Level 1, Level 2 and DC fast charging

Charging equipment comes in three levels. They aren't marketing tiers. They're three genuinely different electrical installations that ask different things of your building, and picking the wrong one is an expensive way to find that out.

Level 1: a regular wall outlet

Level 1 runs on standard 120-volt household power. Most electric cars come with a cord that plugs into a normal outlet, so if there's already one near where the car parks, there's nothing to install.

It's slow. A car sitting on Level 1 all night picks up a few miles of range per hour, and the exact figure depends on the car. If you drive a short commute and the car sits at home twelve hours a night, that can genuinely be enough. Beyond that, it isn't.

Where it works: one house with light daily mileage, or a workplace where cars sit all day and nobody needs a full battery. Where it doesn't: anywhere one outlet has to serve two cars, or anywhere the car has to be full by morning.

One warning. A Level 1 cord pulling continuously for hours is a real load on a circuit that may be shared with other things. If you're going to lean on Level 1, have an electrician confirm the circuit can take it.

Level 2: what most properties put in

Level 2 runs on 208 or 240 volts, the same kind of supply as an electric range or a commercial air conditioner. It needs its own dedicated circuit and, nearly everywhere, a permit and an inspection.

How fast it charges depends on the amperage of the circuit and on the car's own onboard charger. The car sets a ceiling here, and a lot of people spend money before they find that out. If your vehicle only accepts so much power, it will not draw more no matter how big a charger you hang on the wall. A 40-amp circuit feeding a car that can't use it is money spent on nothing. Find out what your residents or your crew actually drive before you size anything.

In practice Level 2 turns overnight parking into a full battery for most cars and most driving, which is why it's the default at homes, apartments, workplaces, hotels and anywhere else cars sit for hours rather than minutes.

What it asks of your building: spare capacity in the service, panel space for the dedicated circuits, and a wire run out to the parking. Multiply that by how many separate places you want to serve.

DC fast charging: a different kind of equipment

DC fast charging skips the car's onboard charger and sends direct current straight to the battery. That's what makes it fast, and it's also what makes it a much bigger electrical job. This equipment runs at power levels ten times and more above Level 2. It usually needs three-phase supply, its own transformer or switchgear, and a real footprint of hardware sitting next to the parking stall.

For most property owners, DC fast charging is the wrong tool. It exists for places where drivers stop briefly and need a lot of energy fast: highway corridors, travel centers, fleet depots with tight turnarounds, high-turnover retail. If cars at your property sit for more than an hour or two, Level 2 does the same job for a fraction of the electrical work.

There's a running cost angle too. Commercial power bills often include demand charges based on the highest power you pulled in a billing period, and DC fast charging can set a nasty peak off a handful of sessions. Have that conversation with your utility and your installer before you commit, not after the first bill lands.

Which one you want

It comes down to how long the cars are parked.

• Parked overnight at a house, apartment building or hotel: Level 2, easily.
• Parked all day at a workplace: Level 2, and often fewer chargers than you'd guess, because cars can rotate or share the power.
• Parked an hour or two at a shopping center or restaurant: still Level 2, though how many stalls you have matters more than how fast each one is.
• Parked for minutes on a corridor or in a hard-working fleet: this is what DC fast charging was built for.

Sharing power between chargers

One more thing worth knowing, because it rescues projects that looked impossible. Load management, sometimes called power sharing, lets several chargers split a fixed amount of capacity and dial each one back when a lot of cars are plugged in at once.

If your building doesn't have much spare capacity, this can be the difference between serving four stalls and serving twenty, with no service upgrade. It works because cars parked overnight don't all need full power the whole time. Ask whether the hardware your installer is proposing supports it, because plenty of it doesn't.

EV Ready USA doesn't do electrical work or price installations. What your property can support, and what that takes, comes from the licensed installer who walks it.