Menu
It can take anywhere from 30 minutes to 24 hours to charge your electric vehicle. There are several factors that determine how long it takes to fully charge an EV. Some of these are – the power rating of the charging station (level), the amount of power that the vehicle can accept, the size of the battery, the amount of charge in the battery, and other environmental factors.
We will look into each of these factors in detail below.
Charging is grouped into three categories based on power (kW) delivered by the station or outlet.
The first level of charging is comparatively very low-powered charging. This is generally the power you would get at any 120V plug outlet in your home. The power rating can be up to 2.2kW.
For reference, charging the Tesla Model 3 (which has a 60kWh battery pack and 272 miles range) will take you approximately 24 hours for a full charge. This equals around 10-12 miles of range added per hour of charging.
While this charging speed is slow, you need no extra set-up and can charge from the convenience of your own home.
Level 2 charging delivers 3-20kW of power to a vehicle. These power outlets are available in some public locations and can be installed at home.
To compare this to Level 1 charging, the same Model 3 can be charged in 6 to 8 hours at a Level 2 EV charging station. This is equivalent to adding on average 30 to 50 miles every hour the vehicle is charging.
With some additional setup, a level 2 charging station can be installed at home. Or if already available, a NEMA 6-50 or NEMA 14-50 plug (typically used for washers and dryers) with 4 prongs and a plug-in electric vehicle charging connector can deliver Level 2 charging to your electric vehicle.
The fastest level of charging is also known as DC (direct current) fast charging. As the name suggests, unlike the previous levels, it uses DC power rather than AC power. This reduces power losses while charging your car at super-fast speeds. DC fast charging delivers power from 20kW all the way up to 500kW to an electric vehicle.
At these power levels, you can expect a Tesla Model 3 to get fully charged in under an hour. That’s a staggering charging speed of about 300 miles added every hour.
Charging at this level is not feasible for the home and so, is only available at public locations, including shopping centers and along highways.
Estimate how long it will take to charge an electric vehicle using this simple calculator
While there are no real-world applications yet, there is also current research being done on charging speeds above 500kW. Of course, just because the charging technology exists, doesn’t mean that the car can keep up.
The present vehicles on the market cannot accept power above 350kW. In the near future, when the charging capability of EVs improves, charging times could be as low as 2-3 minutes!
As mentioned above, no matter which charging station you connect your car to, each of them has a maximum power or charging speed that the vehicle can accept. This is set by the vehicle manufacturer and is done to preserve the health of the battery. The Tesla Model 3 can accept a maximum of about 250kW. So, if you plug the vehicle to a charging station that can deliver 350kW of power, the maximum speed the Model 3 will charge at will be 250kW.
This one is rather obvious. If you have a bigger battery (which offers more range), then it will take more time to charge. Think of it as filling up a tank with water. The bigger the tank, the longer it will take to fill it up. The Tesla Model 3 Long Range has a bigger battery (82kWh in size) than the Tesla Model 3 Rear-Wheel Drive (which has a battery size of 60kWh). The Tesla Model 3 Long Range will take longer to fill up.
The charge status (battery level) can affect the charging speed in two ways. Naturally, it will take more time to fill up an empty battery rather than a half-filled one.
However, vehicle manufacturers manage the amount of power a battery can accept as it charges to preserve the health of the battery. In other words, the battery will accept less power as the battery ‘fills up’. This means that the power that the battery was accepting from 0% to 80% is much more than what it will accept from 80% to 100% charge status. This is done to preserve the life of the battery and different vehicles have different strategies for this.
To put it another way, if connected to a Level 3 charger and the maximum charging power of your car is 75kW, the car will not constantly charge at 75kW. Charging speeds will progressively reduce as necessary to protect the battery.
Finally, the last important detail that may affect the charging speed of the battery is the weather in which you are charging. Batteries don’t do well in extreme weather.
Thus, charging times might decrease drastically if batteries are overheated or are super cold due to the weather. In fact, some of modern EVs have a feature that warms up the batteries when the ambient temperature is low (in the winter) so that the batteries can charge faster.
As you can see there are several factors that might affect the time taken to charge an EV. There are many more than the ones mentioned in this article. But if we try to list out all of them, this article might become too technical. But hopefully, this post helped you get a basic understanding of charging times, and what factors affect the speed of charging.
Sign up to receive updates on electric vehicle charging tips, products, and services