Hello all. Thanks in advance for any guidance. We bought our 2019 Kona Limited EV a couple days ago. It was brand new (17 miles) at a Hyundai dealership in NJ. My wife is driving it home (to Florida) right now. She wanted to do this instead of having it trucked home, so she could stop and visit family along the route, while learning about the car. She is loving the car. So, I have a couple of questions that the forum might be able to help me with. The first is about home charging. I'm a pretty good amateur electrician. I want to set up a Level 2 home charging station. Are there any resources for learning about what is the best way to do it? I'm very comfortable installing circuit breakers, running cable, and setting up outlets. I'll also need to know what is the best charging cable setup to buy. I looked briefly online and found a lot of choices. The car comes with a charging cable, but I haven't looked at the charging level yet. Finally (for now), I've read a few things here about the 2019 batteries. The guys at the dealership said that there were a few recalls on the car, but they were taken care of while the car lived there, so there is nothing outstanding. Should I be concerned? Thanks for any help. Dan
Welcome! Search this forum for lots of info about your questions. Here is a good thread about home chargers: https://www.insideevsforum.com/community/index.php?threads/recommendations-for-nema-30-level-2-charger.10589/ And it links you to other threads on the same topic. I have a ChargePoint and it works great. The cable that comes with the car is a Level 1 that you can plug into a regular house outlet but it will take forever to charge up the car. It can work well if all of your driving is local and not tons of miles, but I recommend getting a Level 2 so you can charge it overnight when needed. The 2019 battery is a topic all its own. It is very likely that your battery will be replaced as part of Recall 200. Just search that and you will find more than you want to know about the recall. But the good news is that the recall will replace the battery at some point assuming yours is part of the recall, and also I'm pretty sure that the 2019 battery has a lifetime warranty for you, which is awesome. I just made the drive your wife is making about a month or so ago - NJ to Florida a week after buying the car. She will learn so much!
Setting aside any laws that would require you to use a certified electrician, including any state or federal incentives subsidizing the cost of installation... Your best bet, with the EVSE you plan to use still unknown, is to install a NEMA 14-50 outlet (and local 50 Amp disconnect switch, if you can't see the electrical panel from where the plug is). This will give you the greatest flexibility. Beyond that, MSimpsonNJ pretty much covered it.
This is probably the best thread for the battery recall info: https://insideevsforum.com/community/index.php?threads/what-is-the-final-fix-for-the-battery-fire-recall.10363/ It's long but the more pertinent posts come in around mid February or early March 2021 when Hyundai decided on doing the voluntary recall.
Check for recalls and their status on this site: https://autoservice.hyundaiusa.com/campaignhome One can check multiple dealers to insure database is current to the S/N etc On board charger is 7200 W so size the cable for maximum continuous current, 7200/240*1.25 = 37.5 ampacity minimum. Discuss this with your certified electrician and save some $ by running the cable itself. Best to have the electrical contractor pull the permit and do the terminations, or if your municipality allows and you are comfortable and have trained electrical experience, pull homeowners permit and do the complete work yourself. Congratulations on your new Kona EV and hope your family enjoys many wonderful years driving it. Just curious... seeing as it is a 2019, does it come with the original USA lifetime battery warranty?
And I found this review extremely thorough in helping me decide which EVSE to buy: https://www.google.com/amp/s/insideevs.com/news/456441/enel-x-juicebox-ev-charger-review/amp/
We have the Enel-x juice box, since getting our 2019, actually have 2, one in the box I am planning to sell. Great car, great charger.
I'd spend some time figuring out where best to place the charger if there are options. Since you're comfortable doing wiring you may as well hardwire it and avoid the unnecessary failure points and limited choices imposed by having an outlet. Consider if you need load balancing, power draw analysis or remote control features. The charger (EVSE) broadcasts to the EV the maximum current the EV can draw. Some are user-adjustable while others must be configured at installation and others are fixed. Some can alter that on the fly for household load balancing. The car can draw 32A or slightly more if allowed, so you need to provide a circuit rated at 40 A or more.
Thank you all for the great comments. I understand and 'highly respect' the common theme. 'Hire a licensed electrician'. I just might do that. For the record, about 2 years ago, I did hire an electrician to replace the garage sub panel and the exterior main panel. My house was built in 1975. A year later, I wanted to wire in a dedicated circuit breaker and interlock switch for a whole house generator. I opened the exterior main panel and saw that the electrician fed the two main lines into the 200 amp breaker upside down. That story is for another day. The moral of the story is, I successfully rewired the feed from the meter to the main breaker so that the house is now fully protected and able to support the generator (using a very safe interlock switch). I could technically handle the EV charger install, but if I blew up my wife's car, my life would be hell. Yes electriceddy, the window sticker said Lifetime Battery Warranty. It blew me away. We only flew to NJ to look at, sit in, and maybe test drive our first electric car. My wife researched used 2019 Kona(s) because of the more affordable cost. When we got to the dealership and saw the brand new 2019 in the showroom, it was like fate. They were anxious to sell it and they made me a ridiculous offer that I couldn't pass up. When I saw the Lifetime battery on the window sticker, it sealed the deal. I'm very anxious to read all of the links that you guys sent me. I'll let you know what I learn. Thanks again for the advice.
Additionally Domenick has set up a thread featuring our very own Tom Molougney charging reviews which may be interesting to watch: https://insideevsforum.com/community/index.php?threads/charger-reviews-by-tom-molougney.10647/ As a back up, I installed a 20 A 120V ground fault receptacle which I can use with the included EVSE that comes with the car if my hardwired EVSE goes belly up
Congrats! Sounds like a great opportunity you stumbled into. If you're comfortable with running new circuits, and you know how to look up codes for high amperage circuits (since the DIY sparky doesn't generally do those a whole lot) then there's no reason not to sort out your own EVSE. The code actually includes EVSEs since the last couple updates, so there's some specific guidance. Since you have a sub-panel in your garage, the size of your charger might be limited by what you have capacity for on that sub panel. If you can add a 50 A circuit, then get yourself a 40A EVSE. (I got a JuiceBox, but I imagine I'd be perfectly happy with any of the other major brands).
