Home charging

Waterproof power points are fine to put on the outside walls of a house, depending on what size charger you are wanting to use there may be access to existing house wiring - for a 10A charger that plugs into a standard GPO (power point), assuming that circuit isn't already near maximum capacity.

Otherwise you'd probably need a dedicated circuit, ie a new circuit breaker in the switchboard and wiring to the 15A or 32A GPO on the outside wall.

Have you got the 39 or 64kWh battery? Either way a small charger that plugs into a standard 10A GPO would charge the car overnight if there was some remaining capacity, although not fully, especially the long range battery that might need all the next day as well.

However, if you want to maximise home charging with less reliance on more expensive public chargers, it might be worth considering charging at a higher rate, as there may be occasions when you don't want to wait so long before heading out in the car if the battery is low.

Slow charging is good for calibrating the vehicles battery state of charge meter, they generally recalibrate when slow charged to full, and can drift away from accurate when lots of fast charging to 80% is done. Also, the final 10% of charging to 100% is very slow, even on a 350kW Supercharger - similar speed to a home charger.

Thankyou. OK so worth getting an electrician to scope the wiring of the house's limit's first and then probably do a dedicated circuit sounds prudent for this.

How do I establish what size battery my car has? I bought it second hand. I know it is meant to go around 550kms, but when I charged it to what seemed 'full' it registered as 480ish..Is this the somehow indicate the kWh battery? I'll need to learn more. What is the relevance of this aspect please?  

That range suggests it will be the larger battery, 64kWh. If you have the user manual it should have all the details.

Larger battery = longer driving range = longer time to charge, so if you only have a low capacity ~2kW charger, it take a much longer time to charge than the shorter driving range version.

From 20% to full will take a bit over 24 hours with that charger*

* The charger is actually built into the car, the unit commonly called a charger is just a box with some control and communication electronics in them, and sometimes a colourful LED display to indicate what is happening.

I think it would be worth investigating a 15A or 32A charger, or if your house has 3phase electricity, an 11/22kW charger could be installed.

PS  I should add, if you have a PV system that just meets your needs, it could be worthwhile enlarging it to partly or fully meet EV charging needs - the energy produced is worth much more powering your car than it is selling it back to the grid for minimal return.

OK Thankyou. We do have PV but not such a large roof. Thanks for the tip on the charger. I don't think we have 3 phase. I'll try and find out about a 15A or 32A charger thanks.