Total cost for 240v charger

Hi all, I am new here and just picked up my 2014 FFE and couldn't be more excited! It's currently sitting in our garage plugged into our wall outlet with the supplied 120v charger. I have already read just about all the posts in this sub forum and I'm still a little bit confused as to what I can expect to pay for having a 240v charger installed.

A few people recommend going with Bosch but on their website it said the typical installation can cost between $1200-1500. I'm assuming that's in addition to the $500+ in cost to purchase the actually charger? That's a lot more than the dealer led me to believe as they said you only have to hire an electrician for a couple of hours. We have a brand new house so I'm hoping the wiring and all that will be pretty straight forward.

What are my options and how much can I expect to pay for everything? I was really hoping to get the total cost at $1,000 or less. Thank you!

I paid 700 from Home Depot for GE charger (with a PLUG) and they have other units like Siemens and so on for the same price range

If your breaker box is in the garage then I can't believe that installing such receptacle (NEMA 6-50) would cost more than 200 for a professional install. This receptacle is used for welders so it is very common job.

Some chargers can go with 30A receptacles as used for dryers. Then an extension cord could be used if the receptacle is too far.

Hardwired units are sometimes 100$ cheaper but then you need an electrician to install a conduit to the breaker box.

Again it all depends on how far you are from breaker box; Another factor would be if you want the unit outside.

If you are going to install it in a garage I'd recommend having the electrician just give you a plug. That way you can get any EVSE you want--you can even have the plug wired before you purchase the unit.

EVSE's by themselves cost from about $300 to $800 depending on model, features, capacity, etc.

The cost for the electrician can be all over the place. Your best bet would be to call a few and get some estimates.

Clipper Creek makes some really nice, small, units for reasonable prices:
http://www.clippercreek.com/store/featured-products/

A review of sorts:
http://jamiegeek.myevblog.com/2014/06/10/chargers-are-us-or-rather-evses/

Please mention what state you live in. Your state makes a huge difference in what you might want to install.

If you don't have to deal with cold, 120V outlet with what you have might be more than enough. If you live in an area where it gets cold, 120V outlet will work, but the advantages of preheating the car are better with 220V.

I live in the Chicago area and used a 120V outlet for a long time. We had no problems with a detached garage - the car stayed just warm enough that 120V worked fine through the winter.

This summer we added a new car and had to add a lot more service to the garage. I decided to install a charging station for the FFE at the same time. In total I needed 100 Amps in the garage - 50 for the new car and 50 for the FFE.

The other part about which state you live in - if you install an outlet only, you might not get a rebate from your state for the installation cost. Because I installed an EVSE, I could get an installation rebate in Illinois when the program restarts (I missed the original program by about a month).

Plan carefully with what you decide to do - an electrical outlet might cost you more money because you can't get a rebate.

The cost to get 30-50 Amps of 240V into your garage is all over the map. Just because you have an electric dryer, doesn't mean you have enough service to add the charger.

The first critical step is the service coming into your house. In my example, I had 100Amp service. When I was going to add 50 Amps for one car and 50 Amps for the other, I used up all my service. That meant I had to upgrade my service to 200 Amps, meaning a whole new panel in the house, box outside, and I had a ground wire that had to be changed. All that before we even talked about the garage.

My garage is detached - so the conduit had to be buried and a sub panel put in my garage. That also required grounding.

If your garage is attached, that doesn't necessarily make it easier - you might have finished walls, there might be trouble getting conduit to your garage - there are a ton of variables.

Personally, I would go with a hard wired EVSE. The number of times you will take the plug in style with you is probably really small. You've got the Ford cable to charge 110V. And then use Plugshare to find faster charging.

You really should hire an electrician to do this work. It's probably a bit bigger than most DIY projects. It's also not a bad idea to get it permitted and inspected.

All in for me, including a GE Wattstation, two electricians worked for two very long days - $5300.

Now this will sound strange - if you are looking for an electrician, go to the tesla forums - somehow these guys find some of the best priced and high quality electricians around. The people they recommend are usually very familiar with installing this kind of equipment. That's if you want a turn key install.
http://www.teslamotors.com/forums
You don't have to be an owner to read or post in that forum. Go to your particular state in the Clubs area. There is no good way to search that forum - just scan the titles for your state. (Unless you live in California - don't even try to find something in the main forums about electricians)

Sorry for the long post - I just went through this major overhaul about three months ago. Hope some of that helps.

Thanks for the replies! I live in Northern CA so extreme cold is not much of an issue. The reason I really need the 240v is because my round trip commute is about 50 miles and sometimes I'm at work for 12-14 hours and I don't have enough time to charge on the 120v.

