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Comment by thrower123 | Hacker News Reader

Of course it does. An absurd number of houses still only have 100 amp services.

Not many people have a 50 amp, 220V circuit lying around to dedicate to charging. If they do there's already a welder plugged into it.

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Many European EV chargers have a "dynamic load balancing" feature that measures current at the main breaker, and dynamically allocates any spare capacity to the car.

I'm not aware of any North American chargers that do this... https://dccelectric.com/ sort of solves the problem with a big relay, so charging either runs at 100% or 0%.

I also don't know such equipment exist in Japan. We should need such equipment seriously in the future because our main breaker for home is mostly limited to max 60A/100V.

If I had to guess a whole lot more randomly chosen American houses have electrical clothes dryers than welders.

But they are not 50A usually. I’ve tripped my dryer breaker with my TIG welding aluminum before

Much more often 30A. But still usually sufficient to charge a car overnight.

There is (was?) a 30% federal tax credit (up to $1000) that covered the cost of installing a home EV charger (including upgrading your breaker panel/load center if needed).

https://www.evconnect.com/blog/ev-infrastructure-tax-credits...

A panel upgrade alone is in the neighborhood of $5k. And if you have underground service and need new wires, that's another $25k.

While better than nothing, that's like saying the $7500 credit covered the cost of a new Model S.

What would be considered an acceptable amount of tax credit on offer? You want to reduce the burden on the person wanting to own an EV, but you also don’t want to incentivize price inflation for the upgrade and EV charger install.

To be clear, my comment was referencing the use of the term "covered." Covering the cost of something means it pays for it in its entirety, not a fractional coupon. I wouldn't say, "this coupon for 3 cents off a gallon covers my next tank of gas."

Does anyone know if the proposed Infrastructure bill gives money for home chargers, or just 'gas station' ones?

It's 174 billion for EV which is absolutely what we need. But there is no way we can do it without paying to upgrade people's houses. Unless rapid charging gets a lot quicker.

I'm looking at getting a car for the first time in over a decade. I would love an electric, but our building is 110 years old. To upgrade my units power box thing alone was quoted 12k.

I'm not sure how to get a quote for the outside building or if it's even feasible to do EV here. But it will be a lot more than that.

May I email you?

sure! dillondoyle gmail

While the house may have a 100amp setup, the actual utility from the pole is probably capable of 200amps. Changing out your main breaker to 200amp is not that hard but may cost you an additional ~$1,000 for parts and labor.

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