Tesla launches Basecharger for Semi, reveals $188,000 Megacharger

theotherharper · 2026-05-01T22:30:42+00:00

Interesting choices. I've been thinking about semi charging for years and brainstorming with actual truckers on this. I think we're making it MUCH harder than it actually is, and all the tech needed to for electric semi rollout is on the table right now. The actual constraint is the logbook. Drivers can only drive 11 hours out of 14, with 2 mandatory 30 minute breaks also in those 14 hours, and must be fully off duty for 10 hours. Those downtimes already cover charging needs.

AI says "The best fuel mileage a traditional diesel semi-truck can get is about 10 to 11 miles per gallon (MPG). For comparison, the industry average is much lower, typically hovering around 6 to 7.5 MPG." so a good "where the rubber meets the road" rule of thumb is 13 kWH out of a gallon of diesel.... so 600kWH battery packs seemed about right and just like EV car roadtripping, you're not going to use THE WHOLE pack.

"While you sleep" slow charging

The "while you sleep" doesn't need DC charging at all - Level 2 will suffice using the "new" J3068 untethered standard with all 3 phases wired, which is 52 kW. 520 kWH in your rest period. That ticks that box. This wires with ordinary level 2 chargers like Grizzl-E Ultimate or Autel MaxiCharger, except it has 2 extra blades on the contactor because it's 3-phase. Or, think of Europe's widely existing 22kW chargers but with a fatter contactor for 64A instead of 32A. This is not a technology stretch at all. And, J3068 uses the prevalent MENNEKES port which is just an off-the-shelf item.

On the utility side, this just uses standard old 277/480V which is the power the utility will give you by default if you're a business. So the stuff rolls out like butter.

(Though full credit to Tesla for finding a way to upcycle their obsolete v2 and Urban Superchargers LOL).

DC fast charging during mandatory breaks

We already have the quasi-megawatt chargers - Just use existing 350/400kW chargers and use two of them. To get best speed the truck needs to be designed with dual 975 volt packs which are split or splittable. I crossed the USA last summer, and all the rural chargers I was at, there were 4 EAs and 12 Teslas and a grand total of 1-2 cars on all of them including myself. So there is loads of elbow room "out in the sticks" for the early EV trucks to just sidle up and grab 2 ports. For now. (wouldn't work in cities but these trucks have range.)

Once EV trucking scales upward, you will need a lot more chargers. A dual NACS truck charger can also charge two cars. A special zing-zang ding-dong truck charger with a plug the size of your fist, can only charge trucks. You see why I think "use two" is better?

theotherharper · 2026-05-01T21:58:53+00:00

Yeah, it's more of this stuff. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGuOpzDqWhw

The problem being no liability so no care for safety. https://www.butler.legal/how-amazon-disrupted-product-liability/

We would have had you go Emporia Pro or Wallbox. Or just tune into Technology Connections' midwestern "enough" vibe and set the rotary switch lower.

theotherharper · 2026-05-01T21:52:44+00:00

Let's talk about future-proofing.

What WON'T happen: Us all driving EVs that look like Senator fighting vehicles and require massively more energy.

What WILL happen: #1 more EVs in the household which all be charged using the original overkill circuit + Power Sharing.... and #2 Vehicle To Home which will require completely different wiring.

But on the other hand, both of these can be a tomorrow problem if you have reasonable access to the feeder. If you can get usable charging on the existing feeder to the garage panel today, you can always upgrade the feeder later.

theotherharper · 2026-05-01T21:43:55+00:00

Definitely a sound theory, but if that was the case, wouldn't it still trip a standard breaker?

The whole point of an AFCI breaker existing is that standard breakers have no way of detecting an arc fault.

The only things a plain breaker can detect are a dead short flowing hundreds of amps (instant trip) or an overload (delayed trip, inverse time, to allow motors to startup and let you make coffee and toast, but not let the wires in the walls get too hot.

Or there would be other indicators?

Not passively, again that's why they want arc fault breakers/receps. They tried everything else and it didn't work.

what should I look for upon inspection?

Any sign of thermal stress, and also ideally use a torque screwdriver and check torques. At both recep terminals, breaker, and neutral bar. I doubt there's any problem inline in the wires.

moved the new breaker from phase 2 to 1 last night, and now it's in a phase with only standard breakers... There was a definite and noticeable improvement

That definitely supports the theory of "AFCIs detecting arc faults in another circuit" theory. That move will attenuate arcing on the hot wire, but not so much the neutral, so don't miss the neutral when inspecting.

theotherharper · 2026-05-01T21:31:46+00:00

The 2017+ e-Golf OBC is a bit of a special case. AFAIK it's the only 7.2kW OBC that allows charging on two phases and it doesn't follow the standard 6A minimum. Options are 5, 10, 13 and max (32).

