How long does it take to charge an electric car?

Watching paint dry, waiting for the kettle to boil, recharging the battery of your electric car … All these activities test our patience in the time-poor 21st Century.

Of course, no one really has to watch paint dry or the kettle boil. Go watch Netflix instead…

But recharging an electric vehicle while out on the road does require significantly more time than refuelling at a petrol station.

So how long does it take for an EV to recharge? Long enough to prepare dinner? Long enough to write three more chapters of one’s magnum opus? Long enough for Axl Rose to produce the next Guns N Roses album?

The answer will vary in accordance with these factors:

And the good news is this: newer EVs will recharge much faster, on the whole, than even EVs from just three or four years ago.

The sources available to recharge your electric car begin with the standard domestic power point in your home. This a single-phase circuit rated at 10 Amps. It produces 2.4kW (2400 Watts from 240 Volts multiplied by 10 Amps).

Installed at extra cost, a 15-Amp outlet is also known as a three-pin type of socket on a single-phase circuit. This 15A outlet delivers roughly 3.6kW to shave as much as a third off the recharging time.

Car companies and energy suppliers will sell you a dedicated wall-mounted single-phase AC charger that can be installed in your garage or office car park. These range in power from about 3kW up to 7kW and can halve the time it takes to recharge compared to a household plug. Cost has fallen to less than $1000, but the labour for installation in your garage is not included.

If you need to replenish the battery away from home – or the office – destination chargers are three-phase AC units deployed in public locations such as shopping centre car parks, hotels and other public areas and are rated at 22kW.

An ever-expanding network of charging stations are popping up with direct current (DC) chargers that are more powerful. DC units charge faster than the AC units not only because the power they produce is higher, but also because their output bypasses the bottleneck of the car’s on-board charger.

In simple terms, AC (or alternating current) is like drip-feeding the battery small doses of power through a filter while DC (or direct current) is similar to pouring larger amounts through a pipeline.

Older DC chargers typically start from 50kW, but Australian start-up Tritium (now under foreign ownership) markets an entry-level DC charger with a 75kW output, or a higher-output unit rated to 150kW. Another Australian name, Ocular Charging, builds and sells a DC charger rated at up to 420kW.

Tesla has built its own network of Superchargers, most of which have been available for use by owners of other EV brands since August of 2023. Tesla’s only stipulation is that the EV must have a CCS port or an adapter.

While the current V3 units are limited to output of 250kW, Tesla is reportedly rolling out its 500kW V4 chargers in Australia this year.

Just like a refilling a petrol tank, the time it takes to replenish a battery depends on how much energy is in there already and how much you want to add.

Batteries operate at their most efficient when driven in a state of charge between 20 and 80 per cent, and in moderate temperatures like most of Australia’s major metropolitan areas.

As a result, the theoretical driving range will diminish greatly in cold climates and extreme heat, and the time it takes to recharge will consequently increase.

The biggest factor though is the power provided by the type of charging outlet used.

Basically, think of the vehicle’s battery capacity – which is measured in kilowatt-hours (kWh) – as if it was the physical volume of a petrol tank, while the power of the charging outlet is the size of the pump delivering the fuel.

The bigger the battery, the longer it will take to replenish. And the less powerful the charger, the slower the flow of electricity.

Recharging a 60kWh battery from a basic 2.4kW home power point can take more than a day to replenish fully – if the battery is almost completely depleted.

That time can be reduced considerably with a higher-output 15Amp power outlet and slashed to between seven and 12 hours – an overnight period – with a commercial 7kW wall box.

When using a 22kW fast charger, a 60kWh battery can be recharged to full in less than three hours, while a faster 50kW fast charger drastically reduces that time to not much more than an hour.

Chargers often slow the flow past 80 per cent, as the heat generated by squeezing the last bit of energy into the battery can have a detrimental effect on its performance and longevity.

Beyond that, higher-powered DC ultra-rapid chargers can take as little as 15-30 minutes to top up a battery to 80 per cent capacity – provided the car has a 400-volt or 800-volt electrical system to take advantage of the much faster output.