EVEats Articles How long EV charging takes
How long EV charging takes
A charging stop has a length, and the length is set by the plug, the car, and how empty the battery is. The three levels people mix up on a trip planner are not three speeds of the same stop. They are three different things you might do with an hour.
Level 1
Level 1 is an ordinary 120-volt outlet. A typical portable cord adds a handful of miles of range per hour, often something like 3 to 5, depending on the car. That is an overnight plug at a house, or a last resort at a campground. It is not a way to cross the Eisenhower Tunnel. If a listing is mostly Level 1, treat it as a place to sleep, not a place to catch a highway battery.
Level 2
Level 2 is 240-volt charging. Public posts in this range are often somewhere between about 6 and 19 kilowatts. A useful mental model is tens of miles of range per hour, not a full battery in the time it takes to order a sandwich. Many cars pick up roughly 20 to 40 miles of range in an hour. A two-hour dinner can be a meaningful charge. A 25-minute errand usually is not.
In the EVEats catalog this shows up most clearly in names that say Tesla Destination, and in a lot of ChargePoint sites at garages, hotels, and workplaces. Destination charging at a Vail hotel or on Pearl Street in Boulder is the right tool when you are staying. It is the wrong tool when you are trying to get from Denver to Grand Junction before dark. The catalog's charging-position count adds Level 1, Level 2, and DC fast ports together, so a site with four positions may be four slow plugs.
DC fast charging
DC fast charging feeds the battery directly and is what highway stops are built around. Power varies a lot. A 50-kilowatt post is a different stop from a 150- or 250-kilowatt post, and many cars cannot take the full rate the charger advertises. A practical band for a modern EV on a fast charger, starting low and stopping before the battery tapers, is often about 20 to 40 minutes for a large slice of the pack, such as from a low state of charge up toward 80 percent. That is a range, not a promise. A cold battery, a shared cabinet, or a car that peaks at 50 kilowatts will take longer. Sitting from 80 percent to 100 percent is usually the slow part, and on a busy corridor it is the part that makes the people waiting dislike you.
Tesla sites whose names say Supercharger, Electrify America sites, and most retail EVgo sites in these guides are the fast kind. Rivian sites in the catalog are only labeled Rivian. Some are Adventure Network DC fast posts and some are slower Waypoints. The name in EVEats will not settle that. Open the Rivian app, or whatever app your car uses, before you commit.
Why the same charger takes different amounts of time
- State of charge. A car that arrives at 15 percent takes a fast charger seriously. A car that arrives at 70 percent is already in the taper, and the minutes buy less range.
- Temperature. On I-70 in January the battery is often cold by the time you reach the tunnel approaches. Preconditioning on the way, if the car can do it, matters more than the stall count on the sign.
- The car's peak. A plug rated at 250 kilowatts does not make a 50-kilowatt car charge at 250. Read your car's curve, not the charger's brochure.
- Sharing and faults. A site with 12 positions can still have a cabinet offline, a stall iced in, or power split between paired posts. The catalog is not a live status board.
Match the stop to the clock
If you have 20 to 40 minutes, you want a DC fast site with a restroom and food in the same development: a Walmart, a King Soopers, a mall, the Silverthorne outlets, a travel center. If you have two hours and a reservation, a Level 2 post at the hotel or the brewery is the better charge and the better meal. Fort Collins is the clearest example in this set. Old Town and the breweries are worth the time if you are spending the time anyway. The fast posts for a through-driver are down on I-25, at Loveland, Johnstown, and Longmont, not in the alley behind the square.
For the route version of this, see I-70 from Denver to Grand Junction and I-25 from Colorado Springs to Fort Collins. For what the fields on a charger page do and do not mean, see how to read charger details.