Tong Family

If you are away from home, what are your options with Tesla gives you out of the box.
Well they give you the so called Universal Mobile Charger), this is a 240V x 32A or 6kW maximum charger, they provide you with two connectors out of the box:

1. 120V by 12A NEMA 5-20. This is the North American plug also called NEMA 5-20. It let’s you charge at 1.44kW from wall sockets. If you wall socket is lower amperage, this happens if you have a GFI for instance, then you can manually lower the draw in your car to 8A which most circuit should support.
2. 240V by 32A NEMA 14-50. This is the so called laundry circuit with the round third plug. This supports up to 240V x 32A (some say 40A, but it isn’t clear) which is 7kW and the best way to use this is to borrow a circuit from a dryer that is hopefully in your relatives garage or close by.
3. JEDEC J-1772. This let’s you connect o public chargers that are sort of common, these chargers support up to 40A or 10kW at 240V. You don’t actually use your UMC for this, it just plugs into the top.

Here are the things that you should think about buying:

1. NEMA 14-50 to 14-30. There are driver plugs that are not 50A maximum but instead are 30A maximum, so you buy an adapter that convert from the 14-50 to the 14-30. Make sure to turn down the draw request to 24A though. The way this works is that sustained draw needs to be 80% of the maximum (30A * 80% = 24A) but will still give you 5.7kW which over an night is quite a bit or say 57kW over a 10 hour overnight charge. That is 57% of a 100D or 78% of the estimated 75kWH battery in a Model 3.
2. NEMA 14-50 to L14-30. This is the locking connector, there are a host of different connectors, but this. is a 30A circuit that twist locks. This is very common in say emergency generators or older homes.