Internal combustion vehicles have been around for so long that the infrastructure is such that vehicles can be made to adapt to our lifestyles. However, when it comes to electric vehicles, roles are reversed—we have to adapt to them. Which is a difficult thing for many customers to wrap their heads around and can turn many customers away. Especially when it comes to two car garages. It’s one thing to plan and adapt your lifestyle for one EV, never mind two. So Enphase put together two new videos to help customers figure out how to plan for two EVs.
Enphase sells Clipper Creek dual-charger stations, capable of charging two EVs at once. It’s a single charging station, with two plugs, that is wired into one circuit, so it costs less to buy and, more importantly, costs less to install. So customers who plan on buying two EVs can get a pretty simple charging solution from a single station.
There is a catch, however. Since it’s one charging station, wired into one circuit of your house, if two EVs are plugged in, and requesting a charge, the available electricity will be split 50/50 between both cars. So, for instance, if you’re using a Clipper Creek HCS-D50p—a 50 amp dual-charger station—that can charge at a maximum of 9.6 kW, plugging two cars in at the same time will charge each at 4.8 kW. However, once one car is done charger, the other car will then get the full 9.6 kW charge until it’s full.
Admittedly, 4.8 kW charging is quite slow and likely isn’t fast enough to charge two EVs from flat-to-full overnight. However, if your car has 250 miles of range and you use 100-150 miles in a given day for work, plugging your car in when you get home will easily charge it back to full by morning, even if you’re doing the same for a second car simultaneously. So it’s more convenient than many naysayers might think.
Obviously, having to plan for and adjust to EV life can be a bit overwhelming, especially since cars in our lifetimes have just met our needs. Everything surrounding the internal combustion vehicle is designed to fit our lives but electric vehicle technology is so new that it’s us that need to…
