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How long does grocery shopping take you? I can do it in under 30 minutes, definitely under an hour. And in that half hour, my car charges… about three miles (@ 3.6kW)? That’s about how far the trip to the grocery store is. 50A 240V (10.8kW) only gets me up to 7.5 miles of charge in a grocery shopping trip.


Thats... extremely pessimistic. I have a VW eGolf, with our 7.6kW home charger it can go from empty - full in 4 hours. It has a 36kWhr battery w/ a range of 150 miles, so in 30 minutes that's on average a little under 19 miles (probably more because you get faster charging at first and slower when closer to full).

But more to the point, how many people have a regular commute, only have street parking at home, and ALSO couldn't be expected to have their employer provide charging at work? Are they doing on-street parking at work as well?

I know a lot of folks in the city who own a car but use it for errands and trips but not commuting. They're the people best served by slower charging at grocery stores, movie theaters, etc. 20 miles isn't a lot but if you're topping up every-time you use the car anyways it adds up or at the least means you only need to use the fast charger once every few months at the most.


Model Ys use something like 250-300 Wh per mile if you’re not at highway speeds, so I think your range estimates might be a bit pessimistic?

But yeah, I wouldn’t count on short grocery store stops to charge my car.




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