I am not very bright when it comes to all things electrical. I plan to buy the new 2023 Prius Prime. Can I just add a 220 volt outlet in my garage, or must I install an EV charger and 220 volt outlet?
Your Prime will come with a 120 volt, 12 amp charger. To charge at max rate you need 240 volt, 16 amps. So a 20 amp circuit will serve you well. If you just want faster charger, a 6-20 receptacle and a cheap portable EVSE is fine. If you want more intelligence, a hard wired EVSE may offer extra features. If you are looking beyond this Prime, you may want more than 20 Amps.
you only need 120 volts with the oem charge cable (evse) preferably a dedicated circuit. but past generation prime, you coud use the oem evse with an adapter to plug into a 240v receptacle and cut charging time if needed
I want to install a 220 volt receptacle and use that with the adapter to reduce charge time. How long is the OEM charging cable? What benefit is there to installing a charging station in your garage?
1. The adapter to use the factory EVSE at 240V is a hack with safety implications. A fireworks display if a 120v appliance is accidentally plugged into what looks like a 120v receptacle that is actually presenting 240v. And doing this can possibly void your home fire insurance due to the code violation. 1) The hack using the factory EVSE will only provide 12amp at 240v = 2880 watts. A real 240V charging station will be able to provide 16 amps = 3840 watts, and thus faster charging. Also many charging stations have WiFi so you can start/stop charging and monitor usage over the Internet.