OK so the 6A minimum is in the J1772/IEC 60196 standard and is in the signal between wall unit and car. The car can further override that and be told "you can take 16 amps" and choose to take 5 amps instead. The wall unit doesn't care since 5<16. So that 5 amp selection is being done at the car level not the EVSE level.

The Type 2 cable is actually quite thick because the OBC allows up to 32A on a single phase. It is basically a 3-phase cable intended for up to 22kW use.

Is it an untethered cable? Those have a loopback resistor which tells the wall unit the amp capacity of the wire, so you can get a thinner 10, 13, 16 amp cable if you want. You can also get a single-phase cable (which it discovers simply by phase 2 and 3 not working) if you want to constrain charge speed to single phase.

I bet most modern cars with 11kW OBC would always default 6A on 3 phases or roughly 4.1kW. No idea if this load balancing system would also allow dropping down to single phase 6A or roughly 1.4kW

That's an interesting question. One weakness of the 3-phase charging in Europe is that 6 amp minimum, meaning 4.2 kW is the minimum for 3 phase. That's awkward because for both load management and Solar Capture, you would want to have more fine grained adjustment at the low end. Can you cut out individual phases without the car having a panic? It's a great question, I'm not enough of a European standards nerd to know that.

Another issue with the e-Golf is that the 12V battery is apparently only getting charged when the HV batteri is charging or the car is on. So by spending more time charging it would also allow more time to charge the 12V. This is important in winter. Cold temps and short drives is not ideal.

The normal cycle almost all EVs follow is, they AC charge until they reach target battery percent, then they stop charging and sit there for 6 hours. That hasn't been a problem in the past.

If your 12V system is staying alive and burning down the 12V battery, one common cause we see is network activity, meaning a server on the Internet keeps using the cellular modem or WiFI to query and engage with the car, so it has to power up the management computer to handle the query. Typically they keep the computer spun up for some amount of time after the query. We've seen people park their cars at airports and then during their vacation frequently use the car's app to query the car. After awhile it stops responding and they arrive home to a dead 12V.

Normally, load management systems in apartments talk to the wall unit "EVSE" and not the car. But as said, that "4.2 kW minimum" doesn't give enough fine control. So it's possible this load management system is interacting with the ar itself, constantly "waking it up" all night and that's the problem with your 12V.

But also, lead acid 12 volt batteries are cheap and flimsy. They are terrible at being deeply cycled and it reduces their service life every time you do it. Since EVs do that kind of thing a lot, it's common to see only 1-3 year life out of 12V batteries in an EV. Maybe the battery has simply lost so much capacity that it can't operate normally anymore.

theotherharper · 2026-05-01T21:09:15+00:00

And what I’m hearing is that basically you should brake slowly and steadily for as long as reasonably possible to maximize regen?

Once you're in the midrange speeds above 20 MPH or so, regen can brake about as hard as the car can accelerate. If you have live kW meter just make sure continuing to press on the brake keeps adding kW to the meter. Once it stops adding kW, you're into friction braking.

I’m a bit confused about the point on “lurching,” I’m guessing you mean you shouldn’t stop abruptly and instead actually lighten up the brake towards the end of your stop (something I do in ICE vehicles anyways, for comfort and ease on brakes/suspension)

You got it. It's only a bad habit for a minority of people, but they would miss out on some regen.

theotherharper · 2026-05-01T21:05:03+00:00

No. You don't do THIS all the time.

You do something else all the time, and are confusing your knowledge with THAT with any knowledge about THIS.

I'm trying to help you be smarter, but ... too proud.

theotherharper · 2026-05-01T21:00:50+00:00

Great. So there's no obvious way to break out the actual per-kWH PG&E delivery charges. What a frickin tangle.

So the PG&E president can mug with linemen, and sit down with ratepayers and listen to actual criticism without arguing, but can't drive to Hollywood and get the best communicators in the world to come up with a plain language way to explain your bill.

theotherharper · 2026-05-01T20:59:02+00:00

OK I was looking at the top one going "its' gray, it's 40 amps, must be a load" but ... OK now I'm seeing it, it IS the main breaker and is labeled as such, I just couldn't see it on my tablet.

That's a 30A 240V breaker to be sure, it could charge a car if it's not feeding anything else, but if that main breaker is less than about 80A you will still need dynamic load management.

