Mobile Charger

[garegin]

My car came with a mobile // at home charger, but the plug isn’t regular. For example, if I travel to a cabin, I don’t know how I would charge there. The one that I’ve posted from Home Depot for example, seems to work with a regular plug.

I’m a complete noob to this game. Any experienced insights on charging on the go?

Sponsored

 

[daveo4EV]

the big plug in your picture is a NEMA 14-50 plug - it's 50 amp 240V outlet power supply cable - if you have this type of plug in your garage it will charge @ 9.6 kW - taking about 9-11 hours to charge your Taycan from empty - 3 hours or less for typical daily usage…

best practice is to have on of these plugs (NEMA 14-50) installed/added to your home garage setup so you can charge your EV while the car is parked at home…most EV owners get this done before they acquire the vehicle - as it may take some time to find an electrician and get the work scheduled.

your charger also came with a normal household plug- you can swap the NEMA 14-50 power supply cable for the household plug (seen in your picture) - have your dealer show you how to swap between the two cables. It is called a NEMA 5-15 cable and charges at 1.44 kW - it's the same as the dewalt unit you found at homedepot - you don't need to purchase another charger - you just need to swap the plugs…if you want to use the NEMA 5-15 plugs in your home or cabin…

however the NEMA 5-15 cable on both the Porsche charger and the dewalt unit you've found will take 3+ days to charge your Taycan from empty - yes 70+ hours to charge - so it's not really an option - also Porsche does not recommend using this for daily use (see link later in this posting) it's for emergency use only to get to a fast charger or faster charger - it's just not worth while to use this type of plug for daily use and may cause problems according to Porsche.

you can attempt to use the NEMA 5-15 cable that came with your vehicle (and is shown in your picture) but the amount of charge you'll get overnight is about 1.5% battery per hour of charge - so I don't consider this a long term solution - but it may work well enough while you're waiting for your NEMA 14-50/6-50 outlet to be installed…

I't recommend for your cabin you do the following - choices are and/or listed below

• look on plugshare.com to evaluate the possibility of near by existing EV chargers in the area - fast or slow
• consider upgrading the cabin and having a NEMA 14-50/6-50 or NEMA 14-30/6-30 outlet installed - consult a certified local electrician to get the work done
• you can also consider having a hardwired EV chargers installed on any size circuit you can "add" to your cabin
• you can purchase another EV charger for the cabin from $200-$2000 dollars
• you can bring your existing EVSE along with you each time, or you can purchase another one and just have an EV charger at the cabin for simplicity - I do not recommend the Porsche one given it's cost - there are several excellent high quality compatible alternatives for 1/3 or 1/4 cost for a 2nd EV charger (EVSE) for your cabin - you just need a 240V electrical circuit added like your home.

you should also get a NEMA 14-50/6-50 outlet installed in your main home for best EV ownership experience - charge the car overnight in your home so it's ready each morning

the Porsche charger that came with the car (called an EVSE) can handle the following types of plugs in North America:

• NEMA 14-50 - your picture shows on of these
• NEMA 6-50 - this is $200-$300 option - typically you do not need it since you have the 14-50
• NEMA 14-30 - this is a $200-$300 option - this is for homes that can not handle a 14-50 or 6-50 or have an existing dryer/water heater outlet
• NEMA 6-30 - different type of plug but same as 14-30
• NEMA 5-15 - your picture shows one of these - normal household outlet

most people do not need any of the alternative cables - and just use one type of cable at home - you have alternative cables for when you're road tripping, but if you want a "complete" set of NEMA plug types there are better EVSE "kits" than building out your Porsche EVSE, these kits can be more functional, easy, smaller, lighter, cheaper than the Porsche kits. There is a thread for that if you want to go down that rabbit hole, but really you probably don't need that.