I live in a brand new house. The panel is in the attached garage and would be about 1 foot away from where I want the charger mounted. I believe I have a 200 amp panel. I really hope this doesn't get into the thousands of dollars as I was told by Ford that I can expect to pay around $500-600 for the charger and $200-300 for installation. Of course, they are trying to sell you a car and sometimes will say anything!

install: I got 2 quotes, wound up paying 400$ for professional to put in pair of breakers, conduit (about 8 feet), and a NEMA 6-50 outlet (more than enough current); that was 2 years ago, in SF bay area. Probably could do better, but I wanted quick.

EVSE: first got an SPX (now Bosch), adjustable from 12 to 32 amps. Device was fine, but the connector began to get disturbingly warm (it wore loose?) at 24 A., then later even at 16 A., so I replaced it.
Second got Clipper Creek LCS-25P with matching plug, for about 600$, direct from C C. (Might have been cheaper elsewhere, but this was easy, reliable, and comes from Auburn, CA, so was quick.) Nice to be able to swap / install that in a few minutes.

Winter: I HIGHLY recommend planning to be able to pre-warm the car, which only works well with some sort of 240 volt device like this. Many like to use mostly just the seat heater, to avoid the substantial bight that the cabin air heater takes out of your driving range. Air heater takes in neighborhood of 5 kW; seat heater takes almost nothing by comparison. Starting off with a comfortable cabin can help, even if you just use that preheating rarely.
Range: a 50 mi. commute that is fine much of the year Might feel marginal if you use cabin heating (or if you add side trips, or drive well over 65 mph).

Is there a website or some place I can check on electricians that set up these chargers? I put a request on Thumbtack earlier today but didn't get any responses.

When my parents bought their C-Max Energi they had to do some major work. Their existing service was only 100 amps so it had to be upgraded to 150. Their garage is detached and the existing 120V 15 amp circuit wasn't in very good shape. So the electrician installed a new panel in their basement with circuit breakers instead of fuses and ran a new conduit to the garage with a 240V 30 amp circuit and a 120V 20 amp circuit. Now the old 15 amp circuit is only used for their garage door opener and everything else in the garage runs on the new 120V circuit. They also had the electrician redo a couple circuits in their house that were prone to blowing fuses. Their total cost including permits and everything was about $3000 plus another $550 for their EVSE. This allowed them to take advantage of the Federal tax credit of 30% of the EVSE installation cost up to $1000 maximum tax credit. Since almost all of their $3000 in electrical work was necessary to install their EVSE unit they were able to claim almost all of that cost for the tax credit, the only portion they couldn't claim was the ancillary things they had done like the new 120V garage circuit and the rewiring in the house (less than $300 of the total bill).

Considering the upgrading the panel and service was the majority of the bill and that they needed to do that anyway and had been planning to for years, getting an EV and a tax credit was a great motivation to do it in 2013.

Yours should be much cheaper and could potentially be a DIY project if you have some knowledge and experience with electricity. You may be required to get a permit though. In Minneapolis a permit was required for their work. Be sure to check with your municipality.

I live in Oakland, CA.

Paid $300 for addition of new breakers and outlet near existing panel for 50A RV outlet.

Paid $350 for JuiceBox EVSE that I assembled myself in 90 minutes.

Total: $650.

-M

mcowger said:

I live in Oakland, CA.

Paid $300 for addition of new breakers and outlet near existing panel for 50A RV outlet.

Paid $350 for JuiceBox EVSE that I assembled myself in 90 minutes.

Total: $650.

-M

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That's great! I don't know if I'm handy enough to assemble a JuiceBox. I was thinking about getting this one:

http://www.amazon.com/Bosch-EL-51253-Electric-Vehicle-Charging/dp/B00FM7B1AO/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1406608558&sr=8-1&keywords=Bosch+EL-51253&dpPl=1

Electrician is quoting $250.

Thoughts?

The Bosch is fairly popular, and gets decent reviews.

I will say that the JuiceBox Premium can be purchased fully assembled for about the same price as that Bosch with a longer cord and wifi capability .

Can't go wrong either way.

mcowger said:

The Bosch is fairly popular, and gets decent reviews.

I will say that the JuiceBox Premium can be purchased fully assembled for about the same price as that Bosch with a longer cord and wifi capability .

Can't go wrong either way.

Click to expand...

Cool...do you think the $250 to the electrician is reasonable? The Bosch is going to be mounted about a foot away from the panel in the garage and I know I have plenty of space and don't need a sub panel.

$250 for ANY EVSE is a steal!

jmueller065 said:

$250 for ANY EVSE is a steal!

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$250 is not for the EVSE but is for the installation. He would be paying $250 for labor.