Charge Time Chart

Charge time at home is a division rather than a mystery. Take the energy you need to put in, divide by the power actually flowing, and add a correction for the energy that never reaches the battery. That is it. The only two things that complicate it are that the power flowing is capped by the car rather than by the wall unit, and that the energy you need is almost never a full pack, because cars arrive home part full and most owners charge to a limit rather than to the top.

How long does each car take to charge from 20 to 80 percent?

The 20 to 80 percent window is the honest one for home charging, because it is the range daily driving actually uses. Read across a row and watch where the numbers stop falling: that is the vehicle onboard charger saturating, and every column beyond it is identical no matter what you install.

The Nissan Leaf row is the clearest illustration on this site of why the wall unit is not the limit. Its figures are identical in the 7.7, 9.6 and 11.5 kW columns, because a 6.6 kW onboard charger cannot draw more regardless of what is offered. A Leaf owner who pays for a 60 amp circuit gets exactly the charge times a 40 amp circuit would have delivered, for several hundred dollars more.

At the other end of the table, the Cybertruck, the F-150 Lightning and the Rivian R1T are the rows where the last column genuinely matters. A 123 to 135 kWh pack at 9.6 kW is a long session, and moving to 11.5 kW recovers well over an hour. That is the case where the hardwired 48 amp buildout earns its extra cost rather than serving as insurance.

How long does any pack size take at any charger output?

If your car is not in the table above, work from pack size instead. Both grids assume 90 percent efficiency, which is the conservative figure used across this site so that times and costs quoted on different pages agree.

From 20 to 80 percent

From empty to full

Cross-check whichever row you land on against your own onboard charger limit before you believe the right hand columns. If the car caps at 7.2 kW, the 9.6 and 11.5 kW columns simply do not apply to it. Onboard limits for current models are on the battery capacity chart.

Why is AC charging linear when fast charging is not?

On a DC fast charger the power electronics live in the charging station and feed direct current straight into the pack, so the pack itself becomes the limit. As state of charge rises, the battery management system reduces the current it will accept in order to protect cell chemistry, which is why a fast charging session starts quickly and slows dramatically. The last 20 percent can take as long as the first 60, and quoting a peak kilowatt figure for such a session tells you almost nothing about the time.

Home charging works the other way round. The wall unit supplies alternating current, and the conversion to DC happens inside the car in the onboard charger. That converter is far smaller than a fast charger, so it is the bottleneck for essentially the whole session rather than the pack. The result is a nearly flat power curve: 11.5 kW in at the start, 11.5 kW in three hours later, with a modest taper only in the final percent as cells balance.

Practically, that means the arithmetic on this page is trustworthy in a way that fast charging arithmetic is not. Energy divided by power, plus a small efficiency correction, gives a time you can plan around. It also means that if your session is taking materially longer than the table says, something specific is wrong rather than the physics being complicated, and the likely causes are covered in EV charger troubleshooting.

Is the overnight window ever actually the constraint?

This is the question that should settle most purchase decisions, and for most households the answer is no. Assume ten hours plugged in, which is conservative for a car home at nine in the evening and leaving at seven in the morning.

The average American drives around 37 miles a day. The 16 amp row, which is the cheapest genuine Level 2 circuit that exists, covers that several times over for a sedan. The 24 amp dryer-circuit row covers it for a large truck. On daily commuting grounds alone, almost nobody needs 48 amps.

The reason to buy a larger circuit is therefore not the commute, it is the exception: the day the car arrives home nearly empty and has to leave full. That risk scales directly with pack size and inversely with charger output, which is exactly the interaction the first table shows. If you own a large pack and those days happen more than occasionally, wire 60 amps. If you own a 60 kWh car and they never happen, the money is better spent on cable length and a better receptacle.

What makes a real session slower than the chart?

Temperature

Cold is the big one. A pack below a threshold temperature will not accept full current until it has been warmed, and on some vehicles that warming is done using energy from the same supply, so the opening hour can deliver very little into the battery. Efficiency in miles per kWh also drops in winter, which compounds the effect on the range recovered rather than on the hours.

