PRESS RELEASE
Chevrolet Volt’s 240V Home Charging Unit Priced at $490
2010-10-06
DETROIT – Chevrolet has an agreement with a supplier to offer Chevrolet Volt owners one of the most affordable 240V home charging units on the market. Priced by SPX Service Solutions at $490 before installation, Chevrolet’s “Voltec” 240V home charging unit is one of several 240V home charging units that will be offered for sale by SPX Service Solutions, a national provider of home charging installation services and equipment.
The Voltec 240V home charging unit can charge the Volt’s battery from depleted to charged in about four hours, compared with 10 hours with the standard 120V charge cord that plugs into a household outlet. Installation of the Voltec 240V charging unit is estimated at $1,475 but can vary based upon electrical requirements.
In addition to Chevrolet’s Voltec unit, SPX will sell a variety of home charging stations and manage all aspects of installation for Volt owners, including the home survey, installation, permitting, Department of Energy and utility coordination, and identification of available programs and incentives for reduced charging rates.
PDF Pages: 1 2
About Christopher DeMorro
I think you maybe overlooking the 240 volt service you already have if you have either a dryer, water heater, electric range or Air Conditioner. Running an additonal tap from one of these should cost almost nothing and why are they inventing new plugs? Did we learn anythign from the all teh power adapters required for cell phones all do the same job produce about 5 volts DC to charge them? Common components area plus for customer accpetance. In fact as expensive as these cars are going to be, I want the one I can plug into my dryer outlet.
Totally agree with ROystarman, 240V house normal connection is for sure enough to allow quick recharge for the car. We are tired of more and more lies from corporations. More dependence for the users is the business success guaranty. Electric cars should be the new alternative for users freedom and independence.
When my wife and I had our house built, we designed in a 240V outlet near the nose of our cars in the garage. We’re not going to be early EV adopters, but we’ve at least planned ahead a bit. Shouldn’t cost to much to install our future charger.
Complete bullshit. Drove a full-electric 2002 RAV4EV for 2 years, installation of a 4-wire 240V plug cost me $300.
http://blog.geeklimit.com/2006/05/09/i-drive-a-30k-80mph-166mpg-suv
Yep, assuming you have adequate amps into the home and an existing 240v service for appliances, no reason you couldn’t share a breaker with, say, a washer/dryer? Just don’t run the washer/dryer while charging the car..
Adding your vehicle charger to an existing circuit for a dryer for instance would not be building code acceptable. You need to run a separate circuit from the breaker panel to the charger. This should not cost $1400 however; a few hundred at most plus the cost of the charger.
If the charger is $490 and $50 for shipping how can it be
$2200 after installation? The people are being ripped off!
How many mountains are you willing to blow up to get the coal to furnish electricity for all these plug in cars? Until there is enough non-fossil electricity to be equivalent to about 150% of our coal-fired electricity I think EVs should not be allowed. Environmentally what is better, using petroleum products, or blowing up mountains to get coal and then burning the coal to produce electricity, then dealing with the CO2 and toxic coal ash? It’s obvious to me….
Was that $1400 for a union electrician or a non-union one?
“For the rest of us, installation will cost around $1,475, bringing total costs closer to $2,000. Yikes! And this is for a car that goes just 25 to 50 miles on an electric charge.”
Going 25 to 50 miles on a charge that can be obtained overnight means, over the course of a normal week, I would be visiting a gas station about ZERO times… without the premium cost of a fancy wall charger.
At today’s gas prices my TJ costs 21 cents to drive. My V6 sedan costs 14 cents per mile. A diesel car would cost me ~7 cents per mile. An electric car would cost 3 cents per mile.
Even if I couldn’t be troubled with a trip to the library, internet websites, or a friend’s help (who am I kidding: been there done that, for an air compressor) and chose pay an electrician $1475 for such a conversion, I would still break even for the cost of wall charger by choosing to take the Volt 8200 miles instead of the Jeep. It would take me 13,400 miles to break even if I chose the Volt over the Alfa sedan.
Every potential purchaser will be determining the practicality of the Volt by weighing their current (no pun intended) home location, garage setup, and daily commute against the premium in base price plus options. For people like me, living 9.3 miles from work, with everything I need located in between, the appeal is undeniable.
All homes have 240 volts coming into them at the breaker box, but are split there to 120 volts.
However, do consider one very important factor: Cold. Cold has a severe effect on batteries, draining them very quickly, and of course, preventing them from attaining a full charge. If it’s cold enough, it may be virtually impossible to charge a Volt battery pack. EV owners in cold climates–there probably won’t be many of those–may have the additional expense of heating their garages while charging their batteries. Of course, once they drive outside into the cold, they’ll find their range greatly decreased by the cold itself and by the current draw from the fan and heater, wipers, etc.
EV’s, at the current level of technology, remain a brilliant solution to a non-existent problem.
The Volt battery pack is fully insulated and has its own temperature control system, so you wouldn’t need to heat the whole garage to charge it. The Volt has been extensively tested in cold climates, google “Cold weather testing the Chevrolet Volt” for more info.
Mikemcdaniel, don’t you consider the problem of contaminated air an existent problem?
Don’t you consider that forever and constantly increase of fuel price is an existent problem?
The installation cost will vary tremendously, depending on the state of your house’s electrical system. If you have to add a new 240V plug, your house’s total service must have the excess capacity to handle this, or you must upgrade your house’s total capacity. (You may say you will never be charging your car while using other high-load items, but a licensed electrician must assume that all circuits will be used at once.)
If you need this kind of upgrade, yes, it could reach $1400+.
Greetings all.
I am an electrician with 20 years of experience and now run my own company.
It will not take $1500 to install a 240 volt charger in the typical garage of a home or townhouse.
Most homes have the electrical panel in the garage, therefore the labour would only take about three hours.
I charge $60.00 per hour.
A 40 amp 240 volt breaker is aprox. $30-40
Wire is about $1.50-3 per meter- and that’s the mack-daddy teck cable.
As far as people worrying about their house being able to handle charging their cars’ don’t worry about it.
A 200 amp service can put out 38,400 Watts at 80 percent load!!!!!
It’s so funny that people are concerned about plugging in a car, yet I can install a 50 amp 240 volt hot tub and there
is no concern whatsoever!
Go ahead and buy a couple of electric cars for you and your better half.
No sweat!
BTW. Yes you can use your dryer receptacle for charging your car, all that is required is a transfer switch or contactor
that only allows one or the other to operate and your set. You could even put this on a timer so that it only charges the car or truck at night.
Remember that this will also increase the value of your home in the future.