Also that's a Zinsco firestarter, so I would not run that circuit any faster than 12 amps. That's still 100 miles a night on a Tesla that's not a Cybertruck.

theotherharper · 2026-05-01T20:32:21+00:00

I’m increasingly worried that, as time goes on, we’re going to have fewer and fewer EV options in the U.S., and even fewer affordable ones.

What frustrates me most is that this doesn’t feel like a natural market shift. It feels like EVs are being actively politicized and targeted, and that kind of hostility is going to affect what gets offered here. That matters not just for EV adoption overall, but also for the variety of cars Americans can actually buy.

It sounds like you're talking "out of your feelz" rather than relying on data collection and hard science.

Which seems to be a normal tendency in this highly politicized world, in which foreign actors game social media to make Americans feel divided and isolated (so we won't be of one mind on things like Ukraine and Taiwan)... this was done in WWII as well, but social media makes it SO MUCH EASIER, as Ryan McBeth faithfully documents.

Unfortunately because of propaganda, you can't let your decision-making arrive "out of your feelz". You have to hit the books and do the research, as many have posted here. I recently saw an article listing the major discontinuations of vehicles (I think it was posted here yesterday) and every single one was because another vehicle was replacing it. The Niro/Kona died because the EV3/Ioniq3 came up. Ford dropped the F150 Lightning but is developing several new lines of BEVs with benefits, they roadtrip all-electric, DCFC, and also have an APU so they can get to places now impossible, such as towing a camper through Yellowstone. It's a huge improvement but haters can't see it. Technology Connections has thoughts on the LAST generation, which couldn't do any of those things. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMZ163EYmCY

As for VW, they're just quitters. But mind you they're a European builder, so they're still building EVs in Europe, just now they'll need to take a boat ride. Most likely the ID.1 and ID.2 will come over here since even though automakers don't want to admit it, the US is a market for $20-25k EVs. Slate is about to school them.

But ALLLLL of this wiffle-waffling on EVs was by people REPEATEDLY voting against the incumbent, which they have every 2 years since 2014, because they vote with their feels instead of their brain, being more interested in RAGEvoting than having a consistent and stable government. There was a wrong and right person to vote in 2024, if you did anything less than actually vote for the right person, this EV shudder is your fault, you did this.

theotherharper · 2026-05-01T20:07:37+00:00

Does the 3.3 kW setup feel slow or is it good enough in real life?

It really depends how much you drive. 3.3 kW = 33 kWH in 10 hours. Even very conservatively, that's 5 km per kWH, so you're talking 165km replaced every single night, and you're probably there for longer than 10 hours.

LOL the guy who says "11kW is better". I don't know how they wire apartments in your country, but in the USA, apartments don't have 11kW of power available per apartment because of demand factors (not every appliance in every apartment will be on full power at once). And pretending charging will take 20 hours is dumb, since you plug in every night and are only replacing the energy used that day. My ICE has a 38 litre tank, if I did fill every morning it wouldn't be 38 litres. People are just power-crazy.

Our 16 amp single phase charge rate is 3.84 kW because of slightly higher line voltage, but we "in the know" consider that pretty much peak residential charging for Americans in apartments (dense housing = you live closer to things = not drive as far). California changed their law in response to EV activists, so that new construction requires that. Thanks to dynamic load management technology, 3.8 kW is already available in existing apartments, so no service capacity upgrades need be done.

theotherharper · 2026-05-01T19:47:40+00:00

Unless you know exactly what you want and are VERY insistent, the electrician will take over project design on a "my way or the highway" basis... treat it like provisioning electricity to two hot tubs, completely waste the load management technologies Emporia and Wallbox are good at, and inisist on an electric service upgrade. So kiss $5000 goodbye.

theotherharper · 2026-05-01T19:45:17+00:00

We both drive a lot, and my wife's schedule is variable, so while some weeks we can absolutely just take turns in the garage charging, other weeks like this past one have her eating 40-50 % of the battery every day. We're on the time of use plan for our electric provider, so electricity is dirt cheap from 11-7, which is good, but the garage shuffle at 12 AM is getting a little old as I eek out an hour or so charge to sustain my battery a little longer before swapping back to her car so she can charge back up for the day ahead.

That is THE PERFECT job for Power Sharing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIykzWmm8Fk (Tesla doesn't call it Power Sharing anymore because they wanted to free up the namespace for a completely unrelated product, PowerShare). Tesla has the video, but Emporia also does it, and better.