A charge limit set in the car

Many owners cap daily charging at 80 or 90 percent. That shortens the session rather than lengthening it, so the chart is conservative for those users, but it also means the empty-to-full column rarely describes anything that happens in a driveway.

The charger set below its rating

A common and easily missed cause of slow sessions is a unit that was dialled down at commissioning. Most smart chargers let the installer set a maximum output, and a cautious electrician facing an uncertain panel situation may have left a 48 amp capable unit configured at 32 amps. Check the app before blaming the car.

Voltage

Everything here assumes a nominal 240 volts. A 208 volt supply, which appears in some multi-family and converted commercial buildings, cuts the power by roughly 13 percent for the same amperage and stretches every time in the table proportionally. A long undersized run does the same thing quietly, which is why the voltage drop chart matters more than it looks.

Choosing the circuit from the chart

Work backwards from the worst arrival state you realistically face. Take the energy you would need to replace, divide by the output you are considering, and check it against the hours you can leave the car plugged in. If 9.6 kW clears it with room, buy the 40 amp circuit and put the difference into a longer cable and a better receptacle. If it is tight, buy the 60 amp circuit while the wall is open, because conductor and breaker are cheap next to the labour of doing the job twice.

For most households that lands on a 40 amp unit such as the Grizzl-E Classic or the Autel MaxiCharger 40 amp unit. For large packs it lands on a 48 amp unit such as the Emporia 48 amp hardwired charger or the Wallbox Pulsar Plus 48 amp. Run your own numbers in the charge time calculator, and confirm the panel can carry the circuit in the panel load calculator before you buy anything.

Common questions

How long does it take to charge an EV at home?

From 20 to 80 percent, which is the window most owners actually use, a 75 kWh pack takes about 4.9 hours at 9.6 kW and about 4.3 hours at 11.5 kW. From empty to full the same pack takes about 8.7 and 7.2 hours respectively. Level 1 charging on a household outlet is a different order of magnitude and is measured in days rather than hours for a full charge.

Why quote 20 to 80 percent instead of a full charge?

Because almost nobody charges from empty at home. Cars arrive with 40 to 70 percent remaining after a normal day, many owners set a daily charge limit of 80 or 90 percent to protect the pack, and the last few percent taper as the battery management system balances cells. The 20 to 80 window is a realistic worst case for daily use and a fair basis for comparing charger outputs.

Does a bigger charger always mean a shorter charge time?

Only up to the vehicle onboard AC charger limit. Every column to the right of that limit is identical, because the car simply refuses the extra power. A Nissan Leaf capped at 6.6 kW shows the same time in the 7.7, 9.6 and 11.5 kW columns. Buying circuit capacity beyond your car onboard limit buys no time reduction at all, only a larger electricity bill for the install.

Why is AC charging linear when DC fast charging is not?

Because on alternating current the vehicle onboard charger is the bottleneck, and it runs at a fixed power for almost the whole session. On DC fast charging the pack itself is the bottleneck, so current tapers sharply as state of charge rises and the last 20 percent can take as long as the first 60. At home you can treat charge time as pack energy divided by power, with a small efficiency correction.

How much charging time does an overnight window actually give you?

Around ten hours for a car home at nine and leaving at seven, which at 9.6 kW is roughly 86 kWh delivered after losses. That is more than most packs hold and far more than an average day consumes. For the average 37 mile daily commute, even the cheapest genuine Level 2 circuit replaces the energy used in under two hours.

Does cold weather make charging take longer?

Yes, sometimes considerably. In genuine cold the pack must be warmed before it will accept full current, so the opening part of a session can run at reduced power while the vehicle heats the battery. Cabin preconditioning on a timer draws from the same supply. It is realistic for a winter session to take a quarter longer than the figures in these tables suggest.

Getting your own panel and load numbers ready for an electrician? The EV Home Charging Install Planner is the paid version of these pages: 8 printable worksheets you fill in with your own numbers, plus the full PDF, $29.