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Cake day: June 10th, 2023

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  • Right, but people use space heaters all the time inside their homes. This is even less dangerous because people tend not to park their cars on carpet and EVs store most of that energy instead of using it to heat up the drapes.

    If we’re worried about pulling 12A out of a 15A outlet, there is much more to be worried about before we get to cars.

    As TC has covered this before, consumers are clueless (and cheap) about extension cords.

    Only a danger if the cord is tightly coiled and drops enough voltage to get warm, but not enough to trip the car’s protection circuit. A lot has to go wrong for this to be a major problem.

    Also all extension cords are wrapped in fire removedant plastic, so it’d likely melt, short out, blow the breaker, and nothing would happen.

    Electrical code is wrapped in many layers of safety. You really have to try to hurt yourself.



  • Standard outlets are rated for 15A. The vehicle is already de-rating by 20% (to 12A) per NEC requirements for any appliance running for more than 3 hours continuously (which is how you get 1800W hair dryers but only 1440W space heaters).

    Assuming code was followed for your house wiring, nothing is at risk there.

    Then it’s just a matter of buying the right extension cord. Note that the vehicle will refuse to charge if the input voltage drops below a certain level (in my car, I think it’s around 110V).

    So you only have to worry about a 10V drop at 12A or 120W of heat dissipation. Assuming all of this happens inside your extension cord, you just need to make sure you don’t coil it up too tightly (or, better, don’t use such a cheap cord).