The way that most Tesla owners will charge is overnight at home. While you can simply plug your Tesla into a standard wall outlet, you’ll only gain around 2 or 3 miles per hour of charging, per Tesla. Charging will take days to fill up your car’s battery. Instead, we recommend splurging for Tesla’s wall connector, which dramatically reduces charging times.
This wall connector costs $475 and can be purchased directly from Tesla. Though the cost of installation varies based on location and other factors, some areas offer incentives or rebates to help keep costs down. Charging at home — particularly overnight, when electricity rates are generally lower — is the easiest and most convenient way to keep your Tesla’s battery topped up.
Tesla’s at-home charger can deliver electricity to your car at rates up to 11.5 kW, which is quick enough to add 44 miles of range per hour. At that rate, it would take just over nine hours to fully charge up a Model S or X with the largest battery Tesla offers. However, in the interest of preserving battery life, Tesla recommends charging to no more than 80% of the battery’s capacity in normal circumstances. As a result, plugging your car in when you get home, setting the charge limit to 80%, and letting it sit overnight mean you’ll usually wake up to a car that’s ready to go on in the morning.
If you’re a household with both a Tesla and a non-Tesla EV, Tesla sells an at-home charger with both its own connector and a J1772 plug built right in (the plug type that non-Tesla EVs use to charge with). At $595, this 11.5-kW unit costs a little more, but the expanded utility is a boon for multi-EV households.