Today I charged my Tesla Model 3 with a non-Tesla charger for the first time. Just when I think I’ve learned all of the ins and outs of EV ownership I find there’s a new and different bit of knowledge to digest and details to sift through.
The city of St. Paul installed four EV Spot charging stations just across the street from our building. They were supposed to be online in August but they just became available yesterday so, today, I thought I’d give them a shot.
These EV Spots are Level 2 chargers and use the J1772 connector, which is slightly different from the proprietary Tesla connector. Thankfully, Tesla was still including the J1772 adapter when I ordered my car last March but they no longer do. As you can see from the screenshot above, I charged for 48 minutes today, I got 10% of range (about 36 miles) and it cost me a grand total of $3.40. My car told me it would take another hour and a half to charge to 80% but I just didn't have the time to stay plugged in.
Now, when you use a Tesla Supercharger everything is completely seamless and automatic. You pull up, remove the connector from the stand, your car recognizes the plug, opens the charging bay door, you plug in and you’re charging. The credit card you have loaded into the Tesla app is charged after your session is over in ten or twenty minutes depending on your state of charge when you pull up.
These EV Spots require a couple of hours for the same amount of charge. They also add about five additional steps to the process before you even plug in and a clunky third-party app that you have to load money onto before you charge. You also have to park your car on the street while it’s powering up, not always an ideal thing to do in the city we live in.
The EV Spot app lists the per kWh charge to be around $.10 less than what you'd pay a Tesla Supercharger. On paper this works out to be about 2/3rds the cost of Supercharging but I'm highly skeptical about this after today's charging session. I'll explain more about this below.
The EV Spots aren’t all bad. The Level 2 charging is also significantly better for overall battery health than the faster Level 3 chargers. Since we have a few right across the street, they’re also much more convenient than driving miles to charge at the Supercharger network.
My takeaway from my first non-Tesla charge is just how far ahead Tesla is from the competition. Every aspect of the Tesla Supercharger network tech feels a decade ahead of my EV Spot experience. That said, the EV Spot wins purely on location (for me) and because Level 2 charging is better for the car’s battery health.
As I touched on above, I'm still not convinced the EV Spot chargers will be less expensive to charge from 20(ish)% to 80% based on what I experienced today. I'm going to the EV Spot again once the car's battery is down in the 20% battery range and we'll have a true head-to-head price comparison. Just doing the math based on my session at the EV Spot today if I were to have added 60% of charge it would have actually cost me a few dollars MORE than what I typically pay at a Supercharger.
I like my Tesla Model 3 more than any other vehicle I've ever owned or driven in my thirty-five years on the road. It's simply next level in every way imaginable. What I don't care for are the complexities of charging it when you don't have an at-home charging solution. If I had a chance to do this all over again I would definitely have waited to purchase the Tesla until I had a way to plug-in at home. The public charging infrastructure is still quite a few years away from catching up to Tesla's tech.
All for now. Trust your instincts, invest in you, live boldly, and take chances.
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