Should I get a 240v charger

I don't know if there is a long enough drill exist? Even if there is, it is paved completely from wall to wall between house and the garage so there is no place to start drilling without cutting at least some of those pavement in both ends.

 

It has been my experience that things either fry very quickly, or shortly after the stated warranty period of the product has passed.

My car reported that the outside temp at one point today (in Phx) was 111F. I only got 18 miles from my normal full charge. And it takes a lot longer to charge when it's warmer outside (100+), even with the AC activated in the car.

My point is, I have legitimate reasons to believe the extreme summer temps here in Phoenix are far more of a concern than whether the EVSE is going to die just because of a bad component or two due to voltage limitations.

And it's far more likely to die not because of a voltage rating variance, but because of a manufacturing defect that made a component intolerable to high ambient heat. Either way, it's not likely to be covered by the warranty.

 

Yes, that's called the bathtub curve. Basically when electronics are used in the fashion they are designed for, you will have early failures and late failures with minimal failures inbetween. Most companies try to screen out the early failures with testing so the consumer never sees them. And they design the time so the upsweep on the end of the curve is past the warranty period.

This does NOT apply to electronics that are abused or modified, or stressed.

Operating electronics when the ambient temperatures are 40C or higher already induces stress. Over-currenting or over-voltaging them only adds even more stress. It just increases your chances.

It's not a defect if it is outside of the specifications. Lots of parts in the industry, including many I've worked on myself, have various ratings. C class ratings for consumer, I class for industrial, M for military and X space. Lots of companies use different systems, but these are pretty standard letters. Commercial would be 0C to 40C or sometimes 0C to 70C. Industrial would be -40C to 85C. Military would be -55C to 125C. And some of the crazy space IC's without thermal sinks or sources can be spec'd to -270C to 400C.... The not-so-secret trick is that all these variations are the exact same part, with the exception of the crazy space ones. We just test each part very thoroughly both when it is still part of a wafer, and again when it is packaged and we can tell with almost guaranteed accuracy which parts will start to deteriorate out of spec at different temperatures or stress levels. This is called "binning" where you take the same thing and put into different buckets based on actual real world performance. Obviously you can sell a consumer an industrial part because the ranges are inclusive. All industrial parts will work as consumer parts but not all consumer parts will work as industrial parts. So as you go up the binning you increase the price. When a big customer comes and by and throws you money saying I need a bunch of these C grade parts tomorrow! Well you take from whatever bins. So they might get some C, I, and some M. You lose the upcharge, but you make the total sale. And you start more wafers and get more of the binned parts.

This is what leads to things working beyond their rated capacity. The engineer designs a system and specs a part. The manufacturer makes it to be at least as good as that hoping to make it equal. Anything more is wasted money somewhere. And you can bet that if you become a regular customer we will have all the C grade units you need ready to go for your next order so you don't get any I or M grade. Meaning every batch you produce can have variations. This happens with basically every part. Just like right now lots of ceramics are on a world-wide shortage for the higher voltage small package and just larger package MLCC's. Well the makers of basically everything in the world aren't going to wait for the shortage to go away. They start tweaking their circuits so that they can get away with lower voltage components so they at least have a product. You as the consumer will basically never see this. But in the future it may be why Brand Model XYZ Rev4 tends to melt when you use a generic power adapter from eBay but Rev's 1-3 and 5-7 work just fine with whatever cheap adapter you throw at them.

Your stressed EVSE will die sooner than it should because of the higher voltage and temperatures. And you seem fine with that, so yay. But it would be unwise to recommend this to other people unless you also mention all the caveats.

And yes, I've made all sorts of wonky electronics in my day and sometimes the most fun bits of the job are trying to kill something by going above and beyond spec to see how spectacularly it can fail! But if you can't give it to your nana and reasonably expect it to just work without some special insider knowledge, it shouldn't be released to the public.