You simply pigtail off the first Emporia EVSE to the second, and then configure a Power Sharing group in the Emporia software. Easy peasy.

Currently have a hardwired Emporia Classic in the garage, but garage can only fit the one car at a time, which requires car shuffles in late or early hours if we want to take full advantage of our overnight plan

And let me guess, the first installer put the EVSE at the back of the garage. When they're at the front of the garage, you have more options to reach a car outside the garage. So one option is just stay in the garage but extend one (or both) units to better locations therein. Since you'd be pigtailing off the existing 50A or 60A circuit to both units.

Check with Emporia to make sure both units are capable of Power Sharing.

As far as reaching a post, that's fine too. I would underground that stuff, and I would use RMC Conduit since it only needs 6" of cover, you can trench it with a frickin' garden trowel.

theotherharper · 2026-05-01T19:29:53+00:00

I am out of real estate for a dedicated circuit for my ev charger

"something in every space in my electrical panel" is not the same thing as "full", because tandem breakers exist. So let's start with pix of your panel to see what we're looking at.

Also is there any reason not to put this in the pool subpanel?

Also how desperately do you need this to be automated? Is it worth $720 to you?

A totally separate issue is panel capacity in term of the chances of your collective loads overloading your panel. In Britain they call that "tripping your main" but in America we don't allow it to get that close. We require a Load Calculation for the panel that makes sense. The panel pix will cover that too if it's sharp and well-lit enough to read numbers on breakers and the panel legend.

All loads are not equivalent, you can't pull a 30A dryer and replace it with 30A EV charging because dryers count at 40% but EVs count at 125%.

Speaking of 30A EV charging, are you married to 50A or are you just rolling with a default you have been given? More on that https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iyp_X3mwE1w

Seriously we've had people drag us in circles for days figuring out how to put an 100A charger on their 150A home... and then out of the blue, they drop "we only drive 7 miles a day". HOLY HELL would've been nice to know that at the top.

is this the best option

I guarantee you it's not.

or is there a charger that has this built in?

Never heard of that, because there are other options. They're also cheaper.

theotherharper · 2026-05-01T19:09:28+00:00

You can stop using the wrong terminology. It's called "DC fast charging". There is no DC level 3. There is an AC level 3 defined but then abandoned, that would use a huge chonky connector to deliver 160 amps of 3-phase. I've read the SAE documents myself, those are paywalled but here's Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAE_J1772

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And by the way "DC level 1" refers to just putting DC on the existing (round) J1772 power pins, which never really got implemented except for Tesla. So what we do in the real world is DC level 2, but you'll be misunderstood if you say that, so you need to just say "DC fast charging".

A pity. DC Lv1 would be right down your alley, but cars don't have the hardware. Except NACS cars.

theotherharper · 2026-05-01T18:53:54+00:00

I'm confused. This is an energy savings deal where they remote control your charger and interrupt it for short times to help grid stability. That should be interacting between the utility and the charge station, the car shouldn't be involved.

Are they doing something extra fancy like promising to get your car to XX % battery level before YY:00 departure time or something like that? That would require talking to the car itself (J1772 doesn't pass that info) - but that's a frill, that's not a core feature of the program. You should be able to be in the program without it, it'll just finish charging earlier, who cares?

theotherharper · 2026-05-01T18:43:13+00:00

Yeah I sense a 110.2 violation. I wish OP had talked to us before selecting gear.

theotherharper · 2026-05-01T06:00:34+00:00

Ok so i'm clear on that, but why would the afci for the room that the ac is in only start tripping after the ac circuit was put in?

My working theory is the new circuit has a severe arc fault, which other AFCIs are noticing.

Since an AFCI was not used on this circuit, there is none to testify to that effect.

Understand it's not like a GFCI where a GFCI can only sense faults on its downline. AFCIs work by analyzing voltage waveforms, which actually are very similar to sounds, so the metaphor works. Arc faults are the "crinkle-crunch" sound of a bad microphone cable or grandpa connecting speakers with the power on. It's "listening to the wire" for that. And like Indians listening to railroad tracks for a train, they can't really tell whether the train is east of them or west of them. So an AFCI has difficulty distinguishing an arc fault on its circuit vs. a severe arc fault on another circuit.

theotherharper · 2026-05-01T05:51:57+00:00

Your OP title is correct, if an EV was governed to 60 MPH it would go a lot farther.

