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Owning a Tesla Without Home Charging

This is my experience owning a Tesla without home charging - and what to do if you can't charge at home.
Owning a Tesla Without Home Charging

Owning a Tesla Without Home Charging

I have a Tesla 2022 Model 3 rear-wheel drive that I have owned for about 6 months now (now almost 18 months), and one thing that is different about me than most people is that I have no home charging.

Not having home charging means I need to find a Tesla Supercharger or some other charging station in order to get my car charged up so that it can keep driving.

How have I been able to manage this? It actually hasn't been that hard. One thing that is available is there are various apps you can use to locate Chargers. Two of these apps that I use regularly are EV Structure and Charge Point.

These apps use a map to locate Chargers nearby that you can charge at. Some of these charge stations using these apps are actually free to use from time to time, and that is a nice perk of using them.

However, most of these charging stations are Level 2 Chargers, meaning you are not going to charge your car in just an hour or less. But if you are able to park your car at one of these charges for three or four hours, you will get a nice charge.

Then there is the Tesla Supercharger Network, which is the easiest way to charge and it definitely costs money. One thing to be aware of is that when you are charging at any charger that pays that costs money is that you are going to have to pay the peak price of electricity for when you are using the charger. Unless you have a charger that simply charges a number of cents per kilowatt-hour that you use, this is going to be the case.

So, whenever I use a Tesla Supercharger, I usually go early in the morning or late at night in order to pay a much smaller cost for the electricity I am using to get into my car. If I charge during the day or during peak electricity hours, the cost gets pretty close to what gasoline would cost. If I charge early in the morning or late at night, the cost is about 1/3 of what gasoline would cost. You may also be interested in:

The Future of Charging Outside the Home

Because I live in a condo that's near the city I live in and that has a lot of supermarkets and business buildings nearby, charging is not very difficult for me to find. If you lived in a residential apartment neighborhood and there were no charging stations nearby, and you couldn't get charging in your apartment, that would be a little more difficult.

However, I see the future of charging outside the home very bright, and I see charging stations continuing to be put up all over the place in the city that I live in and in the state I live in. As more and more electric vehicles are purchased, more and more charging is going to need to be put up.

The Tesla Supercharger network is one thing that is going to continue to improve and have more charging stations. If you use the Tesla Supercharger Network, you have the convenience of being able to Simply plug the car into your Tesla if you own a Tesla, and it will recognize everything about your car and start charging immediately.

Charging experiences with other charging networks besides the Tesla Supercharger network is not as easy, but can be free. You often have to install another app and have to input your credit card information, and you have to swipe your phone on the charger and do a series of steps in order to start charging, and it can be annoying.

The true reality of electric vehicles today is that the electric vehicles themselves are amazing and their performance and their technology especially with Tesla's Vehicles like the Model 3 and the Model Y and the Model S and the Model X and the Cybertruck and the upcoming Roadster and all the other new vehicles that are going to create like the Tesla Robovan the Tesla bus and anything else it decides to create - are superior to the current charging infrastructure.

So if you are thinking about getting a Tesla vehicle or any electric vehicle install EV Structure and Charge Point and look for Chargers nearby, and then also look for Tesla superchargers nearby and if there are several of them nearby you're probably good to go for getting an electric vehicle.

Would you get an electric vehicle if you did not have at home charging?

In Related News: Tesla gives big incentive in Germany - it now qualifies vehicles for BIG EV incentive

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Jeremy Johnson is a Tesla investor and supporter. He first invested in Tesla in 2017 after years of following Elon Musk and admiring his work ethic and intelligence. Since then, he's become a Tesla bull, covering anything about Tesla he can find, while also dabbling in other electric vehicle companies. Jeremy covers Tesla developments at Torque News. You can follow him on Twitter or LinkedIn to stay in touch and follow his Tesla news coverage on Torque News.

Image Credit, Tesla, Screenshot

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