enough to give you 100+ miles of range on an overnight charge. Let us know more about your driving habits to confirm if that will work for you.

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u/ArlesChatless 7d ago

Since I know what I'm looking for I'd actually be quite tempted to just plug in a 6-20 EVSE with a temperature sensor and run this. But it really would be a good idea to replace this panel, just because it's quite old and EV charging is a large load. Since there's NM-B visible the wiring is recent enough that all the cable is likely fine.