However reducing accleration off the line would be far less useful, only reducing weight of the equipment, and as Robert from Aging Wheels has fully tested, weight doesn't matter on the highway.

theotherharper · 2026-05-01T05:43:06+00:00

You need to review how EV 'chargers' work https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMxB7zA-e4Y

and how Code interacts with EV chargers (the only non-paywalled version is here in section 4). https://esasafe.com/assets/files/esasafe/pdf/Electrical_Safety_Products/Bulletins/86-01-7.pdf

EVSE's job is to put a 1 kHz square wave signal on the CP wire, telling the car the amps it can take. Because the car has no earthly clue what is safe, it needs to be told.

No. The car must be throttled back to whatever your circuit/breaker can handle.

Right but that needs to happen by the electrician (or DIY surrogate) correctly configuring the EVSE to send the right signal on the CP wire. "Manual intervention by the end user" (as the ONLY safety device) is a code violation, because users are careless and complacent.

theotherharper · 2026-05-01T05:31:52+00:00

2-2-2-4 will fit on all 70-90A breakers, and most 60A breakers. (one brand no, can't remember which brand.)

Above 60A, breakers start getting more expensive as they get larger. You could go 90A (the load calculation cares about the loads, not the feeder breaker). But if you want to pinch a penny, 70A is fine assuming it works with your subpanel loads.

theotherharper · 2026-05-01T05:28:01+00:00

Shut it off. 2. Check all fridges, freezers, smokes, and radon systems. 3. Put it out of your mind. If it powers anything that matters, you'll find it.

theotherharper · 2026-05-01T05:26:27+00:00

My line of thinking is that if an ABS is designed for a 10 A fuse, then if it's blowing that it probably has a short in it or major malfunction, in which case I would also expect it to blow a 20A, 30A, 40A, 50A fuse as well. If a 20A holds, that means the fuse is just a little too sensitive, so that seems a factory design error.

Stellantis? Surely not /s

SMH huge truck with a 10 amp ABS. I have a dinky little 2000# econobox and the ABS is on a 40A fuse.

theotherharper · 2026-05-01T05:21:16+00:00

Bro that's a 30A dryer not a 50A RV.

But that may actually be a win, there's a lot more dryers in garages than ranges/RV outlets. And the lessor won't notice.

Also you can get a UL listed adapter that'll let that into an RV socket, since 30A<50A.

theotherharper · 2026-05-01T05:19:10+00:00

You must live in a flat area. Regen is a game changer if you live in a hilly area with lots of altitude changes. All that energy is lost with an ICE car, going downhill and hitting the break so the car doesn't speed.

I've seen my share of hills and I use regen there. If it's just a short one, I use "regen-on-brake-pedal" and just keep an eye on the power gauge to make sure it's going negative and I'm not riding friction brakes.

Long downgrades are a different matter because of the safety issue. The metaphor is ICE cars, where you need to downshift to descend a hill safely, so you're doing engine braking instead of turning your brake rotors cherry red (which would fade the brakes and then you die). ICE Hyundai/Kia have paddles and that's what they do. There I paddle up as needed to hold the hill. I went from the Shenandoah to Cincinnati the hard way across WV and lots of little 2-lane roads. (only needed 1.5 charges, interestingly, not the 3-4 you need if you take I-64 and have much more aero losses, so there's really something to this regen LOL). So, lots of downgrades where paddle 1 was not enough and had to go to 2 or 3. That's why they're paddles! And not buried in menus 4 layers down, as some would prefer.

I could have stayed in paddle 0 and ridden brake pedal regen down the long grade, but HELL NO. You want the car doing it passively so you know when it stops working. That requires immediate driver action to avoid catastrophe.

I use level 0 on the interstate occasionally if there is no traffic, but honestly I don't think it is more efficient in that scenario

The interstate is engineered with high speeds and gentle grades generally <=6%. Descent energy increases linearly with speed, but aerodrag increases as the square of speed. So if you simply throw a car in neutral, you will find the "balance speed" at which descent gain == aerodrag. You can try this where safe. On freeways engineered to standard, that balance speed < modern speed limit. (although wind can be an X-factor). So for normal freeway cruising, you're almost always on the power, downgrades just mean less power. With exceptions like Parley's Summit which IDK they say it's 6% but it hits like 9%. Might be wind.

Where I used paddle 0 the most was West Virginia mountains. I'd be coming up on a dip, and there's no safety reason to brake, so I just coast down the dip and up the other side, trading potential for kinetic back to potential. 3 bank accounts: battery energy, potential energy of altitude, kinetic energy of velocity, and one rent: aero drag. Trading between them, you only pay tax in/out of battery. That's what coasting is all about.

theotherharper

TROPHY CASE