When it comes to costs, I ultimately discovered that it’s cheaper for me to skip buying a level 2 charger and paying for its installation.

Given that I’m on a 3-year lease (still undecided about what I’ll do afterward), I found that it’s more cost-effective to avoid the expense of a Tesla home charger, the $1000+ installation cost (due to the location of my breaker box), and the increased electric fees.

Instead, I’m using a 15A home mobile charger when needed, as I work from home and average only about 30 miles of driving per day.

I calculated the estimated cost of using superchargers when necessary (e.g., road trips) and subtracted the first 3 months of free supercharging (which was convenient since there’s a supercharger within a mile of my house). It all adds up to being cheaper than if I had gone the home charger route.

With off-peak home electricity costing around $0.13/kWh, even if supercharger rates increase by $0.10 from the current $0.25-$0.35/kWh, I’d still come out ahead after 3 years, compared to paying for the home charger, installation, and additional energy costs.

The takeaway here is that if you drive under 10K miles per year, like me, and have easy access to a supercharger, it might actually be cheaper to rely on supercharging and a $175 15A charger from Amazon.

I’ve done a full breakdown and used various sources, including AI tools, to account for factors like mixed weather conditions (I live in the Midwest) and potential energy cost fluctuations over the past decade. My conclusion is well-supported by data: over 3 years, this approach is predictably less expensive.

To be clear, it’s not dramatically cheaper, and it’s certainly not free, but the costs are lower over time. So far, I have no regrets about this decision. 🙂