How To Charge Two Electric Cars At Home

If you have two EVs to charge but only planned for one, this guide is for you.

We didn’t mean to get a second electric car. After purchasing a Tesla Model 3 earlier this year, my wife and I began asking ourselves, “Why are we still burning gas at all when we don’t have to?” Plus, we discovered we like the way electric cars drive – even the non-Tesla ones – more than gas-powered cars. When we found a good deal on a 2016 Chevy Spark EV, we pulled the trigger and welcomed a second EV into our happy home.

The only problem was we had never planned to charge two electric cars at home. When we bought the Model 3, we had an electrician install a 240-volt outlet in the second bay of our two-car garage. This was a considerable expense, as the heavy-duty wiring had to exit our home’s basement, travel along the exterior of our house, go through our garage’s seriously thick cinder block wall, and then travel across the ceiling of our garage’s first bay to get to the second. Did I mention our garage bays are also separated by a brick wall?

So we were faced with a question that will become increasingly common as more and more households go completely electric with two EVs – how do we charge two electric cars at home?

The first answer that came to mind was bringing the electrician back out to install a second 240-volt outlet in the first garage bay. A call was placed, the electrician came out, and pretty quickly this plan was nixed. Like many older homes (our was built in 1953), our house’s electrical panel would require a significant upgrade to accommodate another 240-volt circuit. The electrician estimated the cost of that alone would exceed $2,000, and that’s before running a second line of heavy-duty electrical wiring along the same path as the first. Not only would that be expensive, it’d also be an eyesore.

My next call was to InsideEVs Contributor Tom Moloughney, who has lived with multiple EVs for many years now (he currently owns a Tesla Model 3 and BMW i3). Tom gave me three options of varying cost and complexity to consider.

Option 1: Get A Dual Charger

The first option Tom offered was to buy a Clipper Creek HCS-D40 Dual Charging Station. The HCS-D40 is a 32 Amp, Level 2 hard-wired station that can charge two vehicles simultaneously on one circuit. It splits the electricity between two EVs, with each getting up to 16 Amps of electricity when both are charging and up to 32 Amps when one vehicle is charging. The cost? $1,349 not including installation, which shouldn’t be too difficult as I already have the second garage bay wired. The only problem is the wall separating my two garage bays and the fact the charger and its two cords would be installed in the second bay.

Option 2: Use A Pair Of Chargers That Can Be Installed On One Circuit

Tom’s second option was one I didn’t even know existed. He recommended getting two JuiceBox Pro 32 units. These are separate chargers that can share power from one circuit. This means I could install both on the single 40-amp circuit that currently powers my single 240-volt outlet, and they would intelligently share power so they don’t overload the circuit. The cost? $499 per charger, plus the cost of installing a second 240-volt outlet that splits off from the same circuit as the first, which I estimated at $200-300. So this option costs nearly the same as the first but requires more complex electrical work.

Option 3: The Low-Budget Option

Tom’s third recommendation was by far the least expensive and simplest: charge the Spark EV on a simple 120-volt outlet most of the time since its battery is relatively small (about 19 kWh compared to the Model 3’s estimated 80 kWh battery). For those times when the Spark EV needs a quicker charge, he recommended getting a JLONG 20-ft EV extension cord to help our current charger reach the Spark EV in the first bay of the garage from the second. Cost? $200.