14-50/6-50 are 240V 50 amp circuits - consult your electrician - 9-11 hours to do a full charge - 3 hours or less for normal daily use
14-30/6-30 are 240V 30 amp circuits - 14-16 hours to do a full charge - 5-7 hours for normal daily use
NEMA 5-15 are 120V 15 amp circuits - 70+ hours to a full charge - 11-14 hours for normal daily use

these threads might help…

https://www.taycanforum.com/forum/threads/us-over-the-top-the-well-equipped-ev-home-garage…for-those-that-wish-to-over-do-it-….2343/
https://www.taycanforum.com/forum/t...-related-porsche-ntsb-article-analysis.13902/
https://www.macanevowners.com/forum/threads/faq-north-america-nema-14-50-vs-6-50-new-ev-owner-garage-setup….16974/
https://www.macanevowners.com/forum/threads/faq-north-america-road-trip-kit-for-traveling-with-your-macan-or-an-ev-….17676/
https://www.macanevowners.com/forum...owner-what-home-charger-evse-do-i-want.18162/
https://rennlist.com/forums/taycan/1260596-school-me-on-home-charging.html
https://www.taycanforum.com/forum/t...and-useful-road-warrior-ev-charging-kit.6812/
https://www.taycanforum.com/forum/threads/first-time-ev-owner-what-charger-for-the-house.20488/
https://www.taycanforum.com/forum/threads/wall-charger-recommendation.20894/
https://www.taycanforum.com/forum/t...uide-to-the-porsche-evse-pmc-pmcc-pwcc.13886/

the macan threads are 100% accurate for Taycan - all EV's in a given region are the same for eV charging…

do not buy the dewalt unit - it's no better at charging your Taycan that the charge your taycan came with if you swap the cables…

you should focus on:

• getting a NEMA 14-50 or 6-50 outlet for your home - so you can charge overnight so your Taycan is ready each day
• getting a NEMA 14-50 or 6-50 outlet for your cabin
  • alternative NEMA 14-30 or 6-30 outlet for your cabin if it can't handle a new 50 amp circuit
• learn to use plugshare to so that you can find EV chargers to use "in the wild" when you're away from home - plugshare is like "yelp" for EV "gas stations" with ratings and locations so you can know where to go to charge when you're away from home
  • 95% of the time you'll use someone else's charger when away from home and traveling - you will not unpack or use the Porsche charger that came with the vehicle
  • when traveling you typically rely on "other people's" EV chargers (fast or slow)
  • plugshare is your guide to these charges for your Taycan

decide if you want an EVSE at each location - or carry the Porsche one back and forth with you.

if you're not a reader - youTube will have 100's of hours of videos for new EV owners - suggest you search for "new EV charger for my garage setup"

until you get a NEMA 14-50/6-50 plug for your home garage - you'll need to use local chargers at work/businesses near your home - recommend finding and learning to use Electrify America, ChargePoint, Blink, EVGo - you'll want to use CCS1 fast chargers - which will take 20-45 minutes to charge your Taycan to 80-90%…you can keep the car charged using these types of chargers whil you make arrangements to have a NEMA 14-50 outlet added to your home/garage…and then it will be easiest to just charge the car overnight while it's in the garage.

you may be able to get by with charging at work if you have EV charging in your employment location's parking lot…

good luck!

 

[daveo4EV]

this thread will give you a place to start in how to road trip with an EV…

https://www.taycanforum.com/forum/threads/new-user-questions-about-estimated-range.5582/

 

[whitex]

@garegin
Your Porsche "charger" (it's actually an EVSE, the charger it built-into the car) comes with 2 plugs. NEMA 14-50 and NEMA 5-15. The DeWALT comes with NEMA 6-20 and NEMA 5-15, which is just a pigtail adapter to allow you to plug the NEMA 6-20 hardwired to the EVSE to a NEMA 5-15 outlet. I presume that when using this adapter, the EVSE automatically throttles itself down to 12A because it sees 120V instead of 240V. It's a little weird to see this, but as long as you don't try to use this adapter to connect a NEMA 5-20 for some other EVSE (which it seems it would accept, based on the picture), you should be safe.

Read @daveo4EV posts above about the NEMA 5-15 speeds and charging recommendations. NEMA 5-15 will be rather slow. NEMA 6-20 will be faster (though not as fast as NEMA 14-50 or NEMA 6-50, or even NEMA 6-30) but might allow you to reuse existing wiring at your cabin (talk with your electrician for details), making installing a NEMA 6-20 the least expensive option, giving you 3.8kW charging which would charge a Taycan from empty to full in ~24hrs.

Also, Porsche EVSE is the most expensive, least reliable, and least flexible option, so check out some thread on this forum about different EVSE options.

