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I am planning on getting an electric car in the near future - ordered delivery early next year. I park the car on the city street in front of my house. The city owns the piece of grass from the street to the side walk and a couple feet from the sidewalk to my frontage.

I think the best plan is to run a teck cable to a receptacle on my side and then use an extension cord via a conduit under the sidewalk to where I park my car.

I am currently working on landscaping and the pathway for the cable is under one of the trees I am going to plant.

Ideally if I end up with two electric cars in the future I can add another receptacle and put another extension cord to charge both.

I see that for Telsa there is a 90amp option.

Provisioning for a hypothetical electric car

I am not sure if there is a 90amp receptacle and charging cable. Not currently planning on telsa but be nice if I had the infrastructure there for the future.

Should I run conduit or tec cable? What size? I suppose at most 2x90amp options but I only have a 200amp service so I am not sure that makes sense.

For part of the run I already have 4" abs pipe as I had to install it before I built my window well and the window well is where I'd have the tec cable enter the house ( under ground ).

I talked to my electrician about it and he thought 60amp aluminum to a receptacle - that was before I read the about the 90amp telsa answer.

Looks like there are 30' extension cords so as long as the path from my receptacle under the side walk and close to my car is less than 30' I should be good.

It seems like level 2 charge is 50amp so I'd be looking at a NEMA 14-50 Receptacle and then I just need to figure out how to waterproof and make it look nice since it will be on a post in my landscaping.

The default is probably something like this lockable enclosure. The harder part is making it disappear into the landscaping.

Thank you !

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    Are you allowed to bury things under the sidewalk?
    – Solar Mike
    Commented Aug 27, 2022 at 21:04
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    First thing is to see what the city says, and get it in writing. A guy in Ontario wanted to open a pet skunk farm. Talk to province for three years about his plans. Day after he open, province shut down all skunk farms. He sued, he won.
    – crip659
    Commented Aug 27, 2022 at 21:06
  • With just a 200 amp service, one 90 amp might be a lot, two is probably pushing it. Will depend on how/what you use electricity for. Would be better if you had an all gas heating/cooking setup.
    – crip659
    Commented Aug 27, 2022 at 22:09
  • @SolarMike yes they allow you to place things on the city property, the city can just rip them out without asking you. I already re-did the side walk and have 2x4" abs pieces at 22" below grade ready to use. I'll put an irrigation box to coil up the car charging cable when not in use.
    – Fresh Codemonger
    Commented Aug 27, 2022 at 23:16
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    @Armand -- you can get TECK type cable in quite large sizes (in fact, up to service entrance sizes even)
    – ThreePhaseEel
    Commented Aug 29, 2022 at 1:22

2 Answers 2

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The largest standard size, reasonably priced, receptacle you will find is 50A. 40A uses the same receptacle. Depending on how much service you have, how long the cord will need to be, how much you want to spend, and how much charging you really need, it may make sense to install a 40A or 50A receptacle (same receptacle, but different wiring requirements) or you may be perfectly fine with a 30A receptacle. Or even 20A, but once you're going to all this trouble I'd recommend going for 30A (50% increase in charging speed over 20A). Tesla rates a 30A connection (24A actual current draw) at 17 to 22 miles per hour of charging, so an 8 hour charge gets you 136 to 176 miles of range, which is enough for most people unless they have a really long commute or are out driving Uber/Lyft all day.

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    Many people assume they need the largest/fastest charger they can, and this is just not true, like you say. A 30A, or even 40A charger (running at 24/32A actual) is more than sufficient for the vast majority of people. I'd recommend this video: youtube.com/watch?v=Iyp_X3mwE1w to show you how the math works out, and see what it's like actually owning an EV.
    – Tal
    Commented Jan 27, 2023 at 17:29
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Not as pretty, but if you could get an easement to allow permanently installing a pole curbside (city land), or if there is a electric pole next to your parking spot, get permission to add wires to that, you could run overhead wiring to the charging port.

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  • my friend has his from his tree overhead to the city tree overhead and then down to the city parking spot in front of this house. the city had a pilot program to install the actual ele car charge in front but they ended it.... not sure why. overhead is ugly, no power poles at the front. I don't see any advantage to a permanent solution over the extension cord really - maybe a tiny bit more convenient than pulling the cord out of the irrigation box.
    – Fresh Codemonger
    Commented Aug 30, 2022 at 4:29

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