Lastly, don't get overwhelmed by the acronyms and numbers, for example in the NEMA outlet code, the first number tells you voltage (NEMA 5 mean 120V, 6 and 14 mean 240V) while the second number is the maximum rated peak current (in Amperes), of which you can draw 80% continuously for EV charging. Multiply the voltage and current to get kW charge rate, then ~90% of that makes it into the battery. So a NEMA 6-20 outlet would be 240V * (80%*20A) = 3,840W = 3.84kW. 90% of that is 3.456kW, and you have approximately 84kWh usable battery, so 84kWh/3.456kW = 24.3h to charge from empty to full. Note that you will rarely arrive at empty, and usually you won't want to charge to full (85% is Porsche recommended, unless you need 100% for a trip).

 

[garegin]

Thank you guys so much for beings so helpful. I learned so much today. Much love and happy new years to you all ?

 

[Horizontally Opposed]

I side stepped all of this and installed a hardwired charger on a 50 amp breaker. The charger that came with the car has never been used.
As you do your research you will find some people who have had heat issues with the plugs (such as 14-50, one example). Not saying it isn’t viable, I just decided to go hardwired and avoid overheating concerns 100%.

 

[garegin]

Thanks all. The reason why I even brought this up is …. Roadtripping in California has been a pain, if I’m being honest. There are only a few EA stations, and even fewer EVgo stations. During popular times (holiday travel) there is an hour+ line just to even get to your turn to start charging. I wish there was a way to pressure Porsche to accelerate their comparability with Tesla Superchargers so roadtripping can be a little less stressful…

 

[trycan]

Thanks all. The reason why I even brought this up is …. Roadtripping in California has been a pain, if I’m being honest. There are only a few EA stations, and even fewer EVgo stations. During popular times (holiday travel) there is an hour+ line just to even get to your turn to start charging. I wish there was a way to pressure Porsche to accelerate their comparability with Tesla Superchargers so roadtripping can be a little less stressful…

Install the Tesla app if you haven't already.
Tell the app you have a Taycan and it will show the magic dock locations you can charge at today. Tesla has been converting a good number of stations over to Magic Dock here in the Northeast, and it looks like a few in California too.

 

[garegin]

Install the Tesla app if you haven't already.
Tell the app you have a Taycan and it will show the magic dock locations you can charge at today. Tesla has been converting a good number of stations over to Magic Dock here in the Northeast, and it looks like a few in California too.

thank you, I didn’t know this. Hopefully this will get better too, not really much as of today

 

[garegin]

Looks like the Magic Dock is

 

[trycan]

Looks like the Magic Dock is

I could see how someone could jump to that conclusion based on headlines and announced layoffs at Tesla.

However, checkout this picture of the Magic Docks available in the Northeast corridor (red pins). Its started with about 2-3 locations in 2023 and they've been steadily adding more, even after all companies agreed to switch to a NACS connector.

If I had to guess, the Tesla network is already at/over capacity in California because of the number of Teslas owned there, and converting to Magic Docks would stress that even further.

 

[daveo4EV]

Looks like the Magic Dock is

not true - more not fewer MagicDock sites have shown up since those articles - the articles are true but the that has not "axed" MagicDock sites, just changes the speed of roll out…

eventually we'll have access via BYOA to the V3/V4 superchargers and that will help

I agree california is sparse wiht MagicDock - but east coast has grown…

 

[Jonathan S.]

^ Plus all V4 pedestals are Magic Docks. So even if retrofits of existing V3 stations slow down, most of the upcoming new stations will be Magic Docks.

 

[Tooney]

The reported demise of Tesla supercharger organization is premature.

Since Dec. 1 Tesla opened 31 new supercharger sites in US/Canada with 419 stalls. Smallest sites had 8 stalls - most were at least 12 stalls.

 

[trycan]

Nice to see those stats on SuperCharger growth during 2024.

The original VW/Porsche press release from over a year ago said SuperCharger and NACS ports were coming in 2025. NACS port seems more of a long shot for this year, or maybe limited in which models get it first?
But, I'm optimistic that the SuperCharger BYO option will be enabled for Taycans sometime in the next 12-months. The 2025s now only include a single year of 30-minutes-free at EA stations, so I will welcome the additional options when my free EA minutes run out.

